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Earth's Temperature at Highest Levels in 400 Years
thatguywhoiam writes "Congress asked, and the scientists have answered: 'The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The
National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the 'recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.'"
Last time I looked (although I've largely checked out of this debate), no one - including Bush - was questioning that it's getting warmer. The debate (?) is now shifted to what exactly is causing it. plz correct if wrong, kthx.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Good luck to all those people living in Arizona and Nevada - you're entering a spiraling heat wave. Once people build up the land with houses and roads, the cars, pollution, and A/C makes the air even hotter.
Oh, and with much of China and India either already a desert or turning into a desert due to deforestation thousands of years ago, it's not going to get any better for them.
The desert is actually spreading too - look at China in google earth and see how much of China is sand, and with hunter/gatherer populations foraging for food and fuel, animals eating every plant that springs up from the earth, and pavement being laid down everywhere to speed rain runoff and reduce the amount of water that saturates the soil - the situation looks bleak.
Seriously, I hate to sound like a tree hugging hippie, but if everyone in the world planted a few trees, I believe we could have a positive impact on the global climate
gee whiz guy, no one EVER thought of that! Seriously, of the thousands of scientists to tackle this problem, you are the VERY FIRST to realize that there cycles to the Earth's climate. Scientists have just never taken this into account! /sarcasm
Now I'll tell you to look up the term Milankovitch Cycles and be done with you.
The report was championed by a Republican.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Suppose you ask the question: Is X happening?
When a scientist says that a phenomenon "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I'm pretty damn sure about it, but because everyting in science is subject to further investigation, I'm open to hear evidence to the contrary."
When a lawyer says that "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I haven't the foggiest idea, and I need wiggle room so I don't look like an idiot when someone who knows what he's talking about asks me."
Trouble starts when the two world views are mixed. The scientist hears the bolded words in his part of the speech -- and the politician hears precisely the opposite.
The qualifiers are necessary to the scientist, because they're part of why a theory is explanation falsifiable (and by extension, scientific). Science can't progress except for those areas in which there exists Reasonable Doubt.
The politician hears only the phrases "is probably" (as opposed to certainly), the "bulk of" (as opposed to all of the evidence), and the "indication" (as opposed to conclusive truth pounded out on the table before Judge and Jury) that something is the case. In an adversarial "justice" system, you can't use weasel words, because the holy grail is Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt.
And the planet burns because people who don't grok science prefer oratory.
What the hell, the dinosaurs died because they didn't understand science either.
How the hell did this get modded +2 insightful? For one, the article said, "for at least 400 years," implying that is how far they looked through the records! If it had been 400 years since the global temperature averaged this high, they would have used a word like "since" rather than "for at least!" Did this guy, as the Slashdot saying seems to go, "read the fucking article," or is reading the headline enough these days?
I know I'm anonymous coward, so it's harder to get the coveted +5 blessing, but really, sometimes the wisdom of anonymous cowards is better than the Wisdom of Cowards.
Even though your post is the dumbest post I've ever read in my six years of reading slashdot, it does not preclude it from being the dumbest post ever posted to slashdot.
Ah yes, the infamous hockey stick (the chart). It was what convinced me that global warming was human-caused. Until of course I found that when you put random data into the analysis, you got a hockey stick.
What it comes down to is that more than 200 years ago we didn't have accurate temperature measurement. Everything before that is an educated guess. And the precision necessary to show a fractional degree of change is simply unattainable.
Where are the error bars on the hockey stick? It's shown as if we had exact data for the last 1000 years--which of course we don't.
RTFA. The first sentence says 400 years or longer. If you actually read the stories you'll understand why, and get the point that it's hotter than it's been in a long time, and only getting hotter. I have no more patience for these fools who don't have an interest in science or much of anything outside their own little self serving world. They don't read scientific journals, and who hence have no idea how important the global scientific consensus for global warming is. These people don't even give a half a shit literally hundreds of millions of poor people around the world suffer and die from drought, crop failures, and many other near-apocalyptic consequences if global warming is allowed to continue. People often make crazy analogies to Nazis. But seriously, if half of what the entire global scientific community warns of comes to pass, then the ignorant and uncaring people doing nothing to prevent global warming are leading to a holocaust that will be literally tens, maybe as much as a hundred times worse than the holocaust in terms of suffering and lives lost. We're talking about tens to hundreds of millions dying due to climate change. The resistance to accepting the global warming isn't based on scientific logic, or wisdom, or conscience, or anything that could be called credible or ethical. It's just sheer intellectual laziness and choosing to let someone else die because people are unwilling to even slightly inconvenience oneself. That's shameful. The miniscule but well funded dissent is also backed by the fossil fuel industry and people who think their paychecks depend on perpetuating this tragedy so long as it falls on someone else. It's disgusting, tragic, shameful, and represents the worst in human nature.
Please leave your particular country's ideological distinctions out of this scientific debate that they have nothing to do with. Also please acknowledge that there is more to the world than your narrow-minded battle against an ideological perspective that you happen disagree with.
Please at least learn to control your memes to the point that they no longer lead you to infer things that clearly aren't being implied. A phrase like "Please accept that Global Warming Exists." does not imply a belief that ""global warming" is conclusively linked to man [or] oil", or even a preference for left-wing politics.
Your little political campaign has taken your bigotry to the point where you sign yourself off as "The Voice of Fairness and Reason", which is so intellectually dishonest that my dog just read this page and went and took a shit on an encyclopedia in one of his usual crude but poignant symbolic gestures.
Signed,
Fuck You
PS: In case you missed it, I was implying that my dog is smarter than you.
The really interesting question, however, is: is global warming bad?
If you believe the climate is stable, then of course it's bad! But we know better. Based on the data, we're towards the end of a brief (10k year) warm period toards the end of a 100k year warming cycle, but we're still in an ice age. We have 400k years of pretty good temperature and CO2 data now from the Vostock ice cores, and it's clear that a stable climate is an illusion caused by man's relatively short lifespan. This fact is as clear as the fact that global warming is happening.
So, let's assume that mankinds actions are capable of affecting the climate short term (for a few thousand years). Do we want to turn the thermostat up, or down, or try to keep global temperatures about the same? While the last option might sound good, trying to keep achieve stability in a chaotic system that we don't really understand and can barely model is probably pointless.
If we have to choose between sea level rising a bit, and glaciers covering England and most of Europe (on the upside, we'd lose Canada too), warming is probably a smaller problem to del with than cooling. Regardless of what we do, temperatures are certain to return to the ice-age norm long term (all the carbon in the air, water, and all fossile fuels still in the groud are completely trivial compared to the carbon cycle of the lithosphere), but that's a problem we can consider in another 10k years.
If you've never thought about global warming beyond "prevent climate change", you haven't really understood the issue. Preventing climate change isn't a long-term option.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think the point was that since this is either caused by A) nature, or B) us, perhaps we should start working on B just in case it isn't A.
If its A) and we worked on B), then we profit from less oil dependence and less smog, particulate matter,etc
If its B) and we assumed A), we all die.
Until we know more, I wish people would stop pretending they know what's happening. We have a couple theories, thats it, no proof. (correct me if I'm wrong)
:x
Look, I DO believe in global warming. That said, crap headlines like this are, well, crap.
The fact that this point is warmer then some other point in some arbitrary number of years means nothing. There have been literally countless points in time when you can point backwards and say that it has not been so warm for 400+ years. Any idiot can see that pointing out that we are in another of such periods where the last local max with 400 years ago is thoroughly and completely normal and uninteresting.
Flouting stupid statistics like this is what makes smart people believe that global warming is a crap political ploy by environmentalist/anti-globalist/leftists/exc. If your goal is to divide, crap like this is a great idea as it assures everyone that the opposing side are idiots who couldn't tell the truth if their life depended upon it. If your goal is to build a consensus and spawn action, throwing out junk science is a waste of everyone's time.
There are a lot of good reasons to believe that the Earth is heating in an appreciable way and that humans could very well be the cause of much of that heating. We don't need to throw out junk science and sensationalist crap like "OMFG hottest year in 400 years!" as any idiot with even an ounce of grey matter is going to realize that "hottest year in 400 years" is pretty damn normal during any heating phase, especially heating phases that happen on geologic time.
Is there something unclear about the article? Oh right, you didn't read it. Let me summarize it for you. Scientists have determined that global warming is causally linked to human activities. Any other explanations you may have - supposed "cycles", volcanoes, aliens - have been ruled out. Until there's a reason to doubt what the scientific community has known for years, there's only one prudent course of action. If that doesn't fit with your political agenda, change your agenda.
For example: "I think the point is that, since rainstorms are either caused by A) water vapor in the atmosphere or B) aliens who want to drown us, we should start working on B in case it isn't A. If it's A and we work on B by creating a multi-billion-dollar network of space defense lasers, then we profit from being able to stay alive. If it's B and we assume A, then the aliens drown us all, take over our planet, and make it into a global resort/spa for the Pangalactic Federation."
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
According to the article "Global Warming Skeptics," there are only 12 scientists who disagree with global warming. From the discussion here, clearly there must be more disagreement. I'm sure it's not just a bunch of hacks making stuff up (this is slashdot, home of scientific minded folk), so if you folks could go over to the Wiki and list who your reputable sources for questioning the thousands of scientists who have been trying (and failing) to poke holes in global warming for the last 10 years are it would be helpful. Because from the looks of that article, the creationists have better scientific footing than folks arguing against human influenced global warming. And while consensus does not have a causative relationship with fact, it does, given enough time, seem to correlate frequently in the area of modern science (even ulcers were figured out eventually).
Read the actual paper, and you'll find that, instead of all the very firm statements in the Yahoo article, there are lots of caveats, and the note that temperature reconstructions back further than 400 years are very chancy.
As to the greenhouse gas hypothesis, there are a couple of real problems with it:
(1) about 60 percent of the temperature increase happened between 1500 and 1900. The notion that there was a lot of unusual greenhouse gases in that interval is questionable at best.
(2) there is significant data suggesting "global warming" of similar order of magnitude on Mars and other planets.
(3) most of the argument that greenhouse gases are causing the warming are based, first and foremost, on the assumption that there is unusual warming, which is not a very strong conclusion, as noted by the report. Reasoning from "there has been global warming" to "there is an anthropogenic reason for global warming" to "anthropogenic causes for global warming are proven by the global warming" is circular.
If you put it next to the age of the Earth, the meteorite-induced disruption to the world's climate that put the nail in the coffin of pretty much every large land animal on Earth (including the dinosaurs) doesn't seem that significant.
Nevertheless, to the dinosaurs it was pretty significant.
Likewise, the question with anthropogenic global warming and other alterations to the environment induced by man is not "are the disruptions a huge deal on a geological timescale", but "do the disruptions pose an intense danger to the continuation and quality of human life on earth." To which the answer, for global warming, seems to be a pretty clear yes.
The data shows a flat line for several hundred years, then a "hocky stick" increase coinciding with our use of fossil fuel, to use the term in TFA.
It's a little off to call those data. Those curves are reconstructions of temperatures from proxy data, like tree rings. What's more, as was pointed out above, feeding statistically appropriate noise to the reconstruction methods used by Mann et al. rsults in a statistically indistinguishable "hocket stick."
Now, this doesn't mean there has been no warming --- in fact, we're pretty durn certain that it's warmer now than it was when Isaac Newton was alive. The Thames doesn't freeze solid like it used to. What it does mean is that the methods of Mann et al. can't distinguish data that shows warming from data that is uniformly random. In other words: warming, yes; hockey stick, no.
That is the crux of the issue.
Except for the part about "not true."
Now I know people who would probably fire back with the cliche "correlation doesn't imply blah blah blah", and then shut their brains off. The cliche is overused, and correlation ABSOLUTELY DOES point fingers at possible sources of the observed trend (that's called the Conclusion of the Results, or rather the interpretation of the experts).
Except the actual report doesn't say that.
The "actual interpretations of the experts" are that they have little confidence in the conclusion that global temperatures have actually increased dramatically or unexpectedly. (Again, that doesn't mean they haven't. It just means that we don't know, and the actual data and the reconstructions from the data don't tell us.)
Since NO OTHER MEASUREMENTS trend the same way, the choices are fairly limited as to what could be causing it.
On the contrary, since reconstructions of plain random numbers provide the same "hockey stick" results as the data, the reconstructions of Mann et al. don't actually tell us anything.
Sadly, I don't think four misstatements in four paragraphs is a
Global Warming deniers are the new Holocaust deniers.
On the one side you have scientists with the historical and current data, and the liberals who cheer them on. On the other side you have those who say Global Warming is just made up by a conspiracy of scientists and liberals.
Discuss.
Start Running Better Polls
The parent wrote:
Although they do acknowledge the existence of a "mini-ice age", the press release put out by the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) specifically rejects the argument that it was warmer in the middle ages then now:
While it's true that "Cyclical Global warming != greenhouse effect", this does not mean that humanity is in the clear as far as global warming goes. I believe the concern is that there is no sign that the current heating trend is slowing down. The trending in the NAS report abstract is pretty disturbing. When this is compounded by the above argument that it's warmer now than it has been in the past, there is sufficient ground to worry that we have broken out of whatever cyclical pattern may have existed.
Beyond this, I don't think it matters whether the current phase of global warming is caused by humans or by cyclical sunspots (or whatever). Rising temperatures have the ability to really throw a wrench into global systems (like economies). If we have the ability to even *try* to mitigate the trend, I think it is worthwhile to do so. Arguing that we have no reason to act because it's not our fault is, in my view, a cowardly way to pass the buck... so that we can continue to live extravagant lifestyles in the short term at the expense of the future.
We're not talking about how things were for the dinosaurs. We didn't develop our coastal cities and argicultural centers during the Triassic, we developed much of what we call Modern Civilization in exactly the last 400 years, and we sure as h3ll didn't grow our species to over 6billion people a million years ago. And to say that this doesn't matter entirely misses the point that everything we thought was steady and sturdy about the earth over the last 395 years is as of recently, apparently, changing and in ways we don't entirely understand and therefore will have a hard time predicting.
But sure, let's sit back and watch what happens. Big experiment in social restructuring, could be fun. Could be hard for someone, but that's the breaks. And maybe in 100 years, after the migrations have started in earnest and whole continents empty into whole other continents, rivers of human flesh and misery passing each other in hopeless crawls from one ecological disaster area to another, maybe our grandchildren won't be digging up and violating our corpses in blind rage at how stupid and cynical we were at the very moment in 400 years of screwing up when we could have turned this ship around and saved them a lot of human misery.
Cuz you know, it's just 400 years of history. Blip in the continuum man. Not my problem.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
This is a self correcting problem. There is no way you can stop this. Fossel fuels are a form of "free energy" it's there in the ground all you have to do is dig it up and set it on fire. There is such strong incentive to do this that we will work as hard as we can to do it as fast as we can. The good news is that we are good at this and have likely burned up 1/2 of what's there. All we have to do is burn up the other half and the problem will be gone forever. So the next 100 years it will be hot. But for the next one million it will not. OK maybe my numbers are wrong and we've burned up only 1/4 or whatever. Still it will all be gone very soon in relative terms. Basically the human race stumbles along with stone tools for a million years then discovers hydrocaron and burns half the hydrocarbon on earth only 400 years then the other half in 100 years but then continues on for the next millions of years without using any hydrocarbon. In the larger view of things it's a "blip".
One thing is proof of global warming: global warming. An increase in the global mean tempature. Saying that you can't test this is just wrong. You can. You just measure a large number of evenly distributed points on the surface and take the mean. Then use statistics to determine how significant the warming is. If this couldn't be done, it wouldn't be published in scientific journals.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time it happened the dominant life form wasn't industrialised and happily stuffing the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses
Thing is, it's going to be very difficult to remove greenhouse gasses and stop global warming in 100 years' time should the majority of climate scientists actually turn out to be right. It's really not going to hurt us that much to stop producing greenhouse gasses now, and it might even turn out to be the right thing to do. Why not do it?
Forget global warming, worry about Judgment Day. If you don't accept Jesus, seriously, if only half what the biblical scholar consensus predicts is left to happen, you're all going to be pretty damn sorry you didn't do it sooner. The not giving a shit attitude isn't going to cut it when all hell breaks loose.
What, you don't believe in Hell? What, the amount of scariness of the claimed bad things that are purported to happen doesn't make it any more convincing?
Proxy studies and urban heat island effects cloud the results of all such studies.
Except for, you know...studies done on polar ice. Real problems with urban heat islands there.
Look, folks. We're clearly being astroturfed by someone. But no matter what your local Republican party shill tells you, there is no scientific dissent: global warming is caused by human-produced increases in CO2 in the earth's atmosphere.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Being "apathetic" IS taking a position, it's supporting the current "going to hell in a handbasket" strategy. And the real case is, if you read this or any other FA in a scientific publication:
It's very much like the health issues of smoking. Billions of dollars spent lobbying to make it look as if there is doubt when the case is proved by any reasonable definition.
- Scientist 1: Global warming is for real
- Scientist 2: Right, here's why
- Scientist 3: If that is true, X should happen...oh see, it does!
- Scientist 5: Oh, but Y does not fit...ih, once we correct for the measurement error, it does!
...- Scientists 900-1100: Let's summarize all this in a number of reports
- National academy of science: Let's also summarize this...oh look, the summaries agree!
- Paid shill: But duh! Erm...no, isnt!
Of course this still underestemiates the degree of work and scrutiny that has gone into our scientific understanding of global warming, but you get the idea.Stephan
It's true that there is a lot of disingenuity on the warming-is-fake side, but some of it is caused by disingenuity and outright stupidity on the warming-is-real side.
If you look at places like dailykos.com and other political proponents of "we need to do something", even mainstream ones like Al Gore, they're at huge odds with the scientific literature. For example, you now hear all sorts of nonsense about how increased hurricane frequency proves we need to do something, even though there is no evidence at all of a relationship (some scientists have hypothesized a relationship between warming and hurricane intensity---not frequency---but even that is highly speculative and not generally accepted).
In addition, I've heard claims that severe winters also support global warming, but the UN's general reports on the subject dispel that as a myth, and claim that global warming would result in, on average, slightly less severe winters. (Of course, severe winters don't *disprove* globl warming either---there are still plenty of year-to-year fluctuations even if the average is getting warmer.)
People are also conflating multiple trends. The important issue from a human-change point of view is the extent to which greenhouse gases and other human creations are changing climate. That's a separate question from the *aggregate* climate change. There *is* indeed good evidence for human-caused climate change, but it is still a separate question. For example, glacier retreat is often cited, but is largely a different phenomenon---Canadian glaciers have been retreating since about 1842, long before significant human-caused global warming. Current glacier retreat does appear to be caused or accelerated by global warming, but showing a picture of "glacier in 1840" and "glacier now" is just shady politics, when most of that recession happened from 1840-1930. And, of course, we should also take into account the estimates that about 30% of current warming is caused by an odd increase in solar output.
I think on the whole shoddy pro-global-warming argument is hurting the case. When the facts are on your side, there's no need to embellish them, and it damages credibility. This is why Real Scientists tend not to do it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Look again, kozumik. The GP poster hasn't claimed that he believes in Jesus, and I think he probably doesn't, although that's by no means certain. What he's doing is highlighting the fact that the GGP poster is claming that you should believe in global warming becauses of the severity of the consequences. You shouldn't do that. You should believe in global warming, or any theory (including Christianity,) based on the evidence that affirms the truth of the theory. Here's how the GP poster accomplished that. He described another theory, one that many believers of global warming disbelieve, and claimed that you should believe in that theory based on the severity of the consequences. Now, if a believer in global warming rejects that argument, then by analogy, he should also reject belief in global warming if the argument for global warming is based on the same type of argument.
It's a lot better when you don't have to explain it.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Who was alive 400 years ago to confirm this so-called "global warming"?
Who was alive 13.7 billion years ago to confirm the Big Bang, or, if you're a creationist, who was around 6000-odd years ago to confirm Genesis?
If you want to know where these claims come from, try finding out instead of just rubbishing something you clearly don't understand.
Anyone who thinks we, as humans, are big enough to affect this God given Earth in a permanent way, has a blown up ego.
Sure. Thing is, I don't particularly care about this God-given Earth. As you say, it can take care of itself. In the event of e.g. nuclear armageddon, the planet would barely notice and would carry on spinning round the sun in much the same way. Why, it wouldn't even wipe out all life!
But that wouldn't be much consolation to the folk left crawling around in the glowing ruins of what were once cities, dying slowly of radiation sickness.
I don't know about you, but I'm actually kind of attached to human civilisation, and I'm pretty damn sure we, as humans, are quite big enough to do quite a bit of damage to that. For example, by use of the aforementioned nuclear weapons -- or, according to some scientists, by the effects of our actions on the environment.
Global warming, if true, probably won't wipe out life on earth. But it could make it pretty uncomfortable for an awful lot of humans. Again, I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned, that counts as a Bad Thing. Now, yes, fighting global warming would cost money, money which would be wasted if it turned out not to be true after all. But what I want to know is why so many people seem to think that this makes it stupid to spend that money. Nobody seems to have any problem with paying for health insurance (you have no proof you'll get sick!), or car insurance (you have no proof you're going to crash!), or house insurance (you have no proof you're going to be burgled!). So what's wrong with planet insurance?
Thank you for phrasing this better than I ever could.
/that other people told me so/, I've never looked into a telescope so I'll just take them at their word. I really don't have time to analyze studies in chemistry, astrology, geology, physics, medicine, and what have you. For the most part I have to rely on experts to disseminate the information and report back to the general public.
/I/ can see is two sides claiming the other is wrong, there's little else I can do except wait for a real answer(and as mentioned throughout the rest of this forum, there will always be someone willing to contest a final decision on the matter).
/I/ do about it? I honestly don't know, and am willing to try some REASONABLE suggestions. Buy a Prius(I can't even afford to get rid of my 1993 Ford Taurus Stationwagon)? Conserve and recycle(I already do this)? I can vote Democrat or Republican? I can maybe write my representatives some letters instead of posting here on /. and hope somebody actually reads it. Maybe we could all quit our jobs and become full-time political campaigners. It's the only real contribution I can make because I don't think I can get enough vacation time from work to go on an armed revolution to overthrow a corrupt government into throwing off Big Business influences and declare environment friendly regulations.
/live/ on an individual basis, and step one is to find a job that has opportunity for real career growth, and step two is to settle down with a nice girl. Saving the world from Global Disaster is going to have to be step four or five.
IANA(I Am Not Anything)
I'm just a dumb college kid. A layman. I only believe in the moon and stars because other people told me they're more than pictures on the ceiling of the world. I don't have any other evidence except
So when all
We have a problem because the media profits from reporting disasters. So we have a boy-who-cried-wolf problem. I'm still waiting for SARS to kill me, to be killed by human-borne bird flu, to be blown up by terrorists, to die of cancer, to die of obesity, to die of cancer(again), see economic disaster in social security, peak oil, man-made disasters from nukes, or anthrax... Because of the mostly BS catastrophes above, I get a very high noise-to-signal ratio, so much so that I'm increasingly disenchanted with listening at all.
Without real scientific reports that follow the filter requirements of the parent poster, I just have to listen to what the "experts" say. And there's so much crap out there that I have to pick and choose which reports to follow(but which ones?!) or just tune the whole deal out and get back to my job pumping out 401k distribution confirmations here in HR.
And if we do reach a good consensus(which the majority here says we have) what do
Me, Mr. Average Joe, lives on a diet of work, leisure, and sleep. The news is 90% entertainment, and maybe 10% relevant news. I don't feel like there's a whole lot I can really do at the moment with my meager resources, and there are more pressing issues. This "global" perspective stuff is great, but I
The only problem is. The oil industry / Polluters are also applying the same logic, but for their means.
This makes a funny point, as well.
What do scientists have to gain by claiming global warming is happening/refusing the oil industry? A salary, at best. Climatologists and research scientists definitely don't make big bucks (maybe decent money on writing books, but hardly billions), relying mostly on NSF grants to do their research. Lying for a meager living is not something most people are willing to do.
What does the oil industry have to gain by refuting the scientists? Lots and lots and lots of money. Lying for a few billion dollars is something that even I would consider. Everybody has a selling point.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Imagine I see a line of people going on and on, until that line bends around a corner. Now, let's say I tell you that I'm taller than everyone in that line until it bends around that corner. Would you necessarily conclude that immediately after it bends around that corner you'll find someone taller? Because that's the kind of logic you're applying here.
Now, let's imagine that you do claim that. I now find a way to see around that corner and find tham I'm taller than everyone I can see there until it bends around yet another corner. Will you know claim that this claim means that there's someone taller right around the next corner?
Has it ever been hotter than it is now? Absolutely. Were we here to suffer the consequences? No. Has it ever heated up this quickly before? Probably not since the Earth first coalesced.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?