This is just sick.

[Mwalimu]

I've often wondered what "young-Earth Creationists" think whenever they see anything about dinosaurs, the formation of mountains, how the solar system formed, and so forth.

As for global warming, if the worst predictions are true, then it would be analogous to driving at high speed toward a catastrophic collision. Those who argue that the evidence is unclear or inconclusive want to keep going because there are no impending collisions. But to me that only says we're driving in fog - just because we can't see the obstacles doesn't mean they're not there.

[Kerry Skydancer]

If the worst scenarios are accurate? But they can't be. If they were, we'd already be seeing the effects starting up, and we don't.

The whole point with global warming is not that it isn't happening (it is, fairly evidently, since the climate minimum two centuries back) but whether that change is actually dangerous or even primarily driven by human activity.

There is strong evidence of global warming on Mars, Saturn, and now Neptune, as well as Earth. Strong indication that it's driven from the outside, I'd think.

There is also the fact, ignored by the 'We're Doomed' crowd, that global temperatures are still significantly below those of a millenium ago. Climate is a system that has slow oscillations, and people keep trying to plot the current slope as a straight line when it's really a sine wave. Drop back thirty-five years and read the stuff being written then. The trend was downward - the doom and gloom crowd was drawing that as a straight line, too, and worrying about the Coming Ice Age.

What we need to do is invest a lot of man-hours and computer-years in climate research and see if we can figure out exactly what it is doing, or what it can do. Current models don't have enough congruence to reality to be useful, and it's not worth crippling the world's economies to try to correct a problem which has a very good chance of being entirely a function of lack of knowledge.

[Mwalimu]

If the worst scenarios are accurate? But they can't be. If they were, we'd already be seeing the effects starting up, and we don't.

(...)

Apologies, I wasn't real clear in my last post. I didn't intend to imply that I believe the worst-case scenarios are true. Really Bad Things(tm) may or may not happen as a result of global warming. We're just not really sure at this point. My point was that some of the naysayers are using that uncertainty as an excuse to continue as we are, full speed ahead into the fog.

[CasVeg]

Actually, I was thinking of Newtonian gravity. The theory's reliance on instantaneous unmediated and unmitigated action at a distance did not sit well with its creator. It was a pathetic comb-over--a step backwards--compared to Maxwellian electrodynamics. But, science needed to be formalized, and Newton did what he needed to do. It haunted him for the rest of his life.

[Squeaky Bunny]

If the worst scenarios are accurate? But they can't be. If they were, we'd already be seeing the effects starting up, and we don't.

The whole point with global warming is not that it isn't happening (it is, fairly evidently, since the climate minimum two centuries back) but whether that change is actually dangerous or even primarily driven by human activity.

There is strong evidence of global warming on Mars, Saturn, and now Neptune, as well as Earth. Strong indication that it's driven from the outside, I'd think.

There is also the fact, ignored by the 'We're Doomed' crowd, that global temperatures are still significantly below those of a millenium ago. Climate is a system that has slow oscillations, and people keep trying to plot the current slope as a straight line when it's really a sine wave. Drop back thirty-five years and read the stuff being written then. The trend was downward - the doom and gloom crowd was drawing that as a straight line, too, and worrying about the Coming Ice Age.

What we need to do is invest a lot of man-hours and computer-years in climate research and see if we can figure out exactly what it is doing, or what it can do. Current models don't have enough congruence to reality to be useful, and it's not worth crippling the world's economies to try to correct a problem which has a very good chance of being entirely a function of lack of knowledge.

The answer is simple. Cows generate large quantities of methane, which is a prime ingredient in global warming. If you reduce the cow population then you reduce the methane amount.

So...

Eat beef and save the environment!!!

[Shyal_malkes]

The answer is simple. Cows generate large quantities of methane, which is a prime ingredient in global warming. If you reduce the cow population then you reduce the methane amount.

So...

Eat beef and save the environment!!!

what was that one theory that said that the simplest answers tend to be the most correct?

[Squeaky Bunny]

The answer is simple. Cows generate large quantities of methane, which is a prime ingredient in global warming. If you reduce the cow population then you reduce the methane amount.

So...

Eat beef and save the environment!!!

what was that one theory that said that the simplest answers tend to be the most correct?

Occam's razor. *bows till his ears touch the ground*

Eat steak, eat steak, eat a big ol' steer . . .

[Kerry Skydancer]

Actually, I was thinking of Newtonian gravity. The theory's reliance on instantaneous unmediated and unmitigated action at a distance did not sit well with its creator. It was a pathetic comb-over--a step backwards--compared to Maxwellian electrodynamics. But, science needed to be formalized, and Newton did what he needed to do. It haunted him for the rest of his life.

Ummm... Maxwell was over a century later. Newton was not a step backwards from electrodynamics, and the fact that he -realized- the problem allowed science to advance from that point.

[Luna_Northcat]

If the worst scenarios are accurate? But they can't be. If they were, we'd already be seeing the effects starting up, and we don't.

*cough* *cough* Kerry...

Melting glaciers, melting polar ice, warming ocean temps, warming troposphere, changing oceanic thermocline, shifting patterns of the North Atlantic Oscillation and southern hemisphere annular mode and circumpolar vortex, earlier spring around the world, shifting breeding and migration patterns for numerous species...much of this started with the bounceback from the Little Ice Age, but that should have faded off by the beginning of the 20th century; climatologists are ALL agreed on that one, and the cycles which should have governed it are reasonably well mapped. Instead, we are seeing an acceleration of warming, not a levelling off.

The whole point with global warming is not that it isn't happening (it is, fairly evidently, since the climate minimum two centuries back) but whether that change is actually dangerous or even primarily driven by human activity.

There isn't a single model anywhere which can account for the climate data collected without including human-generated greenhouse gases. Doesn't that tell you anything?

As for dangerous, we're currently inhabiting coastal areas with tens of millions more people than ever even existed in the past, and worldwide there isn't really excess food (yes, there used to be until recently. Now China is buying as much food as the exporting countries will sell them). One of the biggest problems we face is loss of that land with rising ocean levels, not to mention the problem of storms. We face several problems: where do displaced populations go (worldwide), what economic side-effects do the increased refugee levels have, and what about the crop problems generated by shifting weather patterns? After all, we still have to feed people. Not to mention the problem of species extinctions: human encroachment on habitat has driven a lot of species into very cramped quarters, and if the climate changes push them outside their "comfort zone", not all of them have enough population to weather the change, or an "escape route" to take to somewhere more to their liking...if that even exists any more. So, there are problems; the point of this exercise is to pin down what is likeliest to happen, when, and what will have the worst effects, and to come up with ways to mitigate or deal with it.

There is strong evidence of global warming on Mars, Saturn, and now Neptune, as well as Earth. Strong indication that it's driven from the outside, I'd think.

I got the impression that you were involved with NASA somehow?

If that is the case, then you have no real excuse. None of these have identical causes, and in one case you have it wrong.

Mars is experiencing "global warming" because it is SPRING. This is the first time NASA has been in position to closely observe a Martian spring; because of the orbits, mostly observation has been done during the Martian winters.

Neptune is not experiencing "global warming". Neptune's moon Triton is, but not Neptune. While it is a bit of a mystery, it is a mystery which appears to operate on a several-hundred year cycle, and appears to mirror Pluto's "global warming" which is occurring at the moment. The thing to note here is, both Pluto and Triton are nearly identical distances from the sun at the moment as they are just leaving their closest approaches to the sun in some time, and it is suspected that the warming currently happening represents a response lag to the close solar approach. What NASA does know for sure is that it is not the result of increased solar output, since NASA monitors the solar output carefully these days and knows how much reaches those planets -- and they say quite explicitly that the variation in solar output couldn't account for the effects observed there. A lag in response time to "summer" is not unreasonable, however, given how often it is observed. I mean, even here, on the North Sea -- the warmest temperature of the sea here is in August, after the warmest days have passed.

Saturn is not experiencing "global warming" either. See http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/news/science/saturn/ ; Saturn has a "hot spot" at the south pole, hardly surprising given that it has been pointed at the sun for the last 15 years. The news story is about the fact that the hot spot appears to be bilayer and more sharply delineated than expected, which may reveal unknown dynamics of the Saturn atmosphere. There is a suspicion that Saturn's far side has become correspondingly cold, but we haven't been able to observe it yet.

None of which has any relevance to earth. Solar output isn't the governing issue here either; Solanki's paper from a few years ago demonstrated that the last couple of decades don't track solar variations even vaguely closely. There is an overriding signal, here.

There is also the fact, ignored by the 'We're Doomed' crowd, that global temperatures are still significantly below those of a millenium ago.

Aaargh! Skeptic myth #2. The Medieval Warm Period was a regional, not a global, effect. Unlike today, which is a global effect. And, incidentally, we are not "significantly below" those temperatures, either. We drew even with them several years ago. Now we are passing them. And, oh yes, did I mention that now it is global rather than regional?

Climate is a system that has slow oscillations, and people keep trying to plot the current slope as a straight line when it's really a sine wave. Drop back thirty-five years and read the stuff being written then. The trend was downward - the doom and gloom crowd was drawing that as a straight line, too, and worrying about the Coming Ice Age.

Rubbish. Well-documented rubbish, at that. See http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ . Scientists should not be held to account for what the popular press does to their statements in order to get saleable headlines.

What we need to do is invest a lot of man-hours and computer-years in climate research and see if we can figure out exactly what it is doing, or what it can do. Current models don't have enough congruence to reality to be useful, and it's not worth crippling the world's economies to try to correct a problem which has a very good chance of being entirely a function of lack of knowledge.

Cripes, Kerry. Read up on stuff before you make a statement about it?
Have you read ANY of http://www.realclimate.org/ ? Could I please convince you to direct your attention to this: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=170

Seriously, the science is THERE. There is no excuse for not being familiar with it....