The Problem with Global Warming Skeptics (Joshua Frank, Counterbias.com)

[SeveneightyWhoa]

The Problem with Global Warming Skeptics

June 6 2007
Counterbias.com
by Joshua Frank


Alexander Cockburn has been making waves with his recent series on global warming, which has been published in The Nation and online at CounterPunch.org where he serves as co-editor (and I contribute a weekly column). In them, Cockburn attacks the logic of those fear-mongering scientists and all of us uneducated “Greenhousers” who believe humans, and our industrialized economy, are negatively impacting the planet’s climate.

While I’m quite happy to be dubbed a dumb Greenhouser — make no mistake, I’m not an intelligent scientist. In fact I’m one of the few radical environmentalists I know who doesn’t believe global warming is the most immediate threat to life on Earth. Call me crazy, but that trophy, I’m afraid, is still firmly in the clutches of the world’s nuclear powers.

In his articles Cockburn bases much of his argument on the opinion of one retired chemist, Dr. Martin Hertzberg, who worked for the U.S. Navy and later as an explosions expert for the Bureau of Mines, which functions under the rubric of the Department of the Interior. Hertzberg’s reasoning goes something like this: global warming is caused by water vapor and not by CO2 emissions. In fact, according to Hertzberg, it’s never caused by CO2 emissions, no matter the amount. His belief relies on the largely contested thesis that oceans are “carbon sinks” which store excessive CO2 and other sediments. ...

Continue:
http://counterbias.com/894.html