"Global warming" my arse.....

[Brian Ellis]

I'm sorry, Doc, but the atmospheric scientist go back a lot farther in their studies than the middle ages: they go back over 1/4 million years! If you really made a study of the problem, you would not make such silly statements!!!! They are fully aware of the little Ice Age and the warming of 500 or so years ago. Precise temperature data is, of course, only recorded since 1861, when the precursor of the WMO started and measurements were made world-wide. However, climatic temperature, from vegetable matter, ice caps and glaciers, animal biotopes etc., IS known, fairly precisely, for 160,000 years, with a tolerance of better than 1/2 deg C, including all the cyclic and acyclic effects. For example, did you know that the hottest period in that time occurred between 130,000 and 140,000 years ago with temperatures peaking at ~2.5 deg C over present global levels. "Coincidentally", it peaked at just the same moment as CO2 levels, reaching over 290 ppm (lower than the current CO2 level, but the highest recorded up to the 2nd half of the 20th century).

Please, Doc, if you wish to argue the toss, assimilate the known facts first (and it will take you several months of study to do so) and don't use naysayers' ecopolitical hypotheses as if they were fact, any more than I use the yeasayers' ecopolitical hypotheses of Greenpeace, FoE etc. I use only data published in peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Sorry to be tough on you, but I am qualified to pull rank in this field!

BTW, as I am pulling rank, did I tell you that I have several awards for my environmental work, including from the UN and the US EPA?

[Dr Mordrid]

Glad you have awards from the EPA and UN, but in many places that's not exactly a badge of honor. Since Jimmy Carters anti-industrial crowd took over the EPA much of their "work" has pure political correctness raised to exponential values mixed with enough pseudo-scientific BS to fill the Pontiac Silverdome. The UN's BS potential needs no explaining given recent events.

As for hot/cold anecdotes: how about the ice sheet maximums nicely coinciding with solar minimums in pre-industrial times? Did humanity cause that too?

Even if one presumes the human induced "global warming" predictions are correct, how do you know that it hasn't actually prevented the early onset of another ice age? If memory serves the average interglacial period is ~10-12,000 years....which is about how long it has been since the last ice age ended.

Between you and me I'd rather have it warm up a bit so we don't have to burn so many fossil fuels here in the northern latitudes than to freeze our asses off for the next 10,000 years

I think you guys are like neurologists: you know just enough about how an extremely complex system is constructed to give you confidence in your opinions about what it does, but not enough to prevent you from making agregious errors in your analysis as to why.

Dr. Mordrid

[RedRed]

Dr M - stop resorting to personal and political digs just as your argument is crumbleing.... someone knows more than you - live with it.
Your sources sucked and are politicised and Brians don't and arent. Period.
RedRed

[Brian Ellis]

Hee hee! Guess who can bring anti-Democrat politics into the equation

And the circumstantial evidence around our "egregious errors" is a helluva sight more convincing than that which has sent many an innocent person to the gallows, guillotine, electric chair, gas chamber or whatever they call the gurney that is used in places now. And I don't mean just in the USA but in every country in the world, if you wish to introduce an OT, emotive note.

The problem is:
1. If we take notice of the circumstantial evidence and we're wrong, the worst that will happen is that we shall save countless lives and suffering caused by pollution and, in the long term, a lot of money from healthcare expenses. OR
2. If we take no notice of the circumstantial evidence and you are wrong, by the time that we have the "scientific proof" that you seek, then it will be far too late to take any corrective action that would be effective in under 300 years AND it then become an enormously expensive problem to do so.

IMHO, we have little choice; the precautionary principle must prevail.

[az]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
you know just enough about how an extremely complex system is constructed to give you confidence in your opinions about what it does, but not enough to prevent you from making agregious errors in your analysis as to why.

Most doctors are like this, too. No personal offense meant, it's just an observation from personal experience.

AZ

[Dr Mordrid]

Hee hee! Guess who can bring anti-Democrat politics into the equation

Not anti-Democratic at all. Just a fan of common sense, something that even a lot of Democrats share. Believe it or not even a lot of liberal leaners, both Republican and Democrat, don't buy that line of bull in the Kyoto Treaty. That's why it was rejected by our Senate in a 95-0 vote during a DEMOCRATIC administration when the Senate was controlled by DEMOCRATS. 95-0 is a margin you normally couldn't get in the Senate for a resolution saying the sun had come up

Oops....one more political presumption down the drain.

IMHO, we have little choice; the precautionary principle must prevail.

So....precautionary measures are OK for the causes approved by your enviro types but not for those in the coaliton your peace sign seems to be aimed at? Talking out of both sides of mouth?

Dr. Mordrid

[GNEP]

Dr M: well, when the difference is going out and dropping bombs on people, I think you don't have much of an argument...

Brian: You have the major downsides to H2 - that's why we're more likely to have Methanol fuel cells as an interim step - the delivery infrastructure is already there (regular petrol retail networks). Having said that, there is already talk around inside these walls of "boxed" fuel being the future - so self-enclosed "energy pods" with whatever fuel source and interface is required. Not sure which technology they were referring to - this is just me overhearing corridor talk (!)

Oh yeah - and thanks for filling me in on BP - and yup, the oil company was originally (loosely) German in the first half of the 20th century. A case of the "I can't believe it's not Butter" syndrome (a brand of buttermilk margerine in the UK for those that don't know that won a case to keep it's brandname).

Gnep

[Dr Mordrid]

I see no difference at all. In one you hurt people outright. In the other you could easily cause enough economic damage to hurt people indirectly by limiting economic growth; which hurts improvements in living standards, health care, food production, development of new medicines etc. etc.

It's a difference of means.

Dr. Mordrid

[GNEP]

I can see your point but I disagree entirely. Let's leave it at that