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they matter lots. You do know we use satellites to monitor climate change, right? You do realize he's in a position to control access to said satellites, right?

You claim he's anti-science, because he's skeptical of AGW. You do know that those same satellites basically show that any heating is much, much less than modeled, right? So why would he turn off access?

Satellite and balloon measurements show the models are way out-of-line with actual measurements. Most likely the feedback of 3.2 deg K for a doubling of CO2 is wrong. The baseline of CO2 is 1.2 deg K; the 3.2 deg K comes from estimated feedback systems, and that is what is pumped into models (well, values from 2.1deg K to 4.4 deg K). However, those secondary sensitivity values are too high, and probably should be replaced with a total CO2-driven sensitivity of around 1.4-1.5 deg K per doubling, less than half what is used in the models. If you do that, you'll find the models suddenly agree with measured data. So the physics isn't wrong, but the estimated feedback coefficients for the physics is.

I'm happy to have a discussion with anyone on any topic, even if I think they're a climate alarmist.
I think climate panic is bullshit because those conclusions and predictions have been countered by the science:
http://petitionproject.org/gw_...

Furthermore most fear mongering climate predictions follow the following pattern:
1. Make a vague prediction
2. Get lots of attention
3. Make new prediciton(s) before it turns out the previous one is false.
https://www.thenewamerican.com...

It's very similar to Christian preachers predicting the end of the world and then getting more victims when it doesn't happen.
Only the 'predictions' are far worse, they don't include a verifiable outcome or time when it will supposedly occur.
Thus they should be rejected out of hand.

It's interesting that the media are having more and more trouble pushing this propaganda:
1. The term has changed from global warming to climate change, did anyone explain you why? Climate change is redundant because the climate is defined as the average weather over the past 30 years. So it will always change, by definition.
2. They almost never show charts of how environmental weather extremes changed over time. They probably know it would prove their bullshit wrong. Like the hurricane energy that hasn't increased: http://www.globalwarming.org/2...
3. They never talk about the positives of fossil fuels or CO2. Like with fossil fuels enabling us to defend ourselves against the climate, greatly reducing the number of climate deaths, while the population grows. Or how CO2 made the planet greener: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/.... When people are always and only telling you about one side of an argument, it's a hint of propaganda.

Please honestly investigate this stuff, don't just believe what the establishment tells you.

LOL UR WRONG NOT ME

EVERYONE AGREES, SO IT'S TRUE

Meanwhile the models have been completely wrong every single time

http://www.globalwarming.org/2...

So the theory has no proof, except for a bunch of insane liberals jacking eachother off with smug bullshit.

RECAP since you don't seem to have a fucking brain:
ALL THE MODELS ARE WRONG
THAT MEANS THE THEORY IS WRONG
IF GLOBAL WARMING WAS CAUSED BY HUMAN INDUCED CO2 EMISSIONS THE MODELS WOULDN'T BE COMPLETELY FUCKING WRONG

retards

Since someone will bring it up, might as well be me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Worth a look, the percentage of electricity production in the US by renewables is indeed at an all time high, but not as much as you'd think.

In 1998, it was 11.06% of all electricity produced. In 2015 it was 13.44% of all electricity produced.

Yes, an increase, but it has been mostly Wind and Solar picking up for the loss of hydro. Hydro is down 28% since 1998, while Wind and Solar are up massively.

Overall, the US produced 150 billion KWh more electricity in 2015 than in 1998. Nice, but in real terms, nothing to jump up and down about.

CO2 levels in the air are past 400 PPM, in order to get them to stop climbing and actually FALL, will require efforts far beyond all this in a timeframe that is highly unlikely to happen.

http://400.350.org/

The safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million. The only way to get there is to immediately transition the global economy away from fossil fuels and into into renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable farming practices.

The primary problem with this is that what would be required to do it may well start WWIII and lead to massive revolts worldwide. The math just isn't there.

In many ways, the time to change direction was 30 years ago. The ship has sailed, so we now must prepare for the future that is so clearly coming.

http://www.globalwarming.org/2...

But as Newsweekreporter Sharon Begley points out, just to limit atmospheric concentrations to 450 ppm, nations would have to build 10,000 new nuclear power plantsâ"one every other day from now until 2050â"plus a mind boggling 1 million solar roof top panels per day from now until 2050. Even then, 450 ppm is attainable only if global energy efficiency improves by a whopping 500%, population grows only to 9 billion (instead of 10 billion or 11 billion), and global GDP grows at an anemic (near recession) rate of 1.6% per year.

The problem with people like the 350.org group is that they encourage action without saying how MUCH of that action would be required.

What would it take to lower CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm? According to Begleyâ(TM)s source, Cal Tech chemist Nathan Lewis, global CO2 emissions would have to drop to zero by 2050.

Absent revolutionary changes in energy production, distribution, conversion, and storageâ"Nobel-caliber breakthroughs that nobody can plan or predictâ"lowering CO2 emissions to 350 ppm is impossible without draconian cutbacks in population, economic output, or both. Whether they realize it or not, the Climate 350 Club is asking us to go back to the caves.

In other words, there is ZERO chance of this happening...

So we need to prepare for a world of 500 PPM CO2, and frankly should prepare for 600 PPM, since 500 PPM will sail right on by and I doubt we'll stop before 600 PPM either...

We'll still have to deal with phasing out fossil fuels when they run out, so why not start earlier ? The cost will be less.

Of course, I have no problems with starting now.

The question is, how hard do we push for it?

To keep CO2 below 500 PPM would require massive and dramatic changes, that would likely crush the world economy and put us into recession. It is possible that we couldn't avoid 500 PPM no matter what we do, because of the existing CO2 and existing emissions, but if we could, it would require that we more or less turn off all our coal plants tomorrow, half our cars, half our natural gas, etc.

Since we aren't going to do that, we're going to pass 500 PPM.

---

Let me put it this way. We can slowly move towards a fossil free world, with perhaps a 100 year plan to get there. But we also have to accept that a 100 year plan takes too long to stop the CO2 rise from going through the roof.

In other words, the ship is going to sink, she's made of iron, fill her with water and she'll drop to the bottom of the ocean. Are we going to ignore that fact, or start ripping up the decks to build lifeboats?

---

http://400.350.org/

It all sounds very scary when you read stuff like that sight. Clearly they are a propaganda site, but I accept that they also might be right, or right enough.

But what they DON'T do is explain what it would take, what it would ACTUALLY take, to get CO2 back down to 350 PPM. Why? Because if they did, everyone would promptly ignore them.

http://www.globalwarming.org/2...

That is 7 years old, but it is even more true today than when it was published.

"Absent revolutionary changes in energy production, distribution, conversion, and storageâ"Nobel-caliber breakthroughs that nobody can plan or predictâ"lowering CO2 emissions to 350 ppm is impossible without draconian cutbacks in population, economic output, or both. Whether they realize it or not, the Climate 350 Club is asking us to go back to the caves."

---

http://sustainabilityadvantage...

This is an example of what happens when someone attempts to put it into an actual plan for action. First, there are a ton of flaws with that plan and some outright errors. #8 for example assumes that 67% of power is lost in transmission. No it isn't, the real number is about 7%.

It just isn't going to happen, it is the sort of list you come up with when someone is daydreaming about "if I could magically just change the world, what would I do?"

Didn't you criticize me earlier for "smear attempts" and "ad hominems", saying it was a "dick move"?

Here's another graph by Spencer that includes surface temps.

And the following:

The period covered in the SS graph is a decade shorter than that covered by the Spencer-Christy graph and looks suspiciously like cherry-picking. By starting their graph in 1990, SS can use the Mt. Pinatubo-induced cold period of 1992-93 to tilt the trend to be more positive. The Spencer-Christy graph begins at the start of the satellite record — 1979 — providing a longer and more representative period.

More importantly, SS uses global surface temperature datasets, which do not accurately represent heat content in the bulk atmosphere. In contrast, Spencer and Christy use temperature data from the tropical troposphere — the place where the models project the strongest, least ambiguous, greenhouse warming signal.

from: http://www.globalwarming.org/2...

Well, good thing then that there has been no warming over the last 200 months! Of course, we also wouldn't want to talk about the fact that none of the climate models predicted that current, long-term pause...

I know! I can't think of any of scientific field where research that spawned an international movement was found to be fraudulent, yet the supporters keep on believing in the correlation.

Oh yeah, Global Warming: The IPCC monkeyed with the data input into their models, NASA keeps revising the global max temperature now showing that we haven't seen "global warming" for 15 years, evidence that CO2 lags warming (CO2 has vastly increased without correlation to temperature increase), defeated the correlation to hurricane occurences.

Some reading material... http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/003995.html
http://www.globalwarming.org/node/388
http://climatescience.blogspot.com/2008/06/historic-co2-level-data-deception.html
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1806245/posts
Once you see the REAL data you figure out that CO2 is not causing a crisis/

I'm pleased as punch to see that you haven't cited a single data source.

Your lack of knowledge about basic absorption physics and CO2 data (CO2 levels are way below planetary norms - hah!)

1. Results from the middle Miocene, a warm period about 10 million years ago, failed to show high CO2 levels. The researchers suggest that the warming may have occurred due to "episodic methane outbursts."
2. There has been a lot of hand wringing over increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. The increase is relatively small when compared to historic levels. Preindustrial concentrations were about 280 parts per million. Currently concentrations are about 370 ppm. A study in the May 17 issue of Nature shows that CO2 levels were much higher in the past.

indicates you're a basic, clueless troll. Shrug.

Fortunately, you're in the minority now, and won't be able to significantly mess up my planet for me.

Okay...

This is not my area of expertise and not my parent post... but since you put serious time into reading.

I'll do a bit more digging.

How about:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDet ail/assetid/39261;_f5BEi_EFM ... Their main result is expressed in the title of their paper: "Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years." ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/04080 3093903.htm
As the scientists have reported in the renowned scientific journal, Physical Review Letters, since 1940 the mean sunspot number is higher than...

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=870
This is a critique of a peer reviewed article that turned out to play fast and loose with the facts to support the global warming argument.
Nature lays (another) egg ...the researchers failed to use the complete temperature record -- a record that actually spanned 1957 through 1995. ...

http://communities.anomalies.net/forum/ubbthreads. php/ubb/showflat/Number/159231/page/1/fpart/23
This is an article *about* an unlinked but peer reviewed article suggesting ice age correlation with stellar clouds. ...new research suggests the coming and going of major ice ages might result partly from our solar system's passage through immense, snakelike clouds of exploding stars in the Milky Way galaxy. ... ...The latest evidence appears in the June 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal...

...that half the people who post here complain when its too cold!

We should be thankful its so lovely and warm. Afterall we'll have to get used too it...

Check out GlobalWarming.org for a viewpoint from the other side. There's a lot of fuzzy math used in global warming claims that people often won't address, because it's now supposedly "consensus" that global warming is real and manmade and we're just the evil scrubs of the planet causing all this death and destruction.

For a good laugh, check out Pirates Cause Global Warming. After all, correlation equals causation!

There are sites that shed a critical eye on global warming claims.

Really, it's quite surprising how fuzzy the science is when you actually examine it, but more surprising is just how angry and vitriolic some people get when you confront them about it. Apparently you're just supposed to not care about that--for them, there is no debate, which is a dangerous mindset.

There are sites that shed a critical eye on global warming claims.

Really, it's quite surprising how fuzzy the science is when you actually examine it, but more surprising is just how angry and vitriolic some people get when you confront them about it. Apparently you're just supposed to not care about that--for them, there is no debate, which is a dangerous mindset.

So you're saying you can't study the past to know the future. Interesting, since global warming proponents average together the temperatures of the past to support their claims of a warming trend.

the coin :) http://www.globalwarming.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4290340. stm

1. Evidence will certainly appear exaggerated when you see projections which (although I am not a meteorologist) feature predictions that do not at first appear mathematically sound. It's difficult to seem unbiased with cases like journals suppressing dissenting opinion on global warming. It's hard to present yourself as even-minded when you attract support for your cause with slogans like "save the planet."

The IPCC does an outstanding job of researching it, but too few listen to reason and most of the rest content themselves with predicting the end of the world based on incomplete data, and demand that actions be taken which are likely to be either ineffective or excessively costly.

2. There are scientifically literate people on both sides of the equation. The Cooler Heads Coalition, while hardly unbiased, demonstrates that in its selection of articles.

"Rather, there is an equibrium between young trees that are storing carbon and old dying trees that release the carbon as they are broken down."

assuming static growth yes this is true. However growth in North America is increasing at an amazing rate. By definition this means that it is sequestering more Carbon. Increased growth is not just in area, but also in the quality and rate of growth in existing plant life.

In fact one of the key suppositions in Mann's proxy data was that warm climate was indicated by larger (wider) tree rings. And that this was not only indicative of greater warmth, but also increased CO2, in other words Mann grants that a warmer climate with more CO2 increases plant growth, i.e. is good.

"Do you have a reference for that?" shallow search: Possible aerosol cloud effects now range from no effect to a near total masking of the alleged manmade greenhouse effect Consumer Alert, a 501 (c)(3) organization

DOE: ."We show that GHG signal uncertainties are associated with errors in simulating the current climate in uncoupled and coupled climate models, the possible omission of relevant feedbacks..."

cloud effects "statement on feedbacks omits an important assumption about the largest positive feedback in the models considered in IPCC 1995--that water vapor in the upper troposphere is assumed to amplify the warming from the minor greenhouse gases.(17) Both theoretical (18) and observational (19) research suggest that this assumption is flawed. Indeed, the feedback may be negative."

Another consequence is that one cannot even calculate the temperature of the Earth without models that accurately reproduce the motions of the atmosphere."Indeed, present models have large errors here--on the order of 50 percent. Not surprisingly, those models are unable to calculate correctly either the present average temperature of the Earth or the temperature ranges from the equator to the poles. Rather, the models are adjusted or "tuned'' to get those quantities approximately right. "

You can find sideline references in many articles, but there are few direct articles because it is such a politically heated subject.

"what was it? 2 to 7 degrees C over the next 100 years?"

Yes it was, and a review of the high end models. Namely HadCM2, CGCM1, ECHAM4/OPCY3, GFDL and HadCM3. the spread of these for the next 100 Years was 2 to 7 degrees C. More importantly the same models show these same models showed warming of 1.5 degrees C in the 20th century. The 20 the century being over we have this data. These same models were off by 300% (actual warming in the 20th century North America), actual NA warming was approx 0.5 Degrees C. The majority of which occurred before 1940, and the majority of industrially produced CO2.

Agreed the debate is about how much, and how much of it is influenced by man (anthropogenic). More importantly the second debate is whether this is a bad thing or not. Fortunately we have real data for this. i.e. Life has flourished in all previous warm climates, and reduced during global cold climate. Cold climate increases fossil fuel usage, and is much more dangerous to animals, plants, and humans. While warm climates reduce fossil fuel usage, is beneficial to animals plants and humans. The only exception is Deserts. But of course that effect is due to the lack of moisture, not temperature.

Though an interesting effect is that we see the majority of day time temperature highs in desert while areas on equvalent latitudes, with large plant growth and water see much less warming. Showing that the thermal inertia of water has a dramatic effect.

Misleading
Clinton signed it, knowing that the Senate would never ratify it. The Senate voted on whether they should vote to ratify it (Byrd-Hollings, SRes 98, June 12, 1997), and shot it down 95-0 .

Why they did this?

"Whereas the exemption for Developing Country Parties is inconsistent with the need for global action on climate change and is environmentally flawed; and

Whereas the Senate strongly believes that the proposals under negotiation, because of the disparity of treatment between Annex I Parties and Developing Countries and the level of required emission reductions, could result in serious harm to the United States economy, including significant job loss, trade disadvantages, increased energy and consumer costs, or any combination thereof: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would--

You're barking up the wrong president. The Senate under Clinton, did not (and was not asked to) ratify the treaty.

And according to this report, you and your fellow Canadians may be paying $2700 annually per household.

Antartica is, among other things, getting COLDER not WARMER. As for melting in the Antartic, the northern most tip, you know that thing that sticks out south of South America? Is the only part that is melting. The rest of Antartica is getting colder and the ice is growing.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/antarctic_02 0822.html
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=192

The great bogey man nailed by many environmentalists (much to the degree of many collectivists) is the industrail revolution which occurred in the early-to-mid 1800's (some even go back to the mid to late 1700's). Since Orwell is writing during America's postwar industrial boon about events that that occurred well before industrialization, this passage seems to more or less support the notion of anthropogenic change.

Still, you're quite right. Climatologists who aren't funded by the governments of the world, and are thus removed from the Iron Rice Bowl/Iron Triangle (PDF) effect, often point to ice cores taken in antartica as proof that we are in a natural cyclic period of climate change. Scientists using computer models often have to use mathematical tricks to get the models to fit the data, indicating that issues like CO2 and particulate emission have been greatly exaggerated. The more I read about global warming, the more I'm convinced that its quite the ballyhoo, and is distracting from more serious ecological issues like the penetration of toxic metals into groundwater and nitrogen-laden runoff in coastal estuaries affecting fish stocks.

Reading slashdot regularely for one year now, something strikes me. As an european, I never saw anybody during the last two years doubting humans activities on climate change. I saw a general consensus in scientifics, politics and public opinion in Europe and especially in France where I live (examples: a famous parisian museum "La cite des sciences" made a big event called Climax about climate change, there are TV spots about energy comsuption by a french state agency etc...) So when I saw (some) slashdot comments, sites like these http://globalwarming.org/ and US policy, I wonder how can a so big gap exists. Can you help me?

Mod this way up. The "study" itself is pseudo-science. It basically says the majority of climate scientists believe something is true without questioning it or citing proof. There are at least two logical fallacies in this study, Appeal to Authority (they're climate scientists therefore their beliefs must be the truth) and Appeal to Majority (most believe it therefore it's true). Science magazine has taken flak for their silliness on global warming before.

When you look at the actual science behind global warming and its causes, things are a lot less clear. In the same link above, you can see that when atmospheric scientists actually studying the causes of global climate change, the data at leasts points to a significant amount (>80%?) of climate change due to solar activity. But this doesn't make for entertaining or shocking headlines. Boring old science just doesn't have the flash of wild claims and bizarre pseudo-science. Unfortunately, it seems more and more scientists are incapable of separating the two themselves.

Mod this way up. The "study" itself is pseudo-science. It basically says the majority of climate scientists believe something is true without questioning it or citing proof. There are at least two logical fallacies in this study, Appeal to Authority (they're climate scientists therefore their beliefs must be the truth) and Appeal to Majority (most believe it therefore it's true). Science magazine has taken flak for their silliness on global warming before.

When you look at the actual science behind global warming and its causes, things are a lot less clear. In the same link above, you can see that when atmospheric scientists actually studying the causes of global climate change, the data at leasts points to a significant amount (>80%?) of climate change due to solar activity. But this doesn't make for entertaining or shocking headlines. Boring old science just doesn't have the flash of wild claims and bizarre pseudo-science. Unfortunately, it seems more and more scientists are incapable of separating the two themselves.

Wind - (Without incentives) - 4.35 cents Source
Coal - 3.5-4 cents (per an anti-GW science group) Source
(same article has claim from environmental group that ultimate cost of coal is as high as 8.3 cents per Kwh when you factor in pollution related costs)

I say keep working on wind and start retiring coal. Maybe the wind swept Dakotas are the new Texas oilfields.

Here's a link to info about the study: http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=709 . The actual artice can be found here: http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ee_openaccess.htm

B) Electric cars can be technically done, the problem is cost. The batteries alone are very expensive. More expensive than the rest of the car actually. They must also be replaced every couple of years. Hence why there is all this talk about fuel cells. No batteries. GM stopped EV1 because it was anti-economical. If they thought they would get a profit from it, you can bet they would have produced it. All they want is money.

C) Regarding birds... See this this, this and this.

If we listened to some Greens every time they talk, we would be having global famine, war and poverty by now.

Perhaps a more tempered scepticism can be found here.

Unless you're eaten by a white lion which is only alive because we want to gawk at them....

Also, does a lightning strike still count as all_natural if you're out playing golf in a thunderstorm? :o)

Totally agree with you on the global warming though...

It's already been proven that there is NO global warming,

In what universe? Seriously, you may have issues with the political implications of global warming, you may have issues with the implementation of damage-control policies before a true consensus of the scientific community has been reached, but that statement is just plain wrong.

I don't have any doubt that it is repeated ad nauseum in hysterical screeds by the likes of Rush et al, but you would do yourself some good by attempting to understand the opinions of people who actually know what they are talking about.

Here are some starters:

The US Global Change Research Information Office

The American Geophysical Union

The Union of Concerned Scientsts

The Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research

UCS Debunking of the 'Skeptical Environmentalist'

globalwarming.org's constantly updated list of scientific references

I could go on but I won't. There's still lots of debate, and this is as it should be, but global warming has not been "disproved" except in the minds of politically motivated ideologues.

I can think of London, New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, most of Hawaii, Orlando, Sydney, etc. So, yeah, a lot of cities would go away... but they wouldn't go away over night. It would take a long, long, long time for them to disappear under the ocean, and during that time, those people could move...

Check out www.globalwarming.org. It's a very informative site.

I'll just start with your third agrument. The first two aren't worth debating since they're subjective.

You say more money is being given to Republicans, yet the Democratic Party has admitted that it has more donations amounting to $1,000,000 or more. The Democrats also raised more than $30,000,000 more than the Republicans during the 2002 fund raising. If you're wondering, the Republicans had far, far more donations under $1,000 than the Democrats. Feel free to try to refute those arguments, but please do so with links. I can't locate the article I read that in, so if you have it, please let me know.

Could you explain what your "conservative politics" argument has to do with my point? Oh, and in case you're wondering, you might want to read globalwarming.org. It has quite a few good FACTS about Global Warming and the "Greenhouse effect". Maybe you don't understand the Greenhouse effect, and the global warming issue, but if you're wondering, all you tree-huggers seem to think that the supposed depletion of the O-Zone (the layer of the atmosphere that blocks out harmful rays of the sun) has caused the average temperature of the earth to rise, thus threatening to thaw the polar ice and drown us all. FACT: If all the polar ice would melt, it would raise the ocean a whole 300 feet. No big loss.

Bush formally withdrew from Kyoto. That was not the death knell; it was the funeral, or perhaps dumping the ashes in a trash can. The US Senate killed Kyoto on a 95-0 vote (see here) in 1997. Clinton was free to keep us tangentially attached to the protocol, because he knew it would get him popularity without any risk of it actually becoming law. Bush is quite a bit more straight-shooting, and said to hell with it.

Kyoto, believe it or not, would really cause immense suffering right now to pretty much the entire population of the earth - because it would flatline the US economy, which has powered the entire world since Japan crashed and Germany reunified.

Most of the developed world's politicians - especially the Europeans - live in countries with strong enough Green factions that supporting Kyoto was guaranteed to give them a few extra votes. It was totally without risk, too, because they knew that the US would play the heavy and kill it. And we did. And they got their votes.

Source

Is global warming occurring?

According to Accu-Weather, the world's leading commercial forecaster, "Global air temperatures as measured by land-based weather stations show an increase of about 0.45 degrees Celsius over the past century. This may be no more than normal climatic variation...[and] several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase."

Satellite data indicate a slight cooling in the climate in the last 18 years. These satellites use advanced technology and are not subject to the "heat island" effect around major cities that alters ground-based thermometers.

Projections of future climate changes are uncertain. Although some computer models predict warming in the next century, these models are very limited. The effects of cloud formations, precipitation, the role of the oceans, or the sun, are still not well known and often inadequately represented in the climate models --- although all play a major role in determining our climate. Scientists who work on these models are quick to point out that they are far from perfect representations of reality, and are probably not advanced enough for direct use in policy implementation. Interestingly, as the computer climate models have become more sophisticated in recent years, the predicted increase in temperature has been lowered.

Are humans causing the climate to change?

98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources.

By most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Dr. Robert C. Balling, Arizona State University)

In short, global warming could be happening, and it is possible that man even plays a part in global warming. However, there are certainly less controversial reasons to cut back on our oil consumption. Narrowing the argument to global warming simply hurts the cause of environmentalists.

The keyword here is "would." The US isn't ratifying squat, but who's surprised? Financing election campaigns is a costly business, and you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you. Bush is just behaving like the good boy he promised to be.

Bush couldn't ratify Kyoto even if he wanted to, since the Senate voted against it 95-0 in 1997 (admittedly it was non-binding, but it needed 67 votes to pass). Clinton signed the treaty, but during his term, he did nothing to try to implement it.

What makes you think the sea level will rise? Because "warmer temperature, ice melts, sea level rises?" Ok, maybe it's that simple. Or maybe not.

Sea level has fallen 30cm in last 150 years in NZ
Global warming will not cause sea level rise
Sea levels falling in Tuvalu

In short, evidence shows that the sea level has fallen over the last 150 years despite the modest rise in temperatures in the early 1900's. That combined with the above links that show that many believe that global warming does not necessarily mean rising sea levels mean that even if there were global warming, it is far frrom certain that sea levels would rise.

Check the links out. The first one is especially convincing and interesting reading.

All in all I see you falling prey to lots of propaganda that has been repeated in the media but that a precious few have really taken the time to investigate. You automatically assume that there is global warming. You automatically assume that that means there would be a rise in sea level. You automatically assume that that would be bad for humans.

Unfortunately there isn't much middle ground. Whatever you read is either for it or against it--almost always with the disclaimer "...but we really don't know yet." I can give you evidence after evidence and you can discard it one after the other claiming it is biased. But from my point of view your sources are biased.

That said, I think I'm done.

What makes you think the sea level will rise? Because "warmer temperature, ice melts, sea level rises?" Ok, maybe it's that simple. Or maybe not.

Sea level has fallen 30cm in last 150 years in NZ
Global warming will not cause sea level rise
Sea levels falling in Tuvalu

In short, evidence shows that the sea level has fallen over the last 150 years despite the modest rise in temperatures in the early 1900's. That combined with the above links that show that many believe that global warming does not necessarily mean rising sea levels mean that even if there were global warming, it is far frrom certain that sea levels would rise.

Check the links out. The first one is especially convincing and interesting reading.

All in all I see you falling prey to lots of propaganda that has been repeated in the media but that a precious few have really taken the time to investigate. You automatically assume that there is global warming. You automatically assume that that means there would be a rise in sea level. You automatically assume that that would be bad for humans.

Unfortunately there isn't much middle ground. Whatever you read is either for it or against it--almost always with the disclaimer "...but we really don't know yet." I can give you evidence after evidence and you can discard it one after the other claiming it is biased. But from my point of view your sources are biased.

That said, I think I'm done.

Bzz, wrong, try again. Better yet, check the following links for your own personal intellectual growth:

Corrected Satellite Record still doesn't shown global warming
Ice caps have been melting since last ice age
Satellite record shows no warming in NA, Europe, neither does surface record

I highly recommend the last article. It shows that, among other things:

• Of the 0.9 degrees that the temperature has risen since 1890, 2/3rd of the increase occured before 1940.
• The majority of the the remaining 1/3rd of heating actually occured in 1998, and is attributed to an El Nino effect that year.
• The satellite record and the surface record tend to coincide quite nicely (and show no significant warming, except for above mentioned El Nino) in N. America, Western Europe, and Australia where the surface record is more reliable. Most of the "global warming" is occuring in areas of the world where the surface record is not as reliable, such as S. America, Africa, Asia. That is, the surface temperature record only shows a deviation from the no-warming satellite trend in those areas with unreliable stations.
• Since 1979, there has been no warming except for an El Nino event in 1998. In fact, were it not for the El Nino event there would have been global cooling since 1979.
• There was also global cooling of -0.2C from 1940 to 1975.

The question is not whether or not the earth is warming up, we *know* it is.

Again, wrong. We don't know that. In fact, the evidence disproves your assertion. Please review the above sites, including NASA, which contradict your belief.

The only debate left is what is *causing* it, whether or not it is "natural", and whether or not it is cause for alarm (which is not necessarily the same as whether or not it is natural - even if it turns out to be an entirely naturally-caused warming, if it might harm millions (or billions) of people, we should damn well do something about it anyway).

Again, I stress that the evidence cited above (and available elsewhere if you spend some time in google) shows that global warming is far from proven.

Even if there is global warming, again you make the assumption that it is bad. The earth has warmed and cooled many times in the last 4 billion years. The mini-ice age some 500 years ago cooled things off and, since then, earth has been rebounding to its pre-ice age temperature.

Are we really so arrogant as to believe that we can know whether global warming is bad? Especially if it's naturally occuring, who are we to alter that course just because we are used to things the way they are? Every species has to adapt... We are no exception. If the seas rise, we will move. If the seas fall, we'll extend our beaches. If there is more severe weather we'll build stronger homes.

I think the most important thing here, though, is that you review the above links. You seem to believe that global warming is an undebated fact. While many people have chosen to believe it due to rather one-sided reporting in the media, it is far from proven. Even if you consider some of the sources biased, at least they will balance the other bias you've been reading so far. PLEASE READ THE LINKS.

well, I work with some people who do climate modeling. They usually produce a large simulation, run it, check the results, and if it doesn't do what they expect they re-run it with different data. So thier preconceived notions have a LARGE impact on thier model. The data produced relies on two things - one thier input data. Weather depends very greatly on the input data, a very small difference in data can make totally different changes. Next it depends on how well thier model actually predicts. That is where thier preconceived notions are coming from. Basically thier model is the hypothesis, they use the model to try and understand global warming. Once thier model shows something close to what they expect they are done. One of the large differences between what they talk about and what the general public talks about is whether or not this proves anything, they understand computer models and know it didn't prove anything, it is a very detailed hypothisis. They need experimental data to make it a good theory. Unfortunatly experimental data will take years to gather.

To use a computer science example. One of the weather modeling people were angry that we would not NFS mount one of our larger clusters. We would not simply because of speed - nfs on a multi-gig file with 128 nodes was slow, it was much faster to transfer the file to each individual node and run the app. The mathmatician in question wrote a small simulation of NFS, he followed what NFS supposedly did and showed that the cacheing in NFS alleviated this problem. The math was all correct, the model was correct but when we ran the real world numbers his model didn't even come close. For whatever reason, as we knew it would from experiance, the disk reads were not being cached.

Then comes the problem of gathering the data. In the past nearly all data was obtained from land stations and from ocean going ships. When satalites began being able to very accuratly measure temperatures they found that much of thier data was WAY off. The theory that ocean surface tempuratures closly matches rising and falling air temps was faulty. Models had been used to show this and further models were based on this assumption.

And finally, even if temperatures are rising it is very difficult to prove we are responsible. There are many models out there that show we are, and there are many models that show we are not. There is also a question is it bad? In past history high levels of carbon dioxide have resulted in very moist air and a huge abundance of vegetation (were talking millions of years ago here). There is no proof, nor much evidence that it is very bad, just different. (on the other hand many of the gasses we release with CO2 are very harmfull)

For an interesting look into the past at what models would predict look to burke's "after the warming". In a class I had in school that dealt with global warming it was required watching. The teacher went on an on about how errily accurate it was. Yea, if you discount that by the year we are now in most of america should be a desert and most of the atlantic ocean should have no current. The teacher (and many of the .edu's you find this video reviewd by) advocate much of the stuff on the video because "it's scary stuff" - well yea if it was founded in reality. It's a very good look at using a model as "proof" as I am sure the models cited in the study used the most accurate models available at the time.

The point of all this is that an artificial model is being used to "prove" global warming by some people. The accuracy of thier numbers is based entierly on how accurate that model is. For example read this. you should notice the section outlined on model errors. So global warming is far from a known fact as many seem to think it is. Nor is it considered as much of a forgone conclusion as many seem to think it is.

Offtopic I know but I thought I'd digress anyway.

Global warming isn't real?

Sure, sir.

Climate Model Uncertainties
Cliamte models still wrong
Show me the Evidence: A tale of Two Whoppers
No More Fudge Factor: Unfluxed Model Cools Warming

Now, I leave further research as an excercise to the reader.

I would strongly recommend you do a little research before you attack someone in the way you did. At worst it's slander in and of itself and, at best, it makes you look like an uninformed ass.

Sure, sir.

Climate Model Uncertainties
Cliamte models still wrong
Show me the Evidence: A tale of Two Whoppers
No More Fudge Factor: Unfluxed Model Cools Warming

Now, I leave further research as an excercise to the reader.

I would strongly recommend you do a little research before you attack someone in the way you did. At worst it's slander in and of itself and, at best, it makes you look like an uninformed ass.

Personally, I think the "Global Warming Crisis" is a crock. These guys say it much more eloquantly than I can, and even have facts to back it up.

Global Warming - The Cooler Heads Coalition.

To briefly summarize their point of view

According to Accu-Weather, the world's leading commercial forecaster, "Global air temperatures as measured by land-based weather stations show an increase of about 0.45 degrees Celsius over the past century. This may be no more than normal climatic variation...[and] several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase."

Satellite data indicate a slight cooling in the climate in the last 18 years. These satellites use advanced technology and are not subject to the "heat island" effect around major cities that alters ground-based thermometers.

Projections of future climate changes are uncertain. Although some computer models predict warming in the next century, these models are very limited. The effects of cloud formations, precipitation, the role of the oceans, or the sun, are still not well known and often inadequately represented in the climate models --- although all play a major role in determining our climate. Scientists who work on these models are quick to point out that they are far from perfect representations of reality, and are probably not advanced enough for direct use in policy implementation.

Interestingly, as the computer climate models have become more sophisticated in recent years, the predicted increase in temperature has been lowered.

Are humans causing the climate to change?

98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources.

By most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Dr. Robert C. Balling, Arizona State University)

A Gallup survey indicated that only 17% of the members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society thought the warming of the 20th century was the result of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

Why does everyone here start with the assumption that global warming is even real? There is *very* credible evidence that there is no such effect, and a number of scientists have stated as much, but they're not getting the big megaphone from the UN and radical "environmental" groups.

Radical leftist "scientists" and their computer models have been known to intentionally lie to us before: witness the laughable computer predictions of the original 1970 Earth Day and the Club of Rome "Limits to Growth" fiasco which assured us with certainty that we would be completely out of oil, gas, copper, zinc, gold, and tin by now. Oh, and the pollution was supposed to be killing us off in the midst of the massive famines that have never happened. In fact, we now have more of all the resources listed above at our disposal than we had then, pollution is sharply down, and food production is at all-time record levels.

A few links that point this out the fallacy of global warming:

A good BBC article with coverage of some reasonable scientific dissent

A good overview of this from Reason magazine

Another article exposing the political as opposes to scientific basis of the IPCC report.

http://www.globalwarming.org is the source of these and other links exposing the truth about global warming, which is quite simply that there's no credible evidence that it even exists, and that the global warming crowd employs some of the worst science ever seen so long as it fits their political agenda.

It never ceases to amaze me that the numerous self-proclaimed libertarians on Slashdot are so willing to cede their liberty to a politically motivated cabal far more dangerous to our society than the RIAA or the MPAA could ever be. Wake up and pay attention to the things that really matter, and will impact your real freedoms in the future in ways that are truly Orwellian...

Of course, there's no real objective and credible evidence that global warming even exists. The "science" backing this is nonexistent and the entire IPCC report is a political, rather than a scientific, initiative strongly tainted with radical politics.

Check out http://www.globalwarming.org to at least understand what's going on before you fall for the global warming catastrophists' "the sky is falling" line...

This agency really has very little scientific (or any other) integrity, and appears to be little more than a political lobbying organization.

That said, the numbers they fabricate for what is perceived as global warming cannot be believed. There is simply NO evidence to support their claims. The models they rely on are not accurate, and there is no evidence that global warming is actually occurring.

Now, I'm certainly in favor of reducing emissions, but doing so because of the screams of the irrational is not the way to go about it. Until there is real evidence that a danger exists, there is no justification for imposing compulsory emissions reductions. It must be voluntary.

For a much more thorough treatment, visit Globalwarming.org

I am not saying there is no cause for concern, but we don't have to be paranoid about it. If there is no equivalent to gas except really expensive, not so useful electric vehicles like the impact, then why don't we see if we can make engines that burn the gas cleaner, or scrub more CO2 from the exhaust. Alternative fuels need not put the oil industry out of business. Even with alternative fuels, we still need oil to lubricate things. There's a really good web site that tells alot of myths and misconceptions about global warming. Strangely enough it's http://www.globalwarming.org. There are several articles about some of the scientists who previously thought the situation was dire thinking it's not so dire anymore.