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Re: fHuman vs. natural influences on the environment
In article <4te222$908@igc.apc.org>, tomgray
<tomgray@igc.apc.org> wrote:
>charliew@hal-pc.org (charliew) wrote:
>>In article <31F6611B.2A35@hydro.on.ca>,
>> Dan Evens <dan.evens@hydro.on.ca> wrote:
>>>Environmental reporting is some of the WORST journalism
you
>>>are ever likely to find. Not only is it rife with the
usual
>>>problems of simplifying things for Joe-Couch, but it also
>>>suffers from being a political hot button.
>
>I don't agree. Environmental reporting is about like all
other
>reporting--some is accurate and some is not. I don't think
you
>will find many other readers of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN who
will
>agree with you that it carries shoddy science.
I disagree here. In October of 1991, Scientific American
published an article that was clearly erroneous, and which
featured an explanatory picture from the National Academy of
Sciences explaining that oil tankers should be loaded "under
capacity" to reduce or eliminate leaking oil during tanker
groundings. This material was so much in error that I wrote
a fairly long article to the editor in which I chastised him
for publishing such an article in a scientific magazine. I
don't know for sure, but it is likely that most people who
read that article believed it solely because of who
published it. If you are interested in viewing the article
yourself, look for "Soiled Shores", Scientific American,
October, 1991. This article might even be fertile ground
for another internet debate, it you wish.
>>Good point. If I gave a presentation to management and
made
>>this statement, I probably wouldn't have my job for long.
>>In my profession (engineering) you had better get some
>>answers before drawing attention to an issue, or your
>>credibility will be rapidly lost (sound familiar?).
>
>Yeah, but science is different from business.
Applied science is not much different than business, because
it takes engineers to formulate an economic application.
>I don't recall the exact number at the moment, but CO2's
>residence time in the atmosphere is long--certainly tens of
>years. And that means the emissions we are producing now
>will continue to affect the atmosphere well into the
future.
So what? There is no big revelation here that a very large
system (the atmosphere) has a long process time constant (it
takes a long time to see a change). This idea is common
knowledge to any process control engineer. What about the
fact that this long response time can also be beneficial in
that sudden disturbances may have little or no impact?
>Since we have only modest knowledge of what the impacts
will
>be, there is a good reason for suggesting that we should
take
>action now to reduce emissions.
It is just as easy to formulate an argument stating that no
immediate action is needed, especially given the fact that
you are basing your judgment on a "gut feeling" and not on
any measureable phenomena.
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