[liberallarry]

No. I changed my mind.

You're right. There is a third possibility - in the next 20 years the science will be clarified enough to settle the issue and preventative measures, if justified, will be instituted and prevent catastrophe.

Keep in mind, however, the scale of behavior changes required to stop population growth and reduce or stop greenhouse-gas emissions.

[maine-iac7]

Ahhhm - Google stuff on the 'mini ice age', the weather 1000 years ago - per the Viking Sagas - the contemporary scientists who have plausible data that we could be headed for, not global warming, but another mini-ice age precisely because the glaciers in Antarctica are melting....

Earth is in control - and will do her thing. WE can build levees, pass laws, stomp and pontificate and lie for political/power grabs - but in the long run, nature will run her cycles as she has for millions of years.

The coastlines may well come in 20' and flood out a lot of man's building where they shouldn't have. That is nothing to Ma Nature. Her coastline waters were mush higher than an add'l 20' 1000 years ago.

Maybe a new mini ice age and a global warming will balance each other out and things will stay as they are now - myself, I could use some warming up here in the NO East...

Man, in the meantime, postures like the fly on the hub of the chariot wheel: "Look at all the dust I kick up!"

[palmer]

Thanks for both replies. I agree that science will probably settle this issue. I have maintained (with disagreement from cogitator) that the models are currently not good enough because they don't adequately model weather. The crux of the models is showing increasing water vapor from more evaporation from the increase in temperature due to our CO2 increases. The essence of my disagreement is that unlike CO2 the water vapor doesn't get distributed evenly (never has, never will), and the weather is what distributes it and causes a number of other important changes such as changes in heat transfer from the tropics to the poles, convective heat transfer aloft, etc. Cogitator agrees that clouds add uncertainty.

Any of these factors or others not mentioned could tip warming in one direction or another. But whatever these factors do, there's also a power argument against "runaway" warming, but I'm not familiar enough with it yet to argue it properly. But like the modeling, it should be easily resolvable in the next 20 years or so as long as we all stay true to science.