• projectd@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    That’s an article in Forbes magazine by a guy with a degree in philosophy who rejects climate change in its entirety, and runs a company paid by the Kentucky Coal Association, (indirectly) employees of Alliance Coal, and by other fossil fuel companies.

    The article has also aged comically badly: “The warming is a whopping 0.8 degrees over the past 150 years, a warming that has tapered off to essentially nothing in the last decade and a half”.

    Lastly, that article is from 9 years ago. There is a pretty comprehensive rebuttal from the respected scientist who this guy has taken exception to, which I’d suggest reading: https://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-robust.htm

    I think your suggested solutions of focusing on air and water quality are great, though phasing out fossil fuels is a must. They are equivalent to the tobacco industry in this debate in their lobbying for terrible outcomes capacity and will distort reality and ruin our collective futures for profit, and this is where your talent for cynicism is best directed.

    • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      I think your suggested solutions of focusing on air and water quality are great, though phasing out fossil fuels is a must

      That’s how you get to cleaner air.

      The article has also aged comically badly: “The warming is a whopping 0.8 degrees over the past 150 years, a warming that has tapered off to essentially nothing in the last decade and a half”

      If you notice several authors the cook cited said he was wrong on their study or view. I get it’s easy dismiss the author because you don’t agree with his statement but trying to say the authors of the studies don’t know their own work is odd rebuttal

      • projectd@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I can’t disagree with you there with regards to phasing out fossil fuels being a good path to clean air - plenty we agree on.

        I’d encourage reading the rebuttal I linked, as it directly references the people contesting the figures (heading “Confused Contrarians Think they are Included in the 97%”).

        I did read the Forbes article and spent some time down some rabbit holes, but it just doesn’t seem a strong case to combat what appears to be a very strong consensus that climate change is man made.

        Not so academic, but this xkcd on the subject is brilliant https://xkcd.com/1732/

          • projectd@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Yes, it’s his own response to explain the criticism. More impartially, I’ve checked out the Wikipedia article too on the consensus, which speaks of the Cook study, but really puts into perspective how weak the criticism is in the face of the absolute epic mass of agreement (again, also bearing in mind that Cook’s is not the only report of its type.

            Given the overwhelming isolation of disagreement and the clear conflicts of interest from the fossil fuel industry in promoting the overly sponsored-by-fossil-fuel hacks that generally appear in opinion pieces in outlets looks Forbes and Fox, it really is a big stretch to go against the grain.

            • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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              6 months ago

              You can Google and see many other people came to the same conclusion as the Forbes article. You will also see other authors arguing about about how he miss cited their works.