How Can This Be, If Human-Induced ‘Global Warming’ Is Settled Science?
I’m guessing the New York Times was hoping this would be ignored by publishing it on Election Day (link requires free registration; HT George Reisman):
In recent years, scientists have made sizable gains in what was once considered an impossible art — reconstructing the history of Earth’s atmosphere back into the dim past. They can now peer across more than a half billion years.
….. The discoveries have stirred a little-known dispute that, if resolved, could have major implications. At issue is whether the findings back or undermine the prevailing view on global warming. One side foresees a looming crisis of planetary heating; the other, temperature increases that would be more nuisance than catastrophe.
Perhaps surprisingly, both hail from the same camp: scientists who study the big picture of Earth’s past, including geologists and paleoclimatologists.
Most public discussions of global warming concentrate on evidence from the last few hundred or, at most, few thousand years. And some climate scientists remain unconvinced that data from the deep past are solid enough to be relevant to the debates.
But the experts who peer back millions of years, though they may debate what their work means, do agree on the relevance of their findings. They also agree that the eon known as the Phanerozoic, a lengthy span from the present to 550 million years ago, the dawn of complex life, typically bore concentrations of carbon dioxide that were up to 18 times the levels present in the short reign of Homo sapiens.
A little bit of humility, instead of large doses of “it’s settled science” intimidation, would appear to be in order, or at least an end to comparing global-warming skeptics to terrorists (HT The Corner via Amy Ridenour). I somehow doubt that we’ll see it.
