In 1991, on "Nightline", Carl Sagan (noted Martian hunter and catastrophe predictor) debated Dr. Fred Singer (noted atmospheric physicist and man made global warming skeptic) on the enviromental impact of smoke from the Kuwait oil well fires. Mr. Sagan predicted that the smoke would travel to the upper atmosphere, interfere with the monsoon (whatever that means) and cause GLOBAL CATASTROPHE. Dr. Singer said that was ridiculous, that the smoke would go no higher than a few thousand feet and be washed out of the atmosphere by rain. The matter was pretty much dropped 3 DAYS after the debate when black oily rain began to fall on Iran. We can only assume that Dr. Singer then went back to his job INCREASING MANKIND'S KNOWLEDGE and Mr. Sagan went back to his, which was I believe, looking for little green men.
Did you know, that as they were fleeing Kuwait, Saddam's men deliberately pumped 11 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf? Or that they deliberately pumped 50 million barrels of oil onto the Kuwaiti countryside creating a lake of crude 1/2 mile long which contained 9 times the oil ACCIDENTALLY spilled by Exxon's Valdez? Of course we all know that they set 753 oilwells ablaze and that these fires were burning 6 million barrels of oil a day. We also know that some environmental "experts" at the U. N. called it the worst man made environmental catastrophe in history and predicted that it would take up to 10 years to put them out. But did you know that a handful of AMERICAN companies like Red Adair Co., Wild Well Control, and Cudd Pressure Control, ET AL, put all the fires out in 8 months? Oh well, it's all old news but I thought it was interesting.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
1991 CAGE MATCH (Dr. Singer vs Mr. Sagan)
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You'd think the next time the planetary doomsayers were about to go on tilt because of some disaster, they would read this post and realize that mother earth has an amazing ability to brush off calamity like it was so much dandruff. Something tells me that they won't, however.
I don't know how respected Sagan was by the scientific community, but I know he was the face of science for billions and billions. And I think he wound up admitting his error on this. But I would be curious to know what he based his cataclysmic predictions on. There is no question that his IQ could beat up my IQ with one arm tied behind its back. But I'm convinced that if you, me, or just about anyone we know would have been asked back then what we thought the result of all those oil fires was going to be, we wouldn't have missed by as much as he did. In fact -- I can say this now because I can't be proven wrong -- we probably would have said something like, "there's going to be a big mess and then things will pretty much go back to normal". It seems to me that either he had a preconceived world-view (he was, after all, a believer in global cooling, then global warming, and an anti-nuclear activist among other things) or he -- like I think many brainiacs are -- was so infatuated with his own mental power that if he thunk it, it had to be so.
But what do I know? Do. Not. Answer.
Yes, I realize this comment is long and boggy.
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