The latest episode of the hit series “Cosmos” featured something rarely seen on Fox, and a topic that, as anyone who’s been following the series closely will tell you, has been a long time coming. That’s right, Neil deGrasse Tyson finally took on climate change.
The climate IS changing, that much is clear. But (and it's a big butt, hee-hee) we don't know a couple of variables:
1) is this 'normal' for the planet? We know there have been periods with more cold as well as more heat than now. 2) Is it man-made? Could very well be, but is taxing the problem to reverse the effects? Hell no. Not as long as big oil companies can influence lawmakers in order to push their agenda. We could have had thorium-reactors, vastly more efficient solar-panels, highly effective wind-turbines and hydrogen-engines for years, if it would not have been for major players who have wayyy too much to lose from clean energy. 3) What's the deal with the claim it's not just Earth that's heating up, but the other planets in our solarsystem as well? Heard about this a couple of months ago and I haven't had the time to dive into it with more depth. Apparently as long as there's money to be made from the destruction of nature, we're like the dinosaurs but with the only difference we DO see the asteroid coming. We just think it's someone else's responsability to do anything about it.
I think it's been pretty much established with the extent of temperature data that we have that were our emissions controlled we wouldn't be seeing global warming on the particular scale that we're seeing it for quite a long time, if we were even eventually going to witness it. It's not just big oil companies, who seem to be making investments quietly in renewable energy to keep themselves afloat as oil runs out. It's their employees - geologists, for one, may be on the other side of this debate, as a lot of them are employed by big oil.
The Chicxulub crater hypothesis is, still, a hypothesis (not a theory. Pet peeve), but it is really well substantiated and modeled and that crater absolutely did some fucking damage. Odds are it was multiple things, and the extinction took a few years at least, if not a few thousand. The iridium layer is a biggie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event EDIT: The main objection to the Chicxulub crater hypothesis isGerta Keller, however, suggests that the Chicxulub impact occurred approximately 300,000 years before the K–Pg boundary.[11] This dating is based on evidence collected in Northeast Mexico, detailing multiple stratigraphic layers containing impact spherules, the earliest of which occurs approximately 10 m (33 ft) below the K–Pg boundary. This chronostratigraphic sequence of rock is thought to represent 300,000 years. This finding supports the theory that one or many impacts were contributory, but not causal, to the K–Pg boundary mass extinction.[11] However, many scientists reject Keller's analysis, some arguing that the 10-m (33-ft) layer on top of the impact spherules should be attributed to tsunami activity resulting from impact. Few researchers support Keller's dating of the impact crater.[15]
The dinosaurs also kind of had pea brains and no civilization, to be fair. Fun factoid: Dr. Tyson apparently barely got through grad school and was a shitty researcher, which is probably why he's a science popularizer instead of a PI.