I'm not a scientist ...

Well, actually I AM a scientist, but a social scientist instead of a natural scientist. But that's the excuse given by those who oppose the notion of man-made climate change. "I'm not a scientist but ..." they say.

And then they give their non-scientific argument to the notion of man-made climate change.

Most of us are aware, even the opponents of climate change, of the 2010 data published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found 97 percent of scientific experts agreed that climate change was 'very likely' caused mainly by human activity.

As for the 3 percent of scientists who remain unconvinced, the study found their average expertise is far below that of their colleagues, as measured by publication and citation rates.

These findings were buoyed this past week by a new paper published in the journal "Science" by 18 researchers that contends that human activity has pushed Earth beyond four of nine planetary boundaries including the extinction rate, deforestation, the level of carbon dioxide the in the atmosphere, and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

These are the findings of the experts; people who have been academically trained and who rigorously test and retest their theories and hypotheses. They are the intellectuals in their field and that's where the problem arises because we all know what becomes of intellectuals when they challenge the status quo too much. They're imprisoned or killed because the status quo doesn't want any ideas floating around that conflict with their own.

Since I'm not a natural scientist, I've raised questions about man-made climate change too because of all the remarkable things that have happened on this planet without man's input. For millions of years the earth was a dark, dusty planet with no life on it at all. Then an ice age enveloped the planet with the whole earth apparently freezing over. And then a mountain-sized rock collided with earth effectively killing a large percentage of living things including all the dinosaurs. And yet the earth healed itself and survived.

The question is can we continue to survive if 8 billion people continue to pollute the air the way we've been doing for hundreds of years? Does the planet have its limits? Is there a point in time somewhere in the future when we will simply overload the atmosphere with more than it can take and a tipping point is finally reached we cannot recover from? The new study I quoted above says that could happen.

It says "at the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a safe-operating space for human beings."

I don't know if that's true or not.

And, regardless of your social status, political persuasions or religious commitment, you don't either!