If you were in a wreck with a drunk driver and had severe injury to your legs, you would be taken to the hospital immediately. The drunk driver that hit you might or might not have auto insurance. If he did not have insurance, who would be the first person you would want to ask for legal advice? Of course, you would ask your cousin who is carpenter, right? Well, maybe your first hunch was wrong. You should probably ask a reputable LAWYER! Failing to get sound legal advice could lead to some pretty harrowing drawn out legal processes and waste a lot of your time and resources.
If you wanted to develop an opinion about global warming, who would you talk to? Probably not a carpenter. I have nothing against carpenters. My dad is pretty handy with wood. Actually, I quite admire their skills. However, I would not ask a carpenter for accurate scientific information on global warming. Yet a lot of the political and popular debate surrounding global warming in this country seems to be coming anecdotal information from people who do not understand the carbon cycle very well.
Should our lawmakers really be basing policy decisions that affect our environment on information given to them by people who run the petroleum industry or by say, carpenters? Or would it be more prudent to base policy decisions on evidence gathered by climatologists, the people who actually study global warming for a living? One of the best places to find the collective knowledge of climatologists around the world is the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
My brother is a meteorologist. Although he does not work primarily with climate change, he has spent a lot of time studying the factors that influence our global climate and always give me great information when I ask him questions about it. Even though I trust that what he tells me is accurate, I still want to look at the information for myself.
I ask the reader again, would you take legal advice from a carpenter?