Another take on the Global Warming debate

So as not to hijack the other global warming thread...

Does anyone recall the outcome of the acid rain issue years ago? Are there any analogies/lessons to be learned ,such as whether there was pro and con regarding whether it was legitimate science issue? Or whether factors other than man-made were the cause of the problem? Or whether, if there was in fact a bona fide problem, the steps taken by man did in fact remediate or at least lessen the problem?
Seems to me there may be analogous/parallel lessons to be learned re the present debate over climate change. (Or did that issue engender the same type of cluster you-know-what as what's going on now?)

acid rain has certainly been moved to the back burner as of late. should be a great thread.. there will be varied opinion on this as well. my thoughts are that acid rain never got to the degree it was reportedly supposed to get to or never as bad as some reported it was at the time of the big debate surrounding the topic..

I think maybe you are seriously stretching if you are really trying to tie the two together science wise....

In fact this type of thinking is exactly what got us to the point where we are at with "Alleged Global Warming"

Acid rain was fairly obvious the only time it fell on the Earth before man's pollution was after Volcanic activity...

The Earth has been warming and cooling in cycles for as long as we can tell...

See the difference????

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Originally Posted by gssixgun

The Earth has been warming and cooling in cycles for as long as we can tell...

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Wasn't there some scientific scare in the 70s about another ice age coming about (similar to global warming)? I believe the data and comments made at that time were similar to the stuff we hear about global warming.

Back on topic...

I agree, comparing the two sciences is probably not a good idea. We (humans) tend to try to classify or group things as some type of natural instinct to solve problems or categorize for easier recall/understanding but there are somethings where this practice is not a good idea due to the fact that it can cause irrelevant/misleading data.

I remember when they said sex was dirty and air was clean..... turns out they were wrong on both of those statements. :)

Haha.

Oh..global warming...right...

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Originally Posted by TheBaron

Wasn't there some scientific scare in the 70s about another ice age coming about (similar to global warming)? I believe the data and comments made at that time were similar to the stuff we hear about global warming.

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For someone of my age this is deja vu all over again except we have passed through Alice's looking glass to where everything is the other way around.

Discussed here: The Fiction Of Climate Science - Forbes.com.

Picture attached.

Here's my take on the whole climate change thing: I don't honestly believe the global warming hysteria. I don't think that me using less toilet paper will save a polar bear's life. I don'tt think that we have damaged the world so deeply that we can change the weather globally.

HOWEVER, I well and truly believe that we can't keep going like we have been...seriously, we treat the world like a dump, that can't be good. I grew up in coal country, and it ain't pretty...Driving through parts of SE Kansas, NE Oklahoma feel like you're in Mad Max or something, toxic dust killing tress and causing birth defects ARE NOT FICTION. I've seen it, my mom worked with superfund sites and guys, it is messing with people's health. So there is something to the argument that anthropogenic pollution is hurting our environment in meaningful ways. Changing the entire world's weather? No. ****ing in our own nest? Yes.

So...maybe a little hysteria isn't so bad. Maybe it'll get enough people thinking about the effects of what they do, so things will maybe get a little better, without hurting people too much more...

Well, the original point of this post was to ask whether there are any parallels between the current GW debate and the past history concerning the issue of acid rain. IOW-was the validity of the science behind acid rain questioned/debated/argued to the same extent as what is going on currently with GW? Were there arguments that any acid in the atmosphere was naturally caused, not man-made? Did some claim that human activities could not be responsible for altering something as large as the atmosphere?

Any science-savvy folks out there who can inform us?