A five degree climate change would have the potential to wipe out the majority of all humans, all mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects, plants, single-celled pond life and Wall Street Journal Op-ed readers. It would make the terrible consequences of the current economic meltdown pale into insignificance.
This is fact, according to scientists, and opinion according to the WSJ. But it is a fact nonetheless, so how do we prove it? Simple: that event already happened with the increased CO2 and resulting global warming at the Permian-Triassic extinction, 250 million years ago. We can read about it in the stone tablets of the fossil book.
The potential threat of human created, global warming is a fact according to the mountain of evidence and scientific consensus, but opinion according to the current US government and Energy Secretary, Sam Bodman. In addition, we are in the middle of a die-off, let alone recession, with the ongoing rate of species extinction being greater than at the P-T boundary.
Against this background of intransigence, ignorance and incompetence Obama’s rumored selection of Noble Prize winning physicist, Stephen Chu, as Energy Secretary would be the single most important appointment in a generation. It is as if the Papacy had yielded to the greater wisdom of Galileo.