This talk of rushing to a conclusion is rather funny considering the body of scientific data has been put together over the last decades. The theory of GHg goes back a few hundred years. The desperation with which some people try to pin the observed warming effect on anything but GHG is starting to get a bit like ID and creationism. AH! If evolution is true why are there still monkeys!? That level. It's a shame...

Mark-

Your comparison with ID is apt in another way.  If you go to a public debate between an ID'er and a credible scientist, the ID'er often wins by distorting, misrepresenting, or outright dissembling.  But when ID and science went head-to-head in a court of law, where such tactics were not allowed, the ID'ers got creamed.  

I'd like to see GHGs and solar/natural variability/etc. face off in a court of law.  I suspect that GHGs would win, and win big.

Thanks!

Andrew,

You are absolutely right...

I think that just like with ID the key thing is education. Yet, you have to accept I think that there will always be a part of the population that is going to deny science. I find it interesting that they use the same debating tactics.

I find it also interesting that people who are perfectly able of rational scientific thought in other areas completely lose it when it comes to global warming. Seems political views cloud judgement more than anything else.

Just keep going and going. I think more and more people are getting it. Now we need to get our leaders to take responsible action.

Lovely photo, Andrew, of your Weimeramers (?) in that floral-print chair.  They do not seem quite snuggled in, but no doubt they can find for themselves satisfactory positions round about the house, here or there.  Meanwhile, they are posing very nicely, and the colors of the shot are great.

Curiously, the subject of the pet-food recall has been ignored in Grist.  There was something about a recent danger in baby food, which was fine, but nothing about this crisis regarding what is safe to feed our animal companions.

And yet, the way several independent labs are going about isolating the harmful ingredient in manufactured pet food is a good example of how science proceeds, the subject of this thread.  The NY State Department of Agriculture earlier on identified a chemical used as a rat poison; later, that could not be confirmed by a fed lab, or by a lab at Cornell.  A lab in NJ is also at work.  A plastic component has subsequently been identified. ...

The more profound scientific question is how the pollutant ingredient is understood to affect the vulnerable species (cats being apparently especially vulnerable).  And just too little is known, apparently.  No idea, who all are involved in that research, and how they are going about it.  Needless to say, experimentation with live animals is problematic.

Why is transparency in scientific research so embarrassing?  Why do we not understand that that is a great moral weakness of our civilization?

I would think, after this case, the veterinarians should feel at least a bit of embarrassment here.  Whatever, let us hope this episode opens up the pet food industry to greater scrutiny than ever before.

And, more centrally, the way this discussion, on the lethal pet food, is proceeding is a great illustration of how science works.  How it typically works.  How it ought to work? -- well, you decide.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!