Religious zealots and those that believe in global warming are one and the same.

Well put, Maurice. Both of them want to take control of our country to pursue an agenda based on faith rather than reason.

The article's last sentence is the really telling one. Why do you think the US didn't sign Kyoto? Because it has no restrictions on China or Mexico or India or a dozen other countries which are poised to become the top polluters in the world by huge margins in the next few years.

The US has more than proved its ability to be responsible, with some of the most effective pollution laws in the world, especially on automobile emissions. Why should we support a global warming treaty which singles us out for extraordinary sanctions while doing nothing to control pollution in countries relying on much more destructive industries.

As for global warming, the lack of consensus in that area has been well documented. Not only do large numbers of scientists who have no particular corporate affiliation not believe that human activity plays a significant role in it, many scientists, including those who believe in a human agency, think that the long term result of greenhouse gasses will be global cooling, not warming.

Dave

Maurice - can you explain that so it make sense rather than just sound cute?

the sad thing in all of this is that we will do almost nothing (except claiming that global warming is 'bad science') until it's too late.

If you really, really believe the global warming experts it was too late 30 years ago. This isn't the kind of problem where you can just flip a switch and fix it. Global warming is an enormous natural force, and just as it's unlikely human pollution played a major role in causing it, it's even more unlikely that anything we can do will stop it.

Dave

rationalize doing nothing all you want.

fun isn't it?

Complicated by the fact that the earth goes thru natural warming trends anyway, at variable intervals that so far cannot be predicted w/any reliability. So...is this a 'normal' situation that was en route anyway, or us being naughty?

Unfortunately it appears that the propoganda pushed by industry and the US Administration is working.

Look outside your own borders and you'll see everyone, and I mean everyone is satisfied with the data and what it implies.

But even the geologists, et al get into fights about this at their favorite bars, and I read opinions and articles on both sides of the argument. Who's a girl to believe?

It really doesn't matter what caused it, whether it was exacerbated or not by industrialisation all that is by the by. What matters is that the ambient temperature has increased and increased year on year.

Continental Glaciers are melting.

There is one good piece of news and that's that the hole in the ozone layer at the Pole is reducing and reducing at a rate slightly faster than predicted after the global reduction of CFCs.

It is not too late to do something about it.

Again, Dave has stepped in an arena without knowledge. How about the experts that the UN has chosen to write its reports on global warming Dave? They don't say it is too late, yet. The problem is, most religious zealots are the one who do not believe in global warming. Although the US has proven its ability to be responsible, it has not acted on that ability. Just because it has some strict laws dosen't mean they are working.

Or enforced.

Maurice?

Dave Nalle: Why do you think the US didn't sign Kyoto? Because it has no restrictions on China or Mexico or India or a dozen other countries which are poised to become the top polluters in the world by huge margins in the next few years.

Nope, that's not what I think. I think it's because the U.S. is currently the top polluter in the world by a huge margin. As I remember, Bush himself said it was because he didn't want to "harm our economy" (though I'm not so sure that first person plural includes many of the rest of us).

As for global warming, the lack of consensus in that area has been well documented. Not only do large numbers of scientists who have no particular corporate affiliation not believe that human activity plays a significant role in it, many scientists, including those who believe in a human agency, think that the long term result of greenhouse gasses will be global cooling, not warming.

From what peer-reviewed science journals are you getting your sense of what scientists believe?

theSilver: "Look outside your own borders and you'll see everyone, and I mean everyone is satisfied with the data and what it implies."

Actually, some of the most outspoken experts critical of global warming are from the UK, Europe. Russia, Australia and Canada. Support from within the US is much firmer than it is from outside, assuming you discount politically motivated or corporate sponsored advocacy.

Richard: "Again, Dave has stepped in an arena without knowledge."

We've been over this at length before, and I provided extensive documentation of alternative viewpoints on global warming from entirely reputable sources.

Richard: "How about the experts that the UN has chosen to write its reports on global warming Dave?"

Do you mean the ones who disavowed the report because it was edited to change their conclusions by the supervising committee?

Richard: "The problem is, most religious zealots are the one who do not believe in global warming."

This clearly isn't what he meant by his comment. He meant that the techniques and tenaciousness of global warming supporters are like those of religious zealots and that their belief in global warming is like religion because it is based on faith rather than fact.

JR: "From what peer-reviewed science journals are you getting your sense of what scientists believe?"

How many would you like? There are several in the journal of the Geological Association of Canada, which has come out firmly in dispute of many aspects global warming theory. You can also find them in Russian geological publications and more and more other sources as well, including a prominent article in a recent issue of Scientific American. There would be more, but there is a clear pattern of academic journals automatically rejecting any paper which opposes the dominant global warming theories in any but the most tangential way.

One impressive academic climate realist group is the Lavoisier Group in Australia. They have a great links page with peer reviewed papers and other articles at http://www.lavoisier.com.au/

And of course, you can't deny the work of climatologists like Proffessors Richard Lindzen of MIT and Philip Stott of the University of London. Both are respected climate scientists who write extensively on a realistic view of climate change, and they are widely ignored. They have the best credentials and substantial research and yet their articles are automatically rejected out of hand by peer reviewed journals. Lindzen was regularly published in peer reviewed journals up until the 1990s when he began to oppose global warming. Since that time not one of his papers has been accepted.

In addition, I would strongly recommend reading this detailed overview article of the political forces which are distorting the entire Global Warming debate. http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html

Dave

Dave Mainstrean science including the Bush Administration conclude global warming is fact. There is no faith involved except faith in physical laws.

No Dave the experts on their web page if you cared to read it, you pompus ass.

There would be more, but there is a clear pattern of academic journals automatically rejecting any paper which opposes the dominant global warming theories in any but the most tangential way.

There is also a clear pattern of academic journals rejecting any paper which opposes the theory of evolution.

Hmmm...

my reality needs to be seriously cooled: it's 90 degrees today and the air conditioning is broken and I am stuck sitting at this freaking computer with an enormous headache and sweat dripping down my legs

This is an excellent, and politically neutral, description of how we can account for the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=160#more-160

Nice incoherent ranting, Richard. What does that second sentence mean anyway?

I've never said global warming doesn't exist, as you know perfectly well. The question is entirely whether humans have caused or influenced it significantly and whether humans can change the trend.

As for global warming being an article of faith, if you look at all the conflicting models and absolute guesswork involved in developing them, how can you consider it anything else?

Sliver, that article is considerably improved by the several well informed responses which debunk major sections of it definitively.

Dave

I don't see any debunking. I see one major contribution citing a now out of date paper that northern hemisphere re-forestation is enough to absorb excess carbon.

This theory is then extended to show that the relative performance of that reforestation is slowing and will peter out as actual new growth (not regrowth) overall ends.

Its the use of emotive words such as debunking that makes dialog in this impossible. If you take the preponderance of evidence then it is unmistakably true that the ambient global temperature has risen with some notable results, including greater chaos within the weather systems of the planet that mean that some areas are going to be drier and hotter, others colder and wetter and extreme places where there will be no consistent weather pattern.

As I've said before it makes no difference whether the cause is human populations, industrial processess or just a natural periodicity in climate change the results will be the same an increasingly less habitable planet. Not attempting to do anything about that and not even attempting to do patently Good things is reprehensibly irresponsible.

Arguments such as 'well if India and China won't do it, then we won't' remind one more of kindergarten behaviour than adult responsible government.

You're right, debunking is probably the wrong word. Scientists who oppose the IPCC and the dominant global warming theories aren't really debunking them, they're mostly pointing to the fact that the theories are not based on sound science, and while they may have some validity, that validity is unproven, especially in the area of human agency where the evidence is very, very shaky.

From my reading on the subject I would say tht most climate scientists who disagree with the dominant theories do so because those who support global warming do so on the basis of several theories which are actually mutually contradictory and based more on conjecture and statistics which are taken from unreliable data gathering methods rather than something definitive.

It's not so much a debunking as skepticism at a conclusion which appears to have been leapt to without doing the necessary scientific work to provide real proof.

Dave

Skepticism is fine, but I can't see that the basic theories are contradictory at all.

It has to be borne in mind that all of the results used are statistical, there are no certainties in this and there never will be until the point is well past at which there is no doubt. However, within the bounds of reasonable forecasting we do have enough data to say that overall the climate is changing and changing at a faster rate this decade than last decade.

They're just numbers, they don't depend on a theory as to why its changing, they don't depend even on a cause being identified but the numbers are there just the same and they take no article of faith from me for them to exist.

Spring has started progressively earlier in the UK over the past numbers of years, its now between 7 and 10 days earlier than the standard expected dates given by Kew Gardens in the 1960's and based upon figures that were then around 180 years old.

I'm not going to point a finger at any particular cause because that is pointless but given that we do pump out gases, heat and convert carbon it seems only reasonable that we do something about those things that we do have control over. Willfully not doing so is irresponsible and in the end will have far more dire economic and social results than doing nothing, or at least very little.

Dave Nalle: From my reading on the subject I would say tht most climate scientists who disagree with the dominant theories do so because those who support global warming do so on the basis of several theories which are actually mutually contradictory and based more on conjecture and statistics which are taken from unreliable data gathering methods rather than something definitive.

Uh... Wha?

Dude, I know you can write better than that.

i really beleive we should be kind to the environment (in fact i'm trying to sign up for the smoke a joint save a tree program) but i don't buy the global warming theory. deos that make me a bad person, i ask you?