Regarding Michael Crichton, Ronn!Blankenship asked,
So none of the papers referenced in the novel are real?
According to its author, James Hansen, at least one was
misrepresented. Evidentally, James Hansen testified to the US
Congress in 1988, 17 years ago.
Hansen says,
http://columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf
In my testimony to congress I showed one line graph with scenarios
A, B, C and observed global temperature ... However, all of the
maps of simulated future temperature that I showed in my
congressional testimony were for scenario B, which formed the
basis for my testimony. No results were shown for the outlier
scenarios A and C.
Updated to the present, i.e., adding 17 years to the predictions,
scenario B comes close. The outliers, scenarios A and C, do not.
According to Hansen,
Several people have pointed out to me that Crichton takes aim at
my 1988 congressional testimony and claims that I made predictions
about global warming that turned out to be 300% too high.
Put another way, Crichton fails to say that Hansen's main prediction,
scenario B, is spot on. Scenario B suggests human caused climate
change.
There is also a note on the current US Senate hearings sponsored by
Senator Inhofe at the `Real Climate' web site:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=188#more-188
If Senator Inhofe is correct, then human changes to prevent more
climate issues will have to be larger than the current consensus.
(However, he has not produced evidence to this effect that seems to me
to be suggestive.)
You can argue that some farmers will figure that nothing can be done
and not tell politicians that `something must be done' if bad weather
destroys their crops. (Senator Inhofe's home state has many farmers.)
I have heard this argument, it is not a joke.
However, I also figure that other people will try to act, perhaps
wrongly. For example, some Chinese might argue that since aerosols
decrease surface temperatures, they should increase already bad
aerosol pollution produced in China. Increasing the use of
domestically produced coal which produces such aerosols is less
difficult than increasing the use of cleaner sources of energy.
That is to say, while some will say `cannot do', there will be others
with a `can do' spirit, although they may `wrongly do'.
--
Robert J. Chassell
[EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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