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I have been thinking of how or even even why I should respond to this and finally came up with a reason of which will be explained at the end. To keep a little relative to the topics on this site I can even use three of Sartin’s words “preponderance of evidence”.
"Well I have absolutely no idea where that figure comes from, therefore its a mute point without facts behind it. How many actually participated with their own study verses just singing along with the chorus ?"
I think you mean "moot" point Mitch. Folks I'm sorry if I have gone off topic with a non horse racing topic. It started out as a relative point and has veered away. My bad I suppose. But at the same time it does deserve attention because it is and will be the most significant event of our time. And even here, I feel I should do my bit to help the "mis" and or "ill" informed. We have a better chance of dealing with it if we all pull in the same direction.
I don't blame certain groups of people for not knowing where the actual facts come from. Misinformation is a big part of some politics. Unfortunately this problem has become a partisan political issue. It shouldn't be. It is simply science and more specifically physics. The truth is "inconvenient".
I don't believe everything I see on the internet. Nor should anybody. But in this case because of where I live (in the north) I know the figures are truthful and pointing in the same direction. I see the warming outside my door all the time. Subtle still, but there, over time. And more easily than people further south would see it. One example: we used to reach -30C two or three times every winter. It was fairly consistent. In the last ten years it has become rare. We still have snow and winters, but generally a shadow of what used to be more reliable. Winters are more apt to be strange mixes of ice, snow and rain with abrupt changes. Ski resorts can't operate without snowmaking equipment as they once could. Some no longer operate at all. My favourite one closed more than twenty years ago because winters had become too unreliable. A friend of mine works in the insurance industry. Claims for weather related damage have skyrocketed in the last decade in Canada. Ice storms, floods, wind, and fire. Record fires are not just happening in California. Western Canada is also experiencing these in record numbers, size, and intensity and it has nothing to do with how things are managed. Just more dry and more hot. This is just the warming part though but it is the warming that is the catalyst for most everything else like loss of bees and insects. I see less of those too.
The earth has been warmer than this in the past. This info is gathered through ice core samples. Scientists look back hundreds of thousands of years at parts per million of carbon. The reading of ppm of carbon is climbing and is the highest since a few hundred thousand years ago when the earths temperature was several degrees higher. Carbon ppm has a direct correlation to temperature. The top ten warmest years in recorded history are: 2016, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2013, 2005, 2009, and 1998. This is since 1880. A microcosm in time, yes, but still awfully coincidental with the increased carbon ppm. Temperatures can and have changed dramatically fast many times. Dramatically fast in geological terms can be a decade or two, even a few hundred years. But this catalyst needs a catalyst. This time it is us. It is everything we do. Cows, cars, whatever. If it spews a gas that causes the atmosphere to retain solar heat, it is part of the problem.
You could say that this group of scientists or that group of scientists is feeding us a line. But when what they find is backed up by personal observations I have to go with the odds and the “preponderance of evidence”. Our group knows about odds. There are flat-earth people, and people that still believe cigarettes cause no harm. For me personal observation puts them in a small group of deniers that could never be shown the truth. The group of deniers on the climate topic is still too large but maybe some will wake up.
The technology and scientific know-how already exists to fix the problem. It is political will that is missing. Life is comfortable for those that benefit most from the way we operate now. Why would they want to change? Maybe they think they will be immune. Nope. A major complaint is that it will harm the economy. A switch to a low or no carbon economy would have some pains but a no/low carbon economy would eventually be just as big with retraining and completely new areas of work. It has already started.
I am not a social media person. No Facebook. No Instagram. No Twitter. Just a bunch of people wasting their time arguing IMO. But here, if by posting this response I make somebody think twice, or reconsider a political choice so that more of us are on-board, then it will be worth it. It is still doable but only for a limited time.
Again I apologize for getting too far off topic. I hope this thread is not taken down or at least not too soon for being irrelevant to horse racing, but it did start out that way. The more that see it the better. It may have some small affect.
Pook
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