If you believe this, why do you believe it?

If you don’t, what makes you think that present trends, to the extent that they are measurable, are abnormal?

(2) I’m not advocating ignoring the issue completely. I’m saying that the evidence that’s been presented so far is dubious and tainted by personal opinions, and that a much deeper study of the subject is required before we can accept the problems & solutions that many hasty scientists have put out there.

I’m all for conservation of natural resources, reducing pollution, etc. But I’m not yet convinced, however, that (a) man is responsible for global warming, or (b) that the Earth can’t naturally correct for global warming even if it IS a legitimate phenomenon. Trying to fix a problem that doesn’t actually exist is itself a waste of resources.

(3) What about the idea that man IS part of nature and that the Earth contains plenty of negative feedback mechanisms to offset the effects of the destruction that you’re talking about? Who’s to say that the cold places of the earth shouldn’t get warmer, or the warmer places cooler? Who’s to say that green lands shouldn’t turn to deserts, or vice versa? I think you’re assigning more guilt to the human race than is fair to assign.

(4) If you feel the need to “combat the destructive nature of your consumptive lifestyle”, that’s great. Drive a hybrid, plant a tree, and encourage others to do the same. I, on the other hand, do not believe that my lifestyle is destructive enough to warrant paying more in gas taxes, or paying more for any other product from any company that would be affected by Kyoto-type regulations.

(5) About your “bonus question”– There are plenty of people in this country who like to latch onto an issue that looks like a problem and use it to play to the sympathies/opinions of others in order to win political points. These people are called “demagogues”, and Al Gore is one of them. Many of his followers abhor the nature of capitalism and the United States’ role as a global consumer. They buy into the idea of man-made global warming without caring about the science behind it or the economics of the “solutions” to it because they’re looking for a way to blame the human race (or more specifically, the United States) for destroying our planet. Global warming may, in fact, be legitimate, but the credibility of the science is only scarred by people like Gore and the many leftists who think of him as a scientist, or — more frighteningly — as some kind of savior.

And on a global scale– There are plenty of nations who would love to see our GDP suffer and have the value of their currency rise against the American dollar. That speaks for itself.

That said, I think that emphasis on uncretainty and the lack of conclusive data about global warming in general does not justify ignoring the problem.

While it is indeed murky to what extent the earth is warming, whether or not this is normal, what role we have in it, and what we can do to rectify the problem, There are pertinent issues that are crystal-clear; We disturb the natural order. 6 billion of us and then some are consuming rescources, producing waste, consuming more rescources, producing waste, wasting rescources, and producing consumers, and if i forgot, consuming rescources and producing waste.

The fact of the matter is, nothing has ever defoliated our planet so steadily and inexolerably. Even the eruption of Krakatoa, which essentially took 2 populated islands and erased them from existence, and caused a year-long winter across the planet from all of the ash produced, only eliminated 2 islands’ worth of trees. We’ve cut down far more than that.

Even if CO2 is not a sinister chemical that is accumulating above our heads, waiting to suddenly cast us into an unstoppable spiral of natural diasasters culimating in the eradictation of humanity — and i don’t think it is — it still IS a greenhouse gas, and we are putting a lot more of it in the air then there otherwise would be. Just because plants can make use of it doesn’t mean we’re helping out the world be rewriting the makeup of our atmosphere. The reason Carbon levels are rising is that we’re putting more carbon into the atmosphere than our flora is taking out.

I live in New england, and the weather here is incredibly erratic. When its 85 degrees in september, and when it snows in may, i do not look up to the heavens and curse global warming, because the seasons are not as rhythmic as people would have us beleive. I’m not sure we’re even really seeing that much of an impact from global warming (I leave aside the icecaps, particularly the north pole, which was recently fully melted for the first time in i dont even know how long) but that doesn’t mean we aren’t disturbing the natural order, and violating our world, and i think we have a responsibility to make sacrifices to combat the destructive nature of our consumptive lifestyles, rather than writing off all attempts to be constructive as ineffective.

As a minor bonus question, you mention Golbal warming as an instance where “A political Agenda Masks true science” you also state that things like the Kyoto protocol will end up hurting out GDP. Now, i ask you, what is the political agenda that benefits from getting people to be slightly less selfish in their treatment of the world we share, and why would anyone be interested in hurting our Economy?

The reason I mean to focus this blog entry solely on global warming is because the issue is often framed as follows by propagandists like Al Gore: The earth is warming –> humans are destroying the planet –> the United States is a large consumer of oil –> the United States is warming the earth and destroying the planet. And after hearing the words “global warming” hundreds of times on the news, many people buy into this phenomenon and what we need to do about it before they’ve even considered (a) whether or not global warming is actually happening, (b) whether or not humans have ANY control over it, and/or (c) whether or not mass warming & cooling is simply a natural part of how the Earth behaves.

You’re absolutely right that carbon dioxide is a natural insolator. CO2 allows sunlight to pass through it, and after the sunlight reradiates off the earth, it traps heat within the atmosphere. But so does water vapor. And atmospheric water vapor is far more abundant than atmospheric carbon dioxide. This is just one of the many ‘variables’ that I mentioned earlier that is often ignored by the doomsday models that you hear about.

Even if you completely ignore the effect of water vapor on earth’s temperature, the cause-effect relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature is still weak. Granted, there appears to be a correlation between CO2 and temperature. But correlation doesn’t imply causation. You can’t look at two graphs that overlap and say that a rise in one causes a rise in the other unless you see that one of them rises and then the other one rises shortly thereafter, or that one of them falls and then the other one falls shortly thereafter. Take a look at the “Carbon Dioxide & Temperature Data from Antarctica Ice Cores” graph that pops up in so many global warming presentations. What you WILL see is a correlation but what you WON’T see is the causation that I’m talking about. Sometimes you see temperature peak before carbon dioxide peaks. That would imply that a rise in temperature causes a rise in CO2, not the other way around.

Also– Don’t give credit to the sky-is-falling idiots who will point to global doom & gloom, and then when they’re proven wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt, will turn around and say, “well, at least we raised awareness”. Bird flue. DDT. SARS. Heterosexual AIDS. Sometimes people will take a small problem (or even a non-issue) and blow it WAY out of proportion by convincing everybody that they’re affected. Sometimes a political agenda masks true science. I am beyond sure that global warming fits this mold.

All and all stooping our use of oil may or may not prevent harm to our planet. We dont know for sure. But it will definitly help our economy. If you are right and global warming doesnt exist then we still make money. If im right we make money AND we save our lives. Theres no down side.

(2) You don’t know that we haven’t had warm periods like we’re having today. Here you’re making an extrapolation centuries into the past based upon a few decades worth of data.

(3) I may not be a global warming scientist, but I have spent the last nine years studying physics. So I can tell you, from a scientific point of view, the following: Relativity is a theory that is readily lab-testable, its results have been repeated many times, and its conclusions are straightforward. Global warming, on the other hand, is a theory that is only minimally lab-testable, its results are not nearly as precise (because its experiments need to account for FAR more variables), and its conclusions are tenuous at best. It seems foolish to let such a young and imprecise science dictate government policy.

(4) Science is not established by concensus. Yes, scientists generally agree that the Earth has become warmer over the last century, but the scientific community does not agree on the cause of that warming, nor do they agree that the warming will continue indefinitely. Many scientists believe that the sun itself has also become hotter over the last several decades and point to a correlation between its temperature and the Earth’s temperature.

(5) Yes, developing greener energy would help reduce our country’s dependence on foreign oil. But we want to be careful not to stunt our economy’s growth by placing undue emissions restrictions on businesses and/or putting even more taxes on everybody’s gasoline.

(6) Global warming is an immature science mixed with a lot of political propaganda. The jury’s still out on all of this.

Also, many of the scientists that do believe the earth is warming also say that there’s very little that the human race can do about it. The United States doesn’t need to sacrifice a chunk of its GDP trying to “fix” something that we can’t control in the first place.