[Dialogue] NYTimes.com: Industry Ignored Its Scientists onClimate

Wed Apr 29 10:28:38 EDT 2009

Hear, hear, Don!  The effort to reduce carbon dioxide in order to prevent global warming is an exercise in futility for two reasons, first because the only way we will stop burning oil is when it runs out and second because carbon dioxide, as you say, likely is not the basic problem.  Carbon dioxide does trap heat, true, but likely is not the basic cause of global warming.  The reason atmopheric moisture is never mentioned as being the most likely cause is that we don't have a direct cause-and-effect relationship on what affects the levels of moisture.  We can't put humanity on a guilt trip as being the cause.  That said, the massive change in land cultivation over the last two centuries may well have shifted evaporation rates and thus be a contributor to increased moisture levels.  
    In any event, the amount of CO2 that is created by human activity is a minor contributor to the total levels in the atmosphere.  The fact is that the conditions on the planet shift with time in a natural cycle that we don't understand.  The message is that we would better devote our efforts to accomodating to the inevitable change rather than the exercise in futility that is Al Gore's plan to save the planet.  The planet will survive just fine, but humanity may take a beating if it doesn't go with the flow.  There is nothing wrong with growing wheat in Canada's Northwest Territories and Alaska's wildlife preserves while Kansas becomes a desert.  But we need to start building some rail lines up there.
    Darrell Walker  --  Lincoln, California
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Don Elliott 
  To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 9:57 PM
  Subject: Re: [Dialogue] NYTimes.com: Industry Ignored Its Scientists onClimate

  Is it not true that water vapor is, by a factor of ten or so, the most abundant heat trapping gas in the atmosphere?
  How do we reduce evaporation, when the planet is warming up?  Clouds also reflect heat, so maybe the planet is 
  self regulating and our puny efforts to reduce CO2 are likely to have little, or no, effect on the climate.

  Beware the unintended consequences of buying into a popular, as yet, unproven theory.  Tens of million of malaria 
  deaths can be attributed to the virtual elimination of DDT from the planet based on the overblown concerns of DDT's 
  ill ecologic effects popularized by Rachel Carson.  See this article.

  http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Fall02/DDT.html

  Don Elliott
  9400 E Iliff Ave #361
  Denver, CO 80231
  303 695 4688 (H), 303 378 9175 (C)

  -----Original Message-----
  From: opossum2 at att.net
  To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
  Sent: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 2:25 pm
  Subject: Re: [Dialogue] NYTimes.com: Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

  Harry,

  Absolutely true!  Over the past several years I have been amazed to see letters published and signed by long lists of energy industry professionals "refuting" global warming/climate change.  I knew many of these people and20know them to be very bright and well-educated.  Unfortunately, their primary interest was the self-interest of trying to secure their employment and curry favor with their employers. Personally, I think that saving the planet and what is left of our civilization qualifies as enlightened self-interest too.

  Last year I attended a metting of an advisory board I sit on, which is an advocacy group for the Geology Dept. at the university I graduated from.  The President of the Board was handing out DVDs purporting to be educational, but which were nothing but diatribes against anything supporting mitigation of global warming/climate change.  The article you forwarded makes it sound as if this sort of effort is over, but it is very much active and alive!

  Regards,

  Steve Rhea
  Senior Applications Geoscientist
  Houston, Tx.
    -------------- Original message from h-wainwright at charter.net: -------------- 

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                SCIENCE / ENVIRONMENT   | April 24, 2009 
                Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate 
                By ANDREW C. REVKIN 
                A fossil fuels industry group campaigned against an idea its own scientists called irrefutable: a link between heat-trapping gases and climate change. 

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