Dave’s Midlife Blog

Adam Curry is a former radio and MTV deejay, an early Internet entrepreneur, and one of the creators of podcasting. He appears to have been so busy doing all those things that he skipped his high-school earth science and biology classes.

In his Daily Source Code edition #560, for March 9,  Curry gushed about a “fantastic” program he saw on channel 4 in the UK, “The Global Warming Swindle.” (Listen to the DSC at about 24:37 from the beginning to hear this segment.)

As Curry presented it, this TV program is about the “other side” of the global warming “debate,” in which the notion of man-made global warming is challenged. According to the basic counter-argument presented here, global warming is a “natural” phenomenon, and human activity has nothing to do with it.

I actually do not claim sufficient knowledge to refute either Al Gore’s arguments nor the arguments presented here. I find the preponderance of evidence in “An Inconvenient Truth” more convincing than the evidence presented by a small group of people in the Channel 4 piece. I don’t think there is any question that we are a greedy people, and that at the very least our greed and laziness befoul the earth every day. It doesn’t seem to require a dramatic leap of logic to conclude that increasing  human CO2 emissions would contribute dramatically to global warming.

But Adam Curry represents a peculiar constituency in the “anti-Gore” camp: a super-wealthy, rather poorly informed consumer of massive amounts of energy.

Curry’s display of ignorance reached mind-blowing proportions at about 30:56 into his DSC episode:

By the way, we’re all made of carbon dioxide. You know, like, I’m like 98 percent carbon dioxide. Which includes water. [laughter] You know, it’s not like a bad thing. It’s not like a poison, you know? Carbon dioxide is what makes things grow.

Adam Curry has been accused more than once of being full of hot air, but this is, I think, the first time he has admitted it so openly and earnestly. As I say, I’m not a scientist, but I really, truly don’t think I’m mostly made of the gas I expel when I exhale. And I’m almost certain there is no water (H2O) in carbon dioxide (CO2).

As long as the anti-Gore bunch has such public advocates, the “debate” will probably remain one-sided in favor of the green-cautious camp. Good.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 10:21 am and is filed under climate, media, podcasting.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.