Scientists have perhaps 130 years worth of sometimes accurate recorded weather data and from that they are assessing doom in the present and the near future on a planet that is 4.5 Billion years old.
That is akin to calling the U.S. Presidential election with four votes counted on a planet that everyone knows was warmer back when dinosaurs roamed it.
And now that we've witnessed the media completely stirring everything up over the past couple of years, we're supposed to believe the under-sample-sized scientists whose guesses reach us only via that media???
It sounds like a recipe that Chicken Little would love.
You and I only 'know' those things — that we live on a planet, that it's billions of years old, and that there once were creatures we learned to call dinosaurs when we evolved, because of scientists, People who have learned from centuries of doing their science by observation, by experiment, by measurement and by recording and sharing that data. You even said you and I 'know' the planet was warmer back then. Thanks to scientists looking to know what no one knew.
It's because of them and their imperfect data-collecting over centuries (well beyond your 130 year number) that we 'know' anything about our world, how it works, and about its history and ours. Criticize the second, third and fourth hand mass-media digests, summaries and headline-grabbing précis and exaggerations all you want. Although your real target should be our gullible fellow-citizen consumers who parrot the stuff uncritically. That Presidential election was only 'called' — and the voting machines purchased to provide the partial result — because people like us demand it. We reduce even the best media to mere gossip-mongers, by favouring immediacy over accuracy and completeness.
But without the scientists, you and I wouldn't know any better ourselves, would we? There. So much for the Chicken Little† Effect.
As for Global Warming itself: Consider it like a possible house-fire, but very slow-motion. Some in the family smell smoke, some don't. Someone say it's just Liam's weed we're smelling drifting up from the basement, and he and his friends have the space-heater going, so that's why it's hot in the living room overhead. Someone else says, they left for the movies an hour ago, and the living room's been warmer since the new wifi thermostat. Anyway the only thing they smell is the onions Sara burned.
So: Do you do nothing and go to bed? With the possibility of a smouldering roach or a forgotten plug-in heater incinerating the house? That'd be the Denier Option.
Or do you make the effort to be as safe and certain as you can, actually visiting TeenDungeon to see for sure, and resolve to find out if another of those thermostats would let the boys do without the damn space heater with its danger and expense. That'd be the Sensible Option. The Science one if you will: Do what you can
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† Just BTW about Henny-Penny, or Chicken Little, I'd forgotten the ending and checked Wikipedia: Thanks to that branch of science we call History, we know people have been telling each other that story about spreading panic for 25 centuries. But we all tend to overlook that Henny and her friends ended up as dinners, because of inattention and unawareness. There are Buddhist and a Br'er Rabbit versions where wiser critters halt the flock, investigate the facts and restore calm. Sorta like looking past the media hysteria and getting the real science.
Which does say we're warming, and does say the shit we pollute with is making that worse. Better deal with it than deny it.
