The Global Warming Heretic 1190
theodp writes "In The Civil Heretic, the NYT Magazine takes a look at how world-renowned scientist Freeman Dyson wound up opposing those who care most about global warming. Since coming out of the closet on global warming, Dyson has found himself described as 'a pompous twit,' 'a blowhard,' and 'a mad scientist.' He argues that climate change has become an obsession for 'a worldwide secular religion' known as environmentalism. Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, calling him climate change's chief propagandist and accusing him of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models and promoting 'lousy science' that's distracting attention from more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet."
Dyson himself wrote about the need for heretics in science not long ago.
Yeah, well, they also got mad at Galileo. (Score:1, Informative)
the Zealots are always willing to burn a heretic.
Dyson is one of the greats and as Einstein said:
"Greatspirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
And God knows there are a sh*tload of mediocre minds involved with gerbil wormening
Not to mention with Lefties, politicians, movie stars..
If movie stars are in favour of it, it pretty much guarantees it's a bad idea.
Freeman Dyson has, apparently, angered all the right people.
FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Princeton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country's most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming "out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned," as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors' letter boxes and Dyson's own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as "a pompous twit," "a blowhard," "a cesspool of misinformation," "an old coot riding into the sunset" and, perhaps inevitably, "a mad scientist." Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred "carbon-eating trees,"
His most useful contribution to science was the unification of the three versions of quantum electrodynamics invented by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga.
Wikipedia on Freeman Dyson
Although Dyson has won numerous scientific awards, he has never won a Nobel Prize, which has led Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg to state that the Nobel committee has "fleeced" Dyson. Dyson has said that "I think it's almost true without exception if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you should have a long attention span, get ahold of some deep and important problem and stay with it for 10 years. That wasn't my style."
Dyson worked as an analyst for RAF Bomber Command at RAF Wyton during World War II, where he would come to create what would be later known as operational research. .... his major awards and accomplishments run for pages....
Dyson Sphere, Project Orion - on and on.,.
his home page:
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~dyson/ [ias.edu]
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Informative)
You know he actually was quoted saying "I am not going to let science get in the way"...
Googling 'gore "I am not going to let science get in the way"' returns 0 results.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
quote from wikipedia :
In the 1970s there was increasing awareness that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945. Of those scientific papers considering climate trends over the 21st century, only 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming
Re:Thank goodness (Score:3, Informative)
I have to agree with you (and Dyson). Al Gore looses his argument as soon as he says that a concensus has been reached. Science simply doesn't work that way! Then he follows up with "the discussions are over." No they are not. Real science is a process of ALWAYS questioning your theories and assumptions and going where the evidence leads.
There is some evidence that there is some heating. The evidence that it is caused by CO2 or is man-made is tenuous at best! Depending on computer models that are not historically consitant is also ludicrous. All you really need to do is look at the prediction results for a Hurricane track. They use 10-15 different models and get that many different results. Usually as they show tracks taking off from Cuba - the run anywhere from the Yucatan to curling around and hitting Florida - and this for 3-4 days out!
Further - a lot of the data that they use for their arguments of warming are things like the temperature readings in the US - where it has been proven that a goodly chunk of these numbers are biased by Urbanization, but the numbers haven't been corrected for this affect!
Remember the announcement that 1998 was the warmest year of the century -well it turns out that these biases through them off. !934 or there abouts where (remember the great dust bowl???) 1998 was one of the 10 hotest in the century, but not the worst. Further - we've been having a cooling trend for nearly 10 years now! How does that jive with global warming?
Re:Global warming is a politically painful subject (Score:5, Informative)
that's because 'global warming' is a badly chosen term. the average temp may go up, but lots of places are going to get colder, hotter, drier, wetter for longer periods.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:4, Informative)
While I could't think less of his daughter (hi Estie!) I couldn't think more of Freeman. And if you look at the times he's been wrong before (oh, there aren't any) and think about what he says in terms of the context of actual life dynamics you'll see he's not wrong this time.
This doesn't mean we should be free to pollute but as pointed out in Jurassic Park "life finds a way".
Actually no, peer reviewed article from Science (Score:5, Informative)
First off I want to say Freeman Dyson is a brilliant physcist and we should all be grateful for his work in physics, he is not however a climate scientist, climate scientists have a rather different view of the whole thing:
"IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686 [sciencemag.org]
(Peer reviewed science journal Science)
So do some research about the mainstream of climatology before jumping on the Dyson bandwagon.
And yes Al Gore is often an exaggerated propagandist and he isNOT helpful in this debate, that doesn't however mean that there isn't real climate science out there pointing to the anthropogenic origin of observed climate change.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:2, Informative)
This was the analysis of a Science News article [sciencenews.org] I read a while ago. According to them, there was no consensus.
Then again, Science News also chooses to report a 9% growth in the arctic ice as "A near-record Arctic melting" [sciencenews.org]. Agenda, anyone?
Re:Thank goodness (Score:3, Informative)
I have to agree with you (and Dyson). Al Gore looses his argument as soon as he says that a concensus has been reached.
You lost your argument when you failed to correctly distinguish between "loses" and "looses", and also failed to spell "consensus" correctly. Perhaps you should use Firefox, which underlines such errors so that you don't look like a total asshat. (It also underlined asshat, but I'm sure I know how to spell that.)
There is some evidence that there is some heating.
There is overwhelming evidence that the average global temperature is rising.
The evidence that it is caused by CO2 or is man-made is tenuous at best!
CO2 is a known greenhouse gas. We emit more than ten times the CO2 emitted by volcanoes on average, and nobody denies that the CO2 that they emit is a significant greenhouse gas. QED, humans' emissions of CO2 have a significant effect on global temperatures. Nobody can be sure of the extent to which this is true; we can be sure that CO2 is contributing to the eventual death of all oceans on the planet everywhere due to acidification. The carbon is normally fixed from the ocean mostly by subaquatic limestone, but this happens at too slow a rate for the amount of CO2 we have released into the atmosphere, and are continuing to release, for the ocean to survive the abuse. Thus, even if CO2 were not a known greenhouse gas, there would be ample reasons to curb our release of CO2.
CO2 levels have never been so high as they are now throughout recorded history. If you think we're going to get away without any effects, think again.
Remember the announcement that 1998 was the warmest year of the century -well it turns out that these biases through them off.
Your comment is ridiculous through and through. But that's not the version of the word 'threw' that you were looking for.
This has all happened before (Score:1, Informative)
Seems to me like we are operating within historical parameters. We could even see it get a good deal warmer and STILL expect another "mini ice age" if you believe in natural cycles
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/ [worldclimatereport.com]
Re:Professor Dyson is a very smart man (Score:3, Informative)
What the hell does Al Gore have to do with climatology science? Nothing. The claims of climatologists have a large data set backing them now. It is far more than just a few computer models. That was the case in 1988. Today, there is over twenty years of accumulated hard data from ice cores, tree rings, and geological evidence showing change over time going back from thousands of years (tree ring) hundreds of thousands of years (ice core) to millions of years (geologic). This is not about simple computer models any longer (though those models from 1988 have been borne out as accurate anyway).
Hard data gets in the way of your ideology. In time, hard reality will get in the way of your and your children's lives. Mother nature has a way of being a real bitch if you don't get out of her way. Earth may well survive this, but that doesn't mean humanity will as well. Better get yourself and your kids ready for a rollercoaster ride without handrails. But who cares? Because rollercoasters don't exist anyway! I heard someone say that, it must be true.
You're full of shit.
Re:History... (Score:3, Informative)
And in this case, if we follow the consensus and it turns out they're wrong, the consequences of that are what?
- Massive unemployment
- greatly increased worldwide poverty
- advances in technology not made or delayed by many years
- thousands of brilliant scientists wasting their lives in pursuit of nonsense
- government tyranny and possible permanent loss of freedom
- extreme drops in living standards
potential secondary effects:
- wars (possibly WWII-scale wars)
- famine
- millions dead from diseases not cured
- developing countries halt their progress in developing (or it takes another 50-100 years)
People will die if the global warming "remedies" are put in place. People in poverty have a greater incidence of premature death. Slower development leads to cures not found and deaths not prevented.
Millions of people have died from malaria since DDT was banned. Global warming remedies could be much more destructive.
Progress saves lives. Global warming remedies will cause us to regress.
Re:Repent now, the end is near (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
Did you make the same argument the 20 years before that ?
No. The hysteria was not at profitable levels 10 years ago.
20 years ago was the hysteria over acid rain.
Don't forget the Ozone layer. We were all supposed to be long dead from skin cancer by now.
Let's see...
1970's Smog
1980's Ozone layer
1990's Acid Rain
2000's Global Warming
Hmmm. I wonder why I no longer buy it.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Repent now, the end is near (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, it's not the "end of the world" in the sense of "the Earth is destroyed", but in practical terms it'll be VERY bad.
There's a good article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming [wikipedia.org] - some effects are ALREADY very visible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming#Acidification is my favorite).
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
I think it is happening! Though do you read about this in the media? NOOOOO because we all associate climate change with warming not change!
Within the last few years papers seem to indicate that the threat of the Atlantic conveyor shutting down isn't as high as once expected, and that the effects would likely not be as severe as expected. There is e.g. "Climate change: A sea change" [nature.com], but you need a Nature subscription to read it. Anyway, personally I'm not as worried about that particular effect of global warming anymore.
Re:Not out of his mind, just not terribly rooted i (Score:3, Informative)
They are dealing with the very real effects of ricing sea levels NOW
I'm sorry, what rising sea levels?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and-calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
Man-made global warming is a hoax (Score:4, Informative)
MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.
FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands"), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects").
There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.
MYTH 2: The "hockey stick" graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.
FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to 1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17th Century the "average global temperature" has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 Ãff" 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.
The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.
MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.
FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO2 is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth's oceans expel more CO2 as a result.
MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.
FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as "greenhouse agents" than water vapor and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and Ãff" in the end Ãff" are thought to be responsible for 60% of the "Greenhouse effect".
Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention this important fact.
MYTH 5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, and that the Sun has an insignificant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption - that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They
Re:History... (Score:3, Informative)
> Millions of people have died from malaria since DDT was banned.
Problem with DDT was, it caused more problems than it resolved.
There are plenty of ways to prevent, treat and fight malaria. The obstacles are as usual political.
Re:History... (Score:3, Informative)
If the employees took anymore home in pay, it would have bumped us up a tax bracket and we would have made less after taxes.
This is not how taxes work. Tax brackets are always incremental, meaning you pay the same tax on e.g. the first $15,000 regardless of how much additional money you make.
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Informative)
Another non-climate-scientist who thinks nearly all of the climate scientists are wrong about the climate.
You're off there. In fact, in the article you linked to [salon.com] on the very same page, you see that he has published at least one paper in the field. Sure, his main field is physics, but how long does it actually take to become an expert in a field? By the time you're his age, you've had enough time to expand into a lot of areas.
Dyson seems well aware that the climate is, in fact, warming.
Did you actually spend any time figuring out what he does claim? Once again, in the first paragraph of the article you linked to, Dyson states his opinion "[Global warming] is a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm."
Dyson's wrong to repeat the "global cooling" myth
He was actually there in the late 60s. I had a textbook that talked about global cooling, and gave possible solutions. Indeed, there is no reason to doubt that eventually we will enter into another ice age. The paper linked to in your link [allenpress.com] basically outlines the path scientists made from thinking in terms of ice ages, solar forcing, etc. to becoming aware of the consequences of human interaction on the global climate. It shows convincingly that in those days no one was worried about immediately entering into an ice age. However, it doesn't contradict, and in fact confirms, that there was a general consensus that we would eventually enter another ice age.
Basically you're a troll who didn't even read your own articles. And a slashdot editor. Wow, should that be a surprise?
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:5, Informative)
Near record is not a record. Cherry pick your quotes much? Next sentence in that article:
"but 34 percent below the average measured for September since 1979"
Last year was a record. 9% back from that record compared to last year is still crappy when you're talking about a total 34% drop in total area since 1979. 4.5227 million square miles compared to 4.6 million square miles year to year change from 2007 to 2008, compared to over 6 million square miles three decades ago. The article could be a little less hyperbolic in it's title, but as for an agenda? Please.
Re:History... (Score:3, Informative)
Last year we had money left in the bank where I work. If the employees took anymore home in pay, it would have bumped us up a tax bracket and we would have made less after taxes. So what were our options?
I'm assuming you're in the US, or if not, somewhere else with progressive marginal income tax rates. If that is so, then it sounds like the folks where you work got suckered. Additional income would have only bumped some or all of the difference into another tax bracket. You'd still take home more if you got a raise/bonus/whatever. They also forgot other options like D) Paying the employees in the form of non-taxable benefits, like retirement plans and health coverage expansion.
More info on marginal tax rates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Year_2008_income_brackets_and_tax_rates [wikipedia.org]
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:4, Informative)
and some tasty graphs showing stuff like
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Informative)
He's not saying they're *wrong* about climate change, he's saying it's nowhere close to the most important problem we face as a human race. Which I personally agree with.
I'm sure Slashdot editors have some kind of automatic +5 ranking, but please at least *read* the article before spreading bullshit on your own forum.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe, course the aerosols cause other problems .. like cancer. One of the reasons for the famine in Ethiopia in the 80's were the number of aerosols that were emitted by the western nations. The aerosols blocked some of the sun and changed some of the currents in the oceans slightly. The result was that there were parts of africa that didn't get the seasonal rains the people rely on. Sometimes the earth can take a lot of abuse and just bounce right back, then again sometimes a little change here and a little change there can cause slight changes that have big effects. Luckily we cut many of the particle emissions and the rains eventually came back.
I found one (Score:2, Informative)
Of course it doesn't completely 'disprove' global warming, it would take more than one paper to prove that global warming is happening, it will take more than one paper to show it's not. All this paper is doing is trying to get closer to the truth of what's happening.
I'm wondering if you've ever actually read a peer reviewed scientific journal, and I seriously doubt you've ever done peer review. The reason I doubt this is because in my time, I've stumbled across articles that are opposing the standard view of global warming without even looking.
Note that papers like this come up all the time, they just tend not to make the news.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But the real data is worse than the models pred (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Informative)
He says*:
There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. I am not saying that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it better. I am saying that the problems are grossly exaggerated.They take away money and attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important, such as poverty and infectious disease and public education and public health, and the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans, not to mention easy problems such as the timely construction of adequate dikes around the city of New Orleans.
While I agree with him that those are important problems - particularly infectious disease - I disagree with him that those problems are *more important* than something which has the potential to wipe out civilization.
(I'll give him the infectious disease in that respect - although we have survived global pandemics before - although global warming also has the potential to *increase* the danger of infectious disease, by shifting the ecosystems that certain diseases thrive in.)
Dyson is a very talented and brilliant physicist, but he is not a climatologist nor does he come close to approaching the amount of expertise across various related fields that contribute to our understanding of what's happening today.
Everyone who feels they have something to contribute in this debate should read the article I link to below from which those quotes were taken. Read it *thoroughly* and then go and find out for yourself what many other people in the fields he addresses think about the issue. You'll find that, for example, a majority of scientists disagree with his analysis of biological carbon sequestration, and unlike Dyson, they have data to back up their peer reviewed publications.
This quote is particularly illuminating:
When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured. We need to observe and measure what is going on in the biosphere, rather than relying on computer models.
In which he is saying we need more data. So essentially he is saying the same thing that nearly all the climatologists and everyone else involved are saying - WE NEED MORE DATA. More funding, more equipment, more science and less hype. More funding! Dyson is a "global warming heretic" yet he's saying the same thing most of the scientists involved in the research get 'accused' of asking for?
Keep in mind that all of our science and knowledge to date could very well be *understating* the potential problems, as well. Which if you look at predictions from only a few years ago of arctic melting and permafrost CO2/methane release, you'll find that the scientists doing those predictions then were actually being *optimistic*.
*http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
SB
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
The article you are linking to is a collection of opinions, some of which are related to the article in question. Most of them seem to have been taken entirely out of context. It presents a one-sided explanation of the results and significance of the study. It does not discuss methodology at all. The quality of the information presented is absolutely terrible, in point of fact, and given the source, it is extremely questionable whether this represents the current scientific consensus on the matter.
Why is it so important for you to push an agenda rather than hard data and unbiased critical analysis? What good does that do?
Re:Repent now, the end is near (Score:4, Informative)
Yet, there are currently inactive sand dunes in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, that reactivated several times a century, during sustained years of drought, in the last millennium. A sand dune reactivates when there are no roots from vegetation holding the sand in place. At which point, you pretty much get unpleasant sand storms and they leave clearly identifiable sand deposits behind.
The 1930's dustbowl could have been less extreme if the farming practices were better. However, now we are wastefully draining underground aquifers at a rate higher than the rate of recharge when there is not enough rain.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
1. The 2500 scientists do not get paid for the peer-review work they are doing (and btw that's all the IPCC does).
2. The lead chapter authors get "free" plane tickets to go to the "free" confrence rooms and work.
3. The budget is $5-6M/yr and is sourced from 300+ politically diverse nations.
Here are your citations [budgetsite], now STFU with your unoriginal [wikipedia.org] corruption [realclimate.org] meme.
You totally missed the point (Score:3, Informative)
The point is not that Bangladesh flooding is caused by global warming. It's simply a good example of how human actions can create expensive and deadly human consequences. Global warming is such a concept writ globally. You're happy to lecture other people about how concrete can't absorb water (duh), but seem completely unwilling to listen to what other people are telling you about the consequences of increasing the heat content of our climate system.
You're right that many more people will die if it gets colder. Yet you're too ignorant to realize that global warming will likely cause some areas of the globe to get colder than they are now, due to shifting climate patterns. You would learn that and many other things if you accorded other people some of the respect you demand for your own statements.
Re:Repent now, the end is near (Score:3, Informative)
He meant comparable to. Not as an example of global warning. You, sir, are an idiot for jumping to conclusions.
Re:Man-made global warming is a hoax? (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of junk references do not make his post any more real than hand-waving.
If you want some facts:
http://www.realclimate.org/ [realclimate.org]
Why the Hockey stick graph has been proved wrong:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html [newscientist.com]
Come on it's all just so old.
And why bother saying climate change is not man-made if you're denying the climate change in the first place. Silly.
Oh here's 10 myths about climate change debunked:
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html [sierraclub.ca]
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
Except that it is happening suddenly in relative terms. How long does it take for oil and coal to be created (and in turn store carbon), and how quickly are we releasing it back into the atmosphere?
Current estimates place the process of creation of oil to be around hundreds of thousands of years. To try and claim that it's taking a long time in human years and thus will have little or no effect is disingenuous, considering that some already believe we're approaching (or have already approached) peak oil (ie. we've depleted approximately half of the world's oil reserves), and we've managed to achieve that in around 200 years.
And while I agree that quoting the "majority" as a reason is not a valid argument, your logic that the majority were wrong before therefore the majority are wrong now is a logical fallacy. Clearly the majority currently believe that the earth is NOT the centre of the universe, which demonstrates the absurdity of your argument.
Re:Man-made global warming is a hoax? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, references to the lay popular press really supports any complex scientific debate! I do admit that PBS's Nova is the elite of the lay science press.