[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

This is the free for everyone leader that is on the website. There is a more in-depth story in for those with subscriptions.

The Economist generally does a pretty good job of putting debates like this in perspective in a fairly balanced way. Afterall, this is more about science and economics than about partisan politics.

The cost that would be associated with action in this Pascal's wager is far below the cost of being wrong.

[Mo1]

They've been promising us this and every winter ... the snow still comes

[dasboot]

The planet might go a little whacky...again. We aren't doing it; we can't stop it; it ain't Bush's fault.

[Dolphy]

Pascals Wager or, with India and China, Pascal's Flaw?

[Zeppo]

The comparisons to keeping standing armies or paying for insurance are way off base. In both those cases, the risks are much much greater than that of the purported manmade climate risk, and much more quantifiable. How many wars have we seen in the last ten years? The last fifty? The last century? How many houses have we seen destroyed by fire or wind or flood in the last year, let alone the last ten, fifty, or hundred? Now, compare that with how many manmade global warming or global cooling catastrophes we've seen over a comparable time period, or, if you wish, over all of recorded human history, or, in fact, over all of geologic history.

There is a much more cost-effective way to fight global warming that will have about the same effectiveness as the Kyoto accords - namely, a worldwide network of prayer circles led by shamans and wizards. In fact, at only a small marginal increase in cost, we could add tom-tom drummers to the prayer circles and boost their effectiveness by an order of magnitude. I guarantee you without fear of contradiction that it will have comparable results to Kyoto...

[Nateman]

Sooner or later as we run out of oil and coal , some other source of energy becomes cheaper, problem solved. (It also has the nice effect of depriving the Islamic world of it's main source of income!)

Since we will still be using lumber , plastic and paper in that future world and probably just burying it after it's used the amount of carbon in the ecosystem in the real long run will more likely decrease making the world get colder! So enjoy our day in the sun rather than create some Gestapo like organization designed to stop it!

[Dallas59]

Life is dangerous. I'm glad I have AC in the winter and hot water in the winter....and a place to stay out of the rain. I'm happy we use oil. Can you imagine what would happen if 7 billion people had to revert to cooking and heating with wood?

[Outland]

I'll take an interest when someone proves to me that 0.04% of the atmosphere can produce more than a negligible warming impact on the remaning 99.96%.

[timer]

Can anyone here explain : what's wrong with summer edging out winter?

[Trteamer]

The system could right itself or spin out of human control.

Afterall, this is more about science and economics than about partisan politics.

ROTFLMAO!

Global warming is nothing but pork for scientists and poiticians. Prove it exists.

[Exton1]

Global warming is a Political Discussion, not a Scientific, for legitimate weather scientists there is no connection of man to global warming. It is the socialist and fascist that are trying to convince people to give up their rights and money so that it can be redistributed. Watch UN get involved in exchanging carbon credits. They have been looking for a money source for ages. Remember that all Global Warming is based on computer models, so it’s junk in, junk out.

[lmr]

We are all doomed. I feel this may all be a ruse to make the companies that make sunblock, boats, Ethanol, Hybrid Cars, Recyclers, Weathermen, Climatatologists, Astronomers and Halliburton to increase their sales.

/sarc

I digress, If anyone hasn't said it... It's Bush's Fault!

/end clever cliched analogy

[Omedalus]

"...Then, 10,000 years ago, the wild fluctuations stopped, and the climate settled down to the balmy, stable state that the world has enjoyed since then. At about that time, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, mankind started to progress."

How does the author, who purports to understand the science and mathematics behind the global warming argument, justify his claim that a 10,000 year plateau constitutes a "lull" when the climactic temperature fluctuation periods he cites are millions of years long?

In other words, the Jurassic Period was millions of years long, and the Earth was hot the whole time through. If, during the Jurassic Period, a couple thousand years occurred here and there that were cooler than Jurassic average (i.e. equivalent to a modern-day climate), it would not move the Jurassic thermal average even slightly, nor would there be much paleontological evidence of such a comparatively brief cold spell.

So, he has no basis by which to assert that the 10,000 years we've been enjoying in this "midway" state are the result of some kind of delicate balance that's being shattered by human activity. Quite the contrary, it appears that he's stating that this temperate spell is more or less unnatural, or at the very least highly unusual, and we would be fools to assume that the Earth will remain in this state regardless of human activity. Rather, according to his argument, the natural state of Earth is to be either "very hot" or "very cold", and sooner or later it's going to revert to one of those two extremes. So we'd better be ready for it, because it's going to happen regardless of how many SUVs you take off the streets or how many cows you put diapers on.

[Exton1]

To believe in global warming you have to believe the following:

1. That the earth’s temperatures regions were stable, and never changed due to natural causes.
2. That an ice age 16,000 years ago, was not natural, so that warming since then is not natural.
3. That over 20 glacial advances and retreats have occurred during the last 2 million years, were not naturally caused.
4. That the earth is dead. The oceans, rain forest, volcanoes, plant growth, or clouds have no effect on the environment.
5. Mankind in all omnipotent. Only we effect the environment. A few of us with aerosol cans will create Ozone holes, and global warming. An exploding volcano that spews more chemical is the air in one belch than mankind has done in its total existence has no affect on the atmosphere.
6. Only western cultures have any effect on the environment. Anything out of China, or a third world country is natural or has no effect.
7. That people have no memories about all the doom and gloom predictions that NEVER even came close to being a fact.
8. That raising the average temperature of the worlds artic Poles from, -60 to -40 will melt ice.
9. That raising temperatures is a bad thing, and has no benefit to any animal or plant. If temperatures rise and we use less oil to heat our home, or that Florida organs will never be ruined do to frost bite, are all bad things.
10. That mankind has more power over global temperatures than the Sun does.
11. That if you take all of the worlds green house gases and represent them by a column 1 mile high, mankind’s contribution is 3/8 of an inch. This contribution will raise global temperatures like urinating in the Ocean will raise the water level.

Those who proclaim Man Made Global warming are FRAUDS, SNAKE OIL SALESMEN. .

[ancient_geezer]

FOR most of the Earth's history, the planet has been either very cold, by our standards, or very hot. Fifty million years ago there was no ice on the poles and crocodiles lived in Wyoming. Eighteen thousand years ago there was ice two miles thick in Scotland and, because of the size of the ice sheets, the sea level was 130m lower. Ice-core studies show that in some places dramatic changes happened remarkably swiftly: temperatures rose by as much as 20°C in a decade. Then, 10,000 years ago, the wild fluctuations stopped, and the climate settled down to the balmy, stable state that the world has enjoyed since then. At about that time, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, mankind started to progress.

I rather doubt that, unless of course you figure the earth is no longer in the same orbit it entered and has sustained for the last three million years.

 

 

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle

Figure 1-1 Global warming

Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years

 

Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years

Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years

Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice

 

 

In Figure 1-6, the 10 kyr years of agriculture and civilization appear as a sudden rise in temperature barely visible squeezed against the left hand axis of the plot. The temperature of 1950 is indicated by the horizontal line. As is evident from the data, civilization was created in an unusual time.

There are several important features to notice in these data, all of which will be discussed further in the remainder of the book. For the last million years or so (the left most third of the plot) the oscillations have had a cycle of about 100 kyr (thousand years). That is, the enduring period of ice is broken, roughly every 100 kyr, by a brief interglacial. During this time, the terminations of the ice ages appear to be particularly abrupt, as you can see from the sudden jumps that took place near 0, 120, 320, 450, and 650 thousand years ago. This has led scientists to characterize the data as shaped like a "sawtooth," although the pattern is not perfectly regular.

Figure 1-6 Climate of the last 3 million years

But as we look back beyond a 1000 kyr (1 million years), the character changes completely. The cycle is much shorter (it averages 41 kyr), the amplitude is reduced, the average value is higher (indicating that the ice ages were not as intense) and there is no evidence for the sawtooth shape. These are the features that ice age theories endeavor to explain. Why did the transition take place? What are the meanings of the frequencies? (We will show that they are well-known astronomical frequencies.) In the period immediately preceding the data shown here, older than 3 million years, the temperature didn’t drop below the 1950 value, and we believe that large glaciers didn’t form – perhaps only small ones, such as we have today in Greenland and Antarctica.

 

Spectrum of 100-kyr glacial cycle: Orbital inclination, not eccentricity
Richard A. Muller^* and Gordon J. MacDonald

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle
by Richard A. Muller

Figure 2. Spectral fingerprints in the vicinity of the 100 kyr peak: (a) for data from Site 607; (b) for data of the SPECMAP stack; (c) for a model with linear response to eccentricity, calculated from the results of Quinn et al. (ref 6); (d) for the nonlinear ice-sheet model of Imbrie and Imbrie (ref 22); and (e) for a model with linear response to the inclination of the Earth's orbit (measured with respect to the invariable plane). All calculations are for the period 0-600 ka. The 100 kyr peak in the data in (a) and (b) do not fit the fingerprints from the theories (c) and (d), but are a good match to the prediction from inclination in (e). return to beginning


Far more important to our present analysis, however, is the fact that the predicted 100 kyr "eccentricity line" is actually split into 95 and 125 kyr components, in serious conflict with the single narrow line seen in the climate data. The splitting of this peak into a doublet is well known theoretically (see, e.g., ref 5), but in comparisons with data the two peaks in the eccentricity were merged into a single broad peak by the poor resolution of the Blackman-Tukey algorithm (as was done, for example, in ref 8). The single narrow peak in the climate data was likewise broadened, and it appeared to match the broad eccentricity feature.

***

Figure 3. Variations of the inclination vector of the Earth's orbit. The inclination i is the angle between this vector and the vector of the reference frame; Omega is the azimuthal angle = the angle of the ascending node (in astronomical jargon).. In (A), (B), and (C) the measurements are made with respect to the zodiacal (or ecliptic) frame, i.e. the frame of the current orbit of the Earth. In (D), (E), and (F) the motion has been trasformed to the invariable frame, i.e. the frame of the total angular momentum of the solar system. Note that the primary period of oscillation in the zodiacal frame (A) is 70 kyr, but in the invariable plane (D) it is 100 kyr.

 

 

There is evidence from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (ref 39) of a narrow dust band extending only two degrees from the invariable plane. The precise location of these bands is uncertain; they may be orbiting in resonant lock with the Earth (ref 40, 41). It is not clear that these bands contain sufficient material to cause the observed climate effects. We note, however, that even small levels of accretion can scavenge greenhouse gases from the stratosphere, and cool the Earth's climate through the mechanism proposed by Hoyle (ref 30). The dust could also affect climate by seeding the formation of much larger ice crystals. The accreting material could be meteoric, originating as particles too large to give detectable infrared radiation.

Data on noctilucent clouds (mesospheric clouds strongly associated with the effects of high meteors and high altitude dust) supports the hypothesis that accretion increase significantly when the Earth passes through the invariable plane. As shown in Figure 6, a strong peak in the number of observed noctilucent clouds occurs on about July 9 in the northern hemisphere (ref 41, 42) within about a day of the date when the Earth passes through the invariable plane (indicated with an arrow). In the southern hemisphere the peak is approximately on January 9, also consistent with the invariable plane passage, but the data are sparse. The coincidence of the peaks of the clouds with the passage through the invariable plane had not previously been noticed, and it supports the contention that there is a peak in accretion at these times. On about the same date there is a similarly narrow peak is observed in the number of polar mesospheric clouds (ref43) and there is a broad peak in total meteoric flux (ref 44). It is therefore possible that it is the trail of meteors in the upper atmosphere, rather than dust, that is responsible for the climate effects.


Fig 6. Frequency of noctilucent clouds vs. day of year, in (A) the northern hemisphere, and in (B) the sourthern hemisphere (ref 41, 42). The arrows indicate the dates when the earth passes through the invariable plane. The coincidence of these dates with the maxima in the noctilucent clouds suggests the presence of a thin ring around the sun. Peaks on the same dates are seen in Polar mesospheric clouds (ref 44) and in radar counts of meteors.

 

 

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.252.html#1

INTERPLANETARY DUST PARTICLES (IDPs) are deposited on the Earth at the rate of about 10,000 tons per year. Does this have any effect on climate? Scientists at Caltech have found that ancient samples of helium-3 (coming mostly from IDPs) in oceanic sediments exhibit a 100,000-year periodicity. The researchers assert that their data, taken along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, support a recently enunciated idea that Earth's orbital inclination varies with a 100-kyr period; this notion in turn had been broached as an explanation for a similar periodicity in the succession of ice ages. (K.A. Farley and D.B. Patterson, Nature, 7 December 1995.)
Farley & Patterson 1998, http://www.elsevier.com/gej-ng/10/20/36/33/37/32/abstract.html
Farley http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~farley/
Farley http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/18/23/54/21/49/abstract.html

 

http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/dec96/noaa96-78.html

ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE DURING LAST GLACIAL PERIOD COULD BE TIED TO DUST-INDUCED REGIONAL WARMING

Preliminary new evidence suggests that periodic increases in atmospheric dust concentrations during the glacial periods of the last 100,000 years may have resulted in significant regional warming, and that this warming may have triggered the abrupt climatic changes observed in paleoclimate records, according to a scientist at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Current scientific thinking is that the dust concentrations contributed to global cooling.

 

 

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9228-mysterious-glowing-clouds-targeted-by-nasa.html

Mysterious glowing clouds targeted by NASA
26 May, 2006

High-altitude noctilucent clouds have been mysteriously spreading around the world in recent years (Image: NASA/JSC/ES and IA)

[bert]

The volitile emissions of the ink required for this drivel is a major contributor. When combined with the poitical hot air from algore the gaseous compound rejects radiation.

[Frwy]

Ho-hum

[AmericanChef]

Looks to me like it'll be an early and very cold winter here in MN. I had to drag out my sweatshirts already this week. If there's gonna be global warming, send me some!

[winodog]

I am suprised they allowed that second paragraph to go to print. They took a survey?
It goes downhill from there
But the first paragraph is a keeper.

[Sal]

Afterall, this is more about science and economics than about partisan politics.

This ALL about partisan politics and economics (as in destroying the economies of the West) and nothing about science.

Twenty years ago the same quality of "scientists" were telling us we were absolutely causing a brand new ice age--and they were just as positive about that as they are about global warming.

Check out some of the global warming sales groups like that group of "Concerned Scientists". See how many of their "scientists" have degrees in Library Science, Psychology, Sociology, etc. and how few in the hard sciences.

Are you aware that over 17,000 REAL scientists have signed a petition questioning the authenticity of the science re: global warming?

[MissAmericanPie]

If global warming is to be blamed on green house gases then why are the rest of the planets in the solar system heating up also?

Scientist were recently surprised to find the unexpected temperatures on Pluto. Of course we should completely ignore that old Bible that states that in the end times power would be given to the sun to scorch men with fire.

So if indeed that is true and we are entering that phase of history I doubt that a giant pair of sun glasses placed on the Earth is going to help much.