...of course the past is a guide to the present, and the present to the past. "Catastrophes" have marked major biogeographical transitions through-out the fossil record. But how does that make the present changes any different or more dramatic, as the perfervid rhetoric of the scaremongers wants us to believe? Earth has been hot, and it's been cold, and everything in between. Changing from one to the other can be bad news for species upon species, and only an idiot denies that. Dyson doesn't deny it, he just doesn't think it's anything new.
The denial comes from "conservationists" who think extinction doesn't happen naturally or that "species" - of any sort - will last forever. Or that humans are acting any differently from any other large mammal that changes its habitat. Life makes and shapes its habitats. Civilization is when we do better than what we'd do naturally.
In economic terms it's time we factored in what presently is assumed "for free" - air, water, climate. The assumption of unlimited space or resources is idiotic.
Space/Science » in reply to Facts is Facts!
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- NYT Profile of Freeman Dyson