[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by RWebb

1. wrong
2. wrong & the age of the Earth is not relevant
3. yes, it is a complex field
4. only a part of it
5. you are conflating two different things here

You might want to look into this area of science a bit more. It IS science, not engineering.

My comment re cracking was where it would go not whether it would occur. As you know, large safety factors are included to ensure low risk. That makes sense in other areas, does it not?

You asked me if I was an engineer, I gave you a practical engineer answer. If I was wrong 50% of the time I'd be out of a job pretty quickly.

As for #2, I strongly disagree. How can scientists claim to understand the natural patterns of the Earth with MAYBE 100 years of good data? How can they prove that what we are experiencing today isn't simply part of the natural climate pattern that occurs every XXXX years? Validity of statistical data is very strongly tied to sample size, especially when extrapolating. 100 years of data compared to 4 billion years is pretty damn insignificant.