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How Climate Scientists Parallel Early Atomic Scientists
Lasrick writes "Kennette Benedict writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists about the existential threat of climate change, and how the scientists who study and write about it are similar to the early atomic scientists who created, and then worried about, the threat that nuclear weapons posed to humanity: 'Just as the Manhattan Project participants could foresee the coming arms race, climate scientists today understand the consequences of deploying the technologies that defined the industrial age. They also know that action now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will mitigate the worst consequences of climate change, just as the Manhattan Project scientists knew that early action to forestall a deadly arms race could prevent nuclear catastrophe.'"
Because the weather always changes and that way you'll never be proven wrong.
Why stop at four billion years? Compared to the temperature some ~13.8 billion years ago, it's positively chilly right now!
I find it fascinating how science is often refered here on slashdot, but when it comes to climate scientists, all of a sudden the vast majority of scientists are stupid, lying, elitists scaremongers.
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Manhattan Project scientists may have foretold the arms race, but could they have foreseen that the advent of nuclear weapons would produce the longest period of peace between industrialized nations in the past several centuries? Considering the countless lives lost in the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, how many lives have been saved under the haunting specter of nuclear annihilation?
In this context the analogy to climate science is less clear.
I am amazed at how people love to attribute the worst possible motives to scientists (lying for what? to get a 20K-100K grant?) but refuse to see the motives of those who fund climate CHANGE deniers, which would be oil companies, investment fund managers with big stakes in petroleum, etc. with billions at stake.
For the dim witted I can only assume it is because in the back of their minds they think they can never be a PhD scientist, which feeds resentment, but they think they could possibly be a hedge fund manager or oil boss.
early atomic scientists:
- developed sound physical theories that any theoretical theorist could verify from first principles and a few key experiments
- proved that their theories worked in a series of repeatable experiments
- implemented their technologies as practical devices
- worried that the technology they themselves developed might be used for bad
climate scientists:
- make extrapolations involving tons of assumptions and unknowns
- their experiments and data collections cannot be reproduced
- haven't created any new technologies
- try to stop people from using other people's technologies
Reference please.
Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
The article says that his formula wes reasonable, but he could not predict industrial growth, so could not predict trends.
I agree that CO2 levels are linked to temperature,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-plot.svg
But ... Misrepresenting facts doesn't help.
Note to all mods (for the second time) : do NOT moderate opinions without FACT. Most highly moderated comments in here have nothing to back their claims. It makes a mockery of Slashdot.