> You're so full of shyte Paul, it's appalling. Take your damn political
> > glasses off. Forget that the most common "spokespeople" for all this are
> > your hated rival politicians and take a look outside. Take a straight
> > forward look at recorded temperatures over the past hundreds of years, both
> > by recorded notes and by scientific dating. Take a look at your own
> > history... recall what it was like when you were a kid vs today. It doesn't
> > take much to realize that whehter or not global warming is a manmade
> > phenomina it is ABSOLUTELY hotter on the planet.
>
> The issue isn't climate change...it never has been. The climate HAS
> ALWAYS CHANGED!!! There is no such a thing as the "correct" temperature
> or climate. The earth swings between hot and cold, with MOST of the
> past history being very cold...and the northern hemisphere under ice. >
> Here's the long and the short of it. The "magic" hockey stick graph,
> showing we're in the warmest period of the past whatever years has been
> shown, using math and good science, to be crap. The statistical
> analysis used to create the graph has proved the graph to be crap. The
> tree-ring proxy data, the primary data used to create the graph, has
> also been proved to be bad--that is that tree rings are not proxies for
> temperature. The issue of glaciers is far from settled and there is
> great debate about them and what it all means. There is good ocean
> sediment data showing a medieval warm period that is warmer than
> today---without any help from you driving your car. The earth may be
> getting warmer, but how much is natural variation? How much of it is
> caused by people? WE DO NOT KNOW.
>
> I'll debate the specifics...the math and the data. The burden of proof
> is on those who think that man's activities have caused it. So far, I
> have not seen credible evidence (that is credible, real data or
> credible, real, falsifiable science) to support it. I've seen "climate
> scientists" use and re-use the same tree-ring and isotope proxy data
> over and over and over again--all claiming independence. I've seen the
> hurricate/tropical storm counts data in a complete mess.
>
> > In fact, forget about all the "nobody tells you" scenario's you put forth
> > above and just look at certain earth features that are real gigantic earth
> > features that can't be hidden behind statistics, that are so huge they can
> > be seen from space, and that are constantly moving... look at the glaciers
> > of the world.
>
>
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> Pictures of today don't tell the whole story...and you're only getting
> part of it.
>
>
>
> > Take a peek at the photos found on these websites. Don't read the data or
> > artcicles. Just look at the pictures. Then give me your best "guess" at
> > what/how/that stuff happened (BTW, don't come back here claiming that the
> > images were "doctored up" or you'll lose ALL credibility)
>
> >
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here;
> >
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here;
> >
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here;
> >
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> or here;
> >
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> or here;
> >
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> or here;
> >
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> or here;
> >
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> or here;
> >
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> or here;
> >
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here;
> >
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> Pictures, even real ones, are not the whole story. You want an
> example--here's a good one. There are pictures of a larger glacier on
> Mt. Kilimanjaro. The glacier is almost gone. Global warming, right?
> Nope. Changes in land use at the base of the mountain, primarily the
> destruction of the forest for fuel wood, have altered the microclimate
> around the mountain. Snow no longer falls in the same amounts on the
> mountain and the glacier is shrinking. This one small example of
> glaciers and pictures is great proof that pictures do not tell the whole
> story...they do not tell us what was, nor do they tell us why.
>
> Greenpeace is not an environmental organization. One of the founders of
> Greenpeace (and now a "forest industry schill") has stated that
> Greenpeace has been highjacked by radical socialists--which is why he
> left the organization. Greenpeace cannot be trusted for accurate
> information or reasonable discussion.
>
> Realclimate has the express purpose to obfuscate the discussion. They
> do not allow debate of real science issues and do a lot of handwaving to
> deal with difficult issues. There is proof that realclimate censors
> those who don't toe the party line.
>
> But attacking the organization does nothing to prove or disprove the
> science. The science behind anthropogenic global warming is not
> settled--not even close. I'll accept science. I won't accept Al Gore's
> stupid power-point presentation turned into propagandistic movie. >
> I've spent LOTS of time actually researching the issue. I've read the
> papers, looked at the numbers and learned more about statistics than I
> ever thought I would. This isn't because I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh
> or following some right-wing blogs. This is from looking at the actual
> science and forming an educated opinion.
>
> You're doing what everyone else who has a skeptical view...either
> appealing to consensus or ad hominem attacks, but logical fallacies. If
> you want to debate the specifics--let's go. Fire something over the bow.
I suppose what humans want to do with what they have, or *think* they have, discovered, through their scientific methods (whether rigourously, consciensiously or effectively applied/interpreted/ communicated or not) is up to them.
Of course there are other issues of concern, beyond just global warming, that are ostensibly related to human activity, and might do well to be part of the debate on human activity, which they often are.
Frankly, I may be more inclined to give more, say, interpretive weight, to the validity of what a scientist in the subject-in- question's field and lab might tell me, over what an ostensible developer (yikes! ;) on alt.arch (or his quoted journalist) might. :)
I just seems to make sense, especially if one wants to survive, or at least live comfortably, to "scale, proportion and/or choreograph, etc." one's lifestyle to one which may be more in keeping with the apparent constraints/scale/style of one's own home. It's no good if you're parking your car in the bedroom, or the toilet is the sink in the kitchen.
The dinosaurs didn't survive, and while humans are small in comparison, their activity is far bigger, and their meterorite may be of their own making.
Here's an (appropriately) unfinished poem, entitled "Stepping Stones", that I began back in 1991:
We won. Stepping on them now. Wrecklessly; The stones in our Crossing of a shallow, fast-moving river.
With many a careless step, some Fragile stones are crushed beneath Stumbling footwork; Fossils to study at a later date Lessons of failure
Dinosaurs. Their descendants might have had Our abused privileges The river grows wider, the stones fewer and far between As our worried feet get wetter
Will we create our own stepping stones? Or fall in, to join the thunder-lizards of our making?
Or become the stones, themselves Stepped upon by our own mistakes