I was reading Yale 360 to check up on the discussions under some of my favorite articles.  I came across this dumb ass.  So since engaging with these idiots in real life isn't enough anymore, I engaged in cyberspace.   This guy is trying to say that Bill McKibben is being an alarmist about the whole environment thing.  At the bottom of his post you can see his title is "Convenor" of the Climate CONVERSATION group.  Meaning that his job is to stimulate conversation about the climate... obviously in the WRONG direction.  He tries to unravel and discount the argument that the world is in trouble with rapid climate change.  So someone out there holds a position at an organization designed to create conversation about climate, to mis-lead people!  Are you listening... this is reason why aggressive discussion with others is so important.  This guy's job is to search the internet and refute people who are trying to help other people wake up and smell the coffee.

I answered him hoping to educate a person responsible for mis-leading a lot of other people.  

After my post, I have included the "convenor's" post.  The original article by Bill McKibben (author Deep Economy and The Age of Missing Information} is located here: http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2012#comments

I encourage any words of criticism or support.

"Mr. Treadgold, Your essay is consistent and even in your final argument, you show your lack of reading and understanding, to construct an argument that makes false a position opposite to your own... Meaning you have made it obvious that your opinions against your opponent are not based on any actual knowledge of your opponent.  

If you had read more, you would have discovered that your premise, that those who love the planet do not love their fellow man and are willing to doom them to save the planet is false.

If I love my planet, I love everything that it is.  Everything that this balance of millions of years has made it, and ultimately, I am a product of.  So you can appreciate then that the people in the developing world have lived for thousands of years in harmony with their surroundings and community.  Your concerns for providing energy to the people of developing countries as a means to save them from inevitable death is false because as we all know, the balanced manner with which the people of past (and currently modern developing country humankind) lived with their farming technique, and population growth management and self identification of their role in their environment, i.e. the world; was sustainable.

Our current model is not.

The point of your opponent is to educate you, and others like you, on the need to change our way of looking at our life in this world.  We are consuming and growing at an unnatural rate.  

Every organism alive in this world, exists in balance.  Balance is crucial.  As a doctor, I know that the number of various microbial organisms on your body, exceeds our world population.  However, you continue to thrive and live everyday without dis-ease.  But when one organism multiplies at an exponential rate, your balance will soon let you know by letting you experience dis-ease.  So a normal inhabitant of your body, can become the cause of your end.

Humans are but one of the organisms on this planet.  We have multiplied at an exponential rate.  You cannot argue that this point is not true.  

So we are consuming resources of this biologic petri dish we call earth, at an exponentially growing rate as well.  But even if you exclude the population growth issue, you must also take into consideration the fact that within our society we are constantly advocating an ideal of more consumption, per individual, per year, i.e. the NYSE etc.

Take this point into consideration and you will see that despite all of your references of your opponent as an alarmist, you are the person who is advocating the end of humankind.  By supporting the current blind, and inane way of life, you are actually saying you support dis-ease.  Dis-ease of the planet, which if untreated (and as in medicine) not rapidly, will kill the host. (Kill refers to end of life as we understand it).

Those who are trying to awaken the rest of the world to the false sense of reality that they currently live in, particularly in our beloved United States Of America, are actually trying to ensure the continued life and well being of not only those are living now, but those who may come to enjoy it in the future.  Compassion and direct action to save the world, and thus humankind and it's continued well being, is the only way to be.  It is disturbing to see so many people like you, who are so skilled in communicating and conveying the message for the good of others, are actually conveying the wrong message.

Maybe you should ask the author of the article for a reading list to educate yourself before you put so much energy into drafting an article that can mislead so many to their demise.

I anticipate your predictable response.

Dr. Ali Sadrieh"

IN RESPONSE TO article poste as a response to [ http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2012#comments ] Response reads:

You say: "One degree was enough to yield major effects in hydrological cycles, in the progress of the seasons, in the spread of mosquitoes, in the rapid melt of glaciers." 

A rise of just 1°F (0.6°C) over the period of a century is well inside the range of natural variation. To suggest it is not is scare-mongering, pure and simple. 

The "major effects" you mention are in fact minor and cannot be ascribed to global warming, much less to anthropogenic causes. References would be helpful if you have them. 

You also say: "As temperatures warm, snow at the very top of that ice sheet is turning to water, and that water in turn is finding its way through cracks and fissures to the base of the ice sheets where it can grease the skids for their slide into the ocean." 

This phenomenon occurs every year, in a season we call spring. You see, after the winter, the temperature increases up to summertime levels. During this period some of the ice at the edges melts. But when the winter returns, the ice on top of the ice sheet cannot melt, since it is far too cold. Even during summer, most of the surface of the ice sheet fails to melt. 

Note the use of "can" grease, etc. There is no evidence of sustained increased velocity of ice towards the sea. The ice sheet is not, of course, sitting on "skids". 

If the mechanism of "greasing" is actually important, why have the ice sheets survived warmer periods in the past? Why are the ice sheets still there? 

I admire your enthusiasm for global warming, but I must question your grasp of the science. 

The Greenland ice sheet is growing, that is to say, its mass is increasing. That could not be happening if it was melting, do you see? 

There's a nice little story about the World War II aircraft that crash-landed on the ice near the end of the war. People went back recently to retrieve them and were forced to dig down 90 feet (ninety feet!) of solid ice. That's how much had accumulated over the planes in only 50 years. 

The moulins draining melt water are nothing new. Only the scientists are new, arriving each summer to observe the melt and exclaiming: "oh woe, oh woe!" Each winter the melt stops. 

The Greenland ice sheet has lost a little ice over the last few years, around the edges, but there was still a net gain in ice. The loss at the edge is likely caused by higher sea surface temperatures than higher air temperatures. And that's most likely due to changed polar ocean currents, not global warming. 

Fascinating, isn't it? 

Hansen's testifying to a "possibility" of 5 metres of sea level rise this century is no more authoritative than any other guess on any other topic. I don't know if Hansen debases the scientific method with his alarmism or simply reveals a great love for the planet. A love which is prepared, strangely, to sacrifice his fellow man for the good of the planet. How can he think to remove most of the means of producing energy from developing (or any other) peoples? Why save the planet and doom mankind? 

Richard Treadgold 

Convenor 

Climate Conversation Group 

Posted by Richard Treadgold on 05 Jun 2008

**About the Photo:

In the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, verdant green Amazon Rainforest is broken up by broad tracks of pale green and tan deforested land. In 2005, the government of Brazil said that 48 percent of Amazon deforestation that took place in 2003 and 2004 occurred in Mato Grosso.

The transformation from forest to farm is evident in this pair of photo-like images (rollover the image to see an earlier image of the same area), taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. The image was taken on June 28, 2006.  Although some deforestation is part of the country’s plans to develop its agriculture and timber industries, other deforestation is the result of illegal logging and squatters. The Brazilian government uses MODIS images such as these to detect illegal deforestation. Because the forest is so large and is difficult to access or patrol, the satellite images can provide an initial alert that tells officials where to look for illegal logging.