[ex-Texan]

Global warming is a reality but it's all part of cyclic earth changes driven primarily by (1) Sun activity (i.e. sun spots and coronal ejections) which has a huge effect on underwater volcanic activity, (2) The earth's magnetic field which waxes and wanes in very long cycles (see NYT article posted today), (3) Space weather which is variable and unpredictable and places the earth at risk from asteroids and comets from far-flung regions of space, and (4) Ocean currents like El Nino which move millions of miles of sea water (and fresh water from melting ice caps) and dramtically effect weather patterns on all the continents.

I believe personally we are now in the late stages of a 60 year global warming period and will soon be entering a period of rapid global cooling. The last time this happened on earth was about 11,500 years ago. When global cooling begins to happen it will happen rather quickly (do you recall mastadons quick frozen eating wild flowers?).

SUV's and fossil fuels contributed slightly to global weather shifts but not all that much. An argument can be made that we all would have been better off if Detroit had stopped engineering design improvements with the "flat head V-8 engine" because we would not be so dependent on Middle East oil. Oh, well . . . Time marches onward.

To find out more about severe weather shifts go see "The Day After Tomorrow" which has broken records world wide and has sold over $ 530 million tickets. The film exaggerates the weather cycle scenario but is rather eye-opening.

The planet earth lives its own cyclical life as it travels through space like a huge space ship. We are just along for the ride like fleas on a sleeping cat.

Everything is in God's hands and subject to his will.

[megatherium]

The theory of anthropogenic global warming: Carbon dioxide has increased by about 30% in the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. This figure is not in doubt. A simple model of the Earth's atmosphere indicates this much more C02 should cause a degree of warming. Climatologists are now using some of the most powerful supercomputers available, to build and run much more sophisticated models of the climate.

The official line (by the scientists directly involved in the research) is that global warming is real and it may be in part caused by humans. I think the jury is still out on global warming, but I think it's a bit blithe to assume this is just junk science. It won't be like that movie, but you'd hate for the drought out west to be permanent. (That's the kind of thing that climate change could cause.) This is why I'm a big fan of nuclear power.

[pepsionice]

Once we admit that volcano activity, sun activity, the magnetic field, and space weather all play a role...the bubble is burst. It is difficult to play the global warming game unless you come up with a pausiable reason for the little freeze in the 1400s, which none of the Crackpots have yet to define. Most want to utilze volcano activity...but you can't explain almost 200 years of extremely cold weather in that fashion. Everytime NPR puts these guys on...I start laughing when they state their background. None are historians or weather experts...they call themselves envirnomental climate experts...which doesn't say anything much.