I'm an avid reader, and 100% of my reading is in history. I particularly love studying the American Revolution. I have however taken dives in other topics that have interested me. One of those most recent dives was into the life of Albert Einstein, and more broadly the evolution of quantum mechanics - something Einstein never did buy into. Einstein went to the grave trying to develop a unified field theory to disprove quantum mechanics. What you will find though is that scientists are wrong a lot. Many great scientific minds spend their lives punching new holes in the things we dont understand. I find it fascinating, and I love to read and study these things, but science has often been terribly wrong on things throughout history. Even in the medical world we have been wrong. The Ideology of the low fat diet, and how it conquered America is a good example.
One of my big hobbies over years past was in nature and wild life photography. I also live in the country like many here Im sure do. I appreciate wildlife, nature, and It angers me to see people do careless things like throwing trash out their car window. However - when it comes to climate change, all my reading has brought me caution. One of my other passions (Im an introvert who falls deeply into personal interests) was in weather. I actually wanted to go to school for meteorology when I was in high school. Im much older now but still very passionate about weather. I have a professional weather station and I track all my own weather history at my house. Being in Florida, I also have loved the art of tracking hurricanes during hurricane season since I was old enough to know how. I share all of that to highlight the fact that I have a real interest here. I have spent time reading and researching the facts, the data. What concerns me with the current state of the whole "Climate Change Debate" is the rabid alarmism - often pushed by people who really know nothing about climate science or the weather. Anytime fear is the primary motivator for anything, your red flag should immediately go up, and you should start to dig deeper.
We know that carbon in the atmosphere has been increasing, that can be measured. We also know that there have been periods where carbon was drastically higher than it is today - if you go back into the millions of years. Instead we see headlines like this " Carbon Dioxide Reaches Highest Recorded Levels In Human History" with values of over 400ppm. The key here being Human History. If you drop the human part, and just look at the history of the earth There were periods where Co2 levels were 10 times higher than they are today - over 4,000ppm. Im aware there are arguments for everything though, and lots of ways to dismiss this and dismiss that. The fact is that Co2 is on the rise, but the big unknown is how the planet will adapt or respond to higher levels of Co2. That is the part where we leave facts and get into theories of how the earth will respond. My personal feeling is that we are drastically overplaying the fear, much as has been done with various other big social movements in the past. Politicians, particularly on the far left, are constantly making silly outlandish statements that suggest Armageddon is on our doorstep if we don't do something yesterday. I simply do not buy into this at all. There is no reasoned thoughtful approach to any of it by many politicians, no consideration for any other possibilities by most who buy in. I've tried to discuss this with many die hard leftist folks, and their whole position is one that you would more often seen aligned with a religious position - it is almost a cult to some, and reason has long gone out the window. I often hear the same talking points as well, over and over and over, which is further proof to me that it has become too fanatacized. It is like talking to anti vac folks.
Some of the best hurricane experts can not even accurately forecast hurricanes sometimes - and these are people I respect very much. We can totally misforcast a hurricane when we have ALL of the parameters on the table. Hurricane forecasting is so good now, we know so much, we know all the data points, we can measure every single element that affects a hurricane, and we still see some storms forecast completely blown out of the water. As an amateur forecaster my own internal forecast is often way off. Sometimes I'm dead on the money - and sometimes something happens that just cant be explained. It will sometimes fool every single forecast model we have- and these models are highly sophisticated and very very accurate. The point of my rambling is this - The climate is far more unpredictable than most people realize or understand, and the planet far more resilient than people give it credit for. Projecting how high the oceans will be in 50 or 100 years for example is such a silly thing to try and predict. I would honestly put such predictions at less than 1% chance to be accurate. Lets not forget many climate predictions over the last 50 years have already failed to come to pass.
I am someone who respects science - I love it in fact. I respect many of the brilliant minds in science, particularly those in history who had so little to work with compared to what we do today. But in my study of some of these great minds I often find a lot of the same pitfalls of human nature. Pit falls that hit many great historical figures, not just those in the world of science - they buy into their own ideology. Einstein is a great example of a pure genius, who spent years chasing rabbits down rabbit trails that never went anywhere. I respect him tremendously for chasing those rabbits, because every rabbit trail that leads to a dead end is in itself another answer, another piece to the puzzle. Many scientists have done this - they buy into a bad theory and ride it for years in some cases until being proven wrong. When you want to find something bad enough, you can start to find it in everything if you arent careful, reasoned in your mental approach, and self aware enough to not fall into typical trappings. When your theory seems perfect is when you need to start asking the most questions. In 50 years a lot of things are going to happen regarding the climate that will throw us curve balls, and I suspect most of them will come as complete surprises when they occur. We dont have this thing figured out nearly as well as we think we do. Dont buy into fear mongering. Fear is the cheapest and easiest means to taming and controlling the human mind. Fear, when propogated en masse on a society has lead to some of the greatest downfalls of humanity.
EDIT: original post written in haste, edited to better convey my thoughts.
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