In message , MBQ writes
Answer provided by a friend in the business ...
"> Global warming is an accepted fact by all the world's top >scientists. >
Politicians (on behalf of their countries) signed up to the Kyoto Protocol; it's impossible for scientists to do so. So the first few words are garbage - not a good start!
I myself (as a scientist working in the climate area) disagreed with the Kyoto Protocol from a number of perspectives - including the fact that it didn't go nearly far enough and wasn't particularly fair to poorer nations. But to suggest that a majority of scientists disagree with global warming theories, and are simply keeping schtumm to hide their numbers (ooh crafty) is highly disingenuous and requires a modicum of evidence.
Who's saying that? It's an absolute fact that we're warming up but IF you're going to die of it, (and unless you're very very young I'd expect old age or accident to take you instead), it'll be from either global unrest (displaced peoples, etc) or disease (eg, Britain is now borderline-capable of supporting malarial mosquitos).
Satellites aren't measuring the surface or sea temperature, as you presumably know, they're measuring the tropospheric temperature. The US National Academy of Sciences established an expert panel which concluded that the warming measured at the surface was real, and not invalidated by satellite measurements. They were not able to fully explain the anomalies (nobody is, yet) but suggested that the two massive volcanic eruptions in the last 20 years, plus the depletion of stratospheric ozone, would certainly contribute to a cooling at mid-tropospheric height.
Heat island effects have been known about for decades and sophisticated techniques are used to compensate for them. Rural records do show a significant rise so I've no idea what's being alluded to by 'clean records'. I'd also note that marine records also show a significant temperature rise - what's that due to, then? Atlantis?
Incidentally there are plenty of errors in satellite records - changing orbits, gradual descent towards the troposhpere, etc - which also have to be corrected. Or are those corrections right and the heat island ones wrong?
ROFL. Nobody on this planet can state with certainty that it is a natural cycle unless they know what the natural cycle is. That's why people like me are working to get an idea of what the temperatures were like in the past - hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of years ago. And what we've found so far is that the rate of temperature rise in the last 200 years, and especially in the last 50, is unprecedented to our knowledge. And since the tree record goes back 10,000 years and the Earth's apparently only 6,000 years old, I reckon we've go that one covered :-)
HOWEVER I'm not generally inclined to get into these debates as, for me, they kinda miss the point.
To illustrate my position, I'll pretend to agree with matey here, and we'll say that Global Warming's a theory with a lot of uncertainty attached to it. Hell, let's say instead of the Global Warming theory we just have a big board with '?' on it.
So, that's cleared the air. Now, remind me why exactly it's a good idea to burn up a non-renewable energy source as fast as we can, whilst encouraging the rest of the world to develop and do the same, and with no serious plans and infrastructure in place to cope when it runs out?