Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
The term "Climate Change" has been around since at least the 1950's (see http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=326).
"Climate Change" is more common now thanks to conservative think tanks who made a concerted effort to use that term in the early 2000s because it was considered "less scary" than global warming. Scientists went along with it because "Climate Change" is technically more accurate anyway and they are not particularly good at playing politics.
You've got to envy the Republicans in their ability to twist language to suit their needs.
The arms race happened. It wasn't deadly. There was no nuclear catastrophe.
Carbon's increasing. We're still here. The polar ice caps are still here.
Good comparison.
We still have some of the lowest CO2 concentrations in earth's history right now, and our climate has been changing rapidly (in fact, oscillating wildly) for the past 7 million years or so. To stop these oscillations, CO2 concentrations would have to go up substantially.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology