Re New York Times defends hiring extreme climate denier: 'millions agree with him'

["David Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Hasan Diwan <hasan.diwan () gmail com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re New York Times defends hiring extreme climate denier: 'millions agree with him'
Date: April 22, 2017 at 7:07:38 AM EDT
To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>

Prof Farber, 
[for IP, should you deem fit]
While I'm sure that one can persuade "millions" to say "I believe the climate is not changing", the more 
important/relevant question to ask is "Assuming the climate is changing, should humans do anything about it?" to which 
the answer that my old Biology professor liked to give was that life will find a way, but maybe without us. So, if one 
doesn't give a toss about one's own species, then sure, deny the need to do anything about climate change, as life will 
find a way to cope, but I, for one, want my descendants to be born and enjoy the same (or better) lifestyle than 
myself. Therefore, I'm firmly in the camp of "something needs to be done about the increased frequency of extreme 
weather on Earth". 

Also, let's be charitable and say that there are 1 and a half million climate change deniers on Earth, out of a total 
population of 7.5 billion is 2%, which is less than the margin of error in most of the polls that pass as facts in news 
broadcasts. -- H

On 20 April 2017 at 17:18, Dave Farber <dave () farber net <mailto:dave () farber net>> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org <mailto:rsk () gsp org>>
Date: Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 8:17 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] New York Times defends hiring extreme climate denier: 'millions agree with him'
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net <mailto:dave () farber net>>


(for IP, if you wish)

This is not only incredibly tone-deaf, it's dangerous.  I've been
engaged in climatology self-education for the past 15 years or so,
attempting to leverage my science and engineering background into a
basic understanding of the field via books, papers, IPCC reports, etc.

I've lost count of the number of times a new paper or report shows that
previous ones erred -- and those errors are almost invariably on the
conservative side, i.e., newer work shows that the situation is worse
than previously thought.  The emergence of positive feedback loops
is particularly troubling; it seems like every few months another is
uncovered and found to be contributing to the overall trend.

The more I learn, the more horrified I become.

Albert A. Bartlett wrote that the greatest shortcoming of the human race
is man's inability to understand the exponential function.  We stand at
an inflection point on a curve, staring at the slope rising in front of us,
with limited time and resources to avoid the nearly inevitable...and the
New York Times is pandering to the scientifically illiterate for the sake
of some transient profits.  I would say that the judgment of history
will be harsh -- but I fear that few will be left to write it.

---rsk
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