Ah, another one of those "on the one hand, thousands of scientists say global warming is happening now, on the other hand, this handful of crackpots say it's not!" news stories we all love so much...
How's this for the most lame-ass argument ever?
O'Brien criticized colleagues who he thinks are too quick to link short-term and long-term weather. He recalled that in 1988, "we had a big Midwest heat wave ... which (NASA scientist) Jim Hansen told the U.S. Senate was due to global warming." Instead, O'Brien said, the heat wave was caused by high sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.Likewise, he said, during another recent heat wave, "they said that many people died in Chicago due to this global warming. In fact, it was due to old, poor people not being advised about (how to survive) the heat wave."
Erm... last I heard, global warming could cause surface temperatures of the seas to rise. And — am I understanding this right? Is he saying that if old poor people had gotten better advice, the heat wave wouldn't have happened? He's not saying anything about the cause of the heat wave! He is employing a straw man to avoid actually saying anything with facts in it.
When Florida sinks beneath the ocean waves, I'm gonna laugh so hard. At least in the 20 minutes before the Bay Area does the same thing.
Oh, and Chronicle? "Scientists split on heat wave cause" implies that half of the scientists think one thing, and half think something else. When you split something, it tends to be in half. Down the middle. This is NOT a 50-50 split. Only lame-asses like this joker from Florida are still making a case against global warming, and they're not making a very good one.
