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The graph, which is similar to Mann's scientific work is disputed by skeptics. The graph you linked commits a key criticism of graphs of this nature: it intermixes instrumental data with proxy data. If you disregard the black line, the current temp is same as medieval warming period (at this graph shows the MWP) and there is no obvious support of the notion that rate of increase is different when you look at proxy alone (i.e. if you want to interpret data correctly you need to compare apples to apples not apples to oranges). A recent study done by professional statisticians concluded that detection of rapid changes is not possible with proxy datasets and that proxy's filter out high frequency variation on temp series, as such there is no evidence that rate of climb observed in temperature series (in three separate sets, pre 1900s, 1920->1940 and 1970->2000) is in any way extraordinary compared to temperature reconstructions for past 2000 years.

As a side note : that climatologists never wondered over to the local maths department and engage professional statisticians to assist with data analysis will always amaze me. You want to rewrite the rules of the world economy, I would think you would want to put forward the strongest possible case : the best thermodynamics guys, the best statisticians to understand the "problem" then the best engineers and economists to define workable solutions. Not so with climate change apparently.

Here is another image for your consideration: Vostok Ice Core. Although the datasets closely correlate, careful statistical analysis shows co2 actually lags temperature not leads it. This in itself is not proof because you can have weak positive feedback processes but it certain disputes this notion that co2 is very potent. Also although temperature increases (up to what it is present day at multiple occasions) it always falls off again. Which begs the question : why is now so different? To which typical reply is : industrial activity. But that in itself is not evidence of a tipping point catastrophe : it is just a manifestation of special pleading logical fallacy.

The graph, which is similar to Mann's scientific work is disputed by skeptics. The graph you linked commits a key criticism of graphs of this nature: it intermixes instrumental data with proxy data. If you disregard the black line, the current temp is same as medieval warming period (at this graph shows the MWP) and there is no obvious support of the notion that rate of increase is different when you look at proxy alone (i.e. if you want to interpret data correctly you need to compare apples to apples not apples to oranges). A recent study done by professional statisticians concluded that detection of rapid changes it not possible with proxy datasets, as such there is no evidence that rate of climb observed in temperature series (in three separate sets, pre 1900s, 1920->1940 and 1970->2000) is in any way extraordinary compared to temperature reconstructions for past 2000 years.

As a side note : that climatologists never wondered over to the local maths department and engage professional statisticians to assist with data analysis will always amaze me. You want to rewrite the rules of the world economy, I would think you would want to put forward the strongest possible case : the best thermodynamics guys, the best statisticians to understand the "problem" then the best engineers and economists to define workable solutions. Not so with climate change apparently.

Here is another image for your consideration: Vostok Ice Core. Although the datasets closely correlate, careful statistical analysis shows co2 actually lags temperature not leads it. This in itself is not proof because you can have weak positive feedback processes but it certain disputes this notion that co2 is very potent. Also although temperature increases (up to what it is present day at multiple occasions) it always falls off again. Which begs the question : why is now so different? To which typical reply is : industrial activity. But that in itself is not evidence of a tipping point catastrophe : it is just a manifestation of special pleading logical fallacy.

"'Anti-fusion environmentalist organizations' I wonder who that is exactly? Care to name one?"

Well here ya go Einstein: http://www.stop-iter.org/
here's another: http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/nuclear-free/reactors/index.shtml
and oh look, another: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/ITERprojectFrance/

Pro tip: before launching into a wildly hyperbolic rants, maybe do a 2 second search first.

I find that virtually all anti-nuclear organizations (who, to a person, will consider themselves to be environmentalists) will, upon being asked of their opinion, gush forth an endless stream of FUD bullshit about fusion research so ridiculously stupid it would make a cat laugh. Notice how I qualified the word "environmentalist" in the story with the term "anti-nuclear" and never said anywhere that ALL environmentalists are thus inclined. I made this qualification because I CONSIDER MYSELF and environmentalist. By all means though, don't let any of this keep you from your fatuous ramblings about "pigheaded morons" though.

Lots of junk references do not make his post any more real than hand-waving.

If you want some facts:...

Oh here's 10 myths about climate change debunked: http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html

Oh, they used the reverse-causality graph linking temperature & CO2; that one is my favorite. Except that the CO2 rises & falls lag the corresponding temperature changes by about 800 years. Good science, that.

Lots of junk references do not make his post any more real than hand-waving.

If you want some facts:
http://www.realclimate.org/

Why the Hockey stick graph has been proved wrong:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html

Come on it's all just so old.

And why bother saying climate change is not man-made if you're denying the climate change in the first place. Silly.

Oh here's 10 myths about climate change debunked:
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html

I've tried to verify your statement, but all I've found so far is that increased CO2 will lead to increased forest fires which will lead back to increased CO2 (how much was not stated), most of the contribution of forest fires to CO2 is due to tropical forests (think slash-and-burn), and that boreal forest fires (as opposed to tropical forest fires, for example), contributed 828-1,103 Tg of CO2 in 1998, compared to 2,214.837 Tg emitted by US fuels (only fuels, mind you) in 1998. According to that same link, the fuels are 40.5% of the total US contribution, so that comes out to about 5,470 Tg of CO2 from the US alone.

So, your facts might be correct, but it's hard for me to verify. Do you have a source?

My initial reaction to this article is that it looks like propaganda. If you read each of the quotes from the scientist in it, you'll noticed that the qualifying adjectives around each of the stated facts in quotations minimize the importance of any observable facts that can't be denied, and the attributive verbs for the quotes are chosen to slant the reader's perception as well.

Climate change experts, like most scientists, tend to be pretty circumspect with their public statements and avoid hyperbole, so the quotes calling Gore "pathetic" and "an embarrassment" are a red flag as well.

Any "feature" article is going to have something of a slant--and there's nothing wrong with that--but the words in article seemed so consistently well-chosen that they seemed vetted by some PR flack versed in the art of using words to sell your opinions to stupid people.

While that's not enough, in itself, to make me disregard the article, it did make me want to see what I could find out about this "Tom Harris" guy who wrote it. Turns out this guy has made something of a cottage industry out of "debunking" global warming, and in at least one case has co-written an article with the Patterson he quotes in this article. He doesn't disclose this fact, although, in fairness, it was written for a "journal" that, amazingly for 2006, has no web presence.

Harris also wrote another article along the same lines as this one, entitled "The Gods Are Laughing", which you can find here:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/s tory.html?id=d0235a70-33f1-45b3-803b-829b1b3542ef

This one starts out with a lead paragraph that points out that *real* scientists disagree with "liberal arts graduate" Gore about global warming. More red flags here, because people with a good case to make generally don't have to resort to challenging the scientific credentials of their opponents.

The fact that Gore has no PhD in climatology isn't really germane to the debate, although it seems to be a major focus of these pairs of articles. Although once certainly needs some advanced training to conduct climatology research, one would hope that you wouldn't need to go to school for eight years just to be able to read the conclusions section of a peer-reviewed paper. Else, what's the point of doing research, if your findings can only be conveyed to other scientist who are already working from 99.9% of the same knowledge base as you? And one certainly doesn't need a PhD to talk to climatologists and build a consensus view of their opinions.

The director of the atmosphere and energy bits of the Sierra Club of Canada wrote a missive below that explains in more detail a few of the shady rhetorical tricks Harris uses, and which I have alluded to above:

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/climate -skeptic-response.html

Personally, I'm starting to lean toward the this-guy-is-a-shill theory, myself.

OK.

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosph ere-energy/climate-change/vostok-ice-core.jpg

Mr. Egan is president of the High Park Group, a public policy consulting firm that focuses largely on energy issues out of its offices in Toronto and Ottawa. He is retained by the Canadian Electricity Association on a range of issues, including U.S. advocacy (monitoring the U.S. Congress and Administration on issues of interest to the Canadian electricity industry).

Find it here. Google is our friend.

Nack when the Chernobyl accident happened, I had a girlfriend whom's dad is a farmer. Now, I live in western Europe, so quite a bit away from Chernobyl, but despite that, this farmer could throw away part of his products of that season due to contamination. He was nto alone in that.
A: Chernobyl was a flawed design
B: I was only listing reported deaths from the accident, which included estimated deaths attributed to increased cancer, primarily due to radioactive iodine release.
C: I'll fully admit that it was a widespread disaster.

You may have noticed (or heard) that there were quite a few people living in the vicinity of the power plant. They had to leave their houses, many of their belongings, and generally spoken, their livelyhood.
Yeah, like chemical spills and contamination haven't ever required relocation.
80% of black population of New Orleans may not return

You may have noticed (or heard) that there were quite a few people living in the vicinity of the power plant. They had to leave their houses, many of their belongings, and generally spoken, their livelyhood.
Like New Orleans? Heck, even like NO, some people stayed behind, and are still living there. The ones allowed to stay were older folks past child-bearing, but many are still around there, and they're dying at ages not much under residents outside the area.

If you believe that the consequences of Chernobyl were 56 dead and thats it then you are stupidly naive.
56 dead and billions of dollars worth of damage from lost crops, contaminated ground and equipment, relocation expenses, emergency measures to build the sarcophagus. Add some more millions for treatment for the treatment costs for the increase in thyroid cancer.

That is not to say that it was worse then Nohpal, it doesn't compare because it is an entirely different kind of accident. Comparing it to the death toll from coal mining makes as little sense because those deaths do not happen in a single accident usually.

People died. You can average it out over number of workers per year, per hours worked, per megawatt produced. While indeed, the big accident has more psychological impact, I care about rate and averages. For example, remember the whole 'air travel is safer than cars' thing? Any individual accident with a plane tends to kill more people than even the worst car wrecks, simply because you have hundreds of people on commercial planes.

Also, little of the fear for nuclear power is based on reason, and no amount of reason is going to 'fix' that fear.
Sadly true. Fortuantly, the two big disasters just keep getting older and older, so hopefully we'll be able to get some uncommon sense into policies soon.

Yes, the Earth *has* gone through dramatic climate changes in its history:

Vostok data and others. We also have more recent data from ice, sediment cores which all give the same sort of data: the earth's climate changes wildly naturally, but over many thousands of years.

Two things seriously stand out in all of the data:

1) The earth's temperature *has varied* widely - but over tens of thousands of years. The most pronounced spike was when temperature went from 8 degrees below present 140,000 years ago to 2 degrees above present 125,000 years ago; that's 10 degrees in 15,000 years. We're currently experiencing a change of 0.2 degrees every decade, I.e., thirty times as fast. While there have been shorter spikes that have been steeper, nothing in history even approaches what we're experiencing right now.

2) There is an extreme correlation between CO2 and temperature. There is no doubt about the severity of our CO2 spike, nor its cause. We're injecting at a rapid rate earth's sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, and have 2.5xed atmospheric carbon since the early 1800s. We output about 7.1 billion (of which 3B enters the atmosphere) additional tonnes of carbon per year. The atmosphere currently holds about 750B tonnes (which, as stated previously, is a 2.5x over the early 1800s). While there is hope that marine biota will increase carbon consumption, history has shown that such changes take thousands of years when left unassisted.

regardless of whether we eject terawatts of thermal energy

What on earth does this have to do with global climate change?

A forest fire or volcano is a hell of a lot more energy than humans normally put out

If you want to get back to climate change, their CO2 and methane emissions aren't comparable, except for historic supervolcanoes. At the same time, volcanoes produce overall global cooling because of the aerosols and sulfuric acid particulate (which increases cloud formation).

Sorry for replying a second time. I finally found the link, and it turns out it was the Sierra club that made the statement I remember (remove spaces to make links work):
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/media/iter-decis ion-03-06-16.html

However, Greenpeace is just as bad:
http://www.iter.ca/backgrounders/iter-subsidylette r-02-2003.html

Scroll through to Fusion is Neither Clean nor Safe Read their seni-true statements. Sure fusion ain't perfectly clean, but it is about 6 orders of magnitude cleaner the fission, and infinitely cleaner than coal.

They talk about if a meltdown occured, the potential contamination of the reactor would have to be cleaned up... but neglect to mention the negative aspects of nuclear... or coal... instead of metal being irradiated, people die when problems occur in THOSE power plants.

The fact is, Greenpeace and Sierra want us to use less power. Maybe that isn't a bad idea... but it makes me skeptical of their evaluation of any new technology. If it doesn't fit their ideology, it will be branded as "anti-environment" whether it is true or not.

With our current liberal government insisting on cutting short Ontario's hydro supply (both nuclear and coal) (and at the same time raising rates), we're going to be screwed awfully quickly.

Expect more. Much more from the next blackout.

Remember Ontario: You elected the government you deserve.

The whole premise behind global warming is a lie.

Nothing like a link to a wacko right-wing think tank to bolster your case...

(I don't mean all right-wingers are wacko. I mean this guy is wacko, and also happens to be right-wing.)

The existence of the greenhouse effect is basic science. The scientific consensus that what we're doing is having an effect on global climate is strong. The so-called "sceptics" on global climate change belong in the same bin with the "sceptics" about evolution - in fact, there seems to be significant overlap.

>"Modern" nuclear energy is too risky, period.

Risky? Hardly. I can't think of a single fatality resulting from a CANDU reactor, apart from those not related to the fact the plant is nuclear.

Or did you mean "OLD" nuclear energy, like Windscale and Chernobyl? These poor designs should never have been put into production, and people have suffered as a result.

Nuclear energy, done right, is far more safe than any other energy production method. The risks for an installer of solar panels are likely higher than the risks of working at a CANDU reactor. Certainly more people have died as a result of energy dam accidents, and I can't even imagine the numbers that die as a result of toxic smoke spewed from coal and gas fired energy generators.

In fact, CANDU Nuclear Reactors are so safe that even this anti-nuclear article, try as it might, can't find a single death resulting from any accident at a CANDU reactor. Not one. Nada. Zip. Zero.

I'd feel safer working there than programming. Programmers get RSI. I think I'll move to Pickering and see if I can get a job at the reactor. That way I don't have to worry about on the job lethal accidents.

IIRC, there was a posting some time ago that added up the entire waste output from all nuclear reactors since day one. They estimated it would fit in three football fields. At that rate, we'll be able to perform cold fusion before waste management becomes a problem.

That's absurd! Thousands of people die every year from toxic coal waste (a good amount of which is released into the air, despite a complex filtering system).

Very, very true, and I thank you for bringing it up. In fact, less than a thousand kilometers from where I live, there's one of the world's worst coal-related toxin sites. Do a search for "Cape Breton tar ponds" in any search engine and you'll find tons of news reports on this problem.

The Sierra Club has put together a horrifying report on this site. By an astonishing coincedence, this place also has the highest cancer rate in Canada. Hmm.

And this is Canada, supposedly a bastion of environmental friendliness. Can any of you imagine what the situation might be like in countries where the local government doesn't care at all about the environment and doesn't have to be accountable to citizen's health concerns?

I'll be the first to admit that nuclear isn't a perfect solution, but stories like the Sydney tar ponds are what make me realize just how much more horrible fossil fuels can be. Nuclear waste may be more dangerous per mass unit, but at least there's a lot less of it.

Of course, they may need to build a dozen or so of these things, to handle the population being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam.