By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, October 3, 2000

Stephen Hawking is being quoted in a German paper as writing in an upcoming book that the Earth may become uninhabitable thanks to high temperatures within the next millennia. The paper quotes him as saying, "I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter than it is presently. If this occurs, it may reach a Venus-like state of bubbling sulfuric acid. I focus many of my concerns around the greenhouse effect." Assuming this isn't a mistranslation, what is Hawking talking about? Even the worst case global warming scenarios don't support this sort of absurdity. When originally proposed, the global warming hypothesis maintained that additional carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human beings would warm the planet by 3 to 6 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years. The most current models, which still have to leave out the enormous complexities such as the role that clouds play in regulating global temperatures, have cut the amount of warming in half -- based on current evidence, the climate is going to warm by anywhere from 1.0 to 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Although infrequent, such warming has occurred several times within recorded human history -- a similar warming period was responsible for a vast expansion in agriculture during the early medieval period.

But nobody is predicting we're going to turn the Earth into Venus. That's something I'd expect from a third grader trying to understand climate issues, not somebody with Hawking's intelligence (which just goes to show that even the brightest scientists are often complete morons when they start talking about things outside their field).

Discuss (50 Replies) | Printer Friendly