Global warming story was hyped
From the Sam Smith’s Progressive Review, Sam being a long time hardcore Green.
A journalist reader writes – I spoke with the co-author of the “secret” Pentagon report [on climate change] yesterday and he said the Observer report you ran (and which I was about to do a story on) is almost entirely fallacious. For one thing, it’s not a secret report– it’s on the web. For another, it was already reported in Fortune.
And most important, it’s not a “prediction” but a “extremely unlikely worst-case scenario.” What’s still interesting is that Bush’s two favorite interests, defense and oil, are now apparently at odds if the Pentagon is interested enough in global warming to be commissioning studies about it. They aren’t exactly an alarmist environmental group.
The Observer clearly hyped the story and was wrong about it being secret – in fact, the Review had earlier cited the Fortune article – but this is a story about what scientists call ‘phase transitions’ – a sudden alteration in state as when water turns to ice or steam – and while we can’t predict when or where or how they may occur in nature they are far less than a “worst case scenario.” In fact, they are quite predictable except for knowing when, where and how.