Re:In 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about glob...
by eesmith on Monday January 01, 2018 @06:55PM
(#16048776)
I didn't see in this article where it describes how Teller's poor reputation in the scientific community might have caused many scientists from dismissing his message.
While he was "ostracized by the scientific community for betraying his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer" ... "he retained the embrace of industry and government."
It makes no mention of Teller's influence on how other scientists in the 1950s and 1960s viewed global warming.
Re:In 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about glob...
by chmaynard on Monday January 01, 2018 @07:12PM
(#16048850)
Agreed, but I think the author implies that scientists didn't trust Teller and therefore weren't listening to him. It's an interesting claim. I have no idea if it's true.
Re:In 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about glob...
by eesmith on Monday January 01, 2018 @07:14PM
(#16048859)
I don't know either, but as the article was about Teller's influence (or lack thereof) on the oil industry, I don't think we can draw a conclusion about his influence on the scientific understanding of global warming.
Sure. I'm not a scientist but I have done some reading about Teller and his role in the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. He was clearly a genius. He was also a controversial figure and had a poor reputation in the physics community because of his churlish behavior in the theoretical physics group at Los Alamos, his claim to be the "father of the Hydrogen bomb", and the Oppenheimer affair.
It's no surprise that the petroleum industry ignored his 1959 warnings about CO2 pollution of the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The point of the article is that because of his poor reputation in the scientific community, scientists might have dismissed his important message.