This is a pretty balanced look at climate change

Ok. So I'm drunk at 2:20AM and reading Hardcore Husky which is usually a bad combination (or great combo however you wanna look at it), but realized I hadn't actually read this whole article.

And wow. That wasn't even close to a balanced look at climate change. It took the views of one scientist and tried to frame it into a greater understanding of the entire issue.

If you did any research into Richard Lindzen you would find that he did some good work in the beginning of his career but has now been outcast from the scientific community for dishonest and highly speculative views on climate change.

"Dr. Lindzen is “feeding upon an audience that wants to hear a certain message, and wants to hear it put forth by people with enough scientific reputation that it can be sustained for a while, even if it’s wrong science,” said Christopher S. Bretherton, an atmospheric researcher at the University of Washington. “I don’t think it’s intellectually honest at all.”"

Lindzen's last bastion of climate change skepticism has to do with the "Iris effect" which he uses to claim that there's really no problem there, when in actuality,

"The most elaborate computer programs have agreed on a broad conclusion: clouds are not likely to change enough to offset the bulk of the human-caused warming. Some of the analyses predict that clouds could actually amplify the warming trend sharply through several mechanisms, including a reduction of some of the low clouds that reflect a lot of sunlight back to space. Other computer analyses foresee a largely neutral effect. The result is a big spread in forecasts of future temperature, one that scientists have not been able to narrow much in 30 years of effort."

" When Dr. Lindzen first published this theory, in 2001, he said it was supported by satellite records over the Pacific Ocean. But other researchers quickly published work saying that the methods he had used to analyze the data were flawed and that his theory made assumptions that were inconsistent with known facts. Using what they considered more realistic assumptions, they said they could not verify his claims.

Today, most mainstream researchers consider Dr. Lindzen’s theory discredited. He does not agree, but he has had difficulty establishing his case in the scientific literature. Dr. Lindzen published a paper in 2009 offering more support for his case that the earth’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases is low, but once again scientists identified errors, including a failure to account for known inaccuracies in satellite measurements.

Dr. Lindzen acknowledged that the 2009 paper contained “some stupid mistakes” in his handling of the satellite data. “It was just embarrassing,” he said in an interview. “The technical details of satellite measurements are really sort of grotesque.”

Last year, he tried offering more evidence for his case, but after reviewers for a prestigious American journal criticized the paper, Dr. Lindzen published it in a little-known Korean journal."

Sorry Race, that article was shoddy journalism with a clear slant. Nowhere did the writer challenge Lindzen's highly speculative theory. Lindzen basically says that the rest of the community is engaged in groupthink that comes from a reliance on government grants for research. So in short he's a conspiracy theorist.

That shit wasn't chess, or checkers, not even LIFE. Probably closest to Candyland.

“Even if there were no political implications, it just seems deeply unprofessional and irresponsible to look at this and say, ‘We’re sure it’s not a problem,’ ” said Kerry A. Emanuel, another M.I.T. scientist. “It’s a special kind of risk, because it’s a risk to the collective civilization.”

All those quotes can be found in:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/earth/clouds-effect-on-climate-change-is-last-bastion-for-dissenters.html?pagewanted=all