On 25 Jan 2007 06:02:54 -0800, wrote:

Or how about some of the other bandwagons that the scientific/political
community jumped on, only to be proven wrong? Remember how in the
70s they told us that because of fat, eating butter was going to kill
us? So, they recommended replacing it with margarine, made out of
transfats. Now, according to current thinking, it turns out the
margarine was far worse. So bad, in fact, that NYC just past a law
barring it from all restaurants.

The thing that makes me most skeptical of global warming being caused
by man, is that whenever it's brought up and discussed, there is never
a discussion about previous warming/cooling cycles that occurred in the
absence of any possible man made effects. Exactly what caused all of
these cycles and how do we know the same effect is occuring now?

As for scientists being in consensus, here's what Richard Lindzen,
Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT had to say, about how
established, reputable scientists who disagree are being ignored or
shut out of discussion:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
"So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this
junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not
merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep.
Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some
of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis
that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the
warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on
the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to
encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work
could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann,
a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The
scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate
and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well
as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical
Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a
scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

"And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific
journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about
accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are
commonly refused without review as being without interest. However,
even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some
colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under
varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect,"
wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased
temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback
sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally,
criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to
which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this
case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared,
claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and
longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as
"discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find
out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S.
National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge
of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged
support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would
actually happen."