We had all better hope these scientists are wrong about the planet’s future

[NNadir]

50. Joe Romm is not really a primary research scientist. He's a "scientist" dragged out by...

...antinukes everywhere to justify their awful ignorance, but citing websites from the vast circle jerk of nuclear opponents is not quite the same as citing the primary scientific literature, nor does the citations of newspaper articles written by semi-illiterate (in the sense of scientific literacy) newspaper journalists carry much credibility.

A literate person attempting to discuss science does not cherry pick scientists, but is in general, is familiar with the broadest scope of the scientific literature on a topic under discussion. To qualify to do this, one must devote serious amounts of time to so doing.

What we have very often at Democratic Underground, when scientific work is discussed, is people who confuse the popular press, popular press accounts of scientific work, and press releases with the peer reviewed literature. These glib repetitions of single opinions based on lazy googling to get to what one wants to hear, rather than what one needs to hear in order to make a sensible judgement, is precisely the reason that efforts to address climate change, as well as the high mortality rates associated with the defacto approach to energy utilization, are grotesque failures.

Romm is a tiresome fool. He always was a tiresome fool. He always will be a tiresome fool. And as long as he is awared ertsatz credibility based on very little serious scientific work, the grotesque failure on climate that is now observed will worsen.

If one would like to post an important paper, as cited as the Karecha and Hansen paper, written in the primary scientific literature, written by Romm in the last 5 years, one is invited to do so, should one be able to find one. However if someone merely wishes to cite the pablum that Romm publishes on his website, or interviews with him relying on his popular reputation, one may do so, but one is not engaging in scientific discourse, so much as repeating more pablum that does not deserve credibility.

I like to joke that when Romm was running the climate office - a position by the way for which he was unqualified - that the world experienced the highest increases in carbon dioxide ever observed, which was true at the time, in the late 1990's.

Unfortunately, after two trillion dollars thrown down the rabbit hole in the last ten years to attempt to "prove" the nonsensical approach to climate change that Romm foolishly endorses would work, 2015 is actually worse than 1998, the year of Romm's tenure. In 1998, the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere rose 2.93 ppm. In 2015, climate gases rose 3.05 ppm, the first ever observed increase greater than 3.00 ppm in a single year.

This of course, does not take Romm off the hook. It merely represents that for reasons that escape me, political figures - possibly driven by general public ignorance - have bought into Rommian nonsense, with the result that climate's degradation is reaching unprecedented rates.

Have a pleasant Friday.