Well, I suppose it's time for me to stop lurking and finally post something. I've been reading the discussions for a while now and am finally up to date. I've found it to be a great forum for discussions of many different views.
Anyway, a little about myself. I'm currently a software engineer for Bibble Labs in Austin, Texas. We do photography workflow software, primarily focusing on processing RAW images from Digital-SLR cameras faster than any other software available. As such I get to play with just about any DSLR that comes out; if only that made me a better photographer.
I made my way to Austin by first working with Karl at another software company - Corda Technologies in Lindon, Utah. I actually started working there way back when we were all still in Merrill Hall, at that time it was only me and my Boss. After I served my mission in the Philippines I returned to Corda and worked there while I finished my BS in Computer Science at BYU. I graduated in the fall of 2002 only a few days after I got married.
Marriage inevitably took me to New York City where I worked for Nikon doing photography software similar to what I'm doing now. I lived in the Upper East Side of Manhattan for about 3 years. This time unfortunately saw the end of my marriage which also indirectly led me to Austin. Being single again let me entertain opportunities that I otherwise might not have considered.
That's me in a nutshell. Throughout most of that time I've had a big black lab named Pungi who is featured frequently in the pictures I post on my blog, Cutterpillow.com. Unfortunately Pungi hasn't quite mastered the art of taking pictures so there are very few pictures of me there. One of these days I'll get Pungi trained and then hopefully there'll be more pictures of me up there.
Climate Change
Lastly to contribute somewhat to the discussion I'll share some of my views on climate change. I must admit that I don't have a large knowledge of the subject, but since when has that ever stopped anyone from having strong opinions? First of all I despise the term "global warming" as it implies that global temperatures will only ever get warmer and never cooler and that claim is pretty much preposterous. I tend to agree with the following quote by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley which I referenced on my blog:
A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide.Now when you've got a title like The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who's going to mess with you? Seriously though, as for Peter's scale in the previous article I'd have to say that I fall in at #1 and don't go beyond that, that is I believe that on average global temperatures are currently increasing. I don't have any conclusive beliefs one way or another regarding #2 but I am highly skeptical that we have anything to do with the rise in the average global temperature. My belief is that the primary force behind climate change is that big burning ball of gas that our planet orbits. I just don't think that there's enough information to determine that our activity is the driving force behind the current trend in climate change, after all the entire history of civilized mankind is only a blink in the history of this planet. And the period of time that we've actually kept records of global climate trends is a mere blink of that - a blink of a blink in the history of the world. To claim that we have any solid understanding of global climate trends over large periods of time is fairly foolish in my opinion, let alone trying to predict how the climate will trend in the future.
Something I like to remind myself of is how wrong science has been throughout the history of mankind. The one thing that is constant in science is change, yet there are many who believe that out current understanding of science is an absolute authority. There was once time when we knew that the Earth was the center of the Solar System. Later a time that we knew that the planets orbited the sun in perfect circles. I think that our understanding of the global climate system is still in its infancy and trying to enact any policy based on our current limited knowledge is premature and potentially dangerous. It was only 34 years ago that Time magazine published an article titled Another Ice Age? The consensus at that time was that "global cooling" was occurring and potentially a problem. Not to mention that they thought that man might have been the cause. Whatever the cause of the current change in global climates I believe that it is premature to take any significant actions based on our limited understanding of global climate patterns, especially any actions that might try to significantly change global climates. Who knows, we might cause our own manmade ice age if we were to undertake radical efforts to prevent "global warming."
I do think that doing things to ensure a clean environment are a good thing. Everyone wants clean water and air and we should recycle as best we can. But imposing costly measures on businesses and individuals (Carbon Credits) is foolish in my opinion.
1 comment:
Hey Dave, good to see you here and still in Austin. Maybe I'll have to return there some day.
I can't let sleeping dogs lie, so let me direct your attention here for a response to the Time global cooling argument and here more generally (sorry for reposting this link, everyone).
Of course, as I've stated before, I believe the evidence is compelling that global warming is rooted in our own behaviors, and that furthermore there is something we can do about it.
But let's suppose for a second the evidence, as you suggest, were not so compelling--it's just a popular theory. Given the severity of the consequences, and that God's only given us one Earth, shouldn't we take a more cautious approach, even if that approach slightly inconveniences industry for 20-30 years while we figure things out?
(By the way, I'd like to throw out the idea that a focus on new energy or cleaner energy sources would better our economy in the short term by creating an entirely new growth industry, and in the long term by shifting us over to more effecient and plentiful energy sources that lack pollution costs).
And while I'm appealing to emotion, let me throw out this analogy: if 90% of the medical community tells me that there's a good chance I'll die of smoking some day, do I take a wait-and-see approach because 10% of the medical community still disagrees and the 90% can't satisfactorily tell me when or if I'll die?
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