CRM114

Oh, you must meant the Milankovitch cycles (he said as if he was an know-it-all). Thanks to google, here's a good intro to eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession. It's all there!

Milankovitch Cycles and Glaciation

jungle

The most interesting part of this story is how history may be altered to support current goals.

Control the past, control the future.

Billy Pilgrim

I recently sat next to someone on an airplane who was pretty knowledgeable on the subject of global warming (due to her work and educational background) and she had two interesting points.

1) The oceans act as a huge buffer for CO2 and they have been getting close to their limit on how much they can absorb after the past several decades. Another bad byproduct of this is the acidification of the sea which destroys coral and is happening much faster than wildlife can adapt.

2) There are so many variables... and the climate data available for scientists obviously represents a tiny fraction in time compared to geological timescales that in is very difficult to accurately predict what is going to happen.

I'm not particularly any sort of environmentalist but I think Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" quote is relevant on the subject. We can't afford to be wrong on this one as we've got no where else to go.

Sum Ting Wong

There are some givens concerning climate in this climate debate.

The first is that most people are grossly illiterate when it comes to science. People generally have no clue as to what the argument is and yet they will take sides and harbor opinions. The more ignorant they are, the strong their opinions typically. People parroting climate change and claiming the higher moral ground are only making a claim about their own ignorance.

When you do science, you continually discuss it and those discussions can and should get quite bloody. The reason for this is more than egos battling each other. It turns out that when there are differences of opinion, people pull those strings that make no sense and it is the pulling of those strings that are the primary cause for making breakthroughs. Creating an environment where dissenting opinions are not allowed is not only foolish, it goes against everything that science is based upon. There is no clearer demonstration of a person being anti-science by there demanding that the no further discussion be allowed and there is no greater admission of ignorance than to claim "the science is settled".

What do we know about climate change? In the grand scheme of things, precious little. The science proceeds slowly because we obtain one data point a year. Yes, we can and do use proxy data (measuring "a" to infer "b"), but that is filled with problems and assumptions. We do know that CO2 absorbs radiant heat from the Sun, but so does water vapor and water vapor absorbs heat at around the same rate, but is present in the atmosphere at concentrations 100-1000 times greater than CO2. If you look carefully, water vapor is never discussed or is present in any modeling. We do know that models that have been used are grossly inaccurate in their ability to "predict" past climate events and do even worse for future years that have passed. In fact, The Farmer's Almanac is more accurate than any of those models used for the last 25 years. We do know that when random data are used, the infamous "hockey stick" graph is still generated indicating that the shape of the graph is due to programming and not the data. When all is taken into account, we know very little with any certainty.

What we know with absolute certainty is that all the plans by the Obama administration are much to premature to either determine how effective they will be or if they are even needed. Using the models that are grossly inadequate and overstate the effects of CO2 on temperature, the proposed reduction in CO2 caused by the administration's demand to reduce CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants will result in a 0.0013 degree C reduction in temperature. This is not measureable and the cost will be $50 billion/year and 200,000-400,000 jobs. The EPA also claims health benefits, but those claims are far less than the predicted damage to public health caused by Chernobyl, but many decades after the vent, one still cannot see any large scale effect so one can expect the effect from CO2 reduction to be even less. But not taken into account is increased agriculture from higher CO2 concentrations, increased land areas that are now habitable and so forth. We know so very little to be making such wide sweeping changes to our economy. It is simply a fool's errand unless it is all a smokescreen to make those changes for ulterior motives.

Flint Stone

Where's Al Gore when you need him, I'm sure he can explain all of this!

Simply a taxing scam.

FDXLAG

So everyone she received her education from depends on Global Warming for their status and income and now she does.

As to Mr. Sagan we can't afford to stifle progress as progress is the only thing that might save us.

badflaps

When the marble has had it's fill of us, it will flick us off like so many fleas. [Think dinosaur farts]

Airhoss

And there isn't a single solitary thing we can do about it. Including increased taxation.

Billy Pilgrim

You make a completely valid point.

On one hand I say we should strive to fix the issue and on the other hand my personal carbon footprint today was 4,500 gallons of jet fuel and a quart of gasoline.