‘Amateur paleontologist’ Newt Gingrich says a hotter planet may be just fine

[DonViejo]

By Arturo Garcia
Monday, January 6, 2014 23:43 EST

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) engaged in some “snow-trolling” Monday night, dismissing the idea of climate change by suggesting it would be arrogant to think the most suitable temperature for life on Earth is already known.

“I’m an amateur paleontologist,” Gingrich told Crossfire co-host Van Jones, before mentioning his own observations at exhibits in Chicago and Wisconsin and asking, “What kind of hubris does it take to say, ‘I know exactly what this planet’s temperature ought to be and I’m gonna manage it to that effect’?”

Gingrich did not mention that as recently as 2011, astronomers found that a planet considered compatible with Earth “would have a very nice temperature” around 70 degrees Farenheit.

Jones responded by arguing that humanity should explore alternatives to the use of carbon-based fuels.

“The problem is, if we put the foot on the accelerator with this experiment we’re doing — we’re the only planet that we know — and we’re wrong, and we end up cooking the planet, that’s a bad outcome you can’t recover from,” Jones said.

“The age of the dinosaurs was dramatically warmer than this is right now and it didn’t cook the planet,” Gingrich said in response. “In fact, life was fine.”

When Jones attempted to respond — perhaps by pointing out that humanity, as it is currently defined, did not exist in that era — Gingrich derailed the discussion.

“The number of people leaving Minnesota this evening to get to the Caribbean versus the number of people leaving the Caribbean to try to get to Minnesota would argue that slightly warmer wouldn’t be a crisis,” Gingrich said.

When Jones attempted to bring up global scientific consensus on the issue, Heritage Foundation Research Fellow David Kreutzer chimed in.


“This is a bait-and-switch,” Kreutzer protested. “Ninety-seven percent of some subset of scientists agree that man-made global warming is what we’ve seen over the past 50 or 100 years. That’s uncontroversial, maybe incontrovertible. The bait-and-switch is, you take that and say, ‘We’re heading to catastrophic global warming, all the major scientists say we’re gonna lose species.’ No, they don’t.”

Kreutzer did not mention that the “subset” consisted of around 29,000 scientists and nearly 12,000 academic papers, a fact that has largely gone unreported.

Watch the discussion, as aired on Monday, below.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/06/amateur-paleontologist-newt-gingrich-says-a-hotter-planet-may-be-just-fine/

Full article posted with the permission of Raw Story

[tanyev]

1. Yeah, well, he is an amphibian.

[brewens]

2. Dale on "King of the Hill" said something like, "global warming? So what?

we'll grow oranges in Alaska. See what ol' Buotros Buotros Ghali Ghali thinks a that?" Then Hank says, "Dale, we live in Texas! If it get one degree WARMER, I'm gonna kick your ass!"

[Union Scribe]

8. We need to send that to Newt

[Thor_MN]

3. Well, I know damn well that I can run from a giant lizard faster then Newt can.

[NastyRiffraff]

4. ..with HEAVY emphasis on "amateur"

There is so much wrong with Gingrich's statements it's hard to even begin.

How about comparing the ecology of the age of dinosaurs to today?

How about comparing vacationing in the Caribbean to...well, nothing really. Except that Minnesota is cold and the Caribbean is warm. Today, that is. WTF is even the point of that?

[AverageJoe90]

5. Gingrich is an idiot, pure and simple.

Though it may be admitted that life may have been able to thrive under substantially hotter conditions before, and that humanity could survive even the hottest possible average increases.....he conveniently omits the fact that scientists have, for years, pointed out that much of our present life (mostly) evolved in eras were Earth was actually *colder* than it is today.....right now, we're almost as warm as a whole as the Northern Hemisphere was during the Medieval warm period. AGW has not yet been the primary factor for the numbers of extinctions that have happened over the past 100 years or so(AGW only started about 40 years ago and there were problems long before that, mainly thanks to deforestation, low-level pollution, etc.), but there's nothing that says that it couldn't, and in fact, plenty of research that suggests that it could, especially under more pessimistic Co2 increase scenarios.

And temperatures are likely to increase to about at least 2*C by the end of this century(and possibly somewhat more after that, and that's assuming that we never go beyond 550 ppm), even if some substantial collective action is taken to fight climate change. While it may not be as disastrous as if we'd gone beyond business-as-usual(4-5*C by 2100 and about 1,000+ ppm), things won't all be rosy for life on Earth. We're in no danger of becoming extinct, but other less adaptable life-forms are, and largely thanks to the speed of the change as well as the form of it.

[sakabatou]

6. He doesn't know didly-squat about science

Bad thing is, many in Congress don't know either.

[TBF]

7. "Amateur Human" might be more apropos. nt