[ExI] Richard Lindzen on climate hysteria

John K Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Mon Aug 3 21:53:51 UTC 2009


Max More:

>>Can a backer of the "consensus" view please point me to a good
>>explanation of the fact that human emissions of greenhouse gases has
>>continued unabated, and yet there has been zero global warming over the
>>last 10 to 11 years?

Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com>

>it is entirely possible that in a 10 years period the warming signal may
>be masked by the natural variation.

If the signal is that weak then it sounds to me like it's nothing to get all
hot and bothered about; and besides, "entirely possible" is just not good
enough. It's "entirely possible" that cutting your legs off would improve
your health, but if your doctor told you that I'll bet you'd have some very
serious questions to ask before you let a scalpel get anywhere near your
legs.

You're telling millions of people that they must starve to death and you're
telling about a billion more to remain in poverty, because despite all the
empty talk about renewable energy, realistically that is the price you're
going to have to pay if you really want to get serious about stopping carbon
emissions and you're not just making another trillion dollar gesture as in
the Kyoto accords. So before you do anything that drastic you better be
damn sure the effect is real and would lead to an asteroid crashing into
Chiksulub level catastrophe if nothing is done. Are you really that sure?

And I do find it tedious that environmentalist hand wringers always act like
they own the moral high ground when it could be argued that Rachel Carson
and the gang of DDT defamers she inspired killed more people than Hitler.

> The problem is not the "right" or "wrong" temperature, nor a "change".
> The problem is when the rate of change outstrips the ability of the
> ecosystem to adapt.

If you picked any time at random in the last 100 million years you can be
almost certain that is was warmer than now, possibly MUCH warmer; at one
time Antarctica was subtropical and the home of cold blooded reptiles, and
yet back then the continent was only slightly further north than it is now.
And in spite of all this the ecosystem on this planet adapted, life still
exists.

> Similar considerations can be made about the rate of sea level rise with
> respect to human infrastructure.

And that's another thing that I find very puzzling, if it's been getting so
damn hot then ice is going to melt, so where the hell has all that water
gone?

The sea has risen about 6 inches during the last century, and it has risen
about 6 inches a century for the last 6 thousand years. Not very surprising
really, the sea has risen 410 feet in the last 20 thousand years and you
wouldn't expect a powerful trend like that to stop on a dime.

  John K Clark





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