tee hee!

Well, I guess we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. I see it the other way around; this is no different than the misinformation campaign the tobacco industry launched to try and discredit the scientific evidence that smoking was bad for you. Eventually, despite all the money they threw at the issue, the truth prevailed, which I suspect will occur here as well. Back in the 80's and 90's, there was an overwhelming amount of information and scientific consensus that smoking can and does cause cancer. The tobacco industry fought back by conducting a massive disinformation campaign to make people think that scientists were still largely in disagreement.

Also, whenever a paper would be published that would link smoking to cancer, they would immediately have experts (on their payroll of course) state that the manner of collecting data was flawed.

What we see today is a reproduction of that same campaign. We have a multitude of 'think tank' groups that are politically and ideologically motivated to prove that climate change isn't caused by man. These are not skeptics, they are deniers, who will deny any information that goes against their ideological goals. In reality, most of the major scientific groups out there long ago linked our greenhouse gas emmissions to increased temperature. Long ago most major scientific groups did in fact reach a consensus- and no, consensus does not mean that 100% of everyone out there agrees. That happens rarely or never at all on most issues.

In reference to James Hansen? I was illustrating that members of NASA have been stating that global warming is real, and most likely caused by man for years now with very little notice from government until recently.

No, I'm not ignoring it. I've read the links you've provided. They question the validity of previous testing methods and pose alternate hypothesis as to why the planet may be warming, which is great. But they do not disprove the theory that our industrial emmissions are contributing to the issue!

And that's great. Tear the IPCC a new arsehole! I am confused that you keep bringing the IPCC into this, as I really couldn't care less about their reports. What I do care about is that the greater scientific community at large still believes that our emmissions are contributing to global warming. This can be found from a quick visit to most major groups, the U.S geological survey, the APS, hell google can get you all the links you need if you're willing to spend more than a few minutes on all the folks who have signed on.

I'm not going to defend the IPCC report, but just as an aside it does make sense that they wouldn't mention everything that you've stated... because in order to do that, they would have to produce a paper all encompassing about our entire climate, ecosystem, and solar system, replete with references to valid experiments by accredited individuals in all of those areas. In order to produce the kind of report you seek, we would have to dedicate years to research with assets and technology that quite frankly our civilization doesn't possess, with an army of scientists devoted to nothing else. And even if they did produce such a report, due to the very nature of an "all encompassing" report there would undoubtedly remain many areas that could still be questionned, and rightfully so.  For the IPCC report to include everything that you seek and how it all inter-relates definitely wouldn't be available on a yearly basis, but yet the organization must produce a yearly report. So, they can only publish material that they can back up with referenced experiments that have undergone peer review etc. Sure, they might be able to raise questions about solar effects, but as a recognized international organization they have to be able to back up anything that they say!

What about the thousands of nukes set off in our atmosphere in the 50's and 60's? What about the amount of plankton in the ocean and deforestation which are huge carbon sinks, how do they equate into the picture? The truth is that there are a million different possible permutations we can think of and ask, and absolutely we need to explore these areas using the scientific method! However, we also have to go with what we know using current science, most of which supports the theory that the 85 million barrels of oil and thousands of tonnes of coal we burn everyday, will indeed contribute to greenhouse gas levels considerably and cause a noticeable impact on our climate through accelerated warming!

 

Not much, most pollution is kept local so very little of it will reach outsied of China.

As is mine. I think we need to (and some countries are making great strides in that area) look at polution as the problem, as that affects our health. TO see the contortions China is going through this summer is to laugh - and they are exempt from any of the Kyoto limits! The GW crowd does not care about people, just their religion.

Back in the 60’s it was known that smoking can cause cancer. It is not the cause it is a contributing factor. This is why it is so difficult to blame the cigarette companies for defending their product. If smoking were the cause of cancer then everyone that smoked would get cancer. This is not true and has not happened. It took 30 years just to get doctors to stop smoking. My girlfriend is an ICU nurse and I see the doctors standing outside the hospital building smoking as late as yesterday. It is a personal choice not like global warming where people are told they have no choice. There is no pollution industry to fight the information that is coming out. No one is running around trying to discredit the reports in order to support big pollution. What we have are scientists that disagree with each other. One side says man is the problem but has no proof, the other side says we don’t see any proof that man is the cause but we do have proof that the Sun is the cause. Give us proof and we will see where it leads.



This is where I point again that you don’t get what I am pointing out to you. The IPCC report on climate change states that man’s contribution to global warming amounts to .05 of one degree over 100 years. You point to livescience.com as a place of credibility so I dug up a report from January on that same site that says the actual data conflicted with the models. In stead of 1.4 degree rise in temp they were only able to document a .4 degree rise in temp. Are you now going to tell me that the source for your information has been corrupted by politics? Somehow big oil slipped that one past peer review got it published and then reported on your website? The “deniers” as you call them point out that the methods of arriving at this huge number is flawed. Having read the report I came to the conclusion that I can live with .05 of a degree over the next hundred years as an average spread out over the entire planet. And if it is as flawed as the skeptics say it is then we are talking about .00021 of a degree over 100 years. Either way the amount is negligible. It does not matter who is right here because if we live that long we will not feel the difference either way.



In reference to Dr. Roy Spencer, he was a scientist at NASA, he disagrees with Dr. Hansen, I don’t know about Dr. Hansen but I do know that Dr. Spencer just finished testifying in front of the U.S. Senate yesterday when they wanted to know about global climate change. The worse thing anyone said about him that day was that he is the official climatologist for Rush Limbaugh. Since leaving NASA he is a full professor in some dinky little collage or university. His published papers have passed peer review, and he is highly respected in his community, and has not taken any money from big oil but has taken money from environmental groups. He has no political axe to grind that I or his opponents have been able to find. So you have two accredited scientists with different opinions of the same set of facts. I have not seen Dr. Hansen’s published work so I can’t comment on it. Care to tell me where I might find it?



So if the methods of arriving at a conclusion are flawed would that not mean that the conclusion was flawed?

Here is an old joke they told in class when discussing scientific observation.

A scientist took a frog and set it on the table and yelled jump. The frog jumped. He picks up the frog cuts off its right front leg, and then sets it on the table again. Jump he yells. The frog jumps. He cuts off the left front leg and repeats the process. Taking copious notes as he goes. The frog still jumped so he cuts off the left hind leg and yells jump. The frog jumps. He cuts off the right hind leg and yells jump. The frog does not move. Based on scientific observation the scientist concluded that if you cut off the right hind leg the frog goes deaf. The point my professor was trying to make was that you can have all the facts but still come to the wrong conclusion.

In the case of global climate change you have a field of study that is flawed to begin with. No climatologist can accurately predict the weather more than three or four days in advance. To prove this watch your local news every day for seven days and write down the forecast for each day. Look at was predicted five six and seven days out and watch how that changes each day. Now you want to try to predict the weather conditions for the entire planet 100 years from now. If you read the IPCC report you will find they have a bunch of models and eight to ten scenarios for each model for each prediction. With that they take what they think is most likely to be accurate and write their report based on that.

Now I have shown you from livescience that people working purely on a scientific mode have found that the models were off by a full degree. This is independent confirmation the “deniers” were correct when they said the models are flawed. You ignored this information. All of what I posted on the flaw was based on published work that had passed peer review because that was your standard of proof. Or it was until the work you support was disproven then it did not matter that it was done by accredited scientists under peer review. It does not matter that authors of the report support global warming and published a finding of fact that contradicts their view. (As a scientist is supposed to do)

With proof of flawed data, models, and conclusions the work is invalid by scientific standards. The theory may still be valid but that body of work is not. I have read theories that I dismiss like the flat Earth society that publishes a bunch of papers each year, all subject to peer review. And if you will just discount math, physics, hydrodynamics, astrophysics, geometry and gravity then most of those theories have merit. There is a consensus among the flat earth community of scientists that the earth is flat.

To accept the IPCC’s fourth report you have to ignore little things like astrophysics, thermal dynamics, gravity, orbital mechanics, and the heat from the Sun and its effect on the Earth. Every single one of those things is part of our climate. Not to mention meteor strikes, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, and the list goes on. In the IPCC report only volcanoes are listed as a contributing factor, but excluded super volcanoes. Just so you know the last time a super volcano erupted man’s population dropped from tens of millions down to under 10 thousand. Earth is due for two such eruptions within the next 10 thousand years and we are about 300 years over due for one in America. All of this has to be ignored in order to make man made global climate change work.

May I suggest to you that you forget the politicians that are pushing global warming and look at the facts yourself? Read the reports and challenge them, sort of like your own peer review. Tell me how .05th of a degree spread out over 100 years is going to make a difference one way or the other. Learn the solar systems orbital mechanics and tell me how can one predict a weather system on a planet that takes 250 million years to complete one circle of the galaxy? Tell me how a science that is less than 40 years old is going to accurately predict the weather 100 years from now? they don’t even have 25 years of accurate data and they will freely admit that they can’t really predict the weather past four days with any certainty but you want to trust them to predict the weather conditions 100 years from now. I can do that! In the spring it will be warm, in the summer it will be hot, in the winter it will be cold and in the fall it will be cool.

While you are doing this peer review try this brain teaser.
The earth spins a little faster than a thousand miles an hour. Man uses a 24 hour clock. The extra minutes we discard each year adds up to about a day every four years. This means that every 100 years we add 25 days this will mean that our summers come late by 25 days could this be the reason why the summers are not as hot and the winters don’t get cold till almost spring?


This is the reason I keep bringing it up. All your scientists that claim that the emissions from man are such a hazard have at their root the IPCC report on global warming. Every link you have provided quotes or links to that report you don’t like as proof of their claim including Dr. Hansen. Yes, I went to his website and read his work. Most of it is his hatred of coal produced CO2, he makes a good argument but it is undercut by his reliance on the IPCC report that we all, including you, agree is worthless.

Au contrere! Please forgive the constant quoting from wikipedia but I don't have all day to pour over the web!

"In 1998, John H. Cushman of the New York Times reported on a memorandum^[25] written by a public relations specialist for the American Petroleum Institute. The leaked memo described a plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry's views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases." As part of a US$ 5,000,000 strategy to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences," the document mentioned:

"A proposed media-relations budget of US $600,000, not counting any money for advertising, [which] would be directed at science writers, editors, columnists and television network correspondents, using as many as 20 'respected climate scientists' recruited expressly 'to inject credible science and scientific accountability into the global climate debate, thereby raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'"^[26]

Several journalists have argued that the strategy resembles the one adopted by tobacco lobbyists after being confronted with new data linking cigarettes to cancer-- to shift public perception of the discoveries toward that of a myth, unwarranted claim, or exaggeration rather than mainstream scientific theory. In 2006, The Guardian reported:

"There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants. 'Junk science' meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. 'Sound science' meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, 'Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.'"^[27]

Me again-

What we see here today is pretty much the exact same thing just replicated in another arena, and also this-

"In April 2006, a group describing itself as "sixty scientists" signed an open letter^[58] to the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to ask that he revisit the science of global warming and "Open Kyoto to debate." As with the earlier statements, critics pointed out that many of the signatories were non-scientists or lacked relevant scientific backgrounds.^[59] For example, the group included David Wojick, a journalist, and Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist. More than half the signatories cited past or emeritus positions as their main appointments. Only two (Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer) indicated current appointments in a university department or a recognized research institute in climate science.^[60] One of the signatories has since publicly recanted, stating that his signature was obtained by deception regarding the content of the letter.^[61] In response shortly afterward another open letter to Prime Minister Harper endorsing the IPCC report and calling for action on climate change was prepared by Gordon McBean and signed by 90 Canadian climate scientists initially, plus 30 more who endorsed it after its release.^[62

 

 

This appears to be wishful thinking. The atmosphere has a way of drifting globally.

Just try taking a deep breath in the Mojave when the Santa Ana's kick in.

pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I find it more than intriguing that it is bad for an oil company to disagree with a position on global warming and want to get people with credentials to support them.

But it is good if you are an environmentalist who recruits credentialed people to push their side of the argument. Based on what you write only the side you favor should be allowed to hire scientists to tout their side and the others should shut up.

Both sides do the exact same thing but only the oil companies are the bad guys. Your logic is faulty, your solutions are impractical. Your slavish belief in man made global warming borders on religion. Even when proof that the data is wrong you still support the data. That is not scientific.

Dr. Spencer has spoken to the oil companies in speeches for no money. He has been recruited by the environmentalist to give them the science of global warming. He is on their payroll. He gets 25 grand for a single speech to them. This would lead me to believe he is highly respected by the environmental lobby yet he strongly disagrees with man made global warming. How do you justify this in your mind?



I know you have not read the IPCC reports so I will assume you have not read the Kyoto accords. If you had you would see that they do nothing to even slow down global warming, or CO2 levels. It is a punitive document that even liberal President Clinton would not sign because of the damage it would do to the nation. I won’t bore you with the details since you have not bothered to read the documents that are the support for all the stuff you believe you would rather believe the propaganda machine of your choice. Let’s just say that if the accords were made law only two countries would benefit from them. India and China everyone that follows the accords would have to shut down most if not all of their industry and India and china both flatly stated that they would not follow them. Since they are the two largest polluters the accords would solve nothing.

I never said that. Any study that is commissioned with the intent to produce a particular result beforehand is bad. If an oil company commissions a scientist to study the effects of solar fluctuations on the climate that's fine. If the same company commissions that scientist with the implied emphasis that he is to find a discernible link between solar fluctuations and climate change that is when you run into trouble. Any environmentalist group that does the same thing the other way is equally to blame.

Fact is that most studies conducted over the last 30 years have not had pre-existing conclusions. But, when a study is commissioned by a non-scientific organization like the Heartland Institute (a pro-business conservative political group) There is a lot of pressure for the scientist to produce favourable results, or at least results that question the other side. His funding depends on it!

That's great, and good on him for doing it! I've repeatedly stated that I admire the work Dr. Spencer does. While he questions the means that other scientists use in their experiments, he has not, in my opinion, proved that there is no link between man-made emissions and climate change.

Actually, I've read both! The IPCC reports are summarized and dumbed-down so that average folks can read them without their eyes glazing over. The down side of this, which I fully believe, is that in doing so they make generalized statements that in order to properly defend or argue against one needs to delve into the world of publications in journals which are quite lengthy, quite wordy, and very boring for the average joe. I've checked out some of the online publications and was reduced to tears of boredom after trying to read through a 50 page document full of pages of calculus I did not understand!

The Kyoto accords I actually disagree with, because they allow China and India to continue spewing massive amounts of emmissions because they are listed as 'developing' countries. While I agree with the sentiments of the Kyoto accords they are going about it the wrong way and will not actually accomplish much I am afraid.

One positive effect that I noticed here in Canada was the creation of the "one tonne challenge"- a challenge to average folks to find ways to reduce their yearly emmissions of carbon by one tonne. It was a very practical program aimed at realistic reductions and steps folks can take in their everyday lives that actually SAVE the average joe money while reducing your emmissions.

Sadly, when the conservative government came into power they scrapped this program and said "all right folks, go buy Hum-v'S!!!"

And yet, ironically, it is in Europe, signers of the Kyoto accords, where CO2 emmissions have gone up the most for the last 8 years.

The reality is, there is no solid evidence to support that CO2 is a significant cause of global warming. And humans produce so little of the CO2 in the atmosphere each year that even if CO2 did promote a measurable effect on temperature change, it would be hard to make a serious case that human produced CO2 is the cause.

Humans have believed that they could control the weather for eons. There seems to be some instinct-level need to believe we can control all the environment if we choose to.  The "global climate change" folks are just the most recent iteration of the this ilk.

This is exactly my point you are ignoring the fact that the producers of the man made global warming reports have that goal in mind before they start the study. The data is corrupted before they begin. Now that the studies are done we are seeing the flaws in them. Your Dr. Hansen quotes from the IPCC as if it is gospel yet it had flaws that even a layman can see.

For the rest of the environmental community they recruit people that will support their view and fund their research. The oil companies as well as the tobacco companies do the exact same thing. They are not asking or dictating what the results are if that was the case then all the damaging reports on tobacco would never have surfaced. In stead they hired people to do the studies and if they don’t like the reports they file them away because they own the reports. It was court orders that got the reports of the tobacco industry out in the open. None of the reports were falsified. It is too easy to spot when that happens. Case on point is the IPCC report, so flawed was it that people ran for the hills. Only the people that want it to be true still support it.

You yourself don’t believe in the report as you stated that it was a political document not a scientific one. You then pointed to Dr. Hansen because there was so much data out there that proved it to be flat out wrong. I then pointed out that your beloved Dr. Hansen uses the IPCC report as his basis for all his rants. By your own admission you are saying his work is just as invalid as the report he uses to support his work.

Independent scientists have come up with proof the work is bad science. I have yet to see independent scientist review the work and support it.



This only works in the basements of conspiracy theorists. If the work is done by credible scientists then the work is valid to a point. Every scientist goes into a study with what he or she hopes will support their theory. If I hire you to do a study on global warming with man as the cause you will look for that. If it is there you will report it, if not and if you are honest then you will report the actual results. The IPCC report was commissioned by the UN. Their goal was to show that man was the cause of global warming. The actual report does not show this so they wrote a summary that supported their goal and published the summary while holding back the actual report. They did the same thing with second hand smoke. The actual report said there was NO evidence that second hand smoke harmed anyone. They did not like that so the produced a summary that said it killed people. Look at the damage that summary has produced. Laws were changed, lives were altered to “save people” only to find out five years later that the actual report did not say what he summary said. The same tactic was then used on global warming. The report clearly states that man is not the cause, and only contributes .05th of a degree over 100 years. In both situations the reports are ignored and the summary is all people that want to believe in use.

So when I read the report when it was finally published by the UN I found what greater scientists than I spotted right away. The summary was written by non-scientists, the press profit from it because it tells of gloom and doom the things that sell papers and advertisement. Vice President Gore profits from it because his new company sells carbon credits to idiots that want to save the planet without crimping their lifestyle. Somewhere on the planet there is a tree planted to offset the carbon of some idiot flying around in a private jet. What you are not told is that trees planted in northern latitudes contribute to the supposed carbon problem. Can you guess where the trees are planted? That’s right folks. Trees in northern latitudes don’t get as much sunlight so they don’t absorb enough carbon to do much more that trap it during the day and release it when the sun goes down adding to the concentration of CO2 in the region. I have a cabin on Big Bear in California. I can see this every day as the smog created by trees hangs over the mountain till just before noon. It takes 8 hours to absorb what was released the night before and process a fraction of that CO2 then the sun goes down and they release it all again. Welcome to photosynthesis 101.

President Reagan pointed this out in one of his speeches and was laughed at by the press and the idiot liberals. It took weeks to explain to these bright people what a 7th grader learned in science class. Once it was found out that the president was correct and they were wrong did they print a retraction? Nope they went on to a new story. People still think that trees don’t cause smog and only man does.

If a scientist produces a paper touting his views above the actual results his reputation is ruined. This is why if you read the IPCC report they say nothing definitive because it is beyond their ability to prove it. You have to wait 100 years to see which scenario is correct. The IPCC report lists at least 5 different scenarios in order to come up with one that shows man at fault by .05 of a degree the UN chose which ones to use and which ones to shelve. So we are seeing the worse case scenario not the mean or least damaging ones. until all of them are released we don’t even have an idea of where to start looking for the truth.

To have everyone on the environmental nut case side scream we have to do something right now to save the planet is insane.



I am so glad you can read both the summaries. Did you bother to read all four reports?



I see, so if the government does not support it then no one needs to follow it? If you believe it is such a good program why are you not setting the example for your neighbors?



Add to that the nations where it has gone up can’t afford the fines so they have sold their industries to people that can afford to pay those fines. Saudi Arabia! So now those countries need the Arabs for there oil to run their industry, and have sold their industries to the Arabs so they need the Arabs to produce jobs. So they can buy the products they no longer control. Yeah, sounds like a winning strategy to me. guess I picked the wrong week to stop shooting heroin.



China announced last week that if it rains during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics they will change the weather to make it stop. I am praying for rain just so I can see this happen.

This is the problem. Liberals ARE obnoxious and they ARE smug. I truly fecking hate them.

What's even worse, is that they are not always wrong. I think you need to be quite narrow minded to think that everything on the conservative side of the fence is true and always will be, and everything on the liberal agenda is wrong and always will be.

I do believe that climate change is real. And its think its extremely sad that because of liberal smugness and conservative revile this issue has become so polarised.

Besides, simply energy security alone, let alone factoring the economic imperative of energy prices in a developing world should be enough to prompt lower CO2 habits regardless.

We should start with a lot more nuclear power. That will piss off the liberals.

Then you are blind as well as hateful. I don’t hate the liberals I understand where they come from on most topics. On this topic if you read both sides of the argument you will find the left will make stupid statements like yours. Global warming is real, and it has been real and documented for over 40 years. The argument is not if there is global climate change which the left wants you to belief the argument is, but rather the cause of the change. Idiot liberals believe man is the sole cause, when proven wrong then man is a major contributing factor. When proven wrong then man should not aid the change.

The other side of the argument is the conservative side. We agree that there is change, and we believe the change has been going on for millions of years with or without us. Every carbon based plant inhales carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen, and mammal inhales air and exhales carbon dioxide. The balance is such that more oxygen is produced than carbon dioxide. Because of this the Coral Reefs are dying. Not enough carbon is being scrubbed by the ocean to provide nutrients for them. The sun is the main cause for the climate change yet the liberals refuse to accept this. No sun no heat, the sun is expanding and getting hotter, this has been measured on Venus Earth, Mars, all the way out to the minor planets like Pluto. All of them are getting hotter but they don’t want to believe that either because then man can’t be at fault.

I'm blind because I don't agree with you?

You don't hate liberals you just think their stupid?

Well all right then lets be pedantic, I don't hate liberals. I hate the effect their misguided attempts to better the world actually end up doing more damage than good.

Most damaging of all you think that there are two 'sides' to the discussion. Liberal and conservative.

Well once you start polarising an issue you effectively take all reason out of it and it becomes a issue of faith. Now that you have declared that man does not have a significant impact on the environment (to be similarly pedantic) is a conservative position. And you also declare yourself a conservative. So what may I ask could possibly change your mind at this point? Nothing most likely. No amount of scientific work could ever change an issue of belief.

If you let the issue become them and us, and you refuse to acknowledge new evidence that does not meet your stance approved viewpoint then you are truly blinding yourself through your own choice.

Plus you skip right over the other point I made. Even without that. Lets even say your right, even then you still want to cut down on C02 emission for reasons of energy security and given the rising cost as fossil fuels run out (unless you actually believe their infinite, which wouldn't wholly surprise me)


P.S The give away that your making this up when you say that Pluto is getting hotter. You actually have good data that the temperature on Pluto is rising. I somewhat doubt that.

Not at all, you are blind because you believe their argument without any proof that they are even close to being correct. Looking at the facts it is plain to see that most of what they try to get us to do is detrimental to ourselves, and our nation. I have yet to see one liberal program that worked, not worked as advertised but worked at all. the intentions are good for the most part until the late 60’s early 70’s when they went communist and socialist.



Far from it, most are most intelligent but cling to their beliefs like a religion. True believers acknowledge the facts but don’t let them get in the way of their beliefs.



This part I agree with.



Then you misunderstand what I am saying. I have no dog in the fight, I point out the inaccuracies of both sides but if you are taking the side of the liberal then I will point out the problems with that side. One of my hobbies is astrophysics and another is astronomy. Been loving the stars since 1966. This is how I seem to spot things that others that argue the other side don’t. My passion is the stars not global warming. Based on what I know as an amateur these things are easy to see. But if there is another bit of information I read it, study it, and accept or reject it based on facts not dogma.



Yeah, that seems too strange, I guess you did not bother to do any research on the matter before you dismissed it. Have you heard of the Pluto Express? It is a mission to Pluto to do the first close flyby of the dwarf planet. The reason there was such urgency in getting the project off the ground and into space was because the atmosphere on Pluto is visible through telescopes like the Hubble. It has started to cool down and when it goes to the outer most part of its orbit around the sun it becomes the 9th instead of the 8th planet in the solar system. When that happens in about 12 years the atmosphere will freeze and fall to the ground as snow and stay there for about 100 years. This is our last chance to see what kind of atmosphere it has in our lifetimes.

As far as the system getting warmer it has been documented by NASA, ESA and JSA. Probes sent to Venus and other measurements showed this warming, the same was seen on Mars, as the Pioneer and Voyager probes set the baseline data we have seen the rise in temp over 30 years. When HST pointed at Pluto we were able to get temps and even locate three moons. So if you had looked it up you might have found out that I did not make it up. Since you did not bother you have proven what you said about the issue becoming us Vs. them and you won’t even entertain the thought that you are incorrect.



Is this the point you are talking about?



Try this on for size. The price of energy is based on supply and demand. China and India both are going through expansion eating up reserves not expected. The price of cement has gone up world wide causing homes to cost more, oil went up for the same reason, no one expected both countries to begin full bore expansion at the same time. In stead of increasing oil production the OPEC nations have chosen to reduce them. If we increase our own production the price will stabilize and then drop about a dollar a gallon.

To a point, yes. Why else is China blowing a hole in the ionosphere?

I know nothing about this please explain.

OOPS, my mistake--written well past my bedtime. I meant, of course the Ozone layer. :SURPRISED: 

I know nothing of this please explain.

I've driven my hybrid now for two years, and have no need to "throw out the batteries". They are supposed to last aprox. 7 years and then are TRADED IN and replaced for about 1000 bucks, the old ones are sent back in for reconditioning and resold. I drive about 20 miles to work and the last time i bought gas was two weeks ago....will need some more next week. I like the fact that, since owning this thing, I have sent less money to fundamentalist extremists who want to kill me....enjoy your truck....I'm sure the terrorists appreciate your added contribution to their cause. 

Please explaine how this fits into the topic?

did anyone hear about that English judge who ruled that they couldn't show Al Gore's movie without a warning that it contained serious inaccuracies?

Oh yeah, I read about that a while back. You know it seems that the Global Warming nuts are running away from their “irrefutable facts” about man made warming. How much do you want to bet that they will start in with man made global cooling again?