For every bit of 'proof' you post anyone could post an equal amount of
'proof' to the opposite.

This is an issue that has not in any way been decided by the best minds
in the scientific community and no consensus exists one way or the
other. For one of us here to decide the matter is at best, presumptuous.

Given this, it makes your stating one side of the argument as if it were
fact quite antagonistic to people who are more convinced by the other
side of the argument. It also groups you in with political groups who
have an agenda to promote that isn't dependant of scientific fact, but
rather on money and power. Even if they are right, they still attract a
lot of negative attention more due to their motivation than their side
of the argument.

It's not unlike the creation/evolution debate. Taking a firm stand on
either side automatically gets you categorized in with a stereotypical
group of people by the other side. Even though you may or may not fit
into that group at all.

Personally, I don't feel anyone currently can prove human induced global
warming to be fact or fiction so I don't have a side to take and I'm
open to all the arguments on both sides.

I do however agree that it's arrogant and improper for anyone to state
either side as an absolute. At best I question their motivation for such
a statement.


All that aside, I think that it is a fact that most of the things that
are suggested by believers in Human Induced Global Warming (HIGW) are
reasonable anyway. Reducing pollution makes sense. Even if it doesn't
cause HIGW, it still harms the people, animals and plant-life it
touches. Reducing usage of hydrocarbon fuels makes sense. Especially for
countries like the US who must get most of it from countries that don't
like them much and that are unstable. Reducing your heating and cooling
bills makes good fiscal sense, especially in an economy where people
spent more than they saved for the first time since the great
depression. Using more alternative fuels and more efficient materials
just makes sense.
Almost all the things proposed as fixes of HIGW by those that believe in
it are sound ideas in and of themselves, whether HIGW exists or not. So
maybe HIGW is a made up bogeyman to get us to do these things, that
doesn't mean we shouldn't do them.

Granted, I'm more moderate. I'm not going to go live in a commune
wearing hemp underwear and eating vegetables I grew organically myself.
I'm not buying any darn Prius, as I have need of moving more than myself
my wife, two dwarfs and a shoebox. I'll keep my 3 diesel vehicles which
I still contend to be better, more efficient, and cleaner than gasoline
powered vehicles and more practical than hybrids (not to mention much
cheaper and more reliable).
However, I do have or plan on having; solar panels, water boiler heat
(multi-fuel, corn, wood, pellets), diesel generator, bio-diesel
processor, diesel well pump, wind turbine, battery banks, inverters etc.
In my case I don't particularly have any green hippy intentions, I'm
just cheap, and want my independence from reliance on energy providers,
and I like to tinker and enjoy the satisfaction something I've built
myself. In fact this is how I came to be interested in Basic Stamps, and
now PICs and then this list.

Steve Ravet wrote:
> It was suggested that I not post statements such as "humans cannot cause
> or relieve global warming" without either an IMO or some substantiation.
> So I'll explain.
>
> First is what seems to me to be common sense.  What kinds of changes has
> the earth been through that we know about?  We know the earth has been a
> complete snowball, covered in snow from pole to equator, at least once
> before.  In these conditions the only life to be found on the planet is
> that weird stuff that grows in the hot water vents at the bottom of the
> ocean.
>
> We know that large portions of North America have been under water.
> Just a few weeks ago I went fossil hunting in Ft. Worth and found
> incomplete fossils of snails that were 2-3 feet in diameter.  Sea
> fossils are found around Denver (5000 foot elevation).  We know that the
> Pacific has encroached as far west as Arizona more than once, and that
> the river in the Grand Canyon has changed directions multiple times as
> the land rises and falls.
>
> We know that Indonesia is all that's left of what used to be a large
> continent, its tectonic plate being subsumed by its neighbors.  What is
> now a tropical island used to be a snowy mountaintop.
>
> We know that greenland used to be green, and the existence of polar ice
> caps is unusual, not usual.
>
> The predictions that accompany GW are pretty extreme:  tropical diseases
> run rampant, agricultural disasters, flooding, and widespread death.  I
> don't find it credible that human activity could create environmental
> change on par with plate tectonics, asteroid collisions, and other
> "normal" (in geologic terms) environmental excursions.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Second is the modeling.  We only have directly measured temperature data
> for the last 150-ish years, and most of this data was collected on land
> in the western hemisphere.  There is some historical data from the
> oceans, but only from shipping lanes.  How accurate is temperature data
> collected by laymen, using 150 year old thermometer technology?  Do we
> use 150 year old thermometers in science labs today?  How much error is
> there when this incomplete and somewhat inaccurate data is integrated to
> come up with a global temperature?
>
> Other temperature data is inferred from tree rings, polar ice cores,
> etc.  How much error is associated with these measurements, and how is
> that quantified?
>
> The scientists (and therefore their models) don't understand the action
> of water vapor in the air.  It has both a warming and cooling effect.
> They don't understand, and aren't even aware of, all of the feedback
> mechanisms that go into global climate.  
>
> I am skeptical that data of unknown accuracy, and a model that is
> admittedly incomplete, can make predictions about fractions of a degree
> far into the future.  Would you even bother running a spice simulation
> if there was this much uncertainty in your transistor models?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Even if it's real, what can we do about it?  Here's a link to an 8 page
> footnoted article that raises good questions:
>
> http://www.oism.org/pproject/
>
> The atmosphere as 750 gigatons of CO2 in it.  Other carbon reservoirs
> are the surface ocean, deep ocean currents, the land and marine
> biomasses.  The sizes of these reservoirs range from hundreds to tens of
> thousands of GT.  Transport between these reservoirs ranges from 10s to
> hundreds of GT per year.  Human activity contributes about 5 GT per year
> to the atmosphere.  The tremendous sizes of these reservoirs, and the
> uncertainty in the transport volumes mean that human contributions are
> noise in the overall process.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Should we do something anyway?  Bjorn Lomborg, author of the "Skeptical
> Environmentalist" notes that a single year of the global cost of the
> Kyoto Protocol would pay for water and sewage treatment for everyone in
> the world.  Implementing Kyoto is the global equivalent of mortgaging
> your house, liquidating all your assets, and borrowing as much money as
> possible to build a titanium meteor shield for your house.
>
> --steve
>
>   
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