In message .com,
writes
Hi. I'm in the United States and interested to know what some of you
British weather enthusuasts have to say about your own perception of
global climate change. Perhaps a non-American perspective might prove
enlightening to me. Here, in contrast to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient
Truth', there seems to be a strong anti-opinion held by a sizeaable
minority that global warming is either hype and/or a conspiracy put on
by the left, allegorized in Michael Crichton's novel 'State of Fear'.

My own opinion is that there is strong evidence, both direct and
inferred, that the Earth as a whole is warmiing, particularly in the
Northern Hemisphere. That there are climatic fluctuations should not be
surprising since it would be naive to think that the Earth is a static
organism. What I would like to know is exactly how much are humans
contributing to climate change and if so, how - even if I'm skeptical
that much would be done about it even if it was shown beyond a shadow
of a doubt that people's activities were the primary cause of global
warming . After all, we've been warned about and shown the dire
consequences of pollution and deforestation but for the sake of
supposed progress nothing really changes and in fact, environmental
degradation seems to be accelerating.

I read Chrichton's 'State of Fear'. His philosophy could be applied to
many other aspects in the developed (?) countries; the current obsession
with health and beauty for example. I am not a climatologist merely a
meteorologist. However, it is good to see an American taking a serious
interest!
As has been pointed out you are not going to stop the main polluters
India and China who are in stage 3 of the demographic process. Here I
do not mean per capita. Obviously USA are the greatest offenders .p.c.
Unfortunately I think whatever group you approach in Europe, you are
going to find that America is getting pretty isolated both on this and,
at the moment, on other issues.
Cheers
Paul
--
'Wisest are they that know they do not know.' Socrates.
Paul Bartlett FRMetS
www.rutnet.co.uk Go to local weather.
400FT AMSL 25Miles southwest of the Wash