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Originally Posted by cmac2012
Lindzen is a crank who is paid damn good money to propogate those opinions.
Ross Gelbspan, journalist and author, wrote a 1995 article in Harper's Magazine which was very critical of Lindzen and other global warming skeptics. In the article, Gelbspan reports Lindzen charged "oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC."
More at:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen
S'Funny, people give Noam Chomsky a hard time, pooh-poohing his MIT cred. but Lindzed is prominently featured as an MIT scientist... |
Whoa there skippy! Lindzen has gone from "a guy who doesn't quite write convincingly" to "a paid schill"? And this doesn't make sense because people bad mouth Noam Chomsky and Lindzen yet they both work at MIT?
Amazing! How can this be? The world is so unfair...
Ok, here's food for thought:
Noam Chomsky is a linguist. He's even a professor in that field employed by MIT. As such he's pretty good at it reportedly - I don't know because I'm not a linguist. I've read some people think he's allright at it and some think he's got flawed theories. Problem is, Mr. Chomsky makes the bulk of his money (excellent capitalist that he is) and is most well known for several things - none of which is linguistics.
Now lets switch gears a little here. Dr. Lindzen is actually a meteorologist. How about that! The man opines in an area where he is actually an expert. Rather than say, elaborating on the evilness of nudist entymologists, an area that is not his field or expertise - similar to what Chomsky does. Shocking!
Now lets have a look at Sourcewatch, a subsidiary of the Center for Media and Democracy. We learn from this source, stated above, that Dr. Lindzen can't be trusted because a reporter wrote an article in Harper's Magazine that was critical of those who didn't accept anthropogenic global warming hook line and sinker. Gosh! A reporter. Worse yet, the man has accepted money from "Big Oil"! So, we have a reporter who's worst accusation against a man is that he doesn't believe the established religion and that he has taken money from oil companies. But wait, lets go a little bit down from the story and look to the external links. Here's one
http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com/author.cgi?id=2422 that details Dr. Lindzen's extensive academic career and organizations to which he belongs. Among the many are the National Academy of Sciences, The American Meteorological Society and so one. You know what? The guy has also won many awards in his field of expertise. I'm willing to go out on a limb here and bet that he's even published an article or two in his field of study.
So, who to believe??? The reporter, who's only evidence that Dr. Lindzen's professional opinion is silly is because he's accepted some money from the oil industry or Dr. Lindzen who actually works in the field and researches the data. Hmmmmmmmmm, I think I'm gonna risk extreme disapproval from the Church of the Holy Earth and go with the scientist, and science, on this one. His hypotheses seem to more accuratly match the available data than does the
opinion of His Eminence Al Gore I.
BTW, if you'll do a little research you'll see that Lindzen's hypothesis regarding the reduction of storms with the advent of global warming (i.e. a reduction in global temperature delta) rather than the increase (as has been stated by Bishop Robert Kennedy) is actually physically sound.
But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good myth, call the man and ask him your questions, I'm sure he can explain things to you. Here's his number (617) 253-2432.