<div>Chas et. al.</div>
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<div>Thanks for your feedback on Naomi Oreskes research on climate change science.</div>
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<div>I went back to your comment below, and considered that if Vision2020 participants followed your suggestion that "we should lay off the unqualified pronouncements," most of the opinions and comments to this list would cease, including your own "unqualified pronouncements," such as your defense of the Moscow City Council's back room Hawkins development deal, well, that is, unless you have a doctorate relating to the economics, water resources, or urban planning involved, or a law degree regarding the legal complexities. </div>
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<div>Only those with a PhD. in the particular discipline covering the issue at hand would be posting, perhaps, assuming having a PhD. would satisfy your conditions for being qualified to make a pronouncement.</div>
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<div>Explain why, given a public list serve such as Vision2020 is an opportunity for those who do not have a PhD. or law degree covering the topic under discussion, to discuss and learn, why "we should lay off the unqualified pronouncements," whatever you mean exactly? Perhaps you did not really mean what it appears your comment suggests?</div>
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<div>Regarding your comments on Naomi Oreskes research on climate change science:</div>
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<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686" target="_blank">http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686</a></div>
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<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=13459" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=13459</a></div>
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<div>Your comment below raises an important issue, though I do not agree with the hyperbole:</div>
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<div>This is a complicated<br>scientific issue, and USians suck at making rational decisions about<br>science. We make emotional decisions about everything. </div>
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<div>Many other nations (is this an "unqualified pronouncement?") score higher in science education than the USA, so you make a valid point. However, I do not think this state of affairs is inevitable. The USA as a whole could expand its science comprehension, and raise the level of respect for the scientific method. </div>
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<div>I do not agree that "we make emotional decisions about everything," though I may be nick picking here, given you probably did not mean this literally. People in the USA often make very rational cold hard calculations about money, wealth and power, and in applying science to these goals. Many scientific advances occurred first in the USA. We have the most advanced military hardware on the planet, for example, and this goal has been achieved by utilizing well funded advanced scientific research.</div>
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<div>I suppose, though, that it could be argued, in the long run, our decisions about our economic system are too "emotional," given the long term crisis our economy is headed for, due to irrational economic decisions (too much credit and debt, over reliance on depleting fossil fuel energy, over extraction of resources, too much consumer consumption, and the resulting environmental problems, etc.).<br>
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<div>Ted Moffett</div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 3:22 PM, lfalen <<a href="mailto:lfalen@turbonet.com">lfalen@turbonet.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>> Do you discount John Coleman and all 500 of the Climate Scientists that recently met in New York. I think that the question is still open. That is not to say we shouldn't be working on decreasing air pollution.<br>
<br>I agree. Competent scientists on both sides of the debate have come<br>to opposite conclusions. Nontheless, and Inexplicably, some of us<br>have decided to become cheerleaders for our particular hobbyhorse. Of<br>course, it is still prudent to take the cautious approach, but we<br>
should lay off the unqualified pronouncements.<br></blockquote></div><br>