<p>Christcorp,</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that humans cannot have a profound effect on the environment?</p>
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</p>
<p>This must be Reed. There is, of course, the fact that the Reed reactor is so tiny that a meltdown or explosion of any sort is physically impossible.</p>
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</p>
<p>This post is meaningless.</p>
<p>" … Are you suggesting that humans cannot have a profound effect on the environment?"</p>
<p>Only if they are Americans.</p>
<p>We are so screwed.</p>
<p>Of course we can have an affect on the environment. But our impact on global warming; CO2 emissions; is less than 4%. I don’t believe that the “Global Warming” conditions that are being feared is dramatically affected or caused by mankind.</p>
<p>Time to party like it’s 1999. I wish I could find all the doom and gloom crap written back in the 70’s. By now we would be both overpopulated with starvation rampant (not just due to crazy politics in some assbackwards countries), out of oil, and in nuclear winter.</p>
<p>[Gone:</a> Mass Extinction and the Hazards of Earth’s Vanishing Biodiversity](<a href=“http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/05/gone.html]Gone:”>Gone: Mass Extinction and the Hazards of Earth’s Vanishing Biodiversity – Mother Jones)</p>
<p>[As</a> The World Burns](<a href=“http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/world_burns.html]As”>As The World Burns – Mother Jones)</p>
<p>I bet when Ma Jones published articles on the Taliban in 1998, Barrons said they were worrying about nothing.</p>
<p>How can you trivialize the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War? It was very real.</p>
<p>[World</a> War III - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“World War III - Wikipedia”>World War III - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Tornadoes in January?</p>
<p>[Comcast.net</a> News - Rare Winter Tornadoes Pop Up in Midwest](<a href=“Discovery Hub - News & Technology”>Discovery Hub - News & Technology)</p>
<p>And the article says that they had one before in January in the 60’s and illinois in the 50’s. I guess our global warming was affecting those also.</p>
<p>When they have 5 january Tornadoes in a 10 year period, there might be some significance. 1 in a 40-50 year period doesn’t mean anything.</p>
<p>Just responding to the first post. Apparently, it is not unseasonably cold everywhere this year.</p>
<p>I remember a June in the Atlanta area when my kids wore their parkas to the wading pool. I also remember a January when we ran the AC non-stop. One of my biggest stumbling blocks on the global warming theory is that it depends on averages and averages are extremely vulnerable to bias. I’ve read pieces where the average temperature in New York City can vary tremendously at a given instant depending on proximity to traffic, wind tunnel effects, shade from high rises, etc. Even day to day average comparisons are suspect. At what time - day light savings? In full sun? In the shade? Ground level or second-story height. There are simply a zillon variations when we are looking at historical measurements. And then of course there’s the “cascade effect” that John Tierney wrote about recently in the NY Times in which the media fixates on particular events that suit a premise. Thus, we have enormous coverage of unseasonable storms and temperatures – and virtually no coverage of extremely standard weather. Similarly, scientific papers supporting globabl warming are cited heavily. The reverse for studies that question the claim. I’m not saying any scientists are stupid or have suspect agendas. I just think that the notion of dooms day in the form of radical climate change is far too delicious a concept for our media to pass up without hyping it to ludicrous levels. When that happens, it’s very hard to have a civil discussion.</p>
<p>They have it all covered–storms will be worse–or less, it will be hotter, but could be cooler. Some areas will be better off but others will be worse off. Or not.</p>
<p>The great thing about the global warming - CO2 hypothesis is the flexibility. We can use computer models to predict based on the hypothesis, but none of them need to be reliable. If one doesn’t work, we just modify it or switch to another model. The hypothesis doesn’t need to conform to any time predictions. One year we talk about changes over centuries or decades, the next we are predicting the ice caps will melt in a few years. If global warming doesn’t seem to happen quickly enough to detect, no problem, we can just predict that we are going to see disasters and highly variable weather instead. Maybe even short term global cooling touched off by all that CO2. And of course the global warming hypothesis doesn’t need to look at the past. We will just ignore the fact that we have had huge climate shifts in the past - including the recent past - and we don’t know why they occurred. </p>
<p>We know atmospheric CO2 is increasing. We know that there has been some warming over the past few decades. The rest is just a big guess. I can understand the general public falling for the sensationalism. I really have a hard time with the scientists who claim the hypothesis is highly likely. Clearly there is too much politics in science. A good scientist should keep an open mind and investigate novel ideas. A good scientist also needs to be cautious about jumping to conclusions.</p>
<p>Edad, pretty much everything you said is untrue as to the current state of climate change science, but it is an accurate reflection of the “skeptics’” tactics. In fact, atmospheric scientists have continued to refine the atmospheric models and incorporate the vast quantity of data - both new and old - into the comparison of theory prediction vs. actual data. That is, in fact, being done. Apparent anomalies are being reviewed for data corruption, additional sources of data are being brought on line and folded into the analysis, etc. Observed results are tracking closer and closer to predicted results as more information becomes incorporated into the analysis. Climate shifts of the past are reviewed and reviewed and reviewed, the available data (mostly indirect, of course) regarding those periods is assessed and compared to what the model would predict. That is - the scientists are in fact doing what you say they should be doing - acting like scientists - and not doing what you accuse them of, which is acting like cartoon characters. Do you really think that all those scientists are just being “political?” Do you really think you know better than scientists who work full time in atmospheric studies what is and isn’t just a “big guess?” What is the basis of your confidence in your personal superior knowledge in that area? </p>
<p>Climate change science is not simple stuff; there are lots of variables and the result is trends, not individual events. It doesn’t purport to predict what the weather will be like in Chicago next Wednesday, just what the average weather will be like in North America over the next decade. Your post is a great rant, but it doesn’t describe what’s happening in the real world. I’m curious as to how you formed the contrary impression you expressed? What is the source of the information upon which you based your conclusions?</p>
<p>The “skeptics”, on the other hand, utterly free from the restraints of academic rigor, just jump around from anecdote to anecdote - like the OP in this thread, and sneer. Now that’s “flexibility.”</p>
<p>"The “skeptics”, on the other hand, utterly free from the restraints of academic rigor, just jump around from anecdote to anecdote "</p>
<p>You can always tell when someone is taking a political/reactionary position versus a scientific one when they, being non-scientists themselves, slough off the work of climate scientists around the world as being “utterly free from the restraints of academic rigor”.</p>
<p>[ExxonMobil</a> has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview](<a href=“http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html]ExxonMobil”>Some Like It Hot – Mother Jones)</p>
<p>And thats just one company:p</p>
<p>"Hi incidence of payola by big corporations amongst the scientist you speak "</p>
<p>data to support this assertion, please???</p>
<p>There are hundreds of climate scientists around the world that dispute the hype of global warming in one way or another. To ignore their collectives views with a flip of the hand as kluge did and then justify that willful ignorance by saying that these scientists are all willing to let the world go to Hell in a handbasket for a few dollars is ludicrous. Actually the reverse case is far more likely:</p>
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[OpinionJournal</a> - Extra](<a href=“http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220]OpinionJournal”>http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220)</p>
<p>$1.7 billion, makes that $8 million (if correct) look pretty miniscule, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Every major dietary scientist said the Atkins diet was just impossible to really work based on everything science said. Well, even on such a relatively simple thing they were dead wrong. As I recall anyone anyone who said positive things about it was dismissed as a wacko. Now several studies which set out ot disprove the theory behind the diet found out it was actually pretty effective and most of the side effects that people claimed would happen did not happen either. The party-line in science can be as difficult to buck as anything. They are not fairminded.</p>