Patterico's Pontifications

10/9/2010

Proposition 23 and AGW; UPDATED with Harold Lewis Resignation Letter

Filed under: Environment — Patterico @ 2:19 pm



Tell me why I should support Proposition 23.

Which gets us into a bigger question: tell me why I should be skeptical of the concept of man-made global warming. Because it’s my impression that the scientific consensus supports it.

I hate it when scientific questions become political issues — because I think politics causes people to lose rationality. And i think this has become a virtual religion for both sides.

So I am looking for evidence.

This thread will employ the rule of excessive politeness. Nothing even remotely disparaging will be permitted. And I’m not keeping any part of a comment that violates the rule. Your comment that opens: “I’m surprised you would fall for AGW” followed by 10 paragraphs of polite and well researched material gets nuked, entirely. I could end up deleting 90-99 percent of all the comments, leaving only comments by Bradley J. Fikes. I don’t care. This is such a hot-button issue that I’m not putting up with even a milligram of B.S. or invective.

I will probably play devil’s advocate in the threads. The goal is to hash out the issues and put the religious faith aside.

So: why should I doubt what appears to be a scientific consensus?

UPDATE: Looks like the timing of this post is lucky given this letter of resignation linked by commenters below, written by Hal Lewis, which became public just today.

I never heard of him before and it’s one guy, but it’s timely . . .

UPDATE x2: To clarify: I consider myself agnostic on this subject, but I interested in learning the arguments on both sides. I consider myself an “AGW skepticism skeptic” — meaning that I am not willing to simply accept AGW skepticism because it is conservative dogma, any more than I will accept AGW because it is liberal dogma.

I believe we pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and that doing so contributes to warming. How much, I have no idea. That’s about as much as I feel I “know.” But I’m willing to play devil’s advocate to tease out the arguments.

Sockpuppet Saturday!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:48 am



Well, Monday is a holiday, so it’s like a Friday today.

Yes, this is the thread where you get to impersonate other people and nobody will take it seriously.

If you indulge, please, please remember to switch back to your regular handle for the other threads.

Happy puppeting!


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