Covering Climate Change
- Lucian@going2paris.net
- Mar 2, 2021
- 1 min read
I believe that man's contribution to climate change is significant. I also believe that we should be taking steps NOW to address the issue because I further believe that unchecked climate change will have dramatic consequences for the United States. Those consequences include coastal flooding, hotter weather, more severe weather and a decline in our agricultural production.
I know not everyone agrees with me. And unfortunately the coverage of climate change tends to be sensational -- on both sides. I picked a NYT article to critique -- to document what I found wrong/sensational with the article. It's not a good article. The press must do a better job of covering this subject -- starting with staying with the facts and letting them speak for themselves.
Here are the article and my comments. I'll admit that my comments may be difficult for a newspaper that wants sizzle and punch. That's true to almost all newspapers -- I'm not singling out the Times. But climate change -- like economic policy - is a topic that requires facts to support opinions/conclusions.
Chuck I agree with you completely about the private jets. So much of that industry is based on “time savings” for the wealthy and corporate types. I don’t think the folks you identified understand how their use of private jets, etc. is viewed by “the masses.” Leaders must lead by example. I sense what you are saying is that you don’t buy into the forecasts that reasonable scientists are making about what our future looks like if we don’t curb man’s contribution to climate change. Is that a fair reading. The all-in cost of energy - specifically electricity - is a complex topic. You cite the example of where some say the true cost of the various green technologies is understated. Lazar…
One of my issues with many of the climate change advocates and leaders is they fail to "walk the talk". These highly visible advocates (among them Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Tom Steyer, Bill Gates, Leonardo De Caprio) demand significant lifestyle changes for average people, particularly in developed countries. Yet each enjoys incredible wealth, beyond that to which most people can aspire, and at the same time lives a self indulgent profligate lifestyle having a greater climate footprint than a small town. These multimillionaires and billionaires fly private jets, own fleets of vehicles, possess multiple homes with thousands of square feet each, not to mention mega yachts. As they jet around the world to climate conferences, they demand…
Thanks for sharing your perspective. No doubt the climate models are a work in progress - modeling our climate has to be one of the more complex systems that man has tried to model. But they are more accurate now than they were 30 years ago. I suspect we agree that they are probabilistic - there will never be a point forecast. Why don’t you think man’s activity is having any impact? To me that’s the easy part - the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more energy gets trapped. And since we put CO2 in the atmosphere, we must be having an effect. What’s the science behind your position? Do you think burning fossil fuels has no impact on our environment? A…
The scientific method works like this:
(1) Find an anomaly that is not explicable by current theories;
(2) Develop a hypothesis to explain that anomaly without disrupting other, well-accepted theories; then
(3) Test the hypothesis by making predictions which would FALSIFY that hypothesis since no theory can be "proven" inductively.
Virtually every prediction made by the Anthropogenic Global Warming forces has not been borne out over the three-plus decades since scientists switched from the Global Freezing Panic of the 1970s and early '80s to Global Warming in the late '80s. IF one follows the dictates and letter of the law regarding the scientific method, one would have to conclude that Anthropogenic Global Warming is not happening.
Now, I will readily…