Still think global warming / climate change is a myth?

Question

...executives, representing major utilities, aluminum and chemical companies and financial institutions, said the cornerstone of climate policy should be an economy-wide emissions cap-and-trade system.

Members of the group include chief executives of Alcoa Inc., BP America Inc., DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., and Duke Energy Corp.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=2814233

Answer 1

Everyone likes to sound like a Politically Correct good guy. It is good for business. If they back it up with anything more than token feel-good gestures that will have little impact on anything I will be the most astonished person on this website! I still doubt that if human actions are impacting the planet's climate that we can successfully convince enough people soon enough to do anything that will halt the process before it is far too late to matter.

Answer 2

I don't dispute climate change, I argue how much is caused by human activity & how much is a natural cycle. "Global Warming" is a catch phrase embrased by a lobby group with it's own political agenda. Natural disasters are a part of our planets ecosystem, we don't control the weather & driving a '65 pontiac does not make killer storms or the ice caps melt!

Answer 3

You do know that DuPont made a killing when it came to the hole in ozone myth.
Later to find out the holes in the hole in ozone cycle.

GE & Duke Energy they are big ones for nuclear power.

See a trend here.

My guess you don't.

Answer 4

Counterpoint: Highlights from an article appearing in the Houston Chronicle on Jan. 22, 2007

...(the) hurricane overtaking New Orleans and searing heat last summer...finally trigger(ed) widespread public concern on the issue of global warming. (However) global warming may not have caused Hurricane Katrina, and last summer's heat waves were equaled and, in many cases, surpassed by heat in the 1930s.

...a few climate scientists are beginning to question whether some dire predictions push the science too far.

"Some of us are wondering if we have created a monster," says Kevin Vranes, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado...(who) came to this conclusion after attending an American Geophysical Union meeting last month. Vranes says he detected "tension" among scientists, notably because projections of the future climate carry uncertainties — a point that hasn't been fully communicated to the public.

...(Vranes strongly disagrees with such hyperboly as this statement made last summer by Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Science. He is quoted as saying at the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce): "I think we understand the mechanisms of CO2 and climate better than we do of what causes lung cancer. ... In fact, it is fair to say that global warming may be the most carefully and fully studied scientific topic in human history."

Within the broad consensus on global warming are a myriad questions about the details. How much of the recent warming has been caused by humans? Is the upswing in Atlantic hurricane activity due to global warming or natural variability? Are Antarctica's ice sheets at risk for melting in the near future?

...for predicting the future climate, scientists must rely upon sophisticated — but not perfect — computer models..."The public generally underappreciates that climate models are not meant for reducing our uncertainty about future climate, which they really cannot, but rather they are for increasing our confidence that we understand the climate system in general," says Michael Bauer, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York.

Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University...acknowledges that considerable uncertainty exists with key events such as the melting of Antarctica, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 200 feet.

"We honestly don't know that much about the big ice sheets," North says. "We don't have great equations that cover glacial movements."

Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has published several research papers arguing that a link between a warmer climate and hurricane activity exists, but she admits uncertainty remains.

Like North, Curry says...Vranes could be sensing a scientific community reaction to some of the more alarmist claims in the public debate.

Curry says...As the public has become more aware of global warming, more scientists have been brought into the debate. These scientists are closer to Hansen's side, she says, but reflect a more moderate view.

"I think the rank-and-file are becoming more outspoken, and you're hearing a broader spectrum of ideas," Curry says.

Jeffrey Shaman, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University, says that unease exists primarily between younger researchers and older, more established scientists.

Shaman says some junior scientists may feel uncomfortable when they see older scientists making claims about the future climate, but he's not sure how widespread that sentiment may be. This kind of tension always has existed in academia, he adds, a system in which senior scientists hold some sway over the grants and research interests of graduate students and junior faculty members.

Would junior scientists feel compelled to mute their findings, out of concern for their careers, if the research contradicts the climate change consensus?

"I can understand how a scientist without tenure can feel the community pressures," says environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., a colleague of Vranes' at the University of Colorado.

Pielke says he has felt pressure from his peers: A prominent scientist angrily accused him of being a skeptic, and a scientific journal editor asked him to "dampen" the message of a peer-reviewed paper to derail skeptics and business interests.

"The case for action on climate science, both for energy policy and adaptation, is overwhelming," Pielke says. "But if we oversell the science, our credibility is at stake."

Answer 5

What then of the cavemen, the ice age ?