Seattle's Discovery Institute(Intelligent Design folks) hosting global warming critics....

[RedEarth]

That's right, Seattle's Discovery Institute, the folks who helped deliver unto us Intelligent Design, is hosting a talk tonight featuring global warming naysayers. Across town will be a discussion about the causes and effects of climate change anchored by Elizabeth Kolbert, reporter for The New Yorker.

The Discovery Institute talk features agricultural economist Dennis T. Avery, co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. The book was coauthored with Fred Singer, a controversial climate change critic and climate physicist. Avery is a fellow with the Hudson Institute, whose "about" page on its founder is topped by an endorsement by Donald Rumsfeld. The institute held its own talk about the book last month and has this transcript online.

Contained within it is this observation about climate change from Singer:

In other words, we cannot deny the greenhouse effect, that's real, but it's small. It's a lot smaller than calculated from the models. The second point I'd like to make in answering your question is you implicitly assume – and I get it from your question – that warming is bad. I would question that. I would ask – you think a colder climate would be better than the present one? No one would say that. So what – how can you say – how can you argue logically that a warmer climate is worse? Or would you say that the present climate just happens to be the optimum climate? That would seem to be very unlikely...

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/109342.asp

[zbdent]

1. I wonder what kind of salary one gets

in a career of reality denier ...

[bryant69]

2. Pretty good I'd guess

Particularly if you are smart enough to realize who's supporting you.

The ID people probably don't do as well as the global warming nay- sayers though.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[electprogdems]

5. anwers about the pay off for being a reality denier here--

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1875762,00.html

[ComerPerro]

3. sloppy pseudo-science hosting another sloppy pseudo-science

[Kelly Rupert]

6. Creationism, I think, needs a bit more work

before we can call it a pseudo-science. Right now I think "fucking joke" is a technical term, next to (and often overlapping with) the flat-earthers and young-earthers.

[I_Will]

4. Aren't they missing (or side-stepping or over-simplifying) the point...

It's global climate *change*...not simply a matter of it being a little "warmer" than "colder" here or there. Warmer, colder, drier, wetter. Stuff (including people and animals) existing where it previously couldn't and perishing where it previously thrived. That's pretty fundamental change.

Maybe it isn't a "big picture" problem for these guys. Maybe they figure it's just a net-zero change (a little more here...a little less there).

But, on a small scale (you and me and our families and communities, wherever we live), our societal inability to just pick up and nomadically pursue foodstuffs and shelter is a problem. A problem that can be adapted to and mitigated by some, but the result of "change", not simply "warming", nonetheless.