“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.”

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Let me try to state this in a different way, the difference between low cost energy and human work is slavery. Our technology is young, but also incredibly stupid, we as humans, take in oxygen and fuel, and spit out CO2 and that is exactly how our machines work, but far more inefficiently than we do. We are building machines that are competing with us and using our natural resources that we need to survive on this planet!

My key objections to the NERC and our own EPA is that while these organizations may have the resources to point out these problems, they are not offering any solutions to them, rather offer taxation, fines, and even shutting you down, causing your plant to move to a 3rd world country where they don't have such regulations. Is this a solution? Certainly not on a global basis.

Our corporations are based on instant profit, if two cents can be saved on a part made in China, even though tons of oil and coal have to be burnt to go there and come back, not thinking of the long term, that is what is done. Our state is equally stupid with ethanol production, using our tax dollars to feed a single SUV that could feed over a thousand families. Ha, really backfired on them when the price of corn rose from $1.50 a bushel to over $9.00, that didn't consider we live in a supply and demand economy.

I have never received help from our EPA, only told what I cannot do, and better or will be fined or shut down, try and make a profit just to stay in business, when other countries don't have that burden.

I agree, we have problems, with our automobiles, over 85% of the input energy is wasted, but what we need is solutions to these problems, never any money for that

I see the situation as an opportunity through technology, using the knowledge and understanding of our planet, to find viable solutions. Conservation is the most immediate and fundamental key. The auto industry has fought long and hard, with the help of Big Oil against higher fuel efficiency standards for our automobiles. It's ironic, that Detroit's own insistence on looking out for it's own interests has ultimately done themselves in.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Unlike many, I don't pretend my background in anyway leads me to draw any intelligent conclusion

on such scientific research.

However, I do know the nature of government and it is to, extract revenue by any means possible.

It's hard to imagine a more perfect threat than Global-Warming to raise income and control the lives of everyone.

For this reason I am highly skeptical.

As for the related science community, most are directly or indirectly drinking from the breast of global warming grants, how can anyone doubt this effects their findings?

Another red-flag for me is this effort to "shut down" critical opinions... usually by claiming Man Made Global warming is virtually without detractors among scientists and portraying the doubting

person as uneducated, ignorant, or part of some Throw-back culture.

We have seen the "experts" of every field wrong so many times it's hard to take things at face value.

Speaking of "experts" in other fields being wrong, did any of them predict the Price of gas would be below $2 rather than north of $5 in the future?

That's a bit of a sweeping statement and somewhat difficult to validate given the size of some of these science associations. We're talking about thousands of professional scientists around the world....

As for shutting down critical opinions - I will reiterate that the suspicion of and negative attitudes towards Al Gore seems to have more prominence in the public skepticism of GW, than does the merits of the science itself. The vast majority of people simply aren't clued up with the current state of climatology research regarding GW - and so don't really "read" as much as parrot out articles that mirror their own biases.

In that regard its laughable that people insist on debating the science - when few of us really have the know-how to assess the quality and relevance of the work. Hence we get PR pieces or op-ed articles quoted as if they are indistinguishable from genuine research papers.

[HAL 9000 96]

The following is a list of scientists that reject global warming:

The petition has been circulated only in the United States. The current list of 31,072 petition signers includes 9,021 PhD; 6,961 MS; 2,240 MD and DVM; and 12,850 BS or equivalent academic degrees. Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science. All of the listed signers have formal educations in fields of specialization that suitably qualify them to evaluate the research data related to the petition statement. Many of the signers currently work in climatological, meteorological, atmospheric, environmental, geophysical, astronomical, and biological fields directly involved in the climate change controversy.

Atmosphere, Earth, & Environment (3,697)

1. Atmosphere (578)

I) Atmospheric Science (114)

II) Climatology (40)

III) Meteorology (341 )

IV) Astronomy (58)

V) Astrophysics (25)

2. Earth (2,148)

I) Earth Science (107)

II) Geochemistry (62)

III) Geology (1,601)

IV) Geophysics (334)

V) Geoscience (23)

VI) Hydrology (21)

3. Environment (971)

I) Environmental Engineering (473)

II) Environmental Science (256)

III) Forestry (156)

IV) Oceanography (86)

Computers & Math (903)

1. Computer Science (217)

2. Math (686)

I) Mathematics (575)

II) Statistics (111)

Physics & Aerospace (5,691)

1. Physics (5,106)

I) Physics (2,310)

II) Nuclear Engineering (215)

III) Mechanical Engineering (2,581)

2. Aerospace (585)

I) Aerospace Engineering (585)

Chemistry (4,796)

1. Chemistry ( 3,156)

2. Chemical Engineering (1,640)

Biochemistry, Biology, & Agriculture (2,924)

1. Biochemistry (768)

I) Biochemistry (703)

II) Biophysics (65)

2. Biology (1,365)

I) Biology (985)

II) Ecology (72)

III) Entomology (57)

IV) Zoology (145)

V) Animal Science (106)

3. Agriculture (791)

I) Agricultural Science (314)

II) Agricultural Engineering (111)

III) Plant Science (292)

IV) Food Science (74)

Medicine (3,069)

1. Medical Science (726)

2. Medicine (2,343)

General Engineering & General Science (9,992)

1. General Engineering (9,751)

I) Engineering (7,289)

II) Electrical Engineering (2,075)

III) Metallurgy (387)

2. General Science (241)

http://www.petitionproject.org/index.html

I dunno - that petition has been brought up before on here and its not exactly what it appears.

Yeah... that 'petition' again...

[HAL 9000 96]

As for temperatures in places I am aware of:

November 2-5 in Chicago I was out in a tank top as it was hovering between high 70s and low 80s F.

December 1st it snowed and was horribly cold leading up to that (under 20 F).

Other places are experiencing strange new patterns too: Florida (unseasonal cold), Pacific North West (which almost didn't have a Summer this year), etc.

There was so much snow last year from here in Chicago to Montreal and beyond.

I was in Montreal last Winter and the cars were buried. The city had nowhere to put snow even if it could keep up with plowing it!

Is it getting warmer?

Is it getting colder?

Hmmmmm...

It is getting weird.

My saying stands:

The unusual has become the usual.

Given that today its 11 degrees F... I am slowly starting to become a fan of man made GW. We need more VJers to continue talking out of their collective recta to warm the planet some more- although, of course... the homeostatic reaction from the planet's climate systems should be pretty interesting in that case.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Wow. Most Engineers rejected global warming than other disciplines.

[HAL 9000 96]

As I say - I think there is an undue fixation on Al Gore, he's not very (at all really) influential outside of the US, and the theory was kicking around for years - long before he got on the bandwagon.

It snowed in Houston and is snowing in New Orleans.

The climate has and will always change. How arrogant humans are to think differently.

<ahem> The debate is about why the climate changes, not whether it does.

And what parts of these changes do so based on natural and not-so natural causes. I believe the information out there is a lot more clear than some would rather believe based on logic and common scientific sense.

[HAL 9000 96]

As much as is hurt, I did watch, "Inconvenient Truth" having to use cartoons to show what is happening, a bit too much. Carbon dioxide is not even classified as a greenhouse gas, first off, not enough in the atmosphere to make much of a difference, 300-600 part per million, second, it's molecule is only responsive to a very specific wavelength of UV radiation that has yet to be determined. That specific wavelength is required to resonant the CO2 molecule causing fiction that produces heat. Third, CO2 does not cause global warming, but the amount released into the atmosphere is an aftereffect of global warming, just the opposite of what Gore is stating.

For a democracy to be successful, it's citizens must be intelligent and for a country that holds the likes of Anna Nicole or Britney in high esteem, I do not have much hope.

Nick, you're arguing over different aspects of what is going on regarding Global Warming, but in terms of the science regarding climate change, the science is solid and the consensus is overwhelming. What the OP is all about is over how that science is being politicized - from Al Gore to Exxon/Mobil - there is a lot of hoopla, disinformation and hype and dismissiveness. What I hope to see is an end to this skepticism and distrust of science in general.

Just to be argumentative, reiterating that "the science is solid and the consensus is overwhelming" is overstating the case a little. There are far more dissenting voices being heard on the subject than on, say, the Theory of Evolution. Global Warming is a theory, and man-made Global Warming is a part of that theory. There is far more evidence to support Global Warming than there is to support the man-made element of the whole. I remain to be convinced that man is playing anywhere near as large a part of the whole as the main proponents of MMGW are stating. But, as in Darwin's baby, the science is constantly developing and being refined. I wait to see which side emerges with the more compelling case.

On the other hand, what the **** have 2,000 electrical engineers got to do with Global Warming? Squat, that's what! If the skeptics want to be seen as credible, keep the skepticism to those qualified to talk on the subject in hand. Anything else looks plain daft.

And within the evolutionary debate there is more than enough variability as to the HOW cometh about. Don't believe me? Wikipedia evolutionary biology.

Not to mention non-scientific debacle coming from misrepresenting religious fundamentalism acting quite pseudoscientific in its pursuits of imposing non-science as science. Kind of like some of the challenges to very clear science in the GW debate coming from those supporting political and economic views that benefit from the continuation of today's GW-propagation.

[HAL 9000 96]

Unlike many, I don't pretend my background in anyway leads me to draw any intelligent conclusion

on such scientific research.

However, I do know the nature of government and it is to, extract revenue by any means possible.

It's hard to imagine a more perfect threat than Global-Warming to raise income and control the lives of everyone.

For this reason I am highly skeptical.

As for the related science community, most are directly or indirectly drinking from the breast of global warming grants, how can anyone doubt this effects their findings?

Another red-flag for me is this effort to "shut down" critical opinions... usually by claiming Man Made Global warming is virtually without detractors among scientists and portraying the doubting

person as uneducated, ignorant, or part of some Throw-back culture.

We have seen the "experts" of every field wrong so many times it's hard to take things at face value.

Speaking of "experts" in other fields being wrong, did any of them predict the Price of gas would be below $2 rather than north of $5 in the future?

Eventually, funding is reduced once key questions are answered by members of the scientific community involved in said research. Hypotheses are never fixed in stone either. Some scientists may have problems much like other professionals do in the area of arrogance, but the scientific method itself is programmed to permit flexibility of revising hypotheses as the data changes. If only human thinking were this open minded in some people.

Unlike many, I don't pretend my background in anyway leads me to draw any intelligent conclusion

on such scientific research.

However, I do know the nature of government and it is to, extract revenue by any means possible.

It's hard to imagine a more perfect threat than Global-Warming to raise income and control the lives of everyone.

For this reason I am highly skeptical.

As for the related science community, most are directly or indirectly drinking from the breast of global warming grants, how can anyone doubt this effects their findings?

Another red-flag for me is this effort to "shut down" critical opinions... usually by claiming Man Made Global warming is virtually without detractors among scientists and portraying the doubting

person as uneducated, ignorant, or part of some Throw-back culture.

We have seen the "experts" of every field wrong so many times it's hard to take things at face value.

Speaking of "experts" in other fields being wrong, did any of them predict the Price of gas would be below $2 rather than north of $5 in the future?

That's a bit of a sweeping statement and somewhat difficult to validate given the size of some of these science associations. We're talking about thousands of professional scientists around the world....

As for shutting down critical opinions - I will reiterate that the suspicion of and negative attitudes towards Al Gore seems to have more prominence in the public skepticism of GW, than does the merits of the science itself. The vast majority of people simply aren't clued up with the current state of climatology research regarding GW - and so don't really "read" as much as parrot out articles that mirror their own biases.

In that regard its laughable that people insist on debating the science - when few of us really have the know-how to assess the quality and relevance of the work. Hence we get PR pieces or op-ed articles quoted as if they are indistinguishable from genuine research papers.

More of the assumption that GW is a scientific observation primarily made by American Science.

[Danno 1,228]

Speaking of "experts" in other fields being wrong, did any of them predict the Price of gas would be below $2 rather than north of $5 in the future?

The price of crude has little to do with science and a lot to do with the collective psychology of markets.

The point being highlighted was how wrong experts so often are... and how much group-think goes on.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Speaking of "experts" in other fields being wrong, did any of them predict the Price of gas would be below $2 rather than north of $5 in the future?

The price of crude has little to do with science and a lot to do with the collective psychology of markets.

The point being highlighted was how wrong experts so often are... and how much group-think goes on.

"Likely", "evidence suggests" and "probability" is the language of science. There is no proof, there are no absolute certainties. Scientists are always aware that new data may overturn old theories and that human knowledge is constantly evolving. Consequently, it is viewed as unjustifiable hubris to ever claim one's findings as unassailable. But in general, the older and more established a given theory becomes, the less and less likely it is that any new findings will drastically change things. Even the huge revolution in Physics brought on by Einstein's theory of relativity did not render Newton's theories of Classical Mechanics useless. Classical Mechanics is still used all the time because is is quite simply good enough for most purposes. But how well established is the Greenhouse Effect?

Greenhouse Effect theory is over 100 years old. Even the first predictions of Anthropogenic Global Warming came in 1896. Time has only strengthened and refined those ground breaking conclusions. We now have decades of very detailed and sophisticated climate observations and super computers crunching numbers in one second it would have taken 1 million 19th century scientists years with a slide rule to match. Even so, you will never ever get a purely scientific source saying "the future is certain".

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006...t-even-sure.php

[웃 910]

Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather? CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming. “You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.” Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span. "But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.” “We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued. Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century. “If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.” Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man. “The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.” Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10. Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies. “There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.” Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.” His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

[HAL 9000 96]

Weather is weather. Climate is climate.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather? CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming. “You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.” Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span. "But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.” “We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued. Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century. “If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.” Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man. “The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.” Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10. Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies. “There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.” Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.” His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

word

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Weather is weather. Climate is climate.

"Atoms? I don't see no friggin atoms!"

[NickD 203]

It's not global warming, but man made global warming that is the issue and now the green movement. But whatever the reason, if it gives us independence from foreign oil and keeps our jobs at home, I am for it. If it's just a carbon tax, then I am against it.