Redstate

IF the question is Man-Made Global Warming, THEN the answer is nuclear power.

I think it's more likely that we'll need nuclear power to answer the question of Peak Oil, though, given the terribly sketchy 'evidence' of M-M GW.

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

John, you're correct that temperature fluctuations have been cyclical, and we haven't yet blatantly exceeded those cyclical limits.

However, what is plainly not cyclical are the current changes in the atmosphere's composition. Here's Professor Ken MacLeod:

"The changes to the atmosphere caused by humans over the past 150 years are as large as the changes that occurred naturally over the past 35 million years," MacLeod said. "You have to look back that far to find levels at what we expect them to be in the next 50 years."

If these continuing changes in atmospheric composition have a correspondingly huge impact on world temperatures, then it may be too late once we know for sure.

The way I look at it, our alteration of the composition of the atmosphere is a horribly liberal thing to do. Incredibly risky as well. Professor Thomas Stocker:

“[T]he current concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, 0.38 volume parts per thousand, already exceeds the highest level recorded over the past 650,000 years by 27 percent.”

The trends for Nitrous Oxide, Methane, and Sulfur are similar.

http://www.ipcc.ch/present/graphics/2001syr/large/02.01.jpg

and raise you my Dr. William Gray. My expert can beat up your expert :-)

The problem with global cycles is that none of us will live long enough to know the truth; in all liklilhood none of our kids will live long enough. The Church of Antropogenic Global Warming (Reformed) has pieced together its catechism on very, very thin proto-evidence.

John
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True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

If someone's been measuring atmospheric content over the last 35,000,000 years using modern equipment, I'll be impressed.

Unfortunately, statements like that guy made are misleading because, like the infamous hockey stick, they graft modern, precise measurements onto crude, unproven proxies.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

I think you mean Hockey Puck :-)

John
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True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

This creeping cretinism manifested itself most frighteningly in such clearly degenerate emperors as Caligula, Nero, and Commodus."

At least the Romans didn't drag the whole planet down with them, for all eternity.

Message: Bush is a cretin who's going to destroy the planet FOR ALL ETERNITY.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Neil, I wasn't talking about Bush at all. I think he may be the best president of my lifetime. I was just giving an example of another civilization that ignored an environmental danger.

I thought that was the EPA you were quoting?
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Yes, I was quoting the Bush Administration's EPA. Neither I nor the EPA was suggesting that Bush is a "cretin."

I think that juxtaposition was perfectly intended, and I bet Democratic bureaucrats at the agency were giggling their heads off when they published that.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

The EPA didn't say "At least the Romans didn't drag the whole planet down with them, for all eternity." That was me. I neglected to close out the blockquote before writing those words. Anyway, I didn't mean anything by the juxtaposition. My point was that lead poisoning played a large part in bringing down the Roman civilization. CO2 poisoning good bring down ours, as well as permanently harm the planet. Again, I didn't in any way intend to say that I think anyone today is a "cretin." Sorry I forgot to close out the blockquote.

I still find the juxtaposition troubling, heh, but if you hadn't made that HTML error it wouldn't have been so plain. Oh, well.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

to produce some pretty good men for 300 years or so after Caligula, Nero, et al. All we've done in two hundred and change is produce a good man now and then as well - and a few moral bankrupts and cretins as well.

Reading the surviving Roman literature about the the Emperors following Augustus is pretty much like reading the New York Times about GWB. Cicero, Tacitus, et al. represented an aristocratic, Senatorial point of view; there was nothing any of the anti-senate emperors could have done that would suited them any more than there's anything a Republican president could do that would suit the NYT or the WaPo.

I'm not questioning the "fact" that there might have been symptoms of lead poisoning, but the elites would have had no monopoly on it, all Romans pretty much drank the same water. Since there are almost no city-dwelling bodies to exume, they pretty much universally cremated, I'm just wondering where the data comes from about all the lead poisoning.

Maybe something like this:

Lead causes lead poisoning,
Roman plumbing was made of lead.
Therefore Romans had lead poisoning.

That's pretty much the same as:
God is love,
Love is blind.
Stevie Wonder is blind.
Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

In Vino Veritas

The Roman elites may have been especially vulnerable:

Romans used lead acetate ("sugar of lead") to sweeten old wine and turn grape pulp into a sweet condiment. Usually the acidic wine or pulp was simply left in a vat with sheets of lead. An aristocrat with a sweet tooth might have eaten as much as a gram of lead a day. Widespread use of this sweetener would have caused gout, sterility, insanity and many of the symptoms which were, in fact, present among the aristocrats. High levels of lead have been found in the bones of aristocratic Romans. Far more than simply using lead pipes or lead utensils, the direct consumption of lead-sweetened wine and foods created serious and widespread lead poisoning among upper-class Romans.

http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/envhist/1ancient.html

is guilty of the most basic chicanery of fuzzy, 'touchy feely' thinking; the intentional conflation of correlation with causation. The Church of Anthropomorphic Global Warming (Reformed) are Past Masters at this art --- and their "friends" in the "feel good" left are willing charlatans; either that or they are just plain stupid. I'm not certain which camp AlGore falls into but I lean toward idea that he has one foot in each.

It begins with the travesty of Mann's "Hockey Puck", a superb amalgamation of actual data carefully stitched onto some tree rings and acrefully concealing the falacy of the assumptions; and it goes down hill from there. I offer this little gem from the early litany of the Church a mere 30 years ago

If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000... This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.

Kenneth E. F. Watt
Speech at Earth Day 1970

A mere 30 years ago the same people who are now certain that we are all going to fry were telling us we would all be frozen by now. Is it any wonder that it is difficult for people to take the Church seriously?

John
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True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

And no conservative has explained why naturally occuring Carbon 14 concentrations, which have fluctuated since the beginning of time, have been steadily decreasing since implementation of the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Gosh, I wonder if the same thing could happen to Carbon Dioxide concentrations?

Compariing Carbon 14's proportion with Carbon 12, and comparing CO2's proportion with other atmospheric gasses, are entirely different matters.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

but what they have in common is that both are produced by humans as well as nature and are both currently at significantly higher concentraion levels than those seen for the last 400,000 years.

When we slowly decreased the amount of C14 put into the atmosphere from weapons testing, the total levels decreased. Couldn't the same happen with CO2, which is the current driver for global warming?

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

Build nuclear power plants --- and invest in Colorado oil shales. Cut the debate and lets get on with it already :-)

John
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True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke