Brad Field – The DEC’s Flat Earth Poster Boy

Brad Field – the DEC’s Flat Earth Poster Boy

In denying the fait accompli of global warming by greenhouse gasses, there are the deluded and the deluders. The global warming deluders have conveniently made a list of themselves, as if to proclaim their presence among us – without resorting to pointed hats.  

One of the biggest critics of  the Ingraffea/ Howarth paper on methane’s impact as a greenhouse gas  http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/Marcellus.html  is Prof. Lawrence M. Cathies, of Cornell

 http://www.eas.cornell.edu/cals/eas/people/profile.cfm?netId=lmc19  

Like Brad Field at the DEC, Prof. Cathies is a signer of the Global Warming Petition, the 21st Century equivalent of the Flat Earth Soceity http://www.petitionproject.org/ 

This political manifesto calls for the United States government to reject any proposed limits on greenhouse gases because “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

Remarkably and rather hyperbolically the signatories believe that, “We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals . . . an unexpected and wonderful gift of the Industrial Revolution.” The enduring “gift” of the Industrial Revolution was an unprecedented and accelerating spike in CO2 – which is in fact good for some plants. 

In other words, a Fracking Garden of Eden.  Courtesy of a marked increase in greenhouse gases like methane from leaking gas wells and other industrial age emissions.  Evidently no English professors or lawyers signed on, or they might have caught that little inconsistency, how, on the one hand, there is “no evidence that the release of carbon dioxide and methane” is detrimental, but on the other hand, the release of  Industrial Revolution gases, particularly CO2, is good for the ecosystem, leading to “an increasingly lush environment for plants”.

Meaning there will be winners (some plants and some animals) as well as losers in global warming.  But there will be global warming – caused and/or exacerbated by the release of greenhouse gases. 

Science is not done by referendum or acclamation. 

Signing a petition against global warming does not negate the fact that greenhouse gases alter the earth’s atmosphere into something that might prove less benign than “an increasingly lush environment”.

Unless you’re a plant or want to move to Siberia.