The following is an essay distributed by email to a number of friends and journalists by pioneering climate scientist James Hansen. It is a response to controversy generated by his testimony before Iowa's utility board, in which he likened coal trains to "boxcars headed to crematoria."
-----
Emails received regarding the letter from the National Mining Association CEO and my letter to him (PDF) suggest a need for an apology on my part and a clarification of the bottom line. Some context is required.
Generational knowledge and responsibility.
The threat of global warming did not become clear until the present generation. Empirical evidence of warming was masked by weather fluctuations, and warming was kept small, temporarily, by the inertia of deep oceans. We cannot blame our ancestors for burning fossil fuels in an uncontrolled way. They worked hard to bring themselves and their children a better life. Their greenhouse emissions are small in comparison to ours. Any effect of their emissions on our climate is truly inadvertent.
Ignorance is no excuse for us. There is overwhelming scientific evidence of global warming, its causes, and many of its implications. Today's generations will be accountable, and how tall we stand remains to be determined. There is still time, but just barely.
Status of the planet.
Human-made greenhouse gas emissions today are enormous, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), with annual emissions of over 8 gigatons of carbon and average annual increases of about 2 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 in the air. For the past 30 years the planet has been warming at a rate of about 0.2°C per decade. And the planet is out of 2 energy balance by between ½ and 1 W/m (more energy coming in than going out), so additional warming of about 0.5°C is "in the pipeline."
These facts are no cause for despair. There are enough health-damaging pollutants in the air today such that, if they (tropospheric ozone, its principal precursor methane, black soot, and some other trace gases that contribute to the global warming) were reduced by feasible amounts, the planet's energy balance could be restored, or nearly so. That is a doable task, and it would have many side benefits. The primary challenge is the need to limit future emissions of CO2.
A substantial fraction, about one-fifth of our fossil fuel CO2 emissions, stays in the air for more than 1000 years. Thus, whether we burn a fuel and release the CO2 today or next year does not matter all that much with respect to the end result. Conservation of precious fossil fuels is important -- it is needed to give us time to develop energy sources and lifestyles to fit the era "beyond fossil fuels" -- but we must realize that there is a limit on the total fossil fuel CO2 that we inject into the atmosphere.We cannot burn all of the fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal and unconventional fossil fuels such as tar shale and tar sands) and release the CO2 into the air without creating a different planet.
Burning all fossil fuels, if the CO2 is released into the air, would destroy creation, the planet with its animal and plant life as it has existed for the past several thousand years, the time of civilization, the Holocene, the period of relative climate stability, warm enough to keep ice sheets off North America and Eurasia but cool enough to maintain Antarctic and Greenland ice and thus a stable sea level. We cannot pretend we do not know the consequences of burning all fossil fuels.
Basic fossil fuel facts.
Most of the increase of CO2 in the air today, relative to pre-industrial times, is due to burning of fossil fuels. The fossil fuel contribution to CO2 in the air today is due about 50% to coal, 35% to oil, and 15% to gas. The annual increments for the past few decades have been slightly larger for oil than for coal, but coal use has accelerated in the past few years and in the long run coal will be the greatest source because of its larger reserves (discovered deposits) and estimated resources (deposits still to be discovered).
There is a raging battle today about the size of fossil fuel reserves and resources, with "peakists" claiming we are already at or near peak production of both oil and coal because the amounts of economically recoverable fuels in the ground are more limited than the fossil fuel industry has admitted. Evidence that reserves and resources have been overstated is strong. But it is also clear that, absent a price on carbon emissions, as the price of energy rises the amount of economically extractable fossil fuels increases, including unconventional fossil fuels. Regardless of reserve and resource uncertainties, we know that there are enough fossil fuels to destroy the planet as we know it, if their CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
But the potential contributions of oil and gas to future CO2 are limited (PDF), even if we accept industry estimates. CO2 from oil can be further limited via a gradually increasing price on carbon emissions that discourages industry from going to the most extreme environments in the world (such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Antarctica) to extract every last drop of oil.
Actions needed to stabilize climate.
Two fossil fuel facts define the basic actions required to preserve our planet's climate:
- It is impractical to capture CO2 as it is emitted by vehicles (the mass of emitted CO2 is about three times larger than the mass of fuel in the tank), and
- there is much more CO2 contained in coal and unconventional fossil fuels than in oil and gas.
As a consequence, the strategy for saving creation must have two basic elements. First, and this is 80% of the solution, coal use must be phased out except where the CO2 is captured and sequestered. Thus there should be a moratorium on construction of new coal- fired power plants until the technology for CO2 capture and sequestration is ready.
Second, there must be a moderate price on carbon emissions, and both businesses and consumers must recognize that this carbon price will continue to increase in the future. This price, and realization of further increases, will drive innovations for energy efficiency, renewable energies, and other forms of energy that do not produce CO2.
There are a variety of ways to impose this price, including industry cap-and-trade, individual carbon allowances, and fuel taxes designed to be fair. The need to restructure taxes to encourage development of clean energies does not need to imply a large increase of the net tax load, nor does it imply destruction of the economy. On the contrary, common sense suggests that many good jobs will be created in industries focused on energy efficiency, renewable energies, and other clean energy sources.
A carbon price alone is not enough, because it must start at a moderate level to avoid economic disruption. Thus governments must take other actions: changing rules so that utilities make money by encouraging conservation, increasing efficiency standards for vehicles, appliances, electronic goods, etc., and investing much more in energy research and development.
The carbon price will assure that we do not pursue absurd energy pathways, such as cooking the Rocky Mountains to drip oil out of tar shale. We must instead focus on the actions needed to achieve the clean environment of the future, with a stable climate that can continue to support all life, in the era beyond fossil fuels.
As industry and the public realize where energy policies are headed, positive feedbacks and innovations are likely, so change will begin to happen rapidly. Indeed, much of the coal may be left in the ground. This is not a bad thing -- halting mercury pollution of our oceans, mountain-top removal, and pollution of our streams.
One more point needs to be made. We are already near, and probably somewhat beyond, the maximum level of atmospheric CO2 that we need to allow if we wish to preserve a planet like the one we inherited. But this realization, too, is no cause for despair. Each year the earth has been taking up, on average, 43% of our fossil fuel CO2 emissions. There is a limit on the Earth's capacity to take up CO2 on time scales less than millennia, but there are other actions we can take in addition to the two described above.
Additional actions include improved agricultural practices that enhance carbon sequestration in the soil, and improved forestry practices that reduce emissions from deforestation. The actions described are doable, and they make climate stabilization manageable. It should be noted that the resulting planet, with clean air and water, is also more attractive for humans and other species.
Coal trains and reactions.
Recently a coal industry official tried to divert attention from the actions that are needed to solve the climate problem by criticizing a specific paragraph in my testimony (PDF) opposing construction of a new coal-fired power plant that does not capture its CO2 emissions. The paragraph in my testimony mischaracterized was:
Coal will determine whether we continue to increase climate change or slow the human impact. Increased fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, compared to the pre-industrial atmosphere, is due 50% to coal, 35% to oil and 15% to gas. As oil resources peak, coal will determine future CO2 levels. Recently, after giving a high school commencement talk in my hometown, Denison, Iowa, I drove from Denison to Dunlap, where my parents are buried. For most of 20 miles there were trains parked, engine to caboose, half of the cars being filled with coal. If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains -- no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.
This paragraph described thoughts that went through my head as I observed a remarkable string, mile after mile, of coal trains. My words did not resemble their reconstruction by the coal executive and I certainly did not mean to trivialize the suffering of families who lost relatives in the Holocaust.
Nevertheless, it is clear from reactions that several people were hurt by the words. Three scientific colleagues, including one who lost several relatives in the Holocaust, have expressed strong disappointment. A much larger number of people expressed support for the statement, but I think that more weight must be given to those who objected, as their concerns were heartfelt and understandable.
My apology and discussion.
I regret that my words caused pain to some readers. I hope that they will accept my apology for having caused discomfort, an apology that is heartfelt. Here, not in defense of my words, rather to make two further points, I provide the comments of two other people:
Jim, I thought that your equating the coal trains in Iowa with holocaust death trains an apt and reasonable analogy. It does not at all trivialize the suffering and deaths of European Jews but rather is a tribute to them. They will not all have died in vain if the horror and inhumanity of the holocaust can be used to wake up the world to the catastrophic consequences of continued pollution of the earth's atmosphere with carbon dioxide. XXXXX
Jim: As a Jew, who is sensitive about misuse of references to the holocaust, I found no problem with your metaphor...nor to your response to the CEO ... except for the reference to "creation"! YYYYY
My supposition was that most people would take the reference in the way indicated by the first of the last two comments. One merit of references and memorials to the Holocaust is as a reminder that we cannot allow such an event again. We cannot avert our eyes.
As for reference to "creation," my feeling about that topic developed during a meeting with evangelical leaders on a Georgia plantation. We found no reason for conflict between science and religion, but many reasons for working together. We all felt strongly about the need for stewardship, for passing on to our children and grandchildren the planet that we received, with its remarkable forms of life.
Summary and a possible alternative metaphor.
My concern is trying to close the gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by those who need to know: the public and policy makers. I think we still have a long way to go in making the danger clear, in part because of the inertia of the climate system and the danger of passing tipping points -- points at which little or no additional forcing is needed to cause large, relatively rapid, undesirable effects.
Our fellow species feel the danger in climate change. Animals are not on the run (PDF) for the sake of exercise. But they do not control what is happening. We do. We cannot avert our eyes and pretend we do not understand the consequences of continued "business as usual."
A related, alternative metaphor, perhaps less objectionable while still making the most basic point, comes to mind in connection with an image of crashing of massive ice sheets fronts into the sea -- an image of relevance to both climate tipping points and consequences (sea level rise). Can these crashing glaciers serve as a Krystal Nacht, and wake us up to the inhumane consequences of averting our eyes?
Alas, that metaphor probably would be greeted with the same reaction from the people who objected to the first. That reaction may have been spurred by the clever mischaracterization of the CEO, aiming to achieve just such a reaction.
So far that seems to have been the story: the special interests have been cleverer than us, preventing the public from seeing the crisis that should be in view. It is hard for me to think of an equally poignant example of the foreseeable consequence faced by fellow creatures on the planet. Suggestions are welcome.
Comments View as Flat
WWAGD?! Posted 4:18 pm
28 Nov 2007
Why Did Population Remain So Small?
You could go around asking the question, why, in the past 2 centuries, did CO2 production go way up.
You could also ask...why, in the past two centuries, did human population levels go up so dramatically.
My Log
Permalink
NSaggie Posted 5:13 pm
28 Nov 2007
A suggestion
Perhaps an analogy, think of every boxcar of coal going by as another bucket added to a swimming pool?
I think the testimony was great, but I'm at a loss as to how you might better involve a public wearied by the deluge of information out there on a daily basis. Certainly the testimony is good for policy makers.
Cheers
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:26 pm
28 Nov 2007
Dear Dr. James Hansen
Please know that despite the subjective discomfort I initially felt secondary to your use of the "H" word, it seems to me that my feelings are without meaning. What I might feel about your choice of a metaphor matters not one bit. The point you are trying to make is so vital, so incredibly significant, that I would hope others could be encouraged to set their subjective discomforts aside, to put their ignorance and/or denial of reality aside, and acknowledge the ominously looming, human-driven predicament before humanity, the one apparently induced by the huge scale and skyrocketing growth rate of global human over consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities now overspreading the surface of the wondrous planetary home upon which God has blessed us to live so well.
Sincerely,
Steve Salmony
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:33 pm
28 Nov 2007
Holocaust
Perhaps there is something of value to be gained by broadening our view of truly terrible and barely imaginable, all-too-human examples of willfully induced events perpetrated against the family of humanity.
The Hidden Holocaust--Our Civilizational Crisis Part 1: The Holocaust in History
As we are all aware, the term "Holocaust" is traditionally used to refer to the "systematic, bureaucratic state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime", during the Second World War. The word "Holocaust" is a Greek word, which means "sacrifice by fire." It conveys an event, the scale and horror of which, transformed the course of world history. Moreover, it's often seen as a crime against humanity that is unparalleled and unique.
This, we cannot dispute...........
For the entire article by Nafeez Amed, click on the following link,
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 12:58 am
29 Nov 2007
Revkin posted this on his blog also
with a little bit of comment
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 2:38 am
29 Nov 2007
"posted by Dan"
Thanks, Jon, for the link to Revkin's blog.
The 15th comment makes it very clear that with certain readers at least, Jim Hansen is simply not going to be able to explain himself to their satisfaction.
And if anything, the Krystalnacht analogy only makes it worse. Once again, those of us with ears to hear understand exactly what Hansen is saying, on the one hand, and on the other cannot understand why it should be offensive, to Jews or anyone else. But evidently, once again, there will be some who misinterpret Hansen's analogy to mean that he heartlessly fails to appreciate the absolute uniqueness of all that the Jews suffered during the legitimized, institutionalized anti-Semitism in Europe during the 1930s and '40s.
That misinterpretation strikes me as a case of remarkably woeful illogic. To say that "A is like B, in this respect," is, after all, not at all equivalent to saying, simply, "A is B." Is the sense of "There is no sorrow like unto my sorrow" so persistently powerful and overwhelming, that there can be no hope for a return of the logic-loving faculties?
In the same way, as a supporter of animal rights, I like very much Revkin's commenter from Britain, who was reminded of the countless train cars crammed with animals on their way to slaughter in Chicago. But to suggest that there is any kind of moral equivalence between the suffering and death of those animals, and the suffering and death of human beings taken to the death camps, would certainly provoke outrage -- and that too, in spite of the often-quoted observation by the renowned and beloved Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, to the effect that our relation to the animals that we eat is exactly analogous to the relation of the Nazis to the Jews.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
Flamingo Posted 3:03 am
29 Nov 2007
millions will die at human hands
seems like an appropriate metaphor to me. For some people, though, nothing can ever be compared to the holocaust, and it's too bad it distracts from the urgent message here.
Permalink
apsmith Posted 3:11 am
29 Nov 2007
A metaphor that came to me
Not of coal cars, but of Hansen, Gore and friends.
For those not religiously inclined you can skip this...
I had some time to be browsing around the Old Testament last night and noticed something about the old story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal in the book of Kings. If you remember, Elijah challenged them to prove their god was real, himself against 450 of them. 1 Kings 18:24:
"And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. [...]"
A similar challenge applies in this debate: who is right about the implications of coal for global warming and life on Earth: Hansen and Gore and Dave Roberts and company, or the coal executives? Each side calls on their scientists for evidence, proof. And overwhelmingly, the truth falls on one side, not the other.
1 Kings 18:38-40
"Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God. And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there."
You would think Elijah had won. Overwhelming proof. The defeat of many opposed to him. The people on his side. A Nobel prize in the modern debate. And yet his opponents were still in power:
"Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to morrow about this time. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life [...]"
"[...] there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away."
Jim Hansen, Al Gore, our modern-day Elijah's - it is still a long hard fight ahead of us. Don't run, keep strong, and we will prevail.
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 4:59 pm
29 Nov 2007
Oh no, not Elijah!
AP,
a "religious inclination" is most certainly not required for reading the Bible. Every educated European, and every educated resident of a land colonized by Europeans, should be acquainted with the contents of the Bible -- just as they should be acquainted with Homer, the tragedians, Plato and Aristotle, Virgil, and Greek and Roman history. And every educated person everywhere should be acquainted with some basic information about all the major religions of the world, as well as world history, the history of philosophy, the history of science, and the history of the arts.
There! -- no problem. Ain't curriculum design fun?
And yet: The Bible! How I hate that book! How I want to stomp on it, to throw it against the wall, to tear it to pieces! Well, OK, not the book itself, but the false idolatrous concept of it, as though it were some evenly, irresistibly, ever consistently beaming monolith. How harmful and destructive that wicked concept has been to true Christianity!
How I hate the Books of Kings! Could I possibly worship the God of Elijah, who stirred him and empowered him to massacre 450 ignorant men? Never! Could I ever sit still in a pew next to the wild, savage old Israelite who wrote that dreadful story? God forbid! Do I not wish that all the art and all the literature that the brilliant cults of Baal and Astarte must have inspired had survived, and had not been put to the torch and the mallet by those monotheistic fanatics maddened by their horrible anthropophagous desert deity? With every breath I take!
And yet: How I love the Books of Kings too! The writing is just so good! Yes, the stories are horrible, but they are wonderful, and beautiful, and fascinating too. One of my very favorites is the story of the anonymous "man of God out of Judah," and the lion and the donkey, in 1 Kings 13. The gross irony of how the man is killed, and the hideous criminality of God, leave me gasping. How I hope and pray that that story is not true! But also, how I wish I could write a story half as good!
For a different reason, your turning our attention to the Elijah story is very well done. One of the greatest and most famous works of literature ever written by an American, a major document of American religion, American industry, American business, and Americans' relationship with wild animals, is about the voyage of a whaling vessel named Pequod; and the captain of the Pequod is named Ahab, after the ancient Israelite king against whom Elijah prophesied and who in turn drove Elijah into the desert. The book is "Moby-Dick." What does Herman Melville want us to know, when he named his remarkable character after that king? He wants us to read the Books of Kings, evidently, to begin learning what he means, even as he wants us to read the Book of Genesis in order to understand, if we can, why he names his narrator Ishmael, after the patriarch Abraham's inconvenient and ill-served first son. But why? Why does he do this? Why does Melville think that in order to understand this story -- which is about Americans, about ourselves: so, rather, in order to understand ourselves -- , we need to read the Bible?
It might be interesting to know how Jim Hansen, Al Gore and Andy Revkin would answer those radical questions. But let us not urge them too strongly at present. Meanwhile, if it suits us to think of Jim Hansen as the Elijah of our time and our land, one who is alone master of a supreme truth, and lives in fear for his life in the midst of his enemies, well, fine. The analogy may not be to everyone's liking, though.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
Permalink
trock Posted 12:33 am
30 Nov 2007
the heaven and hell of it
One of the hard and essential things for an advocacy movement to do well, is to get the right balance between the vision of what needs to be done to solve the problem and that which will happen if the problem is not solved.
Christianity has its heaven and hell. It's like the mafia; you get an offer you can't refuse, the bribery of heaven and the blackmail of hell. That is one reason Christianity is so successful.
Some have argued like the authors of `Breakthrough' that you only need to articulate the good vision of what needs to have happen, like Martin Luther King jr speech in 1963, `I have a dream.' People will then see a vision of a better future and work towards that. Some will claim that that is the reason for race improvements in America. What they forget are a few other things that happened at that time.
The race riots of 1964 in Harlem and 1965 in Watts. Nothing like a little rioting to get people to understand that you are angry as many blacks were at this time, much of it very justifiable.
So that gave people a choice, the `I have a dream' speech of Martin Luther King jr where people can work together to solve problems or the rioting of Harlem and Watts. The `I have a dream' seemed like heaven compared to the rioting. That was some of the reason Congress was able to pass the civil rights acts as well as many others. The heaven and the hell of a problem were considered.
Which is why we can't just proclaim a vision to a clean energy future, we have to describe the hell as well. Maybe Hanson's analogy was a little to specific for people who were actually a part of those events, but the hell of runaway global warming has to be described if not with this analogy then other's. The hell is as much or more of the story as the heaven.
It also gave me some hope that there is more than cold calculations on the scientists minds, that there is the reality of what it means to the animals and humans dying.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 1:14 am
30 Nov 2007
Speth, Martin Luther King, & breakthrough
In a recent post, I recounted part of an interview of Gus Speth, Dean of Yale's Forestry school:
Speth mentioned a conversation with Nordhaus and Shellenberger, after the publication of their essay ["Death of Environmentalism"]. They made the point to him that Martin Luther King did not say, as environmentalists are alleged to be saying, "I have a nightmare," but, "I have a dream." Speth's response:
So, trock, I agree that you need both heaven and hell. I think the human brain is very well-adapted to being anxious or even fearful about something, as long as there is a plan to solve the problem. With just fear, as Shellenberger says, all kinds of extreme behaviors ensue. With fear and a positive vision, it should be possible to move much faster, and disseminate your message more widely, than with just a positive vision.
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 2:17 am
30 Nov 2007
Dear A.P. Smith and caniscandida..........
Something is happening; but people generally are not yet adequately focusing their attention upon an extremely forbidding and apparently unforeseen human-induced, human predicament that could present itself to humanity in the offing.
What worries me has to do with something within the psyche of the family of humanity that is making it difficult for our species to acknowledge, let alone address, the threat to life as we know it and to the integrity of our planetary home which is posed to humanity in our time by the gigantic scale and rapid growth rate of unbridled consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species now overspreading the surface of Earth.
How do things look to you?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
apsmith Posted 4:20 am
30 Nov 2007
more metaphors
Steve,
let's say we are walking out over a cliff edge, on a plank of wood held down by rocks. Most of us refuse to look down, most of us refuse to notice that the plank is starting to bend, and its abrupt end not far ahead is shrouded in mist. A few lone voices cry out to pay attention, but they are scoffed at and condemned. Those rocks holding it down look so big, we feel so small, the plank looks so long, we're safe, right?
We have choices that will save us, but they cannot be made individually - we're all bonded together on this one, and only collective action by a united world will succeed. How do we get that to happen?
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 5:18 am
30 Nov 2007
Dear A. P.
A wonderfully well-put metaphor..... and even better questions.
I suppose we begin by raising awareness among our many brothers and sisters in the family of humanity. Think of this as a first step on a new path of beginning to determine how we are going to adequately move forward. Once our message of humanity's distinctly human-induced predicament has been reasonably and sensibly shared widely and generally understood, not simply within a solid majority of humankind but many more than that, then we have an opportunity to put to good use the many wondrous, and occasionally unique, gifts God has granted to our splendid species for the purpose of responding ably to whatsoever challenges present themselves to humanity and to life as we know it.
Sincerely,
Steve
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 1:54 am
01 Dec 2007
I Wonder What Galileo Is Doing Tonight........
I find it irresistible not to at least take a moment to wonder aloud what Galileo is doing tonight. My hope would be that the great man is resting in peace and that his head is NOT spinning in his grave. How, now, can Galileo possibly find peace when so many top-rank scientists -- who are NOT members of the IPCC -- refuse to speak out clearly regarding whatsoever they believe to be true about the distinctly human predicament presented to humanity in our time by certain unbridled "overgrowth" activities of the human species that loom ominously and threaten to engulf the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit?
Where are more leaders like Al Gore who are willing to support the good science of climate change that is being presented in the solid scientific observations and consensually validated empirical data from Dr. James Hansen, Dr. R.K. Pachauri and the IPCC?
Perhaps there is something in the great work of Al Gore, Jim Hansen and the 2000 scientists in the IPCC that will give Galileo a moment of peace.
What would the world we inhabit be like if scientists like Galileo had adopted a code of silence or selectively mined data or manufactured controversy or passed along disinformation..... contriving only 'scientific' evidence which was politically convenient, religiously tolerated, economically expedient, and socially correct?
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
Marky48 Posted 2:45 pm
06 Dec 2007
The apology
Well said Jim! Yeah some people are quick to point inappropriate anologies for lack of any counter evidence. My dad liberated the camps, but a death march is a death march. The most offended are the ones who want coal to remain cool. Offering positive solutions as you have is the way to the future. Keep up the excellent work!
Marky48
Permalink