Ambrose: The apocalypse and global warming - Framingham, MA - The MetroWest Daily News

The moral of this tale is not that we should rule out the possibility of serious danger posed by global warming that may have been largely instigated by humankind, but that our ignorance is far greater than facile talk of a "scientific consensus" would have you believe. Wrong responses could be more disastrous than warming, with no effect on thermometers.

Many get it, I think, that a hard landing could await us if we leap before a lot more calm, careful, apolitical looking, and alarmists should understand that ranting about doomsday afflictions will bring few to the faith.

Science and the media: 21 - 27 May - Physics Today Politics and Policy

[Happer] Let me summarize how the key issues appear to me, a working scientist with a better background than most in the physics of climate. CO2 really is a greenhouse gas and other things being equal, adding the gas to the atmosphere by burning coal, oil, and natural gas will modestly increase the surface temperature of the earth. Other things being equal, doubling the CO2 concentration, from our current 390 ppm to 780 ppm will directly cause about 1 degree Celsius in warming. At the current rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere—about 2 ppm per year—it would take about 195 years to achieve this doubling. The combination of a slightly warmer earth and more CO2 will greatly increase the production of food, wood, fiber, and other products by green plants, so the increase will be good for the planet, and will easily outweigh any negative effects. Supposed calamities like the accelerated rise of sea level, ocean acidification, more extreme climate, tropical diseases near the poles, and so on are greatly exaggerated.