I must say I really don’t understand these blogs and editorials I read talking about Al Gore and crazy doomsday scenarios. Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? It’s not a crazy doomsday scenario, in fact I think Gore deals with the issue in a mature and scientific way, presenting accurate data that pretty clearly implicates industrialization in the phenomenon of global warming. I read these responses and there is not even a hint of discussion of the evidence that “skeptics” present, and how rare these skeptics actually are within the scientific community (they are even more rare than evolution or Holocaust “skeptics”, though perhaps not always as ideologically motivated). And like evolution skeptics, their PR campaign has been largely successful, despite their lack of scientific credentials. I, like Al Gore, don’t really see this as a partisan issue. It’s not going to be good for anyone if global warming has anything near the projected effects (which, by the way, Al Gore did not just make up or something…), so an examination of the evidence and a change in policy by everyone in Washington is in order, and has been for some time. It is just pointless to make armchair evaluations of a phenomenon that thousands of scientists around the world have been studying for years and agree on (do you know how hard it is to reach anything near consensus in scientific circles?); just shut up and do some reading, and then make a rational, informed judgment. It’s pretty simple, and there are great books out there for the general public. Try Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers, or Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes on a Catastrophe, or actually look up the studies Al Gore cites. I have a copy of Flannery at home here, I’ll send it to you if you want to look at the evidence.

I will also be posting a long discussion of the evidence for global warming and addressing challenges in a later post here on BNN. When I get it done and post it I will give you the link.