I wasn't referring to you personally, I was referring to the general movement.

To be honest, I'm not 100% convinced myself. But it's better to play it safe, and there is some solid evidence that CO2 does cause climate change. It's not conclusive, but it's solid. And I agree we're on the upswing of a climate cycle; the Earth's temperature is going back up to interglacial levels after the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum. But our current temperature is also higher than any earlier interglacial period. That speaks of some other factor, and it's quite likely us.

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An' it harm none, do as ye' will.


Never argue with an idiot. He'll just drag you down to his level of intelligence and beat you with experience.

Here a nice little story about the Leftists getting confused by their own meme....er, data.

Where's the heat?

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
by Richard Harris

Listen Now [3 min 57 sec] add to playlist




Stuart Westmorland
Oceans hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. Corbis


Morning Edition, March 19, 2008 · Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.

That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.

Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.

"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.

One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.

Listen to these people, chrissake. "How our planet copes with heat"! Our planet doesn't cope with anything. It does not have consciousness. All it does is exist. It does not care.

But tune in at eleven for a special report from the Man in the Moon.

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Mexico delenda est

Good for you chomped to be able to rise above the attacks! You're wrong on AGW but good for you anyway. I'm very interested in the proof and facts you are able to present to back your argument.

For my side of the argument I will just say to start that for every socalled expert who denies AGW there is a real expert working in the specific field who supports the majority of the scientific community which believe in AGW.

So you suppose those who support the notion of AGW have some reason to lie about the issue? I think that those who deny AGW have in many cases a reason to deny.

Atabap- In a topic such as this it's always a good idea to separate the various beliefs. I am an AGWer. Chomped is a GWer. You appear to be a GCer. (global cooler) And if you're not and intend to continue here on this thread as a serious contributor then it would only be fair to state what you believe. If you post articles which support GCing then you should be prepared to back that theory and not back GWing. Fair enough? It's only fair to get that issue straightened away before we begin.

You wrote: That's either being disingenuous or you are just uninformed. I suspect it's more disingenous and you won't come up with anything worthwhile on your own here.

I don't have beliefs. I have convictions.

I am neither. I am a do-not-care-er. I will acknowledge that the Earth's climate changes. So does the Martian climate.

See answers #1 & 2.

Whether or not the earth is warming or cooling is immaterial. The witch doctors don't care about that; only that, whatever is happening, it is the fault of Man. See? It would therefore follow that humanity must be controlled, which is the true objective of the environmentalist movement. The more sophisticated of those-who-fear-the-weather have abandoned the whole idea altogether and now just call it "climate change".

That way, they get to claim accuracy no matter what happens. The climate will change, after all.


Begin what? I'm not going the rounds with you on this. What would be the point of challenging your belief system? I would sooner try to argue a Christian out of his faith. Better to mock, I say.

Perhaps I'm just misinformed. Do you mean to tell me that the Earth does have consciousness? Bummer.

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Mexico delenda est

Earth has had higher concentrations of CO2 in its long history. There is no scientific proof that GWing is caused by anything man has done.

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Reality Land

Lie Exposer, nobody really knows for sure. All the GWing supporters are just going with theories. Nothing more. I for one will not be buying any carbon credits just yet.

Atabap, good article. I have read many more that have refutted GWing.

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Reality Land

Not that we know of, our processes can only accurately date back a few million years, and in that time we are about 15% higher than it has been in the past.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Ironic that the same people that are anti-Obama, are also debunkers of global warming theory. But I bet they would never part with their hi-tech gadgets, or their computers, trying to have it "both ways"...such hypocrites.

Wait someone want to explain how not liking Obama or debunking global warming is related to liking high tech gadgets or computers. How is that hypocritical in any way at all.