Guess What Causes Global Warming Now?
A gas used in the making of flat screen televisions, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), is being blamed for damaging the atmosphere and accelerating global warming.
Well, of course it is. The best part is this story is that there’s no actual data on how much of this gas exists in the atmosphere. That’s important because, as you find way at the end of the article, small amounts of this gas in the atmosphere is not harmful at all.
The article gives no indication about why this gas could be harmful. It only mentions that it is “estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful” as CO2, with no indication of what the heck that means. Who is making the estimate. What does “powerful” mean? The article doesn’t say. It just throws a big number out there knowing that a whole lot of people are going to see it and say “Ooooo…that’s big!”. It’s a number completely without meaning.
I’m really getting tired of these faith-based, fact-deficient articles where some scientist with a bug up his hinder parts can get the MSM all atwitter simply by mentioning the magic words “global warming”. I’m really tired of MSM reporters writing articles like this that are long on big scariness and short on facts. I read pretty regularly that the MSM is superior because it has “layers of fact-checkers and editors” but darned if I see much evidence of that when it comes to global warming. It’s darned-near religious, the faith I see displayed in the most tenuous statements by anyone who claims the job title of scientist.
Exit Question: How much taxpayer money do you think the scientist who got this ball rolling wants to get his study started?
(via memeorandum)
Other Posts of Interest:
- Breaking News: Global Warming Now Includes a Natural Cooling Trend of Ten Years. And the Ten Years Before That, Too.
- Don’t Use the Brave Scouts as Your Global Warming Victims.
- The New Menace: Global Warming Will Give You HIV
Category: Oh the Climate, It is A-Changin', Oh, THAT liberal media.
I don't think that it takes a giant leap of faith to believe that, as our world becomes more industrialized, we might want to keep an eye on the toxic stew that results. Lest we drown in it.
I think there's a difference between what you've said and what the article said. I can get behind your position. It's responsible to keep tabs on what we're putting into our environment and to take reasonable precautions against harm. It's quite another to say that something is definitely hurting the environment and causing global warming when we have no idea if that's true or not.
You're responsible. That article isn't.
J: "How much taxpayer money do you think the scientist who got this ball rolling wants to get his study started?"
Could you be a little more cynical and condescending? But you just said "It’s responsible to keep tabs on what we’re putting into our environment and to take reasonable precautions against harm."
Part of the blame surely rests with Condi Rice, of all people, for encouraging and employing him:
"U.S. Department of State names Irvine atmospheric scientist a Jefferson Science Fellow"
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/articl…
"The article gives no indication about why this gas could be harmful. It only mentions that it is “estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful” as CO2, with no indication of what the heck that means. Who is making the estimate. What does “powerful” mean?"
It's too technical for a general-interest article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_poten…
" * the absorption of infrared radiation by a given species
* the spectral location of its absorbing wavelengths
* the atmospheric lifetime of the species"
The 17,000 figure is not the news-worthy part of the article– it's an accepted part of the scientific literature:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=…