Can we take all the political bashing of the right and left off this
list--take it to PHYSOC if you must (far left liberals are very welcome
there and conservatives even tolerated). Suffice it to say that both
extremes of the Global warming debate have played hard and fast with the
facts, that governments (all) tend to shape those same facts to their
purposes, and despite the illusion of unanimity on the issue amongst
scientists, we need only look to this list to see that many here are not so
ready to get on board the 'humans are destroying the planet' express. {A
good friend, initially trained as a physicist to the masters level then
turned air/water pollution engineer, is an extreme skeptic.}
There was, recently an interesting discussion on PHYSOC about the much
touted announcement by the EU about commiting to more stringent CO2
controls. Apparently such is mostly illusion (with only GB actually doing
anything) due to a lot of technical and statistical shuffling of the
numbers. Turns out that little new (or old) is actually being done in
Europe at all.
Another example of playing with numbers (this time to bash the U.S.) was the
recent report that the U.S. was expected to increase emissions by 20% from
2000-2020 (not counting any possible [probable] new initiatives to be taken
in the next 13 years.) Check out the expected population rise in that
period--seems to me that a 20% increase in emmisions represents a NET
reduction in emissions per person, even without taking any explicit steps
towards a 'cleanup'. Of course that was NOT reported.
Rick
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Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
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Free Physics Software
PC & Mac
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
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