denial – CleanTechies

Despite Attacks from Critics, Climate Science Will Prevail

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges it has been a rough few months for his organization. But, he argues, no amount of obfuscation and attacks by conspiracy theorists will alter the basic facts — global warming is real and intensifying.

Science thrives on debate. Only by challenging scientific findings do we expose weak arguments and substantiate strong ones. But the process relies on the debate being devoid of political taint and grounded in sound scientific knowledge. Sadly, that has not been the case in the recent barrage of criticism leveled against climate science.

The readers of Yale Environment 360 are by now familiar with recent questioning by some of the validity of the widely accepted science of climate change. The release of emails stolen from the University of East Anglia was used just prior to the Copenhagen Climate Summit to project an unflattering portrayal of climate scientists in general and to voice allegations that climate science was deeply flawed.

04/21/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Deception of a ‘Skeptical Environmentalist’ Dissected

written by Walter Wang

Is it worth spending a whole book dissectinig the writing of Bjørn Lomborg, the self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist?” Certainly not in terms of the quality of Lomborg’s argument, which simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. But Lomborg’s writing has been permitted to exercise a widespread and harmful influence.

For that reason, Howard Friel’s painstaking book The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming represents time well and usefully spent.

Friel identifies two strains in Lomborg’s work: his “theorem” that though global warming is happening and is human-induced it is far from a catastrophe; his “corollary” that there is therefore little need to incur the costs of reducing greenhousegas emissions to the extent urged by concerned experts.

03/16/2010 0 comment