President Obama had a realism moment last week when he responded, off-script, to a question posed to him at a meeting with the Business Roundtable in Washington. In response to a challenge to costly carbon-dioxide (CO2) regulation by Weyerhaeuser President Daniel Fulton, Obama opined:
I’m not somebody who — I’ve never bought into these Malthusian, woe, Chicken Little, the earth is falling — I tend to be pretty optimistic. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t pretty optimistic. But I think this is–the science is overwhelming. This is a real problem. It will have severe economic consequences, as well as political and national security and environmental consequences.
Well, here is a little secret that should be brought out in the open. …
[Note: Sunday posts at MasterResource will include best-of reposts from this blog, best-of posts or op-ed’s from other writers, and other general material.]
Robert Bryce is a straight shooter and exactly the type intellectual that is needed as a rethink slowly emerges from the current politicized energy fare. He himself has changed his mind on vital issues, just as Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg did before him. Indeed, as Bryce mentions in the op-ed to follow:…
I have previously posted on NASA scientist and leading climate alarmist James Hansen as a “scientist behaving strangely.” His mixing of politics and science–controversial science at that–has raised eyebrows among friend and foe.
But then there is the old, more moderate Jim Hansen. Below, I offer some quotations for the historical record. There are undoubtedly other quotations that can be added–and should be in the “comments” section, whether by Hansen or by colleagues of Hansen.
Perhaps Dr. Hansen can say that his thinking has evolved toward greater alarm. But if so, with temperatures little or no higher today than when he wrote a decade or more ago, the question must be asked: why has his alarm gone up rather than down?…