There is a scientific consensus that the earth is round. Should the media, in order to be fair, give equal media time to flat-earth dissenters? This article is so ridiculous that I feel like barfing. The media goes out of its way to give "dissenters" like Bjorn Lomborg, an economist, a disproportionate amount of exposure to spout his anti-global warming views, and we are supposed to believe that warming dissenters are muzzled? The author gives away his ideological biases when he talks about green "alarmists". Slate should know better than to print something like this.

There is also actual evidence that the earth is round via satellites etc.therefore consensus is not relevant.the author's point was not about any particular dissenter but the idea that journalists all mouth the same thing and repeat what was previously written and shouldn't suppress other views.just look at how they are fawning over our next savior - barack.

There are a lot of unknowns in the dynamics of the atmosphere. If dissenting positions drive scientists to refine the current understanding of climate change, all the better. Even if the dissenters are wrong.

The article isn't ridiculous. You "feel like barfing" (an elegantly intelligent refutation of the author's position) because someone dared to challenge your deeply held beliefs.

And you are like that guy in South Africa who doesn't believe that the HIV virus causes AIDS. He's a dissenter, and his views are causing that nation to ignore it's AIDS crisis, just like your global warming dissenters will fiddle their thumbs till they are proved wrong. Remember those neo-cons who were so convinced that Iraq had WMD, after they had manufactured the evidence themselves. Are they repenting now? No, they are planning to invade Iran.

Airisfree,

I believe Bjoern Lomborg got his degree in political science and taught statistics at Aarhus University. That is, I don't think he identifies himself as an economist. More to the point: you condemn him as a dissenter, but he accepts the IPCC reports on the science of climate change. He merely takes issue with the political solutions some people have proposed. Are you suggesting that, since the science of climate change is settled, now there can be no dissent on the proposed political solutions either? This is getting scary.

Well, Mcgyver, there is "actual evidence" (mountains of it) that the earth is warming, and that we are causing it. So, tell me again what the difference is between the Flat Earth Society and global warming deniers? (Except, maybe, that in your view, and in Ron's view, the evidence is not very convincing; of course, for a member of the FES, evidence of a spherical earth apparently not very convincing either.)

Idiocy. Lomborg is on record in believing humans are in large part responsible for GW.

The "flat earth" canard can easily be distinguished from the AGW debate. Just take a flat-earther into space and show him the farking earth. Take video while you're up there.

Anyone who says the videos and other evidence are faked is OBVIOUSLY not making scientific argument.

But with GW there is no "proof", no experiment, no demonstration, NOTHING that can be done to "prove" by any scientific standard that humans are responsible. The systems involved are just far too complex.

Anna Keppa, idiocy! (As you might put it.)

There is a mountain of science supporting anthropogenic global warming. And another rejecting various alternatives. That is, I suspect, why Lomborg, sensible chap that he is, accepts it.

The fact that you just can't bring yourself to believe this evidence says volumes about you, but nothing about the evidence.

By the way, have you been in space? If that is the test, why do you take the word of a small handful of people (what, dozens?) who (claim to) have been there, but are so resistant to taking the word of the (literally) thousands of scientists--plus Lomborg--regarding global warming? Why do you need to go so far out of your way to emphasize the uncertainties in this case? Do you do the same for, say, evolution? Plate techtonics? The three-body problem? (Did you know, that a gravity system that models more than two bodies--like our solar system--is too complicated to solve?)

What makes global warming so hard for some people to believe?

(For that matter, what makes evolution so hard for some people to believe?)

Questions. Questions.

Makes me doubt everthing. It's all so complex. Hey, should I be skeptical of my own existence? After all, if I exist, I might be very complex. Billions and billions of cells. Maybe even too complex for a scientific experiment to prove it. Come to think of it, is there scientific proof that you, Anna Keppa, exist? Are you simple, or are you complex? Like global warming, too complex for science?

Oh dear!