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I've seen troll posts, but this is perhaps the first time I've seen an entire article that's a troll.

Oh, I know I'm going to be castigated as a "dissenter" (Yikes, just that name reeks of quasi-religious orthodoxy. How dare he disagree!) but sure, I'll bite:

'For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.'
I'm not sure "decades" applies, as it's only been about a decade and a half since the alarmists started warning us that the sky was falling. When initially presented by a blowhard self-promoting politician, it's hard to take the 'science' seriously. If Rush Limbaugh produced a propaganda film insisting that 2+2=4, I'd likewise start to doubt whatever it was he was promoting. Let's also remember that there's a bit of a 'cry wolf' case here; the people claiming that armageddon was now approaching, had previously told us that:
- we were going to all starve to death
- we were going to run out of oil
- we were going to run out of fresh water
- we were covering our country in landfills
- DDT was going to kill us all
- nuclear power was going to kill us all
(etc. ad infinitum) ...and that sort of bombastic pessimism HAS been going on for decades (real decades, not inflated decades).

Initially they claimed that weather stations exaggerated the warming trend. This was disproven by satellite data which shows a similar warming trend.
I'm not sure that's true. Well, probably SOMEONE somewhere said that. My concern was that weather station data was sparse, extremely questionably interpolated in a way that seemed to encourage bias (upward), anecdotal evidence that many of the long-standing weather stations in the US had been subject to encroaching urbanization without (as far as I could see in the data) any correction for that, etc. Further, while the "hockey stick" (that started this) shocked me as fully as it did Mr Gore, I was suspicious of the statistical methods that had been broadly explained in its initial presentation. Further, I'd (anecdotally) remembered stories about oranges growing in England that didn't seem to be reflected in the data. As more discussion followed, people who were far more savvy than me presented a more-convincing case that the statistics used were deeply flawed. This of course made me wonder why someone would do this - by accident or on purpose. To be frank, I immediately categorized Messrs. Mann (et al) as eco-alarmists, the broad group of discredited wierdoes I'd been ignoring since the 1970s. Frankly, that's the hole that "global warming" alarmists have had to try to climb out of since then. I'll be very clear: In my mind, this definitely weighed against subsequent AGW claims.

Further, and regardless of his conclusions (many of which I believe to have been either overstated or otherwise flawed; I *do* feel strongly that his whole point about opportunity costs of chasing CO2 vs other beneficial ecological investments is the baby that's gone out with the bathwater) the vitriol and fury directed against Bjorn Lomborg for daring to doubt the data was even more confirmation for me that this was no longer a scientific issue - this took on the tenor of a secular Inquisition.

Next, solar activity was blamed for much of the warming. This looked like a promising theory until the '80s, when solar output started to diverge from global temperatures.
Really? http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html seems to present fairly soberly.

Comparison of the extended solar activity record with the temperature series confirms the high correlation between solar activity and northern hemisphere land surface air temperature and shows that the relationship has existed through the whole 500-year interval for which reliable data exist.
A corresponding influence

Man is not to blame. See the effect of solar output here. The nay sayers that attempt to put done the solar effect look at sunspot activity not total solar output. Man is a speck on the surface of the planet.

The earth's rotation will continue to slow down more and more. Dino-days were shorter. And eventually we will lose more and more atmosphere to space. And the radioactive material that keeps the earths interior molten will all graceful move towards iron, and the lower magnetic field will mean even more atmosphere erosion. The surface will be very very hot. No life as we know it will live there as the temperature will be over that of boiling water, our atmosphere will be much less dense and unbreathable, and the solar radiation will not be deflected because our magnetic field will have weakened and collapsed to far. Depending on your science this is 500 million to 1 billion years off. Earth will be a lifeless rocky planet.

Generally warmer climates predicted by the global warming fanatics are in the range of normal variation, the last warming period allowed the renaissance by longer growing seasons and thus more plentiful food in Europe.

We are "overdue for an ice age" (well and a eruption of the super volcano in west central US but that's another paranoid's dream). If and it is a horrendously HUGE if, mankind is contributing to global warming, then hurrah. Just learn when to stop. Worldwide food production will increase, and contrary to intuition the desert areas will actually subside because the alterations to the weather patterns will allow for more rainfall. We owe it to mankind (and Canada) to help stop the next ice age. Not likely we can, any more than we cause global warming.

The fundamental question is not is global warming happening (as in in the 1970s the next ice age was coming, same science behind both). The question is, "Is man causing global warming?"; the answer to that is no. To many facts show the effects of man are minor in comparison to natural events, like volcanos, slides of methane hydrates under water (don't tell the doomsday makers, but the North Atlantic has enough methane in seabed ice/methane hydrates to _really_ cause global warming). We don't as a species even try to track things like the effects of undersea earthquakes as they relate to global warming. There is a lot going on. Look for the strongest correlation. Occam's razor says solar output is the biggest contributor by far to global warming. Studies that dismiss it only look at selected portions of solar activity that support their hypothesis.

http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html

http://www.junkscience.com/GMT/index.html

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/AR4WG1GlobalMeanTemp.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/global-temperature.html&h=384&w=567&sz=86&tbnid=ZkCq3VjJqZA8xM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dglobal%2Bmean%2Btemperature&usg=__5O0QbT0FvssTY0dQkkMAt750tg8=&ei=vfcJS-jjMqGNtgennMj-Bw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image&ved=0CBgQ9QEwAw

There are other graphs that show more data, if you actually want to look. The sun's activity is directly linked to the drop you're talking about, but the global daily mean temperature over the last few decades shows that it keeps climbing upwards, accounting for drastic spikes that correspond directly to solar activity.

So yes, it's a very serious man-made threat. Unless there's some invisible pink unicorn farting out heat in an amount that would be more influential than the sun. Note that the junk science link shows data for a whopping 3 years and concludes its hypotheses based on that, whereas the NASA link shows data for hundreds of years, with obvious cycles present, which correspond to the first graph.

DC lines can be higher voltage than AC lines. one line is +345 kV while the other is -345kV and so you have a 700kV line without all the funny things that start to happen when you have AC lines that are 700+ kV.

higher voltage means more power for the same current or less losses for the same power if you want to look at it that way.

Then also since it is DC there is no capacitance and I think you get further reduction in losses from that.

Here is a model for an AC transmission line showing all the capacitance etc

http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html

you might not the conclusion: "70-90 years oscillations in global mean temperature are correlated with corresponding oscillations in solar activity. Whereas the solar influence is obvious in the data from the last four centuries, signatures of human activity are not yet distinguishable in the observations. "

I'm not a solar physicist, and to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't significantly directly affect weather, unless you count the Aurora Borealis. In fact, they're not even sure sunspot numbers are a good predictor of solar activity.

What solar activity does, however, is things like screw up GPS and other systems that depend on radio signals, kill satellites, and damage the power grid. It can also affect flights that go over the poles, as they try to avoid those routes during high activity.

... and yet the likely culprit is the sun, not the small levels of particular gases, that's causing it.

Solar Activity and Climate

(No, I'm not american, and I don't own an SUV)

For anyone that is statistically minded and wants to look at objective data, not just emotional claims, correlation analysis on global temperatures and solar activity is an interesting place to start, such as the graphical representation reproduced from Science here Note the 1940 to 1975 aggressive cooling trend, which stopped at the same time President Carter started enacting environmental policies on coal fired plants, auto emissions, etc. - proof enough for many that environmentalism causes global warming if you use the rules of evidence many in the not-so-objective church of pseudo-environmentalism community use.

If you do really dig into the scientific analysis on warming, there is yet evidence that shows measurable human influence outside of agrarian impact on warming (having crops changes heating patterns and is alleged to retain heat somewhat). There is some interesting work on climate volatility from higher CO2 levels, but we're recovering from a lull and just have inadaquate data to make accurate conclusions. It's like predicting that all stocks go up when you started monitoring the market after a big crash (or as some would suggest, assuming the housing market is a one-way street and incapable of downward trends as some economists pose).

Currently, the combination of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus do a pretty good job of covering the Sun from all angles. Of course, when the planets line up this won't work so well. But with the pole shifting that happens during conjunction, we'll have much bigger things to worry about anyway. (WHAT?!? There was no pole shift in 2000-2001? Well, it will happen next time.)

• The actual cause of rising temps here ; from the Danish Meteorological Institute, Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division.
• Debunking the myth of consensus by the scientific community on GW here; from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• More GW debunking goodness here from the University of Virginia.

Alexander Shulgin's writeup of the "Infinitely Old Universe" idea (in place of the Big Bang) seems more poignant than ever....