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Follow the link from my previous post before assuming I'm citing fraud.

Evidently 4000 signed your Heidelberg petition; 15,000 (10,000 with "advanced scientific degrees") signed the petition created by Frederick Seitz, professor emeritus of Rockefeller University, questioning the accuracy of the methods used to justify the formation of the Kyoto protocols.

Besides criticizing two sources I never used (really, is it that hard to click on a link?), Wikipedia isn't where I'd look for concrete, unbiased, and accurate information on global warming.

This isn't even up for debate

Not quite sure exactly what you think "isn't up for debate" - that environmental regulation "hurts the economy"? It's true - nobody disputes that dumping all of our crap in the ocean is cheaper that properly disposing of it. Generally, having breathable air and drinkable water are worth some economic loss - the "debate" is where to draw the line between the extremes of competing with China and hugging spotted owls.

Desptite whatever FUD you hear, we have a decent economy that created 176,000 jobs last month.

We have so much going wrong in this country after 8 years that even if we get a Democratic president and Congress, it will take 10 years to recover policy-wise after this administration is finally run out of office

That's funny; the current Republican president took an economy at the brink of recession and took it to booming in only a few years. I don't think it will take Democrats a decade to fix what isn't broken.

The environment isn't high school debate club; this is serious and it matters

True. That's why we need to stop pretending that there is 100% agreement an extremely politicized scientific issue when at least 10,000 climatologists disagree with the prevailing notion that man is responsible for the warming of the planet. It is irresponsible to pretend that we have a "consensus" or that "the debate is over" just because the prevailing truthiness supports your worldview.

Something's wrong when even the UN keeps revising figures on the extent of global warming - we're down to an upper limit estimate of a 17" rise in sea levels by 2100.

I can now sit back and observe the spectra emitted by my flaming karma - but, despite the prevailing notions on Slashdot, the United States has a strong and improving economy, and it is still very much debatable whether or not we will all be the proud owners of an above-ground swimming pool.

You idiot, nearly every single climate researcher believes that global warming is accelerating at a rate unprecedented in the history of our species....

You are proving that you are the idiot by showing at the very least that you are ignorant about anything else. Like this petition signed by 17000 scientists saying global warming research is a fraud. http://www.sitewave.net/pproject/listbystate.htm. Of course, I'm sure you will find a way to blow that off too, don't let the facts get in the way of your TV science now.....

Evidence for global warming may have been exagerated by up to 40 %?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2001/01/14/wglob14.xml/
http://www.sitewave.net/news/s49p1354.htm
http://www.cgfi.org/materials/articles/2005/jan_10 _05.htm

or google for yourself.

Ok, that's done.

Sun to Blame for Global Warming

A False Consensus On Global Warming

Facts disprove warnings about global warming

Global warming claims 'based on false data'

I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

and later

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Oddly enough, in one of the papers (Who you gonna believe? on the pages you link to, the author who is taking Crichton to task over his views on global warming states:

I'm not a scientist. I know more about science generally

You have been hearing it from a few for a long time. Now you are hearing from a majority of respectable scientists.

Really? Check out this link First of all, I still doubt the "The earth is dying" theology. Clearly CO2 levels have increased but scientists don't really know if this explains the small change in global temps. We very well might be in a natural warming trend. "Why take the chance" is the arguement people use for drastically changing energy policy. Well... Lets look at the past theory:

1970s: There is NO oil left! We must convert to new energy sources! Please FUND OUR PROGRAMS!! WRONG: There is plenty of untapped oil that will easily last another century, no rush. The trick is to get it cheaply AND maintain political stability.

1980s: If we have a nuclear war, the earth will die due to nuclear winter. Please fund our nuclear winter/climate studies. OKAY, peace with the USSR, now no need for nuke winter PHDs.

1990s: Wait, the earth is dying due to..to...to... CO2! Please fund our programs!

Its hard to find unbiased researchers that are not PAID by people who stand to profit or suffer from the results of climate study. Most studies are funded by governments who typically have a vested interest in "changing" things. The PHDs themselves would no have future (other than teaching) if the results were not BAD for the earth. Many scientists who are not on the Go'ment dole (or the oil companies) do not buy into the C02/warming linkage.

I think this is just a way for some governments (Europe, canada) to try get a competitive advantage over America. The way THEY do business (more socialistic in nature) cannot compete with America's mixed (less socialistic) enconomy so this is an attempt to level the playing field. To put it into a /. perspective, the Kyoto treaty is like ISO 9000 and other so-called "standards" in Software engineering. They exist not to really make a better product, but to try gain a competive edge over s/w competitors (mostly in Government work ofcourse). The trick there is to FIRST get your little ISO compliance rating and THEN force it upon everyone else so that then YOU have an advantage. This is what Europe is trying to do to America, only with climate science...

Don't get me wrong, I am TOTALLY for alternative fuels, wind, solar, electric cars, etc... But it should NOT be driven by some treaty. It should be driven by free markets and inovation..

GSG

He should read this first.

Yes, pollution needs to be decreased, but not with something like Kyoto.

And here are two books worth looking at:

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjørn Lomborg, 2001 The author of this book is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Aarhus (Denmark), and used his knowledge of statistics to analyze the claims that the Earth is dying.

Environmental Overkill Whatever Happened to Common Sense? Ray, Dixie Lee; Guzzo, Lou. 1993. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

We're pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere - which is a closed system .

Now, it's perfectly logical to draw a correlation between the two.

Um, no. There are many other factors influencing climate.

The Kyoto Petition was signed by 2,500 scientists. Only a few were involved in actual climatology. Most were social scientists and gov't functionaries.

However, another petition urging congress to reject the treaty, was signed by 15,000 scientists!

Here is a good page explaining global warming and it's relation to CO2 emissions: here I will talk about the results of this study later, so read it.

But by the time we WILL have reference, we'll all be dead if we are the cause. Therefore the only logical course of action is to stop.

What do you mean we will all be dead!? 3,000 years ago things were vastly warmer than they are today. CO2 isn't even one of the main causes of the greenhouse effect. It just happens to have more of a greenhouse effect than other gases. Just use your head. The reason the earth is warming is because we are still coming out of the little ice age 300 years ago!!!
We're still below the temperature levels of the middle ages and way below the levels of ancient times. The global warming article I referred you to has an excellent graph showing the average temperatures for the last 3000 years. The earth warms and cools all the time. This new global warming is just us entering into an average temperature period. It's nothing to be worried about.

If you look at the global ocean temp. graph for the past 3,000 years, we seem to be going through a slow rise in temperature right now. Compare that to the dramatic up an down of several degrees between 1000 and 500 B.C.

In our warming since the Little Ice Age, we had a dramatic increase of a little less than a degree between 1600 and 1700, before there was a lot of CO2 emissions. It has been a gradual rise since then. We aren't even up to the average historical ocean temperature yet.

There is no credible evidence linking C02 emissions to global warming. It is just another warming and cooling cycle. Please, before you flame me, look at the article I linked to. It contains valuable information about the subject historically.