Response to a Few Climate Questions

I think that if you are genuinely interested in climate science, then you could read the International Energy Agency reports, or reports from NOAA, or from our armed forces, or from NASA or many other organizations to find out these answers. It is easy to find contrary opinions to climate change within the public discourse, but if you really take the scientific discourse seriously and look critically at the scientific consensus, then in time I think that you might change your mind.

I think you understand that no science is absolutely certain. This is what I was taught at Statesboro High School, and this is what they are teaching at Statesboro High today.

What science does is point us to rational conclusions (that are never accepted as absolutely certain) upon which we can base decisions. Science tells us that we've reached peak oil and that the world's population will grow to 9 billion by the time I'm 64. No one is arguing about that. It also tells us that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been in a very long time and that the rate of increase has been accelerating since the industrial revolution.

But all this is science, and so there is an element of uncertainty. If you pour vinegar and baking soda into a kid's volcano, just because it overflows every single time doesn't mean it will again...there could be some other factor acting upon it. The most likely cause for that overflow appears to be the mixing of baking soda and vinegar, but no scientist is absolutely certain of this fact. You can choose to put that kid's volcano above your carpet and mix the two ingredients together with the belief that it will not overflow, but many people might think that is a dumb thing to do. I imagine that if you saw a child about to pour those ingredients into a volcano on your carpet, then you would exercise the precautionary principle and say "Stop!"
So I say stop, but a lot of people don't like that because there are a lot of political and economic implications they don't like...that good Americans react to emotionally, regardless of the fact that the chemical processes of the atmosphere are happening. It is scary to me that people are not concerned with science, because if the scientific consensus is correct, then this means very bad things for my generation and my future children and grandchildren.