Global Warming

The other night while skipping through the channels I paused for a moment on Larry King Live. Not a show I normally watch because I think it is a little morbid of CNN to use an interviewer that actually died in 1987, but I digress. What caught my attention was Larry’s guest Bill Nye the Science Guy was on, discussing the upcoming made for TV, end of the world as we know it, apocalypse now, topic of Global Climate Change. Formally known as Global Warming. What made this interview interesting was that Nye was debating MIT climitologist and infamous global warming denier Richard Lindzen.
I don’t know if Mr. Bill Nye Inc., Cornell University educated engineer, former Boeing employee, and sometimes comedian would use a topic as serious as the end of the world to promote his Science Guy schtick but it became pretty clear that Bill was out of his league in this debate.



What this clip doesn’t show is that after several more minutes of Nye lobbing the climate change mantra and Doctor Lindzen smashing every serve a flustered Nye switches gears and presses the Professor to admit that we ought to do it for the good of the people so they have clean air. He then goes on to say that we ought to do it because it would an economic boom as people make a switch to alternate energy. It appeared that his scientific arguments didn’t have much leg.

If Nye, Gore, and DeCarpio are the Science Front Guys for Climate Change then the awaiting disaster has all the credibility of Y2K, West Nile, Flu vaccine shortages, or any number of scares that in hindsight came no where near the point where we had a guy dragging a cart through the streets yelling "bring out your dead".

“Comic Interlude”

During my days in Alaska I witnessed the glaciers receding and I have no doubt that the earth's climate is changing. If there is one constant in this world it is change, but there are credible voices that say that the sky is not falling and as the global warming inquisition gains steam those voices have a right to be heard. As Lindzen said many years ago: "...the consensus was reached before the research had even begun. Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists."

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? : Timothy Ball, Canada Free Press

Al Gore Is a Greenhouse Gasbag :Professor Bob Giegengack, Penn St.

Fear, Complexity, & Environmental Management in the 21st Century :Michael Crichton

The real deal?: Lawrence Solomon, National Post; Ten part deniers series.