Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Presented without comment: Neil deGrasse Tyson on AGW

[W]e’re dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate the Earth hasn’t seen since the great climate catastrophes of the past, the ones that led to mass extinctions. We just can’t seem to break our addiction to the kinds of fuel that will bring back a climate last seen by the dinosaurs, a climate that will drown our coastal cities and wreak havoc on the environment and our ability to feed ourselves. All the while, the glorious sun pours immaculate free energy down upon us, more than we will ever need. Why can’t we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What’s our excuse?

 -- Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos

h/t Grist

6 comments:

  1. What's our excuse? Why haven't we accepted unquestioningly every scaremongering prophecy of doom ? I dunno. I guess we're just idiots.

    I suppose we need more screaming end of the world scenarios from the likes of John Holdren, senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology. He has warned at various times of both a possible man-made ice age and catastrophic global warming. Now there's a man who covers all his bases.

    If you're looking for idiots to track...

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    1. Are you volunteering. You have all the necessary attributes.

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    2. An interrogatory sentence should be followed by a question mark, as in, " Are you volunteering?" To not use one makes you look a little stupid.

      As for your zinger, I don't normally call people idiots but this blog is named 'Idiot Tracker'. Who would better qualify for such tracking than a man who in 1971 was worried about both an ice age and runaway global warming?

      "The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history."

      "For the remaining major means of interference with the global heat balance is the release of energy from fossil and nuclear fuels...the exact form such consequences might take is unknown; the melting of the ice caps with a concomitant 150-foot increase in sea level might be one of them."

      http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/dr-holdrens-ice-age-tidal-wave/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

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  2. I'm hoping someone can show an explicit affirmative quote from Tyson that says that he believes the earth's current temperature rise is primarily caused by people.

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    1. Do you have some sort of Google disability that prevents you from looking up what he's said for yourself?

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    2. If the quote above isn't explicit enough for you, I suspect you're not really trying.

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