Comic relief

[ikol]

You make a good point: if climate change is true, then everyone would have to give up travel.

 

Or at least not travel by jet. If global warming is such a huge doomsday disaster, sacrifices have to be made.

[owl]

Or at least not travel by jet. If global warming is such a huge doomsday disaster, sacrifices have to be made.

Ah, that makes sense. The only way to make a sacrifice is to avoid air travel--or at least only fly via biplane.

[ikol]

Ah, that makes sense. The only way to make a sacrifice is to avoid air travel--or at least only fly via biplane.

 

There are many other sacrifices that Al Gore is not making.

[Good Old Neon]

There are many other sacrifices that Al Gore is not making.

 

Care to share them with us?

 

And what if Gore

[ikol]

Care to share them with us?

 

For starters, he lives in a 20-room mansion. I guess it's possible that he wanted 30 rooms but decided to limit himself to 20 for the sake of the environment. Maybe he does pay extra for "green" energy, but by using so much electricity, he's not setting a very good example for those that can't afford to pay extra. He advocates the type of environmental policies that would be hard on the average person while himself not making much of a sacrifice.

 

And what if Gore

[owl]

For starters, he lives in a 20-room mansion. I guess it's possible that he wanted 30 rooms but decided to limit himself to 20 for the sake of the environment. Maybe he does pay extra for "green" energy, but by using so much electricity, he's not setting a very good example for those that can't afford to pay extra. He advocates the type of environmental policies that would be hard on the average person while himself not making much of a sacrifice.

Ohhhh, I get your point now: because Al Gore's has a large house, he's wrong about climate change. Also, he's wrong about climate change because you've tabulated all of the personal "sacrifices" he's made to help the environment, and you find them to be insufficient.

[ikol]

Ohhhh, I get your point now: because Al Gore's has a large house, he's wrong about climate change. Also, he's wrong about climate change because you've tabulated all of the personal "sacrifices" he's made to help the environment, and you find them to be insufficient.

 

No, him being wrong is a separate, independent point. He thinks he's right and yet is not willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

[owl]

Yeah, I didn't realize that he has publicly asked people to sell their homes and buy smaller ones, has refused to donate millions to environmental causes but asked others to do so, condemned the airline industry and said nobody should be allowed to fly, etc.

 

And that he's wrong is a separate point. It's amazing how in science, no experiments are ever made, it's science's policy to always judge hypotheticals as false. Cool.

[ikol]

Huh?

[owl]

No, I totally understand. It's really easy to rationalize one's dislike for someone when he/she expects something of you.

[ikol]

Something tells me you totally don't understand.

[Good Old Neon]

No, him being wrong is a separate, independent point. He thinks he's right and yet is not willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

 

I respect you Ikol, but at times, it appears as though your willingness to believe in something is sort of backwards, meaning - the more evidence that exists in favor of a certain proposition, the less likely you are to believe it. While a lack of evidence serves only to buttress your belief - or lack thereof.

 

The theory that the sun is responsible for global warming has been reviewed and dismissed numerous times, by myriad studies, conducted by just as many sources - yet, like many right wing talking points, it shambles forever on, like a zombie who stubornly refuses to just knock it off and die already.

 

Here

[ikol]

I respect you Ikol, but at times, it appears as though your willingness to believe in something is sort of backwards, meaning - the more evidence that exists in favor of a certain proposition, the less likely you are to believe it. While a lack of evidence serves only to buttress your belief - or lack thereof.

 

The theory that the sun is responsible for global warming has been reviewed and dismissed numerous times, by myriad studies, conducted by just as many sources - yet, like many right wing talking points, it shambles forever on, like a zombie who stubornly refuses to just knock it off and die already.

 

Here

[Good Old Neon]

But all scientists do not agree on this. Just about every theory that eventually gets accepted as true is initially seen as crazy by the majority of the scientific community, so even if most scientists think humans are causing the majority of climate change, it does not necessarily mean that it's true. This is not something as clear-cut as Newton's laws or even evolution. Excuse me for thinking that they don't have the climate of an entire planet all figured out. The whole Orwellian attitude of human-caused climate change proponents also doesn't help; the scientists that do have alternative theories get shunned by their peers and there studies are blocked by scientific journals.

 

This comment has more to do with our past -when the religious establishment had the last word on what was and what was not considered scientific fact

[ikol]

This comment has more to do with our past -when the religious establishment had the last word on what was and what was not considered scientific fact

[Good Old Neon]

Except that's not true. I'm not denying the part about the religious establishment having a larger influence on science in the past, but even in more recent times when religion did not have much influence, many scientific theories that were ultimately accepted were initially dismissed as crazy. A great example is the two scientists who theorized that peptic ulcers were actually caused by bacteria rather than just stress. After being laughed at and dismissed by the scientific community, one of them drank a dish of the suspected bacteria to prove he was right. They won the Nobel Prize in physiology recently, and now their theory is universally accepted as true. There are numerous other examples of this including the discovery of prions, quantum physics, and more recently that the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are actually caused by an inflammatory reaction by the immune system. So, no, it's not just the past influence of religion.

 

 

 

My remark about evolution was not at all meant to be condescending (as I've stated several times on this board, I accept the theory of evolution 100%) but to acknowledge that evolution is a lot more complicated and difficult to prove than Newton's Laws. My point was that the climate is even more difficult to study (it's hard to do a controlled experiment on a whole planet) and less well understood than something as complex as evolution.

 

 

 

And we've reached a dead end here. I don't think he's doing enough if he really believes what he preaches, whereas you think he's only "mildly" hypocritical. There's not much more to add to that.

 

Yeah, I think we

[fatheadfred]

Anyone seen 11th hour? That is kind of scary.

 

I side w/ 'we are ruining our planet'. Isn't that enough? Regardless of global warming, which is apocalyptic, we are slowly degrading human, plant, and animal life everyday. So let's get past the debate about whether global warming is real and start improving our quality of life.

[ikol]

So let's get past the debate about whether global warming is real and start improving our quality of life.

 

OK, I'll start by getting a 20-room mansion!

[fatheadfred]

OK, I'll start by getting a 20-room mansion!

 

While I partly agree with 'walk the walk, talk the talk', Gore was able to spread the message about the destruction of our environment like no other. Although it is annoying to hear local newscaster talk about it and companies market it, 'going green' is now commonplace. Prior to Gore's film it was not like that.

 

I've heard people mention Gore's house before kind of diverts attention away from the scientific understanding we have gain about our ecology. It is easier to dismiss his life rather than the knowledge.