Note to Birdforum's Jane Turner

In a Birdforum thread, you wrote:

Presumably this is approximately the same ratio of the environmentalists and conservationists population as the ratio of physicists and climatologists that argue that there is insufficient evidence to suggest an anthropomorphic component to global warming.

Your statement suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific debate on global warming.

I think essentially 100% of scientists agree that there must be an anthropogenic component to global warming.

The debate is all about the magnitude of that anthropogenic component.

That above point is so critical, and so often overlooked, that I'm going to repeat it for emphasis:

The debate is all about the magnitude of that anthropogenic component.

Many skeptics think the magnitude of the anthropogenic component is relatively small (say, on the order of .5 degrees Centigrade in the 21st century in a "business as usual" scenario).

That is not a catastrophic warming. It is entirely possible to disbelieve the catastrophic predictions while at the same time being pro-conservation, intelligent, honest, well-versed in the scientific issues, having no hidden agenda, etc etc.