X-Message-Number: 19269 From: Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 15:44:09 EDT Subject: Re: CryoNet #19254 - #19262 Tracey Simon asks: "Don't you think that Global Warming is a threat? Or do you think that it is overhyped?" Answer to the first is, perhaps, but the science isn't there as assumed by so many. Answer to the second: absolutely. The temperature of the earth goes up and down over the centuries and millennia. CO2 levels have often been higher in the past and it may be related to warming. It's also what plants breathe and they like it a lot. From what I have read, there is significant evidence to indicate that fluctuations are mostly caused by sun activity. What humans contribute to the variance is very hard to pick out, but we have been on a warming trend, perhaps something like 0.6% temperature increase in the last 100 years. It is very doubtful that CO2 levels produced by human activity have contributed much to this temperature increase. Yes it is cause for concern and a lot more effort by scientists to sort out the factors. I suggest you look at Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist , Cambridge University Press for a pretty thorough and, I think, objective presentation of the facts as we know them today. I know that Scientific American enlisted a whole army of distinguished scientists to try to refute Lomborg recently [now there's a global crisis for you!] but he's got the facts and put them together in a rather persuasive monograph. Remember that true science doesn't ride on the basis of how many 'scientists' think such and such is true. It's the data that counts. I repeat, doomsday stuff is bad for cryonics. Fight it any way you can. Squash the lies; puncture the hype. There are many legitimate threats to the human race. Proliferation of atomic weapons is by far the worst; terrorism in some malignant forms probably deserves a high place on the list, but I also see luddite alarmist attacks on progress in science and technology from global warming scares to population bombs, to resource depletion to cloning and gene manipulation also as threats to where we want our world to go from here. Ron Havelock Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19269