DCCRAIG1,
I resent your earlier accusation of my intellectual dishonesty as much as George Monbiot's accusation (Grauniad recently) that those of us of a certain age who question some of the science that warming alarmists put forward didn't care about the future because we wouldn't be there to see it. Well, I may be past the first flush of youth, but I have grown-up children and one day, by the grace of God, may have grandchildren, and I care as passionately about the future as George Monbiot, Al Gore and your good self.
I've met George Monbiot (years ago) and actually have a lot of time for him, but don't necessarily go along with everything he says. I've made no secret on this forum that politically I'm pretty much towards the green left of the spectrum and have been for years, since long before people were worrying about Global Warming. In the seventies people were worrying about Global Cooling (look it up). We also used to worry about the "nuclear winter" in the event of a nuclear war. If you ignore for the moment the possibility of warming due to anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, cyclically speaking, we are about due for another ice age, based on more than one cycle.
Like most people of my "green" leanings, I pretty much accepted the story on man made warming from an early stage. It was actually what I wanted to hear. Hard evidence that the things I thought we should be doing anyway were now actually a matter of urgency. However, I actually became a bit bemused that suddenly the only thing people talked about was "carbon reduction" (shorthand of course for carbon-dioxide emission reduction, but I wonder actually how many people know the difference). All the other environmental concerns seemed to go on to the back-burner (pardon the pun).
Alerted by a few people whose views I respected, it was only relatively recently that I started looking a little bit harder at some of the supposed evidence, and I've actually changed my mind. That is to say that I've gone from a position of accepting that man-made warming is a fact, and that its consequences will definitely be disastrous, to a position of open-mindedness. I think that _some_ of the people who question the currently accepted wisdom raise questions and make observations that deserve our attention.
As an Australian Dccraig1, you may have heard of Professor Bob Carter. While being a sceptic about warming, he takes the view that we should prepare for both warming _and_ cooling (which he thinks is more likely and more deadly).
Other names to look out for (e.g. YouTube) are Freeman Dyson, Robert Felix, Dr Timothy Patterson, Professor Ron Carter, John Christy, Ron Spencer.
You may also be aware of Stephen McIntyre, who helped to point out the problems with the famous "hockey stick" graph. See also:
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/global-warming-scam_index.html
Personally I don't care that much about Al Gore's apparent conflicts of interests. Well, American politicians are just like that. I imagine he has several large cars and is always travelling by aeroplane. Personally I walk, ride a bike, take a bus or a train much more than I ever drive and I haven't been on a plane for 4 or 5 years. I use energy-saving bulbs and only at a minimum, and keep our thermostat as low as possible. I recycle, make compost and do most of the politically correct things, even if I question the science behind supposed global warming. I do them for the same reasons that I was doing them before most of the chattering classes started preaching about global warming, and which actually have nothing to do with climate change. I'm damned if I'm giving up meat though.
) that it's a winner...
