I would have thought that the pro AGW-danger lobby (including European governments) spend that several times over every year, largely it seems on publicity of their case. That is to the detrement of further important scientific investigation that would improve our understanding.

Best regards

If we could just find some way of hooking up Raymond et al. to a turbine, our energy problems would be over!

Meanwhile, an important First Amendment case comes down from the SCOTUS, and despite the VC’s having at least one expert on the subject, we get nothing.

“The Volokh Conspiracy—where conservatives post about what they don’t know about, and ignore what they do know about.”

Over the past decade, coal and oil interests have funneled more than $1 million to about a dozen individual global-warming skeptics as part of an effort to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact,” according to industry memos first uncovered by former Boston Globe journalist Ross Gelbspan. -from The truth about global warming.

It’s already a fact, gentlemen! An industry that has an agenda that disagrees with the facts has undertaken a misinformation campaign to cast doubt on otherwise sound science and you… you… how do you so utterly, completely miss this point???

Is the asylum door again wide open?

Right-wing freudian projection – the strongest force in the known universe.

“I’m a long ways from being convinced. We can start with improper adjustments for the heat island effect and go from there.”

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/the-surface-temperature-record-and-the-urban-heat-island/

“Its just irritating when people make definitive pronouncements about something like long-term climatology.”

This is an interesting admission – why does science irritate you?

“Relax, have a drink. This will be a nonissue in 10 years and life will just keep on getting better and better.”

Over the past 10 years, this has gone from a ‘maybe’ to ‘as far as we can tell, and some things are happening faster’. As for life just getting better and better, I do have hopes. But the GOP is an enormous force for change – for the worse.

Our second “skeptic” casts it as a matter of religion. He wants to drive his SUV, which has nothing to do at all with the technical question of whether we are changing the composition of the atmosphere and the global climate (yes and yes).

Oh Steve – we have found strong evidence in the climate record of dramatic shifts in climate that occurred over very short timescales. Do keep up.

Even President Bush has admitted that the Earth is getting warmer.

And no, it’s not a “theological issue”. Much as you might want it to be one, since that would spare you more careful attention to the issues.

Well, I hope one doesn’t become a crank merely by virtue of believing that a large group of influential elites are pushing an agenda based on apocalyptic fearmongering in order “to come up with an enemy after the end of the Cold War, and…to find a political cause that would enable them to ‘organize, propagandize, force conformity and exercise political influence….’”

Yep. The old ‘this is just an excuse to come up with a new enemy after the Cold War’ argument is a classic leftist argument (Radical Islam, China, the military-industrial complex, and on and on). If using that argument makes one a crank, then the entire left-wing in the West are cranks (well, I happen to believe this, but not because of this one argument).

“The planet is at risk, and the changes that are taking places sometimes occur with such suddenness that by the time we might hope to realize and understand critical transitions, it truly will be too late to make a positive difference.”

Name one instance where this has occurred in the past.

Agnostic about global warming, but I gotta agree with Raymond: this has sadly become a theological issue. And agnostic or not, I’m perfectly willing to clearly state: civilization is not going to end in the next ten years because I drive an SUV. the fact that this is an argument taken seriously by anyone indicates to me that Algore and his minions, are, well, ‘batshit crazy.’

Steve

I’m a long ways from being convinced. We can start with improper adjustments for the heat island effect and go from there.

Its just irritating when people make definitive pronouncements about something like long-term climatology.

Relax, have a drink. This will be a nonissue in 10 years and life will just keep on getting better and better.

God Bless America

Over the past decade, coal and oil interests have funneled more than $1 million to about a dozen individual global-warming skeptics as part of an effort to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact,” according to industry memos first uncovered by former Boston Globe journalist Ross Gelbspan. -from The truth about global warming.

People need to stop being so d@mned willfully ignorant and just face the facts. Reality will eventually encroach upon the irrational fantasies of those who refuse to let go of their agendas; an upon those of us who allow ourselves to be overrun by those agenda-seekers.

The planet is at risk, and the changes that are taking places sometimes occur with such suddenness that by the time we might hope to realize and understand critical transitions, it truly will be too late to make a positive difference.

Kill your children and mine for the sake of ego? Sensibility and sanity forbid!