Saturday, April 27, 2013

Warmist scientist Peter B. Kelemen, on the alleged threat of CO2-induced bad weather: "Apocalyptic warnings sell newspapers, power Web sites, and are surprisingly good for marketing...you feel like Paul Revere (though you might be Chicken Little)"

An Earth Scientist Explores the Biggest Climate Threat: Fear - NYTimes.com
[warmist Peter B. Kelemen] we agree that human greenhouse gas emissions are having a huge, negative effect on global climate. But I don’t agree with Nathaniel Rich.

Apocalyptic warnings sell newspapers, power Web sites, and are surprisingly good for marketing. Beyond the media, in the sciences and social sciences, if your research predicts a scary outcome, your name gets in the news, your grants get funded, and you feel like Paul Revere (though you might be Chicken Little). It’s a heady experience.

Meanwhile, my children are fearful of, and almost paralyzed by, the prospect of an inevitable, dystopian future. They would like to contribute to avoiding calamity, but they don’t see where to start, and they are told it is too late to begin. And my children are lucky, in a stable home, among the 3 percent, talented, athletic, well educated. In the face of an overarching climate of fear, people with less opportunity find there is nothing they can do to help avoid “destruction, displacement and despair.”

However, climate catastrophe is not inevitable, let alone irreversible.
Hey Peter: You *are* Chicken Little.

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