Why So Gloomy? [MIT Scientist: 'Alarm over climate change is based on ignorance]

Newsweek International via Drudge ^ | 4/8/07 | Richard S. Lindzen

[PajamaTruthMafia]

By Richard S. Lindzen Newsweek International April 16, 2007 issue - Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.

[ApplegateRanch]

We need temps back to normal here in Kansas....we need a wheat crop!

Don't worry about it; we can buy all the wheat & wheat gluten we need from China.

I understand they'll also sell us inexpensive dialysis machines, too.

[Old Airplane Driver]

Hey Nathan -

First, I suggest you read the article carefully and in its entirety. Second, I suggest that you do a little research on just who Dr. Lindzen is. To give you a starting point, he will be found in the M.I.T. directory as an Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science. For 20 years, he has been standing up to the "Flat Earth Society" charlatans like Ozone Al with reasoned and science-based arguments.

Your rant does our side no good, as you seem to confuse Dr. Lindzen with the U.N. and the Islamists all in one incoherent blast. I can assure you that Dr. Lindzen is beholden to neither. Dr. Lindzen is a man of science and is not swayed by any political agenda. I also think he would be outraged by your comments on Islamist influence, as much of his family was killed in the Holocaust.

It is you who is wrong about greenhouse gasses; they are very real and water vapor is the most important of them. No atmospheric scientist denies what can be objectively proven. What is at issue is how much effect these gasses really have and the exact mechanisms of their behaviors. The Ozone Al camp uses a simplistic model of an exquisitely complex three-dimensional fluid dynamic system, while Dr. Lindzen has studied the problem in considerably more detail. I have read several of his technical papers and I assure you that he probably has more knowledge on this subject than any other human on the planet.

Finally, I just can't resist taking a cheap shot worthy of your ad hominem attack. You really need to go back the high school and learn the proper use of the apostrophe.

Just for the record, I do have an MIT education and I regard Dr. Lindzen as one of the foremost authorities in the current discussion about "global warming". He is very much an ally in this fight and his credentials are impeccable.

[Mike Darancette]

He’ll be labeled a “heretic” by the radical Left within a week.

On the HIQ boards Lindzen is being referred to as the anti-Gore and called a sell out to big oil and the Republicans, this has been going on for months.

[miliantnutcase]

I’ll laugh when we find out how algore will try to marginalize this guy.

[GOPJ]

bump for later

[stephenjohnbanker]

MIT hotshots have been saying this for 20 years. The hard left continues to pretend it ain’t so. Morons : )

[TigersEye]

Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

No problem. They'll create consensus.

[BykrBayb]

bump for tomorrow.

Read it now. There may not be a tomorrow. ; )

[Porterville]

There has been stuff released on CNN... Gore climaxed.... and he’s shooting blanks.

[TigersEye]

...the FACT that in recent history, within 4,500 years or so, the entire north pole and all the land within the artic circle was once a lush tropical enviroment, a fact proven by the huge amount of animal carcasses; elephants, rino's, hippo's, tigers, wolf, fox etc. discovered throughout the region in that last century...

Source please.

[I see my hands]

"The $64,000 question is: Can you see Al's hands?"

The 320 pound question is: Can Al Gore see his own feet?

[AZLiberty]

Very surprising to see this in Newsweak. I thought the official game plan was to run with global warming at least up until the 2008 election.

Part 2 of the official game plan says that if Gore gets enough traction to threaten Hillary, even as a third party candidate, then cold water must be applied to global warming.

[rogue yam]

He’ll be labeled a “heretic” by the radical Left within a week.

He already has been. Dr. Lindzen has been talking sense about global climate issues for years. The socialists are well aware of him and have been trying to discredit him all along. Their main line of attack is the source of some of the research funding Dr. Lindzen has received. The socialists think they are entitled to declare void the ideas of scientists who have accepted funding from sources that the socialists declare are deligitimizing (corporations mainly). The socialists usually refuse to acknowledge or respond to Dr. Lindzen's arguments (despite his obvious qualifications) preferring instead to ignore them and to falsely claim that global warming alarmism is the "unanimous" position of scientists and that therefore "the debate is over".

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

I agree. The lefties have taken a snapshot of the Earth and essentially are saying, the atmosphere should never change from that snapshot and if it does, we should put ungodly amounts of political power into their hands so they can save us.

It's a con-job folks. And the payouts are going to be SPECTACULAR!! $250 Billion in 10 years, and gathering steam from there.

The lefties are gonna make a KILLING!

[spinestein]

An excellent post. It does us no good to fight the pseudoscience that is the political aspect of the global warming issue by throwing kook talk at it. This statement is particularly important:

[What is at issue is how much effect these gasses really have and the exact mechanisms of their behaviors. The Ozone Al camp uses a simplistic model of an exquisitely complex three-dimensional fluid dynamic system...]

It’s difficult at best to get the public at large to understand the nature of process of science and know how to determine the reliability of its predictions. The failure to do this always leads to opportunistic charlatans selling bunk ideas to the public in exchange for money or power (or both).

[cookcounty]

"I wondered how long it would be before they go after him like a puritan after a heretic."

Or like a heretic after a Puritan?

[HarmlessLovableFuzzball]

Guess he was denied funding for G W research. In any case prospects not too high for getting any now.

[6.5 x 55]

I posted the same thing that is in the article using fewer words just the other night and even then I was concerned that I was stating the obvious.

I guess that everyone just has to find a way to whine louder than Al Gore!

[Cementjungle]

Source please.

Here's an excerpt from such a source:

About 55 million years ago, in an event known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, there was a period of rapid global warming. Scientists have not had any exact records of the climate in that region, however. Now with the accumulated sediment, researchers were able to determine that summer surface temperatures of the Arctic Ocean reached as high as 64 degrees Fahrenheit and then rose to 73 degrees Fahrenheit.

Unlike today's warming, however, the ancient rise in temperature was not associated with human activity, of course.

And the link: http://www.livescience.com/environment/060531_arctic_climate.html

[TigersEye]

I think you missed something essential in the post I was requesting a source for.

...the FACT that in recent history, within 4,500 years or so,...

And in combination with that the following carcasses were said to be found within the Arctic Circle...

a fact proven by the huge amount of animal carcasses; elephants, rino's, hippo's, tigers, wolf, fox etc. discovered throughout the region in that last century...

Got a source for that?