Dave Koller at it again with Global Warming
posted by yturks
I wrote this email to some friends, and now share it with my devoted fans in TYT world:
If you want to devote about 15-20 minutes (you need to concentrate) to educate yourselves about an issue that some think is the gravest danger facing humanity, read this article in the New York Review of Books.
http://www.nybooks.com/arti cles/21494
Otherwise, read my post here (well, read my post anyway).
The link is to a review by famous physicist Freeman Dyson of two books on Global Warming. One book is by an economist who for the sake of argument, accepts fully the mainstream scientific view that Global Warming is real, is happening, and is caused by humans (a view that I too accept). He then plugs several possible approaches to reducing the effects of global warming into an economic model that balances the costs of carbon emissions (to the environment etc) against the costs of reducing greenhouse gases. His model accounts for a zillion factors blah blah blah. He concludes that "severe" approaches advocated by Al Gore and others would generate net negative economic impact, while imposting a carbon tax would be slightly beneficial.
The second book is a compilation of talks at a recent conference. One highlight is from an MIT scientist, and one which I mentioned a few weeks ago. He thinks predictions of the harmful effects of global warming are grossly exaggerated because of the way the sensitivities are set on the models. Now maybe a majority of climate scientists disagree, and think instead that the potential effects are alarming. Well, sometimes scientists are wrong. Now, if you say, "Sometimes scientists are wrong, and I think there is no global warming" you are a certified idiot from the Middle Ages. If you say, "Sometimes the scientists are wrong and the potential effects of global warming are grossly exaggerated by computer models set to be extra sensitive" then you are a thinking person, and maybe even a scientist.
And here is the final chapter in the book review:
Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.
