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That's one hell of a false equivalency. Because the author chose to put a valid and rational argument under a valid but slightly inflammatory headline, you equa

That's one hell of a false equivalency. Because the author chose to put a valid and rational argument under a valid but slightly inflammatory headline, you equate him with those intentionally misrepresenting the science? PZ is many things, but he is not a "Big Loud Liar trying to defame the other side." What he is doing here is showing the actual behavior of the other side and exposing it for what it is: a baldfaced lie, repeated by uncritical followers. Moreover, it is certainly not the case that climate change is "a little-understood phenomenon that might have some minor repercussions over the next few hundred years, some of which might be possible to mitigate by changing human behavior." While one can debate the magnitude of the probable consequences until the cows come home, there is near universal agreement within the scientific community that those consequences will likely be anything but minor.

jasonkester 17y ago
Possibly. But if you're going to predict the End Of The World, you need to be careful about how you do it. Because you're competing with a long history of crazy people making the exact same sort of prediction, all of whom were wrong. So if you want to distinguish Climate Change from Asteroid Impacts, Africanized Killer Bees, Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria, Russian Nukes, Mayan Calendars, and the dozens of other things that we've forgotten about in the last few decades, all of which were set to End The World in the next few years, you'll need to tread lightly. I'd suggest being the reasonable side of the debate. The one with the facts, research and data. And the one that never resorts to name calling.
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- cgranade 17y ago
  That's an odd list of catastrophes there. A couple of those, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria and nuclear annihilation, turned out not to be catastrophes because efforts were taken to stop them from becoming catastrophes, not because scientists were wrong. In fact, the threat of antibiotic-resistant strains will never go away, but demands constant efforts to keep the problem in check. Let me add one to your list: Y2K. As we approached the year 2000, a lot of intelligent people noticed a problem, documented how it could adversely affect society and advocated fixing the problem. Millions of dollars were spent, and thanks to those efforts, the problems were almost entirely mitigated (at least, insofar as the general public was concerned-- many annoyances, inefficiencies and strange bugs remain due to the manner in which problems were dealt with). While some people took a religious bent on the problem and started stockpiling food and batteries, we were fortunate in that cooler heads prevailed and dealt with a major problem. Admittedly, Y2K never even threatened to be as large a problem as climate change is, but my point is that one can list examples all day long of times that society has faced a crisis and overcome it with lots of effort. That doesn't, however, mean that those who originally warned of the crises were wrong.

jasonkester 17y ago

Possibly. But if you're going to predict the End Of The World, you need to be careful about how you do it. Because you're competing with a long history of crazy people making the exact same sort of prediction, all of whom were wrong. So if you want to distinguish Climate Change from Asteroid Impacts, Africanized Killer Bees, Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria, Russian Nukes, Mayan Calendars, and the dozens of other things that we've forgotten about in the last few decades, all of which were set to End The World in the next few years, you'll need to tread lightly. I'd suggest being the reasonable side of the debate. The one with the facts, research and data. And the one that never resorts to name calling.

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cgranade 17y ago
That's an odd list of catastrophes there. A couple of those, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria and nuclear annihilation, turned out not to be catastrophes because efforts were taken to stop them from becoming catastrophes, not because scientists were wrong. In fact, the threat of antibiotic-resistant strains will never go away, but demands constant efforts to keep the problem in check. Let me add one to your list: Y2K. As we approached the year 2000, a lot of intelligent people noticed a problem, documented how it could adversely affect society and advocated fixing the problem. Millions of dollars were spent, and thanks to those efforts, the problems were almost entirely mitigated (at least, insofar as the general public was concerned-- many annoyances, inefficiencies and strange bugs remain due to the manner in which problems were dealt with). While some people took a religious bent on the problem and started stockpiling food and batteries, we were fortunate in that cooler heads prevailed and dealt with a major problem. Admittedly, Y2K never even threatened to be as large a problem as climate change is, but my point is that one can list examples all day long of times that society has faced a crisis and overcome it with lots of effort. That doesn't, however, mean that those who originally warned of the crises were wrong.