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Originally Posted by richardkm  I can see where both Thwick and Paul are coming from, but once upon a time all scientists thought the world flat, even earlier than that they considered that the earth was the centre of the universe, and may I remind you that Darwin was a lone voice in the wilderness.
I'm not saying that one side or the other is correct, I consider that the jury is still out regarding climate change and that we should keep an open mind as to the cause, because if it is a natural phemomena and we can have no effect on the cause, we need to think very carefully about the future. If humankind is the cause, then we MUST look at how we can reverse the trend, but it's no good if we in the UK are the only ones taking steps, it needs to be world wide, and that really is a can of worms |
Actually hardly anyone thought the world was flat - the greeks calculated the circumference pretty accurately circa 200BC The medieval church might have thought it was flat (but actually I'm not sure many of them did) but no scientist ever did. The earth as the center of the universe was accepted for a long time simply because it conforms to experience - you see the sun going round the sky, proving that actually it's us going round the sun requires pretty complex maths. (Incidently in a survey of primary teachers a few years ago something like 30% thought the sun went round the earth, so there's still some work to do here). Darwin's theory was almost universally accepted by scientists as soon as it was published. Only non-scientists argued against it. "How incrediably stupid of me not to have thought of that" was Huxley's first response on hearing about Darwin's theory.
And the jury isn't out as far as science is concerned - no serious scientist who isn't paid by the oil industry has any doubts about the reality and causes of global warming - any more than they have doubts about the link between smoking and cancer. What we are seeing here is a concerted campaign to muddy the waters about global warming run for the most part by the same PR firms who managed to delay action on smoking on health for so long. My uncle died (from lung cancer) still believeing that the link "wasn't scientifically proved", that "the evidence wasn't conclusive", that there was "a controversy". It's exactly the same campaign, complete with fake graphs, tame scientists, and dodgy statistics.