Já aqui falamos dos azares que rodeiam os pseudo-adivinhos como Tim Flannery. Eles bem queriam enfiar a cabeça num buraco, como o faz a avestruz, mas tem que ser chamados à razão!Foi o que lhe aconteceu numa entrevista numa rádio australiana, no mês passado. Se não quiserem ouvir, podem ver a transcrição aqui. A conversa decorreu com Andrew Bolt, que havia exposto o tretas Flannery neste post, com a transcrição das suas previsões aberrantes. Duas das mais aberrantes incluem:
- The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.
- A recent survey of Arctic specialists indicated that the majority consider a loss as great as that of 2007 to be unlikely, yet by June 2008 signs of a great melt were emerging (...) this may be the Arctic's first ice-free year.
A qualidade destes tretas mede-se pela forma desplicente como respondem às perguntas. Veja-se como Flannery responde às afirmações que produziu relativas à subida do nível dos mares, de 25 metros:
| Bolt: You warn about sea level rises up to an eight-storey building. How soon will that happen? Flannery: Asking that question is it’s a bit like asking a stock analyst when the next stock market crash is going to happen and how big it’s going to be. No one can. We can all see the underlying weakness in the market in the months before the crash.. Bolt: Thousands of years? Flannery: Could be thousands of years. Bolt: Tens of thousands of years? Flannery: Could be hundreds of years. Bolt: Hundreds of years? Flannery: It could be hundreds of years. The thermo- dynamics of ice sheets are very, very difficult to predict., but what we do know when we look back is the fossil record is that when the world is a degree or two warmer than it is now seal levels rise very significantly - between four and 14 metres above where they are. We can’t say how long it takes for that rise to happen because the fossil record just isn’t good enough, it isn’t accurate enough… |
