Global cooling is our most serious climate challenge.

Of course, I read it.

But I realize that real science may be beyond your comprehension.

Are you in denial AJ?

Are you worried that the whole hoax is coming down?

You're funny. Thanks for reminding us that real science is where the results are decided by the group funding the study before the data is collected and analyzed.

It is your side that is has given up the scientific method. There is absolutely no science backing up the speculation about carbon dioxide. But there are lots of bureaucrats and faux scientists worried about continued funding. They can't tell the truth or they will be unemployed.

I don't see why someone like you has bought into this scam. Or are you one of them?

From http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ :

Certainly seems like the trend is up.

In any case, it's certainly true that the politicization of the issue has made real science near impossible, but I think that reducing fossil fuel consumption is worthwhile anyhow.

AJ - Your resort to name calling is obviously a sign of desperation. You are brainwashed and need help.

I'm only trying to help you see the truth.

Change is difficult, but you can do it.

Rorek - that old hockey stick data has long since been disproved

An ice shelf the size of Connecticut is in the process of breaking off of Antarctica.... and glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, and Scandinavia are melting to the point that core ice is thawing which had been frozen for tens of thousands of years....

Antarctica is getting colder and the ice mass is growing.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17257

This year has been so cold that the ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere is also growing.

Slab Of Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses Amid Warming.... and I suppose this didn't really happen?

Anyway even if pollution were not causing Global Warming, it is still most definitely causing cancer and toxic abortions of the unborn....

Yes, a large slab of ice broke off of Antarctica.
However, the amount of ice in Antarctica is still growing.

I think most people want clean water and air. We've made a lot of progress in those areas since the 1970's. We need to continue to carefully balance tradeoffs.

But let's be clear - carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

But the same burning processes that put carbon dioxide in the air also put a lot of other things in the air that contribute to bad health, generally.... carbon monoxide for one, and all sorts of other residue of plastics and metals not found in natural sources of heat (like volcanoes and wildfires)....

So what do you think we should do?

Sounds like you want to shut down the world. No cars? No Airplanes? No computers? No televisions?

The world wasn't very clean when everyone cooked over open fires.

If you were in charge what would you do?

Only a few scientists in the 70's actually thought that there was global cooling.

The paper you link to is bunk science. A particularly salient quote, from the invitation letter organizers sent to prospective participants: "The purpose of the conference is to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science, and that expensive campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not necessary or cost-effective." That is to say that the conference organizers had decided on the conclusions of the conference before any researchers had a chance to present and discuss their findings.

Apparently the dominant climate model predicts cooling for antarctica, for the time being. Global warming doesn't mean that *every* place on the earth gets warmer, it means that the average temperature gets warmer. The study you link to cherry picks sites to look at temperature trends, and as a result means only that a few places have experienced a warming trend.

As for what I think we should do, we should be limiting our fossil fuel consumption. Americans should live closer to where they work and ride bikes, walk, and take public transportation to work. Studies show that this actually makes people happier, despite their choice to live far from where they work and commute, the commute makes them unhappy. To this end we should raise taxes on gasoline, improve subsidies for public transit, and boost spending on bike & pedestrian infrastructure. We should offer (larger) federal subsidies for retrofitting homes with improved insulation, and also for sustainable energy - wind, solar, tidal, etc, and develop improved methods for storing energy. We should offer tax breaks to companies that reduce their energy consumption. We should develop carbon sequestration technology, and retrofit it to our coal plants.

Americans need to eat less meat. Meat is very inefficient, and the meat industry contributes to environmental degradation in more ways than just carbon emissions, though the CO2 produced as a byproduct of meat is over 10 times that of the equivalent vegetable meal. So, we should tax meat, and enforce stricter environmental and production controls on animal farming. In particular we should illegalize constantly feeding antibiotics to animals, which ends up creating strains of bacteria immune to antibiotics.

And probably some more stuff I can't think of right now.

I disagree with you about the International Conference on Climate Change. That conference is at least as credible as the IPCC. The IPCC is a political organization that keeps the scientists away from the microphones. There are dozens of scientists that have defected from the IPCC and hundreds of very serious, credible scientists that do not agree with the IPCC. The IPCC has a lot to lose if they are proven wrong and they will do anything including telling lies to keep their position unchanged.

Al Gore and the others are positioned to make billions and are not really interested in the truth.

We need to be energy independent, but that will take a long time. In the meantime, we need to continue to develop fossil fuels. We need a strong economy to give us the resources to become energy independent, which means we need to keep the price of gasoline as low as possible. I don't believe carbon dioxide is a problem.

I agree we would be better off if we ate less meat, but I believe that is an individual choice that each of us make.

What if you're wrong?

I mean, if you're right, and Al Gore (and by the way John McCain) would have us switch to a more fuel efficient which at least puts off the peak oil crisis.... and yeah, some different industries make money, but somebody is going to make the money anyway....

But if you're wrong and we do nothing, human civilization comes crashing to a pretty damn ugly end.... imagine no more internet, no heating or cooling, not enough food to feed a desperate world which holds the US to blame....

I'm pretty sure there will be global warming, but I don't think that it's likely to be a total disaster for me personally or other relatively rich folks. (on a global scale, most everyone who visits jyte is rich) I am concerned about poor folks in other parts of the world, many of whom will likely starve, die of malaria, and be displaced by rising sea levels.

And I think that our economy will be better off if we invest heavily in alternative energy. I am amazed, Urgent, that you point out the interests of Al Gore, who will likely make some money on alternative energy investments, but has in the past shown that he cares about the country and its people and has been a public servant, while ignoring the interests of the oil companies, which are much more entrenched and have much more money at stake.

I found this passage in an article http://www.antiwar.com/rep/szamuely/szamuely29.html interesting. How has/is Gore ignoring the interests of the oil companies? You do know who Algore's father is right Dag?

"Gore is famous for his tedious expostulations about the consequences for the Earth’s temperature of burning oil and coal. Yet when it comes to his own stock holdings the environment can take a running jump. In a few months Occidental is due to start drilling for oil in the Samore field in Colombia. Standing in Occidental’s way are the U’wa people, a remote Colombian Indian tribe inhabiting the country’s rainforests in the northeast, who do not want to leave their ancestral land. They promise to walk off a 1400-foot cliff in the Andes if Occidental begins drilling for oil. Predictably, Gore has said nothing. He has not protested Occidental’s mining decision, or threatened to dispose of his stock or rallied fellow stockholders on behalf of the U’wa.

There is one thing the Clinton administration has done. It proposed recently to step up aid to the Colombian military to the tune of $1.3 billion. Ostensibly the money is to fight the "drug lords." In reality, it is to make sure that Al Gore’s oil wells and pipelines are firmly protected.

Sorry, the clause "while ignoring the interest of oil companies" was meant to refer to Urgent.

Hell, I don't think Al Gore is the greatest guy ever, and I never said that. But he would have made a thousand times the president than the stupid jerk we got.

Big oil companies are not altruistic, but they are certainly not sinister. Algore has made a lot of money on oil - his hands are not clean on that score.

Rorek - you are seriously underestimating the impact of prematurely moving to alternative energy.
It will take many years for alternate energy to replace fossil fuel - more than 10 years, possibly as many as 30 years. No matter what we do we need big oil for quite a while.

I agree that energy independence needs to be a national priority, but I don't think we should go back to stone age lifestyles while we get there.

Rorek - it seems like you really want to stick it to big oil whether or not AGW is real. In my view big government is far more sinister that big oil.

PD Fish - the "what if you're wrong" question is really just FUD. I don't buy it and neither should you. Historically the earth has been warmer than it currently is several times and we have survived just fine.

If you look at temperatures over the past 20 years, they are flat to down. If carbon dioxide is really having a greenhouse effect, then the temps should have risen over that period. Something else is going on and many of our best scientists are too invested in the status quo to dig in and understand it.

Here is another interesting link

http://www.cargonewsasia.com/secured/article.aspx?id=15&article=15798

Urgent: I don't have anything personal against the oil companies, I just think that rapidly depleting our planet's natural resources is irresponsible at best even if we aren't dramatically changing the climate in the process.

I think that developing alternative energy sources will have a big positive effect on the economy. I fully expect a large portion of economic growth in the next 20 years to be in this sector.