Global Warming Denialism ‘Just Foolishness,’ Scientist Says
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Comstock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — One of the world’s most widely known and respected senior scientists told ABC News that current denial about the basic daunting realities of manmade global warming is “just foolishness.”
He also reports that the rest of the world has now “pretty well given up” on its hope for U.S. leadership in dealing with global climate change.
His assessment reinforces ABC News’ findings at the recent global climate summit in Durban, South Africa, that the vigorous anti-climate science movement in the United States has significantly damaged American prestige among European leaders who are struggling to deal with the daunting impacts of global warming.
Peter Raven, co-inventor in 1964, along with biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, of the bedrock concept of co-evolution, has long been a trusted adviser of American presidents, many other heads of state and government, religious leaders including popes, and countless congressional, academic and scientific leaders in the United States and around the world.
A frequent world traveler for his work, Raven reconfirmed in an email from the international Planet Under Pressure conference in London what he first told ABC News in 2010 in St. Louis.
When asked what he thought about the increasing claims of some parties in the United States that the science and alarm about manmade global warming was “a hoax” or greatly overblown, he responded patiently, “Oh, it’s just foolishness.”
“It’s not a matter of conjecture anymore,” he said. “Climate change is the most serious challenge probably that the human race has ever confronted.”
Raven quickly summarized the virtually unanimous understanding of the world’s climate scientists and other responsible experts about the great upheavals manmade global warming is now producing.
“There is virtually unanimous consensus among the world’s scientists who work in the area that human beings are the major reason that this is so (the world’s average temperature rising),” Raven wrote from London.
“Because, just as first noted by the Swedish chemist Arrhenius in 1895, when you add more carbon dioxide or other co-called greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, you make it warmer.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio