Ray,
Yet, the enormous majority of experts working on the topic agree that man has most probably a large influence on global warming through the CO2 emissions it generates.
This is a fact that should not be impacted by your possible disagreement with the dominant view.
As requested initially, I would prefer not to focus this thread on another discussion about the impact of man on global warming, but about the disconnect between the large agreement in the scientific community and the strongly diverging view shared by media who give the impression that this topic is still evenly debated in the scientific community.
Cheers,
Bernard
Bernard,
I have great respect for the methodology of science. How factual and precise are the terms 'enormous majority' and 'most probably'? What is the scientific methodology that has been applied in order to determine the size of the majority that you claim is in agreement that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the main cause of the current warming?
The other issue that needs to be addressed is the evidence that such warming, whatever its causes, will 'most probably' be harmful to the environment and humanity's future.
I take a more holistic approach to this issue. Human civilizations began when the climate began to warm after the last Ice Age. About 12,000 years ago, that huge area of the current Sahara Desert, bigger than the entire continent of Australia, was a rich grassland with lots of wildlife. Now it's a dry and hot desert, and that increasing desertification in the region no doubt contributed to the collapse of the great Egyptian Empire.
A fundamental scientific truth that needs to be emphasized is that climate has always been changing in the past, in different ways, in different regions, causing many civilizations that were not able to adapt to the changing climate, to simply collapse.
An example a recent collapse of a civilization due to a very rapid change in climate, is the Khmer civilization in Cambodia, famous for its ancient temples such as Angkor Wat, which I know you've photographed.
This area around Siem Reap is one of my favourite locations for photography. There are so many temples overgrown by the jungle, with so many beautiful carvings on the walls which are still standing, and on the fallen stones which are lying on the ground.
When I first visited the area many years ago, the historic story was that the civilization collapsed because their traditional enemy, the Thais, had successfully invaded, and the population just left the entire area, which resulted in the cities and temples gradually becoming lost in the Jungle until the French colonialists discovered the ruins in the 19th century.
However, more recent research, examining tree rings and sediments, has revealed that before the Thais attacked, there was a rapid change in climate in the early 14th century, around the same time that the Medieval Warm Period in Europe was changing to the Little Ice Age, which caused the Vikings to leave Greenland.
In other words, before the Thais attacked, the population was already beginning to depart because of periods of long droughts. As the climate cooled, the snows in the Himalayas didn't melt in the summer as much as they used to, the water flowing down the Mekong was reduced, and the rainfall in the Monsoon periods was significantly reduced.
The question we should all be asking is, which is more certain, that the climate has always been changing and will continue to change, or that the current change is unprecedented because of human emissions of CO2?
It's important because every year people are dying and losing their property because of extreme weather events that are usually not nearly unprecedented, according to the existing record. What might be unprecedented is the total value of property destroyed and the number of lives lost. That is due to the increase in population and urbanization, rather than any increase in the severity of the flood, drought or hurricane.
