Global Warming Debate

[Sequitur]

Interesting...
Flatulent cows could be curtailed by fish oils - CNN.com

[camaraderie]

Thought I'd supply the graphic for you Michel:

:P

[earl444]

is that like, getting flamed...

[earl444]

I heard this explanation. Take a completely sealed off green house, just large enough to sustain life for two adult people, enclose within it the same ratio of water to land that our earth consists of, and fill it with green plants. Now, each day, add one person and delete one plant. You can easily see where this goes. This is a generalization, so no need to get scientific here, but one can readily see the effect of man on the environment in this example.

[jrd22]

Earl- sorry but I find that example to be completely inaccurate. In order for the ratio of water, land, human to be accurate you would either need the largest greenhouse in the world or else somehow shrink a human being to about the size of a gnat.

[xort]

earl
do those humans in the greenhouse drive miniature cars and operate coal fired power plants? the analogy does not work for a variety of reasons. simple answers do not account for complex issues.
Your greenhouse has no glaciers or oceans or mountains.

[camaraderie]

...as soon as glass walls enclose the earth in space, that will be a good analogy. Until then...the earth is not a closed system even though the computer models treat it that way.

[OsmundL]

Originally Posted by jrd22

Earl- sorry but I find that example to be completely inaccurate. In order for the ratio of water, land, human to be accurate you would either need the largest greenhouse in the world or else somehow shrink a human being to about the size of a gnat.

I vote for that! If scientists could work on shrinking us, we'd solve many problems at once. Me, I'd look forward to the ski runs at Vale suddenly looking fantastically long and wide

[therapy23]

Originally Posted by OsmundL

I vote for that! If scientists could work on shrinking us, we'd solve many problems at once. Me, I'd look forward to the ski runs at Vale suddenly looking fantastically long and wide

It might make for some pretty loooonnngggggg ocean passages!

[camaraderie]

Seems like even some Aussies are coming around. Where's the Wombat??

This from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Beware the climate of conformity

• Paul Sheehan
• April 13, 2009

What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let's see.
The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions.
The book's 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years' research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: "An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history."
The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia's most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view. He looks at climate over geological, archaeological, historical and modern time. He writes: "Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone."
Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive". Errors and distortions in computer modelling will be exposed in time. (As if on cue, the United Nations' peak scientific body on climate change was obliged to make an embarrassing admission last week that some of its computers models were wrong.)///.....more here