tomgoodman

I think it's not contempt, but skepticism -- fueled by scientists' overweening certainty that, despite past flubs, this time their conclusions can not be doubted.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
--Lord Kelvin

DYNASTY HVY

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land.

Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years.

Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety.

Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.

When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time.

A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

The Prologue to Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Interesting perspective and to the point.

Fred

KC10 FATboy

Chicago - Record Snow and Coldest Spring Day

Since 1940s

Breaks snowfall record set in 1910


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20 Apr 11 - Not only has Chicago dealt with chilly rain, hail and snow this week, but temperatures on Tuesday fell to their lowest for this late spring date since the 1940s when the high - the high! - topped out at only 38 degrees.

As if that weren't enough, more than 1½ inches of rain fell in less than half an hour Tuesday evening, continuing a miserable week-long trend.

On Monday morning, O’Hare airport recorded 0.6 inches of snow, breaking the previous record of 0.4 inches set in 1910.
Though the snow is over for now, Chicago may see frost tonight.

FDXLAG

Climate change is indeed real. It has been changing ever since the earth started cooling off from when God created it.

Surprisingly the Pope answers your 2nd claim better than anyone else I have heard. Pope: Humanity isn't random product of evolution - Yahoo! News


Oh I think he is a US citizen but I also think he has something really embarassing on his birth certificate that he wishes to keep private.

N2264J

If you have the time, viewing the "Democracy Now" link on post #96 is instructive.

As Mark Hertsgaard has pointed out, skeptics (as deniers like to be called) are important to the scientific method but a true skeptic can be persuaded by evidence. Today's climate change deniers can not and that's the difference. He refers to today's global warming deniers as "cranks."

I think the same can be said for the proponents of intelligent design or people who think the president is a Kenyan, the earth is flat or bleeding the sick is therapeutic. There is a contempt for the evidence and in my view, that's anti-intellectual. Cranks.

You got this part right. A growing minority of scientists are saying their original models were inaccurate and global climate change is happening much faster than anyone previously thought.

N2264J

No one connected to global warming science is worried about man destoying the planet. No one. The concern is that man is destoying his habitat.

When breadbasket states like Nebraska and Kansas start turning into desert states like Nevada and Arizona as the crop growing latitudes move northward, we're going to have a real problem. There just won't be enough water to make that work.

Michael Crichton is shamelessly knocking down his own strawman argument and he's rubbing vanity in my face? Trying to sell books more than likely and, as it turns out, fiction.

tomgoodman

That interview is interesting, but it fuels even more skepticism:
First, Hertsgaard makes a gross overstatement: (there's the "overweening certainty" I mentioned.)
Then, he himself disagrees with a solution (nuclear power) supported by the very scientists (King and Hansen) he earlier cited on global warming, saying that "will make climate change worse, not better". Can you see why many people remain skeptical about the whole matter?
In my opinion, global warming activists undermine their cause by such hyperbole, selective citation, and calling opponents "cranks". Improving the environment will cost a lot of money, and that means persuading skeptics, not making them "cranky".
(Hertsgaard, like Crichton and Gore, also has a book for sale: Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth)

N2264J

Nuclear energy was supposed to be too cheap to meter, remember? But it's turning out to be extremely expensive and dangerous (no private insurance companies will touch them). At best, nuclear is an awkward interim measure.

But forget the activists and back to the issue: It is not useful to apply a political template to physics, chemistry and biology. The two premiere, peer reviewed scientific communities in the US, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, agree although some details may vary:

-global warming is happening
-man is causing it this time
-it's going to be bad

Big oil/gas/coal is using the same playbook as the cigarette companies used in the 50s when they were trying to deconstruct the link between smoking and lung cancer. But their strategy has shifted from "the science is inconclusive" to the more urgent "the science can't be trusted."

That was Hertsgaard's point. Cranks can not be persuaded by the evidence. And every day we put this off, the price to fix it (assuming that's still doable) goes up.

tomgoodman

For establishing technical, academic truths, a political template is not useful. But if one wants to find and implement solutions to the problems revealed by these truths, a political template is absolutely essential.

Agreed. That means serious advocates of politically achievable solutions must stop name-calling, over-dramatizing, and diluting their good data with speculation. Otherwise they just create more cranks. Their goal should be slow improvement of the environment, regardless of who gets the credit, and not pre-positioning themselves to say "I told you so, but you wouldn't listen."

jungle

N2264J is a shill for the greenies, he tries to make sense, but he can offer not a single practical solution, or a single forecast come true, or even define what part man may play in warming.

It is easy enough to criticize big oil, coal and nuclear-but the fact remains there are no viable options at this time.

The best solution to the "warming" problem right now would be to defund the UN and move their headquarters to Libya.

I don't think any scientist has stated that man is the SOLE cause of any climate change. If they do, they have just ignored the entire history of the Earth and its numerous cycles of warming and cooling along with higher and lower levels of CO2. All of this happened before man was on the scene and they will happen long after he is gone.

They only real questions are what part is caused by man, and are there any practical solutions. To ignore the very real natural cycles and causes is pure propoganda.

Lots of scientists think we could build a better human race through eugenics, and they may be right but few of us could stand the practical implications of such a policy. It is thus with most "solutions" posed for climate change, the "solutions" would necessarily pare the world population in a rather brutal manner-all with no real promise of success within a thousand years.

There are indeed a lot of cranks out there, and the easiest way to spot them is in the practicality of their approach to problems and the way they define a problem.