XDA

Rog,

I will comment only briefly as I find I usually regret words written in anger and haste.

I suggest seriously that you cease bashing warmies and address a much more serious issue, acidification of the oceans. This is not some naturally occurring blip in the climate radar but instead is directly attributable to man pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which are then absorbed by the oceans.

Read the science and then you may take the position that the "warmies" are advocating the right policy perhaps for the wrong reasons.

T
 

You're remarks regarding globle warming fly in the face of the overwhelming scientific data.

"Relative to the period 1860–1900, global temperatures on both land and sea have increased by 0.75 °C (1.4 °F), according to the instrumental temperature record. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures (0.25 °C/decade against 0.13 °C/decade (Smith, 2005). Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.12 and 0.22 °C per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. Over the one or two thousand years before 1850, world temperature is believed to have been relatively stable, with possibly regional fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

I note everytime it snows somewhere, some reactionary fool will make a joke about Al Gore. How absurd. The last I looked, the northeast is still part of the United States, and the grass there is still green, and the temperatures are in the 50s. This has never happened before in anyone's memory.

Indeed, i just read where scientists are concerned about the wellbeing of polar bears due to the extreme melting of the artic ice and even the Bush administration is ready to put the bear on the endagered spieces list.

Indeed, just the oter day the Huston Chronical, hardly a bastion of liberalism, stated:

"These days it's getting as difficult to be a climate change skeptic as it is to be an ice-prowling polar bear hunting seals in the steadily warming Arctic.

Over the holiday season one indicator after another pointed to a growing global consensus that climate change fueled by human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is real and has deadly consequences. Scientists have documented the first inhabited island to be submerged by rising sea levels, Lohachara in the Indian Ocean. A new study predicts that the Arctic Ocean will be free of permanent ice by the year 2040.

Nothing illustrates the melting doubts about the reality of global warming more than the plan released by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne to put the polar bear, one of the world's most popular large mammals with children and advertisers, on the endangered species list."

I just find it hard to understand why people with kids and grandkids, no what their politics, can be so flip about the future.
 

Sorry, the last paragraph should be:

I just find it hard to understand why people with kids and grandkids, no what their politics are, can be so flip about the future.
 

I think it's highly unlikely that 6.5 billion people can not have any effect on the climate. But there's too much scare mongering going on for me to be able to separate fact from fiction.

But if our next president, whomever it may be, doesn't put fighting Islamist extremism at the top of the list, all this other cuddly puppy crap won't matter.
 

Tony, I'll look into acidification of the ocean--sounds implausable to me but I'll keep an open mind.

Peter, we've only had reliable thermometers all around the world since the mid 1800s (hence your statistic about 1860 to 1900) Just over 150 years is not enough information to make any reliable predictions about the future. So don't give me the "overwhelming scientific data" crap. I know about the data and it is not overwhelming. Not even close. What a slightly warmer mean temperature will do to the amount of water vapor in the air is absolutely unknown but, because nearly all of greenhouse gases are water vapor, that lack of knoweldge is a pretty big hole in the predictive bases. The difference between me and the Warmies is that I keep in mind a bigger historical picture and know the limits of scientific predictive success. You would do well to do the same. Also they are lying to you about the relative stablility of temperatures in the 2000 years before 1850. It was not a slight change in climate nor was it limited geographically. Thanks for the comments.

Eric, I know it makes sense to think that with so many of us, we have to be having an effect, but there are millions of square miles on earth with no people at all. We're tiny spots here and there on the globe and one big volcano, for example, reduces a hundred years of our smoke and exhaust to insignificant backround noise.

Couldn't agree more about fighting Jihadism as the priority (which Edwards has almost exactly wrong), the others are feel good socialistic fluff. Spending other people's money. What else do our leaders seem to do?
 

"Also they are lying to you about the relative stablility of temperatures in the 2000 years before 1850."

"They", I forgot about "they". How dare "they" lie to me.
 

How dare they indeed.
 

Longer, milder summers. Shorter, harsher winters. That is supposed to be the trend.

Prague set a new record yesterday for the warmest Jan 1st ever. 54.5 F. (12.5 C) a full degree Celsius above the old record.

But looking at specific instances of local weather and trying to make something of it is also hubris. Wouldn't you agree?
 

Yes, Mike, local anecdote is not scientific data. Even scientific data is not equal to an accurate crystal ball. Even if CO2 becomes a culprit in the mid near future, there are tech fixes--scrubbers and a space sun shield, and the hydrogen economy which will almost necessarily follow the end of oil. No CO2 from hydrogen burning. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. The one fly in the ointment is radical Islam. We have to make them afraid to attack us. We will have to be ruthless and perhaps cruel and it will involve deaths on a 20th century scale, but I have proven beyound doubt that I have no accurate crystal ball.
 

Damn,

It started snowing in the mountains and turned back to rain. This is a total disaster for the ski season here.

I think the threat of Islamic terrorism may be overblown, but even if it is not, harness will not stop it, only encourage it further. Here is a quote from Pushtun folklore to illustrate my point:

"A Pushtun man waited one hundred years and then took his revenge. It was quick work."

In my own personal life I have only known one group of people to react to fear and intimidation in the way that you would hope they would: the Czechs.
 

Sorry, replace "harness" with "harshness".
 

I don't imagine that the fear I'm talking about will stop the guys who are as likely to strap on suicide vests. I don't think we could generate that much fear and still be America. I want the normal Muslims to stop the zealots from strapping on the vest because he fears what the American retaliation will do to the populace at large. We can do that, if we only will, and we will not become monsters doing it.

And I'm aware that bombing the cities in Germany did little to break the general spirit but, on the contrary, generally made them more resolute (which is why we and the Russians had to invade to end that part of the war).