[pasi]

Originally Posted by Hasbinlulz [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How come every time I try and get someone who doesn't think mankinds shit stinks to explain why they tell me "it's complex bro, go look it up lol" ?

But then whenever I ask some environmentalist hippie to explain why shit is wrong, they are able to easily cite a laundry list of facts and studies that support what they are saying?

For the most part, people are (usually) knowledgeable about what they care about. The knowledge pool combined with our life expectancy sort of rules out the notion of being a renaissance man.

Originally Posted by Splorf22

Now, what we know for a fact is that the planet has become somewhat warmer over the past 150 years. What we don't know is why. The earth and its weather are a very complicated system, not to mention changes in solar activity. Unfortunately we cannot use science here (= do controlled experiment, create 100 earths with 50 that have strict green house gas laws and 50 that do not and measure the differences). We only have one planet.

There are many fields like this where it is beneficial to connect the dots before something is scientifically proven. As you mentioned - this is not a case where we can run traditional controlled experiments on. In fact, very few fields are so raw that we have the mathematical capabilities to create an isolated model. Other fields must rely on a steady accumulation of results that support a hypothesis. HBB mentioned you're in medicine, I believe?

I think you can draw a parallel to drug development (and medicine in general) here in the sense that we are observing the effect on a system with more variables than we know how to properly model in vivo. We are also acting against a clock that does not always allow us to wait. The idea is weighing the pros of acting now versus the cons of acting without complete knowledge. For the most part, I think the consensus (I say consensus because you will always have people willing to champion an opposing viewpoint for the spotlight) among scientists in the field means that our knowledge base (although incomplete) is sufficient to act on this matter. I think people underestimate the effects a 1-3 degree difference has on the environment. Even in this thread, you had some idiot try to prove his point by saying that Venus is only 8x hotter than the Earth.

Then again, this isn't my field so grain of salt and all.