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October 23, 2005
Universal experts and the global warming debate ....
The Reverend Mike has posted an excellent diatribe on the subject of those who step outside their particular fields of expertise and sound off on matters they have little competence to assess. He is right, and I agree with his sentiments on this one. Still, I don't think I can say this any better than he, so go visit his post "Going to seminary is not like staying at the Holiday Inn Express."
I have to say, that I think he has it absolutely on the button when he says that far too many of those in the "green" camp are simply anti-technology - any technology!
Mikle being a nuclear engineer, he is all to well aware, as indeed am I as a "fire engineer", that computer models are all too limited in their ability to project anything more than an analysis of the data fed into them, and within the parameters the programme has defined. Garbage in; garbage out! This is why we should be very careful of falling for the doomsday scenarios predicted by "computer models" of our climate, our atmosphere or the oceans (which, being a part of the atmosphere, also have "climates". As yet, there is no computer model which can assess or analyse all of the interactions and all of the variations. So we wind up with little fragments which require some huge leaps of "logic" to stitch them all together.
We all agree that something is happening, and we need to do something, but we also need to put aside the doomsday predictions and the fear of technology and come up with some really creative and sustainable answers. And at present, nuclear power offers the best solution for heat emmissions, emmissions of "greenhouse" gases and economy of fuel use.
Mike is right, climatologists, engineers and all the disparate technological disciplines need to actually work together to find a solution - one not driven by the prejudices of small and vociferous groups who hate technology!
Posted by The Gray Monk at October 23, 2005 09:38 AM
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Comments
Yep.... I'm and Environmental Engineer neck deep into the debate here in Canada... everything that I've seen shows that we need a technology solution not a "lets get rid of Hydrocarbon" solution.
I'm not so jazzed about Nuclear solution but theres lots of stuff that we can do until renewable technology is developed further...
Posted by: Sierra at October 27, 2005 06:14 AM