I was listening to This Week in Tech, 2009 wrap up (a weekly on line podcast), Leo LaPorte was reviewing the year in review. They had a special guest on, professor and author Jerry Pournelle. He not only writes science fiction, but writes his opinions and observations on the world on his personal blog. Interesting was the comments he made, when asked, about his thoughts on global warming. Here is what he had to say:
Jerry Pournelle With Freeman Dyson, I don’t know how you can get CO2 to be useful in heating anything except cold, dry areas. Because the water vapor already overwhelms the CO2 effect everywhere else.
…
Jerry Pournelle No, I think there’s global warming because there has been since about 1326 when the Little Ice Age ended and we started warming up. But I think that most of the warming was in between 1800 and 1870. You know this, but you don’t remember it. In 1776, at Harlem heights on Manhattan Island, Colonel Alexander Hamilton brought the guns to capture the Ticonderoga across the frozen Hudson River to General George Washington saving Washington’s Army.
…
Jerry Pournelle The Hudson hasn’t frozen solid enough to walk across since about 1826.
…
Jerry Pournelle In other words, things have been warming since 1776 and everybody who has been to grade school and had grade school history knows it. In 800 to 1000, the Vikings had dairy farms in Greenland. Dairy farms. You can see them, they’re under about 30 feet of ice. Some of them are finally coming out again. But there’s still plenty of ice over there. The Earth has been a lot warmer and a lot colder in human history. We know for a fact. So the fact that it’s been warming at one degree per century ever since about 1700 should not surprise you.
For more of Jerry’s viewpoints, please check out his blog.
Ari's Blog 