Gore Scenario
OpinionJournal – Extra — Here’s a nice essay on Global warming saying that debate is indeed still active. The essayist is no slouch either.
So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.
First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists–especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a “moral” crusade.
Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce–if we’re lucky.
found by Jeff Mele
OK, so the guy sits in an professor’s chair endowed by one of the founders of the modern General Motors, is paid consulting fees by Exxon, and he is supposed to be objective? Just the fact that he’s given space on the WSJ editorial page should disqualify him from any serious consideration on global warming issues. The WSJ editorial page is the modern day version of the Suddeutsche Zeitung.
>I’m not a Professor at MIT and I can do a Google search and find:
>
>First sentence: “New measurements show that the flow of ice in the >Greenland ice sheet has been accelerating since 1996 during the >summer melt season.”
He is a scientist at MIT, and if you notice what he wrote, there is a tendency for the media to exaggerate what the scientists are saying to sell global warming alarmism.
27, Sag, John posted this for discussion. It doesn’t imply that he agrees or disagrees with the author. While I might strongly disagree with some posts, even more, I very strongly disagree with shooting the messenger.
John is just a little nervous about his beach front property off North Carolina.
2: The news department of the WSJ despises the editorial writers because they are lying biased rightwing hacks (John Fund, anyone?) who pretty much make shit up, as Bill Maher might say. I will take Mother Jones over ANYthing put out by the biased editors of the WSJ; MJ has hit home run after home run in the last six years, but the editors of the WSJ have backed the wrong issues and been proven dingo-brains too many times to be taken seriously. WSJ has been on the wrong side of reality on every issue. We’ve a hundred thousand dead civilians, 2500 dead Americans, god knows how man Canadians, Brits and all others as well, in an invasion that the WSJ STILL thinks was waged to take WMD. And last week they started lying AGAIN about the WMD.
At this point, the Village Voice, CNN, MS-NBC, CNBC, CBS news, NBC News, the AP and ABC news are either rightized completely or on their way to being subsumed by the rightists. Soooo where the hell are we to get our news, if not Mother Jones and similar publications? Who else will print anything sane?
And another thing. We’re alone in the world in thinking there’s a debate. And this is because we’ve a solid rightist media system now. We hear crap, we believe crap. Not that we’re alone — Canada is suffering from media consolidation right now as well, with most foreign news coming from the AP in some markets.
HELL. There’s the problem right there: a “market”? You don’t SELL news in a bloody market! The National Enquirer sells news; that’s why they make it up, to make better product and make more cash. News is a loss leader or a low-profit operation. We’re seeing now what happens when news is sold as a commodity in a market. A population of uninformed and uninformable fools.
“There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 parts per million by volume in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas–albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system…”
This caveat was addressed by, of all things, the aftermath of 9/11.
When all airtraffic was grounded in the US and Canada, scientists noticed that the average surface temperture of the continent increased – immediately – by something like 5 degrees (going from memory, but you can Google it). It turns out that the contrails of aircraft criss-crossing our landmass actually reflected back into space the missing portion of infrared energy that would otherwise have heated the Earth to the levels predicted by the higher levels of CO2.
While this is good news in a ‘dark cloud/silver-lining’ sort of way, it also shows that scientists are correct in their predictictions of what the increased levels of CO2 would be doing to the Earth’s temperture, if not for the unexpected side effects of one mode of travel.
Wait a minute, airplanes can lower the Earth’s temperature by 5 degrees? Then there really is no problem to worry about even if the scientists worst fears turn out to be right. We can just send up more airplanes as a solar reflector.
Actually it’s felt that jet contrails lower daytime temperatures (by shielding sunlight) but also keep nighttime temperatures higher (by trapping heat that would otherwise escape), with an overall net gain in temperature.