Climate Change Skeptics

From SmartEnergyPortal.net, here is a quick post from the Climate Change wars. Otherwise known as CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) if you're being wordy about it.

"We Need Rational, Climate Change Skeptics!" by Paul Mauldin
http://smartenergyportal.net/article/we-need-rational-climate-change-skeptics

I heard about this particular wrinkle because the physicist in question is a former professor at RPI, one of my alma maters. And this generated some discussion on an RPI e-mail list of which I am a member.

"In September of this year, Dr. Ivar Giaever, 1973 Nobel Prize winner in physics and former professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute resigned as a Fellow from the prestigious American Physical Society because of the group's official stand that 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring,'"

"Dr. Giaever’s resignation letter was quoted, in part: 'In the APS, it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?' and 'The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this "warming" period.'"

"In 2008 he warned: 'I am a skeptic...global warming has become a new religion…We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important.'"

That last part is exactly correct. The number of scientists who think one way is not important. Only the truth is important.


"...challenge global warming and you might be instantly labeled a nut-case."

I guess I'm a nut-case. :)