Sunday, June 1, 2008

In my long-ish response to Freeman Dyson's article in the New York Review of Books, I mention blogger and environmental scientist Joseph Romm's prediction about the melting of the permafrost in the arctic tundra releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. Today, Gerry linked to a Wired article reviewing a new study that points to massive methane deposits under the permafrost as well:
Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. And the frozen reserve is twice as large, by volume, as the world's known fossil fuel reserves.
The study, appearing in next Thursday's issue of Nature suggests that a release of methane similar to the one projected "rapidly warmed the Earth 635 million years ago, replacing an Ice Age with a period of tropical heat."

In other climate news, Why aren't we getting it? Joseph Romm has a pretty good answer.
The answer is that ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming--strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean energy technologies into the market. According to the late Jude Wanniski, Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker articles [on global warming], did nothing more “than write a long editorial on behalf of government intervention to stamp out carbon dioxide.” His villain is not global warming, but is the threat to Americans from government itself.
We'll take freedom all the way to mass graves if we need to!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

help you with some self-educated science article if you have the independent scientific judgement ability instead of ideology and propaganda mindset

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Falsification_of_CO2.pdf


http://www.heartland.org/article.cfm?artId=22835

Alex Greenberg said...

"Heartland has been criticized[15][16] for employing executives from such corporations as ExxonMobil, General Motors, and Philip Morris on its board of directors and in its public relations department.[2]"

"The Heartland Institute describes itself as a genuinely independent source of research and commentary. Sascha Meinrath noted that the institute refuses to disclose its funding sources and doesn’t list affiliations of Board of Directors on their website. However, it is a 501(c)(3) corporation. On its Form 990 filed with the IRS for 2003 (filed under an extension before August 2004), the organization checked “No” on Schedule III, Part A, line I that reads, “During the year, has the organization attempted to influence national, state, or local legislation, including any attempt to influence public opinion on a legislative matter or referendum.” If they had checked yes, they are required to fill out Part VI-A and VI-B detailing expenses in cash and by other means. In 2003, they received $1.5 million in contributions from unnamed sources out of $1.8 million in revenue."