Interview: Thomas Dietz - 3/14/07

Climate change, or “global warming”, is now an accepted fact by virtually everyone. But what does that mean for Michigan – and what decisions do we need to make? Michigan State University will be looking for some answers at a conference on “Global Warming and the Great Lakes” that starts tomorrow. Thomas Dietz is director of the Environmental Science and Policy program at MSU. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

Hear Audio Story   

Comments

[Anonymous]

Wow. I never thought, that if I were a journalism student, I could ever get away with this as a lede:

"Climate change, or 'global warming', is now an accepted fact by virtually everyone."

Say what? What does "virtually everyone" mean? Are we talking about, "global warming as a consequence of human-caused CO2 emission?" Or, as I suspect, is the intended notion that, "Virtually everyone who reads the Metro Times and listens to the BBC on NPR agrees that..."

Anyway, that notorious organ of blinded Republican loyalty, the New York Times, ran this story. Virtually everyone who has taken the time to read this has said, "This is a debatable topic about which we have as many questions as answers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13gore.html?ei=5090&en=2df9d6e7a5aa6ed6&ex=1331438400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[Jack Lessenberry]

Again, even President Bush has recently, albeit reluctantly, admitted that climate change is reality. He even had the courage not to say it anonymously.

[Anonymous]

With Mr. Lessenberry saying that "even President Bush has...admitted that climate change is a reality..." tells me that this is seen by the left as essentially a political debate, to be used to bludgeon anyone who disagrees with the left in Europe and North America. It is not seen as an essentially scientific and economic issue.
Moreover, there is global warming and then there is global warming. The polar ice caps on Mars appear to be receding, even as the snows on Mt. Kilimanjaro appear to be receding. One might well ask; how many Humvees are there on Mars that might be causing Martian warming? Temperatures on Earth have fluctuated in ways that give us Dinosaurs at one time, and an ice age that carved out the Great Lakes at another time. I suppose that qualifies as "global warming" and "global cooling." I wonder what legislation that Al Gore might have recommended if he lived in the pre-Cambrian era.