It’s not really a question of whether one “believes” in man-made global warming or not. As astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the host of the fantastic revival of Carl Sagan’s COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey on the Fox Network explained recently to Stephen Colbert, science is “true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.”
Nonetheless, helping to shake those who have been long conned by the fossil fuel industry’s extraordinary propaganda effort to hoax the public about the issue can only help to continue moving the needle towards the serious action we must now take to mitigate the worst of the global warming crisis.
To that end, this past Sunday’s episode of COSMOS seems to have done the trick, for at least some previous “deniers”, at least according to this private note sent to me from a colleague of mine:
High praise. And, now that I’ve seen the full episode as well, I’d concur that it is one of the clearest, smartest, most-accessible explanations of the undeniable mountains of scientific evidence for the explosion of CO2 emissions — and the unspeakable dangers it poses to mankind — that I’ve seen to date.
If you haven’t watched the episode, you should. You should also let your climate denying friends know about it. It just may help to shake them out of their Big Carbon-induced stupor as well.
I’m not able to embed the episode here, unfortunately, but you can watch the entire climate change episode here for the next 38 days. (It’s the one called “World Set Free”.)
I hope you’ll consider doing so, and I hope that Fox, or the individual producers of the series, will make this important episode available to all for much longer than just 38 days! Yes, it’s that important.
Perhaps it will help more folks wake up to the reality of Oil-Qaeda, otherwise we victims must continue our wait.
Tyson is such a great explainer, it was very easy to follow the reasoning and facts.
I love the new “Cosmos” series. I’m going to watch this one on the weekend. I’ve been buying the episodes in HD, and they look fantastic.
I was not impressed with Tyson’s propaganda spin, even though the writers tried to make it appear that it was “scientific fact.”
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Though the episode tried to impart the idea that it was established that CO2 was the culprit, it never did show the facts – only opinions – and misled the audience to believe it was a fact.
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In review of the data, CO2 rise appears to be a result, and not a cause of climate change. If you examine the temperature extremes of the moon versus the earth, it’s obvious that our atmosphere is responsible for keeping us “cool.”
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The lunar surface (equator) –
minimum : 100 K (-279.67 F)
maximum : 390 K ( 242.33 F)
Earth
minimum : 184 K (-128.47 F)
maximum : 330 K ( 134.33 F)
Jet Graphics whiffed @ 4 with:
What “data”???
That’s some pretty bizarre “science” you offer there. For a start, it’s not in dispute that the earth’s atmosphere helps keep us “cool”. Without that atmosphere, we’d burn away. (Recall the concerns about CFC’s in the 80’s tearing away at the protective Ozone layer — the concerns that were eventually mitigated by a cap and trade program and an internationally implemented under George H.W. Bush?)
So, not really sure what moon temps are supposed to offer to this discussion.
As to your imaginary, unsupported assertion that climate change is causing a rise in CO2, well, that’s largely just silly. Nobody actually disputes the extraordinary amount of C02 that is added to our atmosphere and our oceans by burning fossil fuels. Not even deniers — hoaxed or knowing — like yourself. Yes, it is easily measurable.
The warming caused by that CO2 does lead, in turn, to more warming by natural forcings, such as melting permafrost, etc. (that’s known as a positive feedback loop), but to pretend that the earth, for no reason whatsoever, is suddenly doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, for the first time in about 650,000 years, ‘just because‘, is absurd on its face.
Yes, the earth has warmed (and cooled) before. But there is always a reason for it. If you can come up with a reason for the unprecedented addition of CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere, other than what is being done by man, I’m sure thousands of climate scientists would be delighted to hear about it, because, so far, they haven’t found any reason other than what man is busy doing here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq4Bc2WCsdE
i love this video.