These guys are dangerous

Quote of the Century

>>>> According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in 'The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change', "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says,
"Human activities have little direct control over its [water vapour] atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation." >>>>>>

Puny human beings, well we have destroyed the world, a simple layer of oil on the seas has disrupted the water evaporation cycle.

I grow really tired of experts that really have no idea at all, and yet they hold sway over scientific progress.

REALLY TIRED

Manages to explain exactly what the IPCC report actually meant, not just by translating scientificspeak into ordinary language, but by (and this is more important) explaining the caveats and what the assessment should really say. The problem is that "very likely" doesn't actually sound like it means 90%. I don't get why people still procrastinate by saying "well there's still a 10% chance it's wrong..." when we're looking at runaway effects.

This still won't persuade those who go on about global warming being good as it will turn frigid northern countries into tropical paradises, though. Don't they understand what's actually under the ice?

Supposedly, global warming "alarmists" were disappointed with this report because it wasn't terrifying enough, so I'm looking forward to the report about the actual effects on humans.

These same scientist's in the 70's were saying that it was global cooling and that the ice sheet would be down to the Dakotas by the year 2000.  We are barely getting out the little ice age from the 1300's.  Greenland had farming communities in the 1100's by the Vikings and was later frozen out.  The Earth goes through warming and cooling cycles for millions of years.  I would like to know how warm it gets between ice ages and how fast does it warm after an ice age?

Thanks for posting the story, David, and tremendous thanks to Tom Engelhardt for getting the permission for you to do so from the generous folks at NYRB.

This piece goes a long way in breaking down the perplexities into little bite-size chunks that - one hopes - more of the masses can start to comprehend, and appreciate.