What does that have to do with "global warming?"

Cold waters in the Pacific are causing the severe weather, as cold fronts from the west interact with warm Gulf Of Mexico air.  

Until climatologists understand what is causing the unusually cold water in the Pacific, they should keep their mouths' closed.  They are embarrassing the entire scientific community with their absurd hysterical arm-waving.

.... weather is driven by climate change. I only get the BBC and Al Jasira as news stations. The BBC reports EVERY SINGLE WEATHER Anomaly as attributable to climate change. In my book, they have lost all credibility, because long before there was man made climate change, there was extreme weather.

From about 900 AD to 1,400 AD the climate got considerably cooler, eventually likely causing the destruction of the Viking Colonies on Greenland. Were that trend happening today, it would be put down to "Climate change".

Now, I am not saying that climate change isn't happening, or that we should not be concerned about it. What I am saying is it is simply not true when we report every extreme weather event to it. No honest meteorologist would ever do this.

One of the big problems for environmentalists is credbility. That's because:

a. They lie and invent scary scenarios to garner support.
b. They often have hidden agendas tied to things like a dislike of certain lifestyles - not for environmental reasons, but simply because they think people should have different values and they want to change them.

Critical in framing environmental debate is to be honest and to be realistic.

Victory in Pattani

... closed. There's nothing wrong with stating theory. As long as you are clear that it is theory. Where a lot of environmentalists go wrong (like the BBC) is to simply say that "x" phenomenon is due to climate change caused by man made factors. It's one thing to speculate, even better to demonstrate facts that support such arguments. No problem there. It's when such speculation is portrayed as fact. Then, when the public finds out it's not fact, enormous credibility is lost (and support for difficult measures).

Victory in Pattani

so long as you are not easily embarrassed.

Per Wikipedia;
At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. The storm is estimated to have been responsible for $81.2 billion (2005 U.S. dollars) in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. The catastrophic failure of the flood protection in New Orleans prompted immediate review of the Army Corps of Engineers, which has, by congressional mandate, sole responsibility for design and construction of the flood protection and levee systems.

As I understand it, it was not a particularly bad hurricane; its just that there were some bad circumstances.  But what about that hurricane, 80 years ago, per Wikipedia:

In south Florida at least 2,500 were killed when storm surge from Lake Okeechobee breached the dike surrounding the lake, flooding an area covering hundreds of square miles. In total, the hurricane killed at least 4,078 people and caused around $100 million ($1 billion 2006 US dollars) in damages over the course of its path.

What were the man-made to CO2 levels in 1928?

Black Wallaby, and others in here:

Virtually all climatologist who have peer reviewed published findings about Anthropogenic Global Warming have said this:

"While Global Warming cannot be linked directly to an individual weather event because of other factors, the science says that extremes in severity and number of both drought and wet storms are more likely with more CO2 in the atmosphere, than with less."

The science only talks about rates and severity over time -- NOT specific weather events.

So both sides are completely wrong in this thread unless they are using the meaning of this whole phrase.

This is the same misunderstanding that caused FOX News to misquote Al Gore's NPR interview a few weeks ago.  Gore was careful to acknowledge both sides of this understanding I have written above.

But I think Black Wallaby knows that the real science tells a more realistic truth and is pointing out more foolish statements to forward his agenda.

-Christopher S. Johnson

LA Nina has faded and is nearly gone.  The cold water is in the North Pacific - from California up through Alaska.  

It has nothing to do with LA Nina.  The theory is that "CO2 forcing" is steadily increasing the heat content of the oceans, yet that does not appear to be the case.  Obviously there are other factors at work which the climate modelers do not understand.  

If they did understand, they would have predicted it - which they didn't.

I go with Dr. Jess Masters of Weather Underground, who solidly refutes that any specific hurricane or storm even such as in Ohio is the work of Climate Change.  Silly folks, the jet stream went that way over Ohio (and is expected to stay there several more days), and that's why you have all those tornadoes too.

If you would stay with the energy theme and how to reduce CO2 that would be nice, as you've proven a complete misunderstanding about how weather relates to climatology.

That said, the NCDC data was pretty neat, even if it proves nothing.  

Onward through the fog

oops!

Onward through the fog

Patrick,

I think the theory is only about ocean SURFACE temps.  ALL responsible climatologist agree that there are other major factors that influence specific events.

-Christopher S. Johnson

Sam, like I said above.  That is HALF of the understanding and consensus on this.  The other half is about likelihood of long term trends -- that look similar to what is currently happening.

You guys have to take the whole pill.

no specifics events
long term trends look bad with more CO2

-Christopher S. Johnson

Another thing environmentalists are loathe to admit is that there will be winners with climate change. Some places that are dry will get more rain. Some places that are cold will get warmer. The issue is, since our infrastructure is already built, and in many areas strained, what do you do if the American southwest starts to get even less water than it already does?

Then there's the bigger issues like rising seas, or runaway global warming.

These are valid issues, even if the latter isn't quite proveable.

Therefore it behoves us to move on this threat. But this has to be undertaken in a measured manner, less we do more damage than good in totally disrupting the global economy.

Victory in Pattani

are those the new talking points? awesome! i've got to pick some up for myself....

Mad Mac,

Show me one study that claims that the areas that would benefit from a 4 degree increase in global average temperature would be anything close to equal the areas that would be negatively affected.  Human-wise, that is.

We are talking about leaving the range of climate that allowed for the Agricultural Revolution to happen 12,000 years ago.  Not a new vacation spot for you in Greenland.

-Christopher S. Johnson

Pangolin wrote in part:

"...It's a little beyond rocket science but I think that the Midwest might just be taking the hint..."

And so they should, the sinners, with the worst floods for 15 years!

... been done. Nor will any. The climate change movement is not going to publish anything or pursue anything that undermines the "sky is falling" arguement. And where did you get 4 degrees from? Let's start with two. All or Northern Russia would benefit from that, and that's a huge land mass. Ditto Greenland. The less ice on Greenland, the more it can be used for agriculture (as it was once before). Furthermore, there will be unpredictable changes in rain patterns. If the sahara were to suddenly start getting more rain, you might actually be able to grow something there (which already happens when it does get rain).

On top of this, the warmer the planet gets, the more rainfall. Where it falls........ another question. But there will be more.

Lastly, did I say it would be anything close to what would negatively be affected? No, I didn't. That isn't the point. Pay attention.

Victory in Pattani

the earth is warming at 1.2 degrees per century over the last thirty years, which is frequently described by AGW promoters as "the most dramatic period of warming in earth's history."  Over the last ten years, temperatures have actually declined, so the average warming rate decreases with each additional month.

The 4 degree number from some computer models sounds very dramatic, but can't be justified based on the actual data.  Rather than panicking and throwing the  world's economy into crisis, the (ir)responsible parties should just fix the models.

OK, I buy the long term climatological view that increased CO2 is correlated with increased ambient air temperatures. Somebody had mentioned sea surface temperatures (SST) as being the metric, but the focus has shifted to ocean heat content (OHC), which is the heat content of the top 100 meters of water (various studies use different depths).

This has generated a huge discussion because it involves satellites, altimetry, and heat sensors that could easily be biased ... but the general consensus is that OHC has been declining over the last several years. This is rather baffling and contradicts the ambient air data. Scientists conjecture that perhaps (a) more subtropical water is headed poleward and (b) some very cold arctic meltwater is flowing south (speaking of the N. hemisphere).

That doesn't invalidate the global warming issue, since many expected the poleward sea ice and glaciers to melt, and be swept southward on the ocean currents. What is curious is that the Gulf Current (and others) appear to be changing over time ... a fascinating research topic.  -sam

Onward through the fog

Joe Romm,
Colder air doesn't have the ability to retain as much moisture as warmer air, (learned that in Junior High School). The temperature difference causes the denser, cooler air to fall, causing the warmer moist air to lift and condense. The recent severe thunderstorms in the Midwest were caused by lifting along frontal boundaries. COLD air advancing from the west lifting retreating warm moist air in the east. Being that BELOW AVERAGE temperatures prevail in the western states currently and are moving east into the (typically) warmer air with the Prevailing Westerlies, the clash of air masses occurred over the central United States causing the severe weather recently observed. It is the COLD air in the west that is unusual for this time of year, not the warm air in the east. Severe thunderstorms in the central United States during the summer months are common.....ever see The Wizard of Oz?
Somehow, I believe that you are aware of this condition, but choose to exploit natural weather events to prop up your untenable position(s). Unfortunately and shamelessly, the global warming hucksters are claiming these natural, severe weather events are somehow connected to whether or not I leave my porch light on overnight or whether or not I decide to take a vacation this summer. The Eco-zealots are taking advantage of these natural, tragic events to boost the exposure of their cause.
Lifting Along Frontal Boundaries
When Air Masses Interact
Lifting also occurs along frontal boundaries, which separate air masses of different density.
In the case of a cold front, a colder, denser air mass lifts the warm, moist air ahead of it. As the air rises, it cools and its moisture condenses to produce clouds and precipitation. Due to the steep slope of a cold front, vigorous rising motion is often produced, leading to the development of showers and severe thunderstorms.
In the case of a warm front, the warm, less dense air rises up and over the colder air ahead of the front. Again, the air cools as it rises and its moisture condenses to produce clouds and precipitation. Warm fronts have a gentler slope and generally move more slowly than cold fronts, so the rising motion along warm fronts is much more gradual. Precipitation that develops in advance of a surface warm front is typically steady and more widespread than precipitation associated with a cold front.

Speaking of extremes, 2/3rds of extreme high temperatures records in the 50 United States were achieved before 1950, at a time when CO2 levels were lower than today. As CO2 levels rise, according to the "global warming theory", temperatures should also rise, breaking previously recorded extreme highs.

That isn't happening.

Shall we look at GLOBAL high temperature records?

State high temperature records
State    Temp    Date                            
Ala.     112   Sept. 5, 1925  
Alaska   100   June 27, 1915  
Ariz.    128   June 29, 1994  
Ark.     120   Aug. 10, 1936  
Calif.   134   July 10, 1913  
Colo.    118   July 11, 1888  
Conn.    106   July 15, 1995  
Del.     110   July 21, 1930  
Fla.     109   June 29, 1931  
Ga.      112   July 24, 1952  
Hawaii   100   April 27,1931  
Idaho    118   July 28, 1934  
Ill.     117   July 14, 1954  
Ind.     116   July 14, 1936  
Iowa     118   July 20, 1934  
Kansas   121   July 24, 1936  
Ky.      114   July 28, 1930  
La.      114   Aug. 10, 1936  
Maine    105   July 10, 1911  
Md.      109   July 10, 1936  
Mass.    107   Aug.  2, 1975  
Mich.    112   July 13, 1936  
Minn.    114   July  6, 1936  
Miss.    115   July 29, 1930  
Mo       118   July 14, 1954  
Mont.    117   July  5, 1937  
Neb.     118   July 24, 1936  
Nev.     125   June 29, 1994  
N.H.     106   July  4, 1911  
N.J.     110   July 10, 1936  
N.M.     122   June 27, 1994  
N.Y.     108   July 22, 1926  
N.C.     110   Aug. 21, 1983  
N.D.     121   July  6, 1936  
Ohio     113   July 21, 1934  
Okla.    120   June 27, 1994  
Ore.     119   Aug. 10, 1898  
Pa.      111   July 10, 1936  
R.I.     104   Aug.  2, 1975  
S.C.     111   June 28, 1954  
S.D.     120   July 15, 2006  
Tenn.    113   Aug.  9, 1930  
Texas    120   Aug. 12, 1936  
Utah     117   July  5, 1985  
Vt.      105   July  4, 1911  
Va.      110   July 15, 1954  
Wash.    118   Aug.  5, 1961      
W. Va.   112   July 10, 1936  
Wis.     114   July 13, 1936  
Wyo.     116   Aug.  8, 1983  

Total Before 1950, 33

if local temperature spikes were readable as a trend, you've also just disproven the "solar radiance" theory, and the existence of transoceanic shipping, since rogue waves are by your argument the only waves on the ocean. keep up the good work!

all done

Looking at weather extremes is not helpful so much as the long-term picture. Myself, I like a rolling 30 year window for averaging. That's what climatologists do unless you're into paleo-climatology where tens of thousands are no problem. Suffice it to say we don't have reliable weather recordings for the US prior to the late 1800's and with better satellites today we can see much more than we earlier missed. Many tornadoes and hurricanes went undetected back in the early days. But the average temperatures, rainfall, and stuff like that is what we need.

I'd like to also mention that a one-year "global mean average" or AGW of temperatures does not indicate a signal for climate change. That is completely wrong. The correct was to do the analysis is to use statistics on departure from mean statistics using a 30-year rolling window. This will show where and how much temperatures or rainfall is trending over a longer period of time.

Onward through the fog

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
By Richard Harris, NPR
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming. In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
Read the full story here
Icecap Note: If anyone would bother to look at the actual data instead of just pronouncements in the media from NOAA or GISS, they would not be surprised at all by these findings. Here is a plot of actual monthly temperatures and the trends from the Hadley global data set (HADCRUT3v) and University of Alabama satellite derived lower tropospheric temperatures covering the same period as the robots measured ocean heat content. Like the robots they show a downtrend (cooling).
See full size graph here

Unprecedented............What were the CO2 Levels in 1913?

Beginning on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, torrential rains across the Midwest dropped a record three months of rainfall in four days. Floodwaters funneled down Ohio's Miami Valley into the heart of the vibrant industrial city of Dayton. Levees burst, houses were swept away, and downtown was gutted by fires blazing from broken gas mains. At the end of Easter week, nearly 100 Daytonians had perished, and tens of thousands more were left homeless and destitute--a tragedy that made banner headlines in newspapers nationwide. Out of Dayton's ashes and mud rose fierce public resolve never again to suffer such destruction. The Great Dayton Flood of 1913 reproduces some 200 astounding photographs from the collections of the Dayton Metro Library and the Miami Conservancy District and the archives of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton History. They portray the terrifying flood, monumental destruction, heroic rescues, and compassionate leadership that occurred during the disaster and its immediate aftermath, as well as the pioneering flood-control engineering that has kept Dayton safe ever since.

..records. So here we are trying to trace weather back five or six hundred years, and there aren't any records to do it with.

Victory in Pattani

Christophersj wrote in part, my emphasis added:
"...Virtually ALL climatologist who have peer reviewed published findings about Anthropogenic Global Warming have said this:
"While Global Warming cannot be linked directly to an individual weather event because of other factors, the science says that extremes in severity and number of both drought and wet storms are more likely with more CO2 in the atmosphere, than with less."
The science only talks about rates and severity over time -- NOT specific weather events..."

Oh really? Can you point me to any peer reviewed papers that say this?   I'm aware of various pronouncements of an opinionated nature, and media, but have not stumbled upon anything scientific.  I know for instance, that Chris Landsea, an eminent hurricane expert resigned from the IPCC when "that big mouth" Kevin Trenberth publicly contradicted his expertise, with crap, and the IPCC club would not support Landsea probably because of Trenberth's entrenchment in the club.   I've seen a lot of rubbish, but NO SCIENCE.  Please enlighten me.

Mad Mac,
I know how you feel! Our Australian Aborigines, have been here heap big long time, like maybe 50,000 years.  Nice rock paintings of regionally extinct species, funny white skinned people in big boots, sailing ships, and possibly people (aliens ?) in space-suits.  But climate science data stuff?  Nah!   Nary a hint!
Yet they were/are clever!  Take the engineering of the boomerang and a few other things!

Precipitate Modeling
Filed under: Precipitation --
Global warming shows no significant influence on precipitation over land, a new study finds.
Despite human-caused alterations to the natural chemical composition of the earth's atmosphere, researchers are unable to identify an anthropogenic impact on global precipitation rates--one of the fundamental measures of climate.

While it would certainly be convenient for carbon dioxide emissions-control lobbyists if an unusual occurrence of floods and droughts were plaguing the globe, unfortunately (for them), this is simply not the case. While it is true that at any given time in multiple places on earth some level of drought (or precipitation surplus) is occurring, but these reflect normal patterns inherent in the earth's climate variability. That these are highlighted in the press simply plays into the media's fascination with catastrophe.
Their fascination with one particular "catastrophe," climate change, leads them to make connections where connections don't really exist. Such is the case with greenhouse warming and global precipitation, as demonstrated in a June 2004 paper appearing in Geophysical Research Letters by Nathan Gillet and three colleagues.
Global climate models have always had a difficult time simulating precipitation amounts. And for good reason: Scientists don't fully understand the process, and linking up what's happening within a cloud to the very coarse scale of a climate model is beyond our computational and, more important, scientific capabilities. Nevertheless, climate models do make projections of future precipitation patterns under input scenarios depicting various levels of human activity.
Gillett `s research team attempted to find out if the observed patterns of global precipitation over the last 50 or so years matched climate model expectations.
To examine this question, they used the National Center for Atmospheric Research Parallel Climate Model that was run with three different climate forcings: volcanic aerosols, solar radiation, and the combined effects of greenhouse gases, sulfate aerosols, and ozone depletion. They also ran the model for a case in which all three factors were entered simultaneously. All those forcings were allowed to change monthly based on historical observations, and the resulting modeled precipitation was compared with observed precipitation over land areas across the globe (precipitation observations of the world's oceans are quite sparse).
Figure 1 compares the observed precipitation changes with the model results. Before being plotted, the data were first smoothed to remove shorter-term variation, in this case to remove impacts of El Nino and other non-external components of natural precipitation variability. (In many cases, data are smoothed when scientists are trying to hide bad results, but in some cases, the procedure can be justified.)

Figure 1. Modeled (broken lines) and observed (solid line) global land average daily precipitation.
The quality of this simulation is in the eyes of the beholder. It's obviously not a perfect match--the model misses the precipitation peaks in the mid 1950s and the early 1970s, but some of the low precipitation periods are picked up pretty well. The model also misses the average rainfall rates because it tends to vary less than reality. Overall, the correlation between the models and observations is a statistically significant 0.45, which means that only 20%, or one-fifth, of the variation in global land precipitation can be accounted for by greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols, and solar variations.
Nevertheless, it is reasonable to ask to what extent greenhouse gases are responsible for the changes observed over the period of record. So the authors compared the observed patterns with each of the forcing responses separately. They found that only the volcanic signal was detectable. In other words, monthly changes in greenhouse gas levels from the late 1940s to 1998 had no demonstrable impact on global precipitation rates over land. According to the authors, "Overall, we thus find evidence of volcanic influence on terrestrial precipitation over the past 50 years, but no evidence of anthropogenic or solar influence using our methodology." Other modeling work has suggested that the rainfall minimum in the early 1990s was linked to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. And the previous minimum in the mid-1980s followed on the heels of the eruption of El Chichon in 1982.
The theory here is that changes in shorter wavelengths of radiation (the heat coming from the sun) are more important than variations in long-wave radiation (the radiation emitted by the earth that is absorbed by greenhouse gases). There is also evidence that planet cools following volcanic eruptions, so a cool planet is apparently less rainy than a warm planet.
So the rainfall problem continues. It's hard to blame human activities on precipitation changes unless by burning fossil fuels we are provoking the wrath of the volcano gods.
Reference:
Gillett, N.P, A. et al., 2004. Detection of volcanic influence on global precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L12217, doi: 10.1029/2004GL020044, 2004.

Jun 14, 2008
Environmentalists Try to Take Advantage of Natural Disaster - Blame Midwest Floods on Global Warming
By Joseph D'Aleo
In the latest in a series of predictable releases, an environmental group Clean Wisconsin today claimed that the disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions in the January 2007 Clean Wisconsin report. The report, "Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin," forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall.
You see alarmist have adopted the can't lose position that all extremes of weather - cold, warm, wet or dry is due to global warming. They had the snowiest winter on record in Madison, topping 100 inches for the first time ever.

Wisconsin had its 33 coldest winter on record, nearby Iowa its 19th coldest in 114 years. The cool weather continued into the spring with the 22nd coldest spring on record in Wisconsin and 24th in Iowa.
The severe weather and heavy rainfall has been the result of rapid COOLING in the northern tier of the United States and Canada not global warming. The flooding exceeded the floods of 1993 when rapid cooling following the eruption of Pinatubo produced a similar kind of cooling with a strong suppressed jet stream that brought a steady stream of storms and flooding.
Rapid warming as took place in the 1930s and again around 1980 leads to drought and record heat. The alarmist movement is reeling after the warming stopped in 1998 and cooling began in 2002, accelerating in the last year. Their claims have now morphed from warming to focusing on the extremes typical of La Nina and the colder decades.

Christophersj wrote in part:
"...This is the same misunderstanding that caused FOX News to misquote Al Gore's NPR interview a few weeks ago. Gore was careful to acknowledge both sides of this understanding I have written above..."

Are you aware that most of the world does not watch/listen/read FOX news?   What is it?  Should I in the antipodes understand what you are saying?

Christopphersj also wrote in part:
"...But I think Black Wallaby knows that the real science tells a more realistic truth and is pointing out more foolish statements to forward his agenda..."
(My emphasis added)

There are actually several aspects in the AGW (Armageddon Grievous Weather) debate, of which ONE of the commonest is media reporting of the most recent worst-ever disastrous bit of weather which is obviously caused by AGW.   Thus, in this aspect alone, I cannot see why you think it is foolish to point out that the recent worst-ever weather has been exceeded by even much worse ever events in the past.

Please explain the logic of your criticism.
Please also explain: what is my agenda in your eyes

Some of the interesting stuff was done over a decade ago, which researchers bored into Arctic glaciers and analyzed the core samples. What they found was fairly startling - except for a few periods of "relative calm" there were very large swings in climate. Some of these extreme events were as close as 70 years apart, remarkably short in paleo-climate science. That's akin to saying there were lions and hippos in the Thames River near London and 70 years later it was frozen solid. It turns out that these events were more the norm than static periods in history where there was little change in the climate.

Scientists noted several volcanoes and the advent of the Industrial Age (with black carbon coal aerosol). The question since the Industrial Age is whether mankind's air pollution levels are a signal of causation in the grand scheme of things. I think so, at least as a catalyzing mechanism.

Onward through the fog

There is some evidence that as life evolved on Earth, it originally started or went through a period when the atmosphere had little oxygen, being mostly CO2, sulfur compounds, nitrogen, and stuff like that. A certain kind of blue-green algae dominated and then oxygen levels increased dramatically, killing off many of the "reducers." One can still find these primordial reducing bacteria surrounding hot vents in deep ocean trenches.

So the question becomes whether mankind, with is huge air and water emissions, has tilted things enough to be considered as pollution even if it is CO2, oxygen, nitrogen compounds, sulfur, or whatever.  Remember, even clean water can kill you - it's called drowning!  Darn pollution ...

Onward through the fog

"I like a warm home in winter and cool home in summer; I like driving my large safe vehicle."

Fortunately this attitude will go the way of the dinosaurs soon, along with you and your whole sickly political species, hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Maybe below 10% in a couple of years, then your political demographic will be defunct as a voting force.

It's hooey like you spew everyday that is ruining the dimbulb limboob right.  Hehey.  Keep it up,  good work.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

"Maybe below 10% in a couple of years,then your political demographic will be defunct as a voting force."

Environmentalists' Wacky Predictions            
Written by Walter Williams
Wednesday, 07 May 2008

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The world as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, is there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

amazngdrx,

As you can see, your kooky environmentalists don't have a very good record predicting anything.

This Brute person is really something, like starting to troll really bad.

Ethically, if we knew we (as mankind) were really introducing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, then we should take measure to limit and reduce those emissions should there be prevailing science that indicates things could get worse, and rapidly - regardless if mankind's contribution is marginal. To do otherwise is not ethical and verges on hypocracy.

This is a strange manifestation by more of a small but vocal libertarian camp I suspect, as even mainstream Republican "technology delayers" like Bush and McCain agree that climate change and global warming are clear and present dangers. So my recommendation is to pay no mind, and work on those "technology delayers" for faster action.  -sammie

Onward through the fog

....as soon as some brutal facts are presented by rationalists, for which the fundies are struggling to respond to, the magic word "troll" appears.

BTW, most of us rationalists have no objection to more efficient or different (eg renewable) energy use, but we do object to unnecessary expenditures and scaring the pants off little kids with all the Gorey garbage.

the magic word "troll" appears.

The sad thing is this "scientific" presentation of AGW has been done entirely through bullying with words.

Those who simply ask questions are labeled "deniers".

Someone who presents an alternative viewpoint a "troll".

Those who weight economic consequences are pegged as "delayers".

The people who present really strong scientific data, or question conclusions are said to be "working for tobacco companies".

For something that supposedly involves intelligent "scientists", the whole thing seems really 4th grade to me.

I think that when the full extent of the charade is exposed, those involved in bilking the public, such as Gore, are going to be tarred and feathered and run out of the "globe" on a rail...

....that Jabailo forgot to include is that in these exchanges of views between fundies and rationalists, if the fundies are desperately losing the debate and/or are outnumbered, they sometimes use yet another defence ploy:
The dreaded ID conspiracy!

Like perhaps Brute, Jabailo and me are all one and the same person but under a range of ID's.

....to multiple ID fraud;  Brute, Jabailo and Black wallaby may become "sock puppets".

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious commitments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

Amongst yourself, please.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I read an interesting article about "Green Noise" on a NY Times blog. The hole idea is that as the "greenies" shout more, and anti-regulators (deniers) shout equally as loud, thus producing a sound not unlike white noise. It's like a rock and roll show with two acts going on at the same time - the result is truly awful music.

To me, I think the naysayers are truly worried, as climate change bills are considered with more seriousness in the Capitol. It is, pun intended, their "Siberian Moment."  That's when a fisherman falls through the ice in a Siberian lake:  you can get out of the water and freeze instantly, or paddle in the water and slowly drown.  

No wonder they are shouting so loud, and may I add backed by some serious money and redneck NAASCAR appeal.

Just put on your headphones and carry on.  -sammie

Onward through the fog

The NYT is "fair and balanced" now, and Rupert did not even have to buy it.  I guess our very top media workers and leaders are drudge/fauxnews fans?  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I feel horrible when disasters happen here and because of a faked-up "war" we can't respond to our brothers and sisters here at home - some "homeland security," huh?

According to Jeff Masters, the ENSO is going rather neutral only recently but the subtropical jet did pump up a bunch of moisture from Tropical Storm Alma/Arthur, so there is much truth to what you say. Persistent high pressure over the GOMEX also figures in keeping the main jet stream to the north.  

Just remember, just cooling of the northern tier of states is predicted in the short term for the US, and does not conflict with Climate Change theory in the least. The tropical belt does seem to be expanding northward at the same time, at least in the atmosphere. With respect to hurricanes we are 2-3 degrees cool for sea temperatures than the last several years (SST and OHC). Again, this apparent conflict doesn't disprove Climate Change theory in the least.  

Onward through the fog

I agree with much of what has been said in the commentary so far, but I have a few questions.

Doesn't the issue at large boil down to two things:

The temperature change coupled with "humanity's" drive for progress puts the rest of the species we share this earth with at risk, therefore putting our food supply and ecosystems at risk.

The displacement of populations as a result of extreme weather puts further strain on already stressed economies.

Yes, extreme weather has a history on our planet albiet the documentation has been shoddy, but that should not discount the the aforementioned matters at hand. Do I think that there is a link between the frequency and power of these storms all over the world? Yes, but I know that is just a hunch and I do not study weather systems so I could very well be wrong. I also know that the weather is something that seems to escape our predictions, even though we have been in practice for hundreds of years.

Also, I don't think that "fear mongering," as some have called it, regarding weather and pollution is any worse than war AND fear mongering which we are all experiencing now. I would much prefer to be afraid of the weather and nature's "bad temper" than be afraid of "terrorists."

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." --President Bill Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." --President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." --Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." --Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." Letter to President Clinton, signed by: -- Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others, Oct. 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." -- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." Letter to President Bush, Signed by: -- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), and others, Dec 5, 2001

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." -- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." -- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." -- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." -- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do" -- Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." -- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." -- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..." -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." Letter to President Clinton, signed by: -- Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others, Oct. 9, 1998

Hmmm, no mention of consulting with the U.N.

A few more...

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for." -Bill Clinton on Larry King Live July, 2003

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

"I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." -Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003

"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

"I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction." -Dick Gephardt in September of 2002

"Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 - 1994, despite Iraq's denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons. U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq's claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction." -Patty "Osama Mama" Murray, October 9, 2002

"Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq's enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." -John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

Speaking about the WMD's, "The consensus was the same, from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration, It was the same intelligence belief that our allies and friends around the world shared." -Senator Hillary Clinton, April 20, 2004 on Larry King Live

"Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan ..."

An excerpt would have been sufficient dimbulb limboobery to illustrate your worthless point of view.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Got a problem? Blame global warming!

From allergies to maple syrup shortages to yellow fever: apparently every contemporary ill is caused by climate change

`It's all them atom bombs what's doing it.' That is what the old dears used to say in the event of unusual weather when I was growing up in the back streets of Tottenham in north London. There is something deep in the human psyche that requires a cause to be identified for every effect. Presumably this has an evolutionary advantage: man the toolmaker was able to turn abstract concepts, such as consequence and purpose, to his benefit.

Mind you, even in those far off innocent days they did not fly into a panic, as now, over a mild October. They just enjoyed it. They even had a term for it - Indian Summer. What a fine example of ratchet reporting we have seen in recent weeks, with almost every British newspaper showing horror pictures of... late flowering gardens. Yet they studiously ignored the fact that this has been the year without a spring, when the tree blossom was a month late (see these pictures from my website, Numberwatch, as illustration).

That instinct has been a gift for the shamans of each age, ours no less than those that went before. Now carbon, the very stuff of life, has been cast in the role of original sin and its dioxide, absolutely essential to the existence of life on earth, condemned as a pollutant. Just as deviation from the strictures of the gods resulted in calamities such as floods and earthquakes in the past, so our new godless religion decrees that every disaster and minor discomfort arises from our engagement in industry, progress and the pursuit of well-being.

When I began to compile the complete list of things caused by global warming (see below), I was only too aware of the facile dismissal that was casually levelled at my complete list of things that give you cancer: `He made it all up!' So, I only included things for which I could provide a link. That list of over three hundred items is still growing daily, thanks to the efforts of number watchers around the world, and contains some remarkable and delightfully contradictory examples. A new raft of entries has now come in from the Stern Report. These include notably an increase in gender inequalities with men migrating and women subject to impoverishment, forced marriage, labour exploitation, trafficking and natural disasters. You could not make that up - it is beyond satire.

What is not a cause for jocularity is the evidence that all this provides for putrefaction in the groves of academe: for most of these excesses emanate from university departments, and are by people rejoicing in the debased title of professor. Not only does it illustrate the pathetic race to grovel before the priesthood of political correctness, who have seized control of research funding all over the world, it also reveals a loss of that sense of proportion that was once the backbone of experimental science.

The telling phrase `lost in the noise' has simply got lost in the noise. Only a quarter of a century ago, if anyone had claimed that a temperature change of 0.6 degrees Celsius would cause such a drastic change in precipitation that it would in turn trigger earthquakes, it would have been met with universal howls of derision. Now it is just par for the course and any derision would be censored by editors of newspapers and even, heaven help us, scientific journals.

What is it about humanity that provokes this addiction to scaremongering? In the seventies, when the scare was global cooling, there was still a residue of that scepticism that was the legacy of British philosophers.  From the Bacons, through the likes of Locke, Hume and Russell, to the magnificent climax of Popper's statement of the principle of falsifiability, the scientific method was painfully established, only to be abandoned in a few short decades. The method was essentially sceptical, as Thomas Huxley put it:

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

All gone, alas!

John Brignell

Please add to Brutes list above:

  Iowa floods
  Joseph Romm
  Cold weather

Hi John Bignell,
Sorry, I should have said your list, not brute's.

I also remember in Essex and London the very common lament:
It's The Bomb you know

THE MIDWEST FLOODING; How to Donate To Flood Relief
Across the country, people have seen images of the Midwest on television and in newspapers, and now they are donating money and supplies to flood victims in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.
Volunteers at several relief organizations said they were establishing special funds and sending disaster teams to the region to decide what to donate and how to allocate the cash donations.
Following is a list of organizations seeking donations:
The American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013. (800) 842-2200, or, for Spanish speakers, (800) 257-7575.
The American Red Cross of Greater New York, P.O. Box 9140, Church Street Station, New York, N.Y. 10256.
AmeriCares, 161 Cherry Street, New Canaan, Conn. 06840. (800) 486-4357.
Church World Service, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, Ind. 46515. (219) 264-3102.
World Vision, P.O. Box 1131, Pasadena, Calif. 91131. (800) 423-4200.

For Immediate Release: June 17, 2008

Energy Guzzled by Al Gore's Home in Past Year Could Power 232 U.S. Homes for a Month
Gore's personal electricity consumption up 10%, despite "energy-efficient" home renovations

NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President's home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

"A man's commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home," said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. "Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption."

In the past year, Gore's home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

In February 2007, An Inconvenient Truth, a film based on a climate change speech developed by Gore, won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore's Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household.

After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore's massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home's windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the "green" overhaul.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month -1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations - at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria.

"Actions speak louder than words, and Gore's actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity," Johnson said. "Gore is exploiting the public's concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile."

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville-based free market think tank and watchdog organization, obtained information about Gore's home energy use through a public records request to the Nashville Electric Service.

Gore's 'carbon offsets' paid to firm he owns
Critics say justification for energy-rich lifestyle serves as way for former VP to profit

Al Gore defends his extraordinary personal energy usage by telling critics he maintains a "carbon neutral" lifestyle by buying "carbon offsets," but the company that receives his payments turns out to be partly owned and chaired by the former vice president himself.
Gore has built a "green money-making machine capable of eventually generating billions of dollars for investors, including himself, but he set it up so that the average Joe can't afford to play on Gore's terms," writes blogger Dan Riehl.
Gore has described the lifestyle he and his wife Tipper live as "carbon neutral," meaning he tries to offset any energy usage, including plane flights and car trips, by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere."
But it turns out he pays for his extra-large carbon footprint through Generation Investment Management, a London-based company with offices in Washington, D.C., for which he serves as chairman. The company was established to take financial advantage of new technologies and solutions related to combating "global warming," reports blogger Bill Hobbs.
Generation Investment Management's U.S. branch is headed by a former Gore staffer and fund-raiser, Peter S. Knight, who once was the target of probes by the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice.
Hobbs points out Gore stands to make a lot of money from his promotion of the alleged "global warming" threat, which is disputed by many mainstream scientists.
"In other words, he 'buys' his 'carbon offsets' from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself," Hobbs writes. "To be blunt, Gore doesn't buy 'carbon offsets' through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks."
As WND reported, Gore, whose film warning of a coming cataclysm due to man-made "global warming" won two Oscars, has a mansion in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville that consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, citing data from the Nashville Electric Service.
The think tanks says since the release of Gore's film, the former presidential candidate's energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kilowatt-hours per month in 2005, to 18,400 per month in 2006.

While I disagree with you on Iraq for Machiavellian reasons, I basically agree with most of what you wrote. The defeatists and whiners posting here are pathetic.

Victory in Pattani

Absurd Claims Of Alarm
The Press | Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Manmade global warming is a myth, and the cult surrounding it will fade into obscurity, but the costs and taxes imposed to combat this imagined menace will remain. In 1998, a peculiar thing happened. Global warming, such as it was, came to an end. Since then, global temperatures have trended downwards, while carbon-dioxide emissions have risen.

The disconnect between carbon-dioxide emissions and global temperature trends proved what many scientists had been saying for some time, that the two are unrelated. But this should have been intuitively obvious in any case because industrial carbon dioxide represents only a tiny percentage of the atmosphere, so it is hardly likely to be a powerful climatic driving force.
It stretches credibility to suppose that such a vanishingly small percentage of a naturally occurring minor gas would be potent enough to drive Earth's climate into meltdown. But it stretches credibility even further to suppose that reducing this fraction by a few per cent would then be sufficient to reverse it.
If the Earth's atmosphere were that sensitive to infinitesimal tweaks to its minor constituent gasses, we would not be here today debating it, because the climate would have spiralled out of control millions of years ago when carbon-dioxide levels were some 10 times higher than today.
In his alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore suggests the Earth's biosphere is also incapable of surviving slight shifts in temperature, where less than 1deg rise over a century is cause for alarm. But if this were so, mankind would not have survived the Roman warm period, the mediaeval warm period or the 1930s dust-bowl era, when temperatures were consistently higher than today.
So there is nothing unusual in either higher temperatures or higher levels of carbon dioxide. Indeed, history shows that higher temperatures are entirely beneficial to mankind.
It was during the mediaeval warm period, after all, that most of Europe's cathedrals were built, England was balmy enough to be a major wine producer, and Eric the Red colonised Greenland.
So what is going on? What is so special about carbon dioxide and 0.6deg warming over 150 years that has the political world in such a flap?
Why is carbon dioxide considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be a polluting scourge inimical to life on Earth when the opposite is true?
Despite mounting evidence that manmade climate change is a myth and the science behind it is tenuous at best, the issue is so politically entrenched that the United Nations Human Rights Council has made climate change a human-rights issue.
This astounding development reflects the attitude of Maurice Strong, adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said: "We may get to the point where the only way to save the world will be for industrial civilisation to collapse."
Not to be outdone, the United States Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, Timothy Wirth, declared: "We have got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."
Even worse, Richard Benedick, who headed policy divisions of the US State Department, said: "A global-warming treaty must be implemented, even if there is no scientific evidence to back the (enhanced) greenhouse effect".
Yet thousands of scientists are scathing of the IPCC's forecasts and are concerned that science is being manipulated to prove there is a catastrophe facing mankind, when no such threat exists. They warn of the dangers in relying upon computer models, which have proved hopelessly inaccurate, while being used as a basis for massive economic change.
Dr Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in the Wall Street Journal: "What the public fails to grasp is that these claims (of increased carbon-dioxide emissions) neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred.
"In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating scepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming".
Many scientists are concerned that the IPCC is using the implausible threat of catastrophic climate change to frighten governments into introducing drastic economic penalties for carbon emissions solely to undermine Western democracies, scientific progress and industrialisation.
According to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), it is precisely because the IPCC is an entity of the UN and is dominated by socialist political agendas that it is predisposed to produce reports championing the manmade global-warming hypothesis.
Yet the 1990 IPCC Summary ignored satellite data that showed no such warming, while significant textual alterations were made to the 1995 IPCC report after it had been approved by the scientists.
The 2001 IPCC report claimed that the last century showed unusual warming based on the infamous "hockey-stick" graph, which was later proved fraudulent by Canadian mathematicians Ross McKitrick and Stephen McKintyre.
The 2007 IPCC report downplayed the effects of solar variability on climate, implying the Sun's massive influence is easily overpowered by minuscule artificial adjustments to a minor natural gas. This is a laughable proposition, yet it is considered sufficient reason on its own to bring about huge economic change affecting the lives of billions of people.
However, as the science behind anthropogenic global warming unravels and the politics based on it becomes untenable, the issue morphs into other hobgoblins: global warming morphs into "climate change" and climate change morphs into "sustainability".
The carbon cult will ultimately fade into obscurity and become a joke, but the costs and taxes imposed to combat the imagined menace will remain.
Meanwhile, the outspoken alarmists who so espoused this carbon-based religion will fade away or stealthily change their tune to sustainability, as though that had been the issue all along.
"A lie told often enough becomes truth," as Vladimir Lenin said.

what is the beauty in a city cloaked in smog?

All of those wasting their time on discounting the correlation between CO2 and population growth/energy consumption are missing the larger general point:

We have reached an era where everyone wants things to be as clean as possible. Clean food, clean water, clean house, clean environment.

Why argue motives when it overshadows something we all agree on? The protection and rebuilding of ecosystems we rely on for global survival?

... supposedly "defeatist, anti American manure".

The National Guard was set up to help American citizens during times of emergencies. The Guard is supposed to be controlled by the states. When the Federal government takes control of the Guard and deploys it abroad for inappropriate reasons, whether Democrats or Republicans make the decision, it undermines our national security and reduces our ability to respond to military threats and natural disasters.

We are the government. When we vote to create organizations like the National Guard and pay taxes to support them, we are helping ourselves, our families, our communities. There is nothing anti-American about speaking up and expressing one's opinions when resources are being misused or squandered. Nor is it "whining" to point it out to my fellow Americans.

It is, however, anti-American to abuse people who volunteer to serve their country by sending them abroad to replace one despotic government we created with another despotic government. Especially when the real terrorists, those who attacked us on 9/11, are still at large in Afghanistan and still funded by Saudi Arabians and drug money. Especially when, if the Federal government is not going to use the Guard or rest of our fine military personnel to fight the real terrorists, there are tasks for them here in the United States.

I believe it is not at all defeatist or anti-American to care about our soldiers and ask our government, our fellow citizens, our representative to ensure our volunteer military does not sacrifice men and women in vain.

Regarding what you consider additional "whining"...

I wrote...

""We need to invest resources in building, maintaining, protecting, repairing our infrastructure HERE. We need trained volunteers HERE. We need equipment HERE.""

This is not whining. I did not say we have a right to these things. I did not say we deserve them. I did not say we are entitled to them. I did not say anyone owed me or anyone else these things. I'm pointing out a fact. It is well recognized that the infrastructure -- the roads, communications, dams, levees, airports, bridges, water supplies, sewage treatment facilities, et cetera -- that supports our economy is deteriorating. It is not "whining" to suggest we might all want to work together to invest resources in rebuilding our infrastructure in the United States and make sure we can stand strong as an independent nation, not relying on resources from abroad, versus investing in  rebuilding the infrastructure in Iraq, which will probably spiral into chaos regardless of how hard and how many lives we dedicate to holding it together.

I feel much compassion and sadness for those who have died. But it will not help to send others to their deaths. GW committed those people to the quagmire. Democrats and Republicans are both responsible for permitting the war to go forward. Democrats and Republicans stand in the way of bringing our fellow citizens home.

Brute wrote...

"You seem to be under the misunderstanding that somebody should provide for you simply because you exist. It doesn't work that way....your life is what YOU make of it and this country simply provides you the opportunity to SUPPORT YOURSELF. For God's sake, grow a pair."

Should someone provide for me simply because I exist? No. NOT AT ALL. How did my remarks suggest that? Did I personally ask for help? No. I only ask that the government -- the one I participate in by voting, paying taxes, volunteering -- take care of my fellow Americans in a responsible manner and not squander lives, resources, money, respect in fruitless foreign ventures.

I realize my life is what I make of it and I'm personally responsible for my success and failure. And I realize this country provides the opportunity for me to support myself. It does it by permitting all of us to work together to build a stable safe community where we can focus on what we personally do best rather than wonder whether the highway system will be there tomorrow, whether the dam upstream of our home will fail, whether the water is clean enough to drink, whether someone will beat young girls to death because they don't cover their heads with scarves.

If you read any American history, you surely realize that we are most powerful as individuals and a nation when we work together... as the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution says...

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

...and there are provisions for electing representatives and passing laws to back  this up.

I have "a pair". Do you? What have you done lately to ensure the Federal government is not abusing its power and trampling on the U.S. Constitution, one of two documents that unites Americans and truly defines who we are, what our rights are, and what our responsibilities are? Far from thinking the someone owes ME something, I think every single one of us owes the founders of this country and our fellow citizens something... each of us must do what we can to ensure that democracy does gradually not give way to totalitarianism, left-, center-, or right-wing versions of it.

More of my apparent whining...

"The threat to the United States is our deteriorating infrastucture and lack of resources for coping with economic and social disruptions due to wild fires, flooding, blizzards, earthquakes, et cetera."

Whining? Just pointing out a few facts.

Brute goes on to write...

"...liberating 27 million people from the ruthless regime of Saddam Hussein, his vicious sons and his gang of murderous thugs is a noble and righteous cause. Your description of the battle in Iraq as a "pointless military venture" is without merit and defies all standards of knowledge regarding the situation."

Sure, liberating everyone under despotic regimes would be noble and righteous. But we don't have the resources to do it. I'm all for dealing with the terrorists in Afghanistan. On 9/11, we were attacked by Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians, trained by Al Queda (or however the hell you spell it), protected by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Bin Laden despised Saddam Hussein as much as he despised us because Hussein was ruthless in suppressing religious fundamentalists. We should have focused on getting the job done in Afghanistan rather then sending people who signed up to fight the Taliban off to Iraq. Now the Taliban is on the rise again.  Why is it defeatist and anti-American to suggest that Iraq is a waste of time and effort?

Finally, Brute wrote...

"Read something other than Pravda or People's Daily and you may learn something about how things are in the real world."

What specifically makes you think I read Pravda or the People's Daily? Why would I want to read and why would I believe the material put out by the far-right "democracy" of Russia or the totalitarian government of China? I get my news and other information from a variety of sources, consider the credibility of the sources, look for inconsistencies and ulterior motives, ask a lot of questions, and reach my own conclusions. I certainly don't go around parroting propaganda, especially the propaganda of governments and organizations I disagree with!!!!

So... where do you get most of your information from?

Peace.

More sniveling and whining from wiscidea..........Holy cow, we are creating a generation of helpless, complaining, malcontents...............our country is doomed if wiscidea is an example of American citizenry.

Savee419,

Everyone wants clean water, air and food..... which has absolutely NOTHING to do with CO2. Carbon Dioxide is PLANT FOOD and is exactly what the politicians/eco-chondriacs are attempting to regulate through taxation and government fiat. CO2 has nothing to do with the environment except that it helps plants grow healthier and stronger; faster.

Politicians are attempting to pass legislation to control energy and consumerism; another attempt for government to reach further into our lives and pocket books. If you want to clean up around your house, DO IT, no one is stopping you. We already have laws regarding pollution....... we already have consumption taxes for gasoline and energy.....the more you use, the more taxes you pay. Pick up trash on the side of the road or volunteer to wade through a river and pick up trash if you're concerned about it. Better yet, write a letter to your congressman and ask them why they aren't doing it; we already pay for them to pick up trash which they don't do.

"Global warming" is a manufactured "crisis" to illicit guilt and empathy for the cause of increasing taxes and controlling legitimate, profitable industries.....to make you feel good, to make you gladly hand more of your hard earned money and liberties to politicians who couldn't care less about the environment or your family.

Obama and the rest of the nutty Democrats are now talking about confiscating even more money from the oil industry calling their profits "obscene" and "unreasonable". Who do you think pays those taxes? YOU DO. Do you have a retirement plan? If you do, you own oil stock, coal stock and natural gas stock. Politicians are attempting to raid your retirement. There is no "Mr. Exxon", "Mr. Mobil", "Mr. Coca Cola"....these companies are not owned by fat cat rich guys...they are owned by nurses unions, truck drivers unions, ditch digger's unions...hundreds of thousands of people called shareholders. Exxon/Mobil and Coca Cola don't pay the taxes; they pass their corporate taxes along to the people that buy their products.....it's called OVERHEAD....the cost of doing business.......YOU PAY IT. For every gallon of gasoline you purchase, 60 cents is confiscated by the government; the oil company share/profit is 8 cents....who's ripping off whom?

Coca Cola has a larger profit margin.....so does Goggle, as does Generation Investment Trust, (Al Gore's company), but I haven't heard a word about "windfall" profits tax being imposed on those companies/industries. Liberals have thrown up a straw man argument and created a boogeyman/scapegoat to divert attention from their nefarious enterprises.

Most American now work from January 1st through mid-May just to cover their tax exposure. One third of the time you spend at work is earning money to pay someone else's bills. Take a look at the net worth of some of these politicians before and after they were elected.....they are making a fortune raping the American people.

Global Warming is a confidence scheme..... a flim flam..... a canard.....a scam............a dodge...a ruse. Clear enough?

IPCC Scientist Calls Global Warming Fears the Worst Scientific Scandal in History

June 17, 2008

Note: The Sheer volume of scientists dissenting from UN IPCC climate views since 2007 has made it difficult for me to keep the database up to date. To read about the latest scientists to publicly speak out, see below and see: U.S. Senate's report of now over 500 skeptical scientists (and constantly growing) of man-made global warming fears. See:  Senate Report - It appears that man-made climate fears are literally as Meteorologist James Spann says below "rapidly running out of gas" both in peer-reviewed studies and in the claimed "consensus."

Mythical UN IPCC `Consensus' Continues to Crumble: Top UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Turns on IPCC. Calls Warming Fears: `Worst scientific scandal in the history'. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist who specializes in optical waveguide spectroscopy from the Yokohama National University, also contributed to the 2007 UN IPCC AR4 (fourth assessment report) as an expert reviewer. Itoh, a former lecturer at the University of Tokyo, just released his new book Lies and Traps in the Global Warming Affairs (currently in Japanese only).

"We have described many topics in this book, including inaccurate temperature measurements (e.g., A. Watt's work), `observations' of climate sensitivity, many climate forcings such as colored-aerosol and vegetation (based on 2005 NRC report as Roger has so many times pointed out), and the effect of solar magnetic activity (including my own work)," Itoh wrote on June 17, 2008, on the weblog of former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. Itoh's new book includes chapters calling man-made global warming fears "the worst scientific scandal in the history." "I also cited the opinions of Dr. Akasofu (Professor Emeritus, University of Alaska) in the last part of the book. He sincerely advises us, "When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists," and says, "IPCC should make appropriate comments before G8." I sincerely think he is correct," Itoh wrote.

Meteorologist says Man-Made Global Warming Movement "Rapidly Running Out of Gas" In last year. A year and a half ago, James Spann questioned the money and the so-called scientific consensus pushing the idea that mankind is causing global warming. Today, he says it's losing steam. "[Y]ou know, there was some great power in that movement back in January of 2007," Spann said. "It's pretty rapidly running out of gas and it just seems like every day more and more people are coming out with the fact that that's pretty much a hoax." And these are Ph.D climatologists that are pretty much saying what I said all along."

`IPCC theory of anthropogenic warming is a hoax' says Patrick Carroll, retired Environment Canada meteorologist (June 9, 2008 - Canada's The Hill Times)

Professor Dr. William J.R. Alexander, Emeritus of the Department of Civil and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters. Man-made global warming is not real. Professor Will Alexander claimed that claims by environmentalists that climate change was real were not true and if the world was warmer now, it was simply caused by natural climatic variability.

Prize-wining Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia says all the expense will be for nothing, as climate change cannot be stopped--and it isn't even caused by human-created carbon dioxide. "There is no relationship between carbon dioxide produced by industry and climate change," he said. He claims Myth May Wreck Economy.

Weather Channel Founder: `I ask Al Gore, where's the global warming?' Meteorologist John Coleman said in a speech to he San Diego Chamber of Commerce "Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.  Well, it is simply not happening."

Dr. John Brignell a UK Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton who was awarded the Callendar Silver Medal by InstMC and served on a committee of the Institute of Physics says "Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man." Read more on these and many more weekly stories.

Oh, and wiscidea......

Victory is the Exit Strategy.

We'll leave Iraq when we're done.

Brute...

Thank you for your remarks. They were very informative.

But would you please select one paragraph of the post you are referring to and explain why you consider it "sniveling and whining"?

I think the issue of the nature of climate change and our dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere (as well as other gases like methane) is not something we should ignore and just shrug off. However, of equal concern is the Green movements agenda - which is clearly using climate change as an engine for other changes that it wants to see. This is intellectually dishonest. The Green movement will use any scare tactic to change lifestyles which they disagree with in principal, regardless of whether or not they are valid environmental issues. Of course, for whack jobs like Wolverine everything is a valid environmental issue because in his world view we are just another species and a bad one at that. He thinks humans should basically be eliminated.

Victory in Pattani

Brute...

While we'll apparently never agree on what it means to be an American and how our country should move forward into the future, I'd like to express my appreciation for your efforts to defend our nation and the principles you believe in.

While I might have the courage to speak up and demand my representatives in Washington and the state capital do their jobs without squandering lives or resources, I definitely do not have the courage to turn my life over to the Federal government and allow them to decide whether I should live or die, where I should live or die, and why I should live or die. I just don't trust them to attack the real enemy.

You, on the other hand, clearly have more confidence in our leaders in Washington. Only the bravest among us could stand up and say to the President... I will go anywhere you ask and die if necessary to protect this country and not hold it against you if you make a mistake.

We are going to desparately need more people like you over the next ten or twenty years, people willing to go to Iraq and finish a very very difficult job. And once you finish the job in Iraq, we'll be asking you to go to Afghanistan and finally defeat the terroists who attacked us on 9/11.

Basically, even if I don't believe "Victory is the Exit Strategy", I sincerely appreciate your service to the nation. I realize you probably don't want the help. But I'll be doing what I can to persuade the folks in Washington to pay our soldiers more -- I can't believe GW opposes this! -- and provide them with all the medical assistance they need when they return home -- again, I can't believe GW opposes this!

You've pointed out that no one deserves anything from anyone. But I really think those defending our nation, risking their lives, deserve far more than the are currently getting... more pay, more respect, more help when they return.

Thanks again. If you are content serving in Iraq, I certainly can't hold it against you. I certainly won't interfere with efforts to get you the equipment you need as long as you are over there. And I hope you guys and gals do win. It's just that history and the odds are not really behind you and I refuse to try to comfort you by saying I think everything will be okay.

Reality always bats last.

Peace.

is best measured via thermal expansion, i.e. sea level rise.

.... might be true. But mass is another variable. And the more H2O you put into the sea, the higher the sea level.............

Victory in Pattani

sure have not thought about that

But I do understand basic physics.

If I have "X" amount of water, and I add more water to it, my water level rises. I do this every time I fill a glass of water. It's not complex science.

So when, for example, ice melts in massive amounts in Greenland, it dumps WATER into the ocean. Stands to reason it would affect sea levels. In fact, scientists are claiming this very thing concerning disappearing Islands in the pacific.

Victory in Pattani

"We'll leave Iraq when we're done."

You are certainly free to stay in Iraq as long as you want to.  Become a citizen, please.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

How amazing that Brute and others can give detailed explanations of various phenomena and yet still cannot understand the basics of climate science.
Two massive floods are going on in the planet currently. Ours, which is termed by geologists to be a '500 year flood'. How soon before the next 500 year flood comes?
The Chinese said their costs are 1 million people evacuated, 45000 homes destroyed, and 1 Billion$-- so far.
Yes, the Yellow River and the Mississippi have always flooded. But these are worse. The floods in england, Italy, part of Russia, and the 3 floods in New Hampshire during the last 2 or 3 years were all exceptional.
Tornados were caused in the Midwest this spring by the difference in the cold Pacific and the heat in the East.
Every time the heat ratchets up a portion of a degree, you can expect more and worse weather. I truly wish I didn't know this.

The Great Dayton Flood

Unprecedented............What were the CO2 Levels in 1913?

Beginning on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, torrential rains across the Midwest dropped a record three months of rainfall in four days. Floodwaters funneled down Ohio's Miami Valley into the heart of the vibrant industrial city of Dayton. Levees burst, houses were swept away, and downtown was gutted by fires blazing from broken gas mains. At the end of Easter week, nearly 100 Daytonians had perished, and tens of thousands more were left homeless and destitute--a tragedy that made banner headlines in newspapers nationwide. Out of Dayton's ashes and mud rose fierce public resolve never again to suffer such destruction. The Great Dayton Flood of 1913 reproduces some 200 astounding photographs from the collections of the Dayton Metro Library and the Miami Conservancy District and the archives of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton History. They portray the terrifying flood, monumental destruction, heroic rescues, and compassionate leadership that occurred during the disaster and its immediate aftermath, as well as the pioneering flood-control engineering that has kept Dayton safe ever since.

More evidence of flooding that has never happened before......

1.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1931
Death Toll: 1,000,000 to 3,700,000
The Huang He River is prone to flooding because of the broad expanse of plain that lies around it. One of the major reasons for the flooding is the high silt content that gives the river its yellow tint (and thus its name). The silt--which constitutes as much as 60% of its volume--builds up until the river actually is higher than the surrounding land. The tendency to flood is exacerbated by ice dams which block the river in Mongolia; the dams back up the water, and then release devastating walls of water when they break.
The history of flooding has prompted the Communist Chinese government to embark on a program of building dams for flood control. The dams, however, have not proven entirely effective and have been the target of criticism from environmentalists.
2.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1887
Death Toll: 900,000 to 2,000,000
3.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1938
Death Toll: 500,000 - 900,000
The 1938 flood of the Huang He was caused by Nationalist Chinese troops under Chiang Kai-Shek when they broke the levees in an attempt to turn back advancing Japanese troops. The strategy was partly successful. By 1940, the Japanese were essentially in a stalemate with Chinese forces.
4.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1642
Death Toll: 300,000
Chinese rebels destroy the dikes along the city of Kaifeng, flooding the surrounding countryside.
5.
Ru River, Banqiao Dam, China
1975
Death Toll: 230,000
This flood was caused by the collapse of the Banquia Dam, along with several others, following a heavy rain caused by a typhoon. It is the worst dam related collapse in history.
6.
Yangtze River, China
1931
Death Toll: 145,000
Although the Huang He has caused more deaths, the Yangtze has had more than 1,000 recorded floods.
7.
The Netherlands and England
1099
Death Toll: 100,000
A combination of high tides and storms flooded the Thames and the Netherlands, killing 100,000.
8.
The Netherlands
1287
Death Toll: 50,000
A seawall on the Zuider Zee failed, flooding the low-lying polder.
9.
The Neva River, Russia
1824
Death Toll: 10,000
An ice dam clogged the Neva, flooding nearby cities.
10.
The Netherlands
1421
Death Toll: 10,000

"Carbon Dioxide is PLANT FOOD and is exactly what the politicians/eco-chondriacs are attempting to regulate through taxation and government fiat. CO2 has nothing to do with the environment except that it helps plants grow healthier and stronger; faster."

We are not plants. I am confused by your logic. I don't know about you but I thrive on O2, yes I can handle some CO2 in the mix, but not if these levels rise. With more coal and nuclear power plants being constructed, I will really have to buy surgeons masks for my daily commute.

The laws we have on pollution are 30 years old, time to upgrade - enough is never enough when you are fighting for something, anything.

I do not give money to politicians, but thanks for looking out for my wallet. And as far as my retirement plan goes, I daily search for ways to get OUT of the investments that do not align with my morals. I am constantly looking for socially responsible options. I understand that you know everyone is not as perfect as they come off to be, but stop being so damn negative and have a little faith that SOME people do not just follow the wave of "popular belief" and think as clearly as you do, but just decided to live a different way.

Just curious, but in what other ways do you focus your rage? (Sorry, but it is hard not to read frustration into your writing.)

Savee419,

SOME people do not just follow the wave of "popular belief" and think as clearly as you do, but just decided to live a different way.

Great, live the way you want to; however, when your Earth worship religious convictions impact my family, I will speak up. No one is forcing you to join and donate to the Catholic Church; but you would have me join and forcibly pay to live by your environmental religious beliefs. We need a separation of The Church of Environmentalism and the State. Al Gore and the rest of the holier than thou charlatans are attempting to sell people a bill of goods that is built on flawed science and hyperbole.......its a shakedown.

Savee419 writes:
"With more coal and nuclear power plants being constructed, I will really have to buy surgeons masks for my daily commute........"

Brute counters:
Nuclear power plants don't emit "greenhouse" gases.

Savee419 writes:
"The laws we have on pollution are 30 years old,"

Brute counters:
The laws were foolish nonsense then, as are the "new" laws being proposed now.