This post is a last resort as I’ve had two comments rejected by the moderators at The Register, one of my favorite IT news websites.
Lewis Page is a regular contributor to the Register. For whatever reason, around 50% of his total output there is (willful mis-) reporting on various papers and research on climate science. Considering he (and for what it’s worth, myself) is not a climatologist, it’s very frustrating to see the “science” category tag on these articles. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was marked Opinion or Editorial, and that he wasn’t deliberately misrepresenting the observed facts, papers, research and scientists’ own words, but that he gives no truck at all to anything that doesn’t fit into his worldview.
Just to be utterly clear – among scientists who are trained in climatology, there is no doubt that we are in a rapidly changing world. Basically the question hasn’t been “if” there’s climate change for about 15-20 years, but “what does it mean to be on this planet in 10-20-50-100 years”. It’s up to us and the politicians to decide “what to do about it”. Even if climate change is not as bad as predicted (which actually, it’s worse than has been predicted), the actions we must take now are good for us and the planet:
- less air pollution == longer, heathier lives
- less water pollution == longer, healthier lives
- lower energy bills == more money for other things
- less wasteful consumption of a finite non-renewable resource == richer, more economically healthy future and longer production of things we can’t economically make without oil, like certain materials and medicines and so on
There is literally no downside to acting to curb emissions, but there’s a lot on the line if we don’t do something. Personally, I don’t think an ETS is the correct path as it’s a cheap way for the government to earn money and seen to be doing something – anything at all, but as it’s a derivative market, which has a colorful history of abuse (such as in Germany, where too many credits were issued undermining the market, and California, where traders essentially create artificial spikes in price to maximise profits and create artificial blackouts), but despite this, we must move on to the phase of our industrial planet.
I call on the Register to provide the scientific consensus view. Here’s my rejected comment in full.
It’s my long and fervent wish that the Register would stop publishing these opinion pieces, as I rather enjoy the “call a spade a f$&#ing spade” approach to almost all the other articles, reviews and IT news, which is rather let down by Mr Page’s long standing and regular missives on this topic.
In my opinion, these articles are not “science”, nor are they reasonable journalism, where the authors of the paper might be asked for a comment or an interview to get their side first hand. Mr Page can still have his opinion, but at least pay us the respect of writing about the researchers, paper or presentation in an unbiased way to allow us to compare Mr Page’s opinion with what they really wrote, demonstrated, observed or said.
At least pay us the respect of providing balanced coverage either by providing mainstream climate science coverage in the science category along with Mr Page’s opinion pieces and coverage, or by adding in right of reply, interviews and accurate coverage of what was actually written in the papers and research.
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