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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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