OV,

I find you a fascinating contradiction. On one hand, you pass yourself off as a pastor who believes in a literal interpretation of the bible, and then on the other hand you argue with Al Gore over what happened millions of years ago.

Um, . . . OV, the Bible says the Earth is 7000 years old.

But why quibble over a few days.

The idea of CO2 “forcing” in the past is controversial. Scientists really don’t understand what caused the carbon to move into the atmosphere, but a correlation is clear, and it conforms to the theory. More carbon = more heat.

The mechanism in the current warming is clear. By burning oil and coal, we are moving carbon from the ground to the air. As life evolved during the Paliozoic Era (570-240 million years before present), carbon levels in the atmosphere dropped from 7000 ppm to 350 ppm as carbon became fixed in the biological cycles. During the aptly names Carboniferous period (360-290 million BP), plants absorbed enormous amounts CO2 into their vegetation which was then buried under more vegetation. Carbon levels in the atmosphere fell during those 67 million years from 1800 ppm to the present level of 350 ppm. That buried vegetation turned to coal and oil.

We are now the forcing element as we have been releasing that stored carbon for the past 150 years.

Is it really that hard to understand?

Tina and I argue over what to do, and there is genuine disagreement. This is just silly.

Mark

Mark,
The current CO2 level is over 385ppm it was 315.98 in 1958, 350ppm is the goal for a safe atmospheric level.
There is no dispute that the arctic ice is melting and the CO2 level in the oceans is also increasing. If we don't deal with this problem NOW it will cause huge problems for future generations.

"Scientists really don’t understand what caused the carbon to move into the atmosphere"

There's a lot that scientists don't know or understand.

Guessing, even with purposely tweeked computer models, is no way to gain concensus; it is feigned adherence to the scientific method.

"350ppm is the goal for a safe atmospheric level."

Says who? Those lying manipulating so called environmental scientists? Or the crooked politicians?

385ppm is the total CO2 in the air. Only 11ppm of the 385ppm is man made. That means mans contribution is a little less than 3%. If we doubled the amount it would still be fairly insignificant. Also, your comparison to 1958 levels is irrelevant. It assumes a norm which may or may not be accurate. (what is normal in a changing world)It also assumes all things remain static or that we should try to control nature so it will remain unchanging within imagined norms.

The big volcanoes of the northern and southern hemispheres have been quite active over the last few decades...they spew a ton of carbon dioxide and there isn't a thing we can do to stop or control it. We are talking about naturally fluctuating environmental occurances for the most part. The small part we contribute is a drop in the ocean.

"There is no dispute that the arctic ice is melting"

The dispute is whether that information means anything. It's like observing that on sunny days the sky apears to be blue. Melting has occured before and will occur again. Also, ice is forming in other areas...these are normal occurances within natural cycles.

Get a grip, we are not that significant in the over all big picture. It would also behoove us all to remember that carbon is the basis of all life.

"I don't wish to stop people from being hysterical and resorting to their personal crusade to reduce their carbon footprint by buying up carbon credits or whatever they wish to contribute, but I probably won't be participating much without a lot more information to convince me I should."

Unfortunately Jack there will be no way to avoid participation. The higher costs in in energy and goods and services passed on to consumers, not to mention the higher taxes if they ever make good on the wealth transfer or global tax schemes, mean that you and I will participate against our will.

Tina,

I beg to differ:

“these are normal occurrences within natural cycles.”

While the warming and cooling of the planet, advance and retreat of glaciers, etc., are part of natural cycles, they are not normal, nor is the speed at which they are changing found anywhere recent records.

“Says who? Those lying manipulating so called environmental scientists? Or the crooked politicians?”

You really cast a wide net here. If all scientists lie, how about the skeptics? Do they lie too? And all politicians? Even old school Republicans? I remember after the leaked pictures from Abu Ghraib went public, PS went out of its way to say this was an isolated incident. Why are these leaked e-mails any different?

The science is sound. The evidence is widespread. The problem is real. What we should do is open to debate, but the continued debate over the existence of climate change is ringing hollow. Take, for example your claim about volcanoes:

“The big volcanoes of the northern and southern hemispheres have been quite active over the last few decades... The small part we contribute is a drop in the ocean.

According to the USGS, volcanoes produce about 130 million tons of carbon each year, while cars produce 130 billion tons of carbon each year.

I think you have the drop and the bucket backwards.

Mark

"...they are not normal, nor is the speed at which they are changing found anywhere recent records."

Once again I will ask...says who? It depends on who you ask. The conclusions that have been drawn have been based on unsound scientific discovery manipulated to prove a particular belief system (or political position).

"You really cast a wide net here."

No, sorry for any misunderstanding. I was referring to the very ones that have been caught lying: Al Gore, Professor Philip Jones of the CRU, his colleague Dr Keith Briffa, the US computer modeller Dr Michael Mann and others.

"I remember after the leaked pictures from Abu Ghraib went public, PS went out of its way to say this was an isolated incident. Why are these leaked e-mails any different?"

Abu Graib was an isolated incident that had been discovered and was being investigated by the military before the story was leaked for sensational political anti-war, anti-American purposes. The soldiers that were responsible for Abu Graib were brought to justice according to military procedure and would have been disciplined had the information been leaked or not. We are at war. Leaking this information was an unconscionable act against our nation and to the benefit of the enemy.

The GW leaked emails are different for several reasons. They reveal collaboration among colleagues to manipulate and destroy data and to control peer review. Their lies were used to manipulate political and economic structures; changes that could have very dire repercussions. They reveal selfish (monetary) motives. These acts have the potential to do great harm to the field of science unless the scientific community acknowledges and denounces these scientists and rejects their findings as a hoax.

It should also be noted that the purpose of the GW leaker was not to do harm but to do good, unlike the leaked information about Abu Graib. The war effort was greatly harmed because of that leak. It was a despicable thing to do. That kind of information should be revealed but not in the middle of the war when it can harm the greater purpose of defeating a dangerous enemy.

"The science is sound. The evidence is widespread. The problem is real."

No it is not. I have posted a number of articles written by esteemed scientists that show the AGW science is not only not settled but is highly questionable; it is now under a serious cloud. Here’s an article that perhaps puts it a bit better than I have:

“Ben Franklin on Real Science,” by John Armor – American Thinker

"According to the USGS, volcanoes produce about 130 million tons of carbon each year, while cars produce 130 billion tons of carbon each year."

I can’t argue that one. The point wasn’t whether they produce more. The point was that the data to prove AWG has been manipulated and cherry picked and a lot of natural data has been ignored.

I don’t trust any of the claims made by these people. My own common sense, and sense of awe when confronted by something like a volcanic eruption or the power of the sun, is enough to make me a little suspicious. These revelations of fraud only serve to solidify my disdain for the AGW theory and the politicization of the issue an even more compelling turn off.

See also information in these articles:

“To Denmark, From Russia, With Lies” – Investors Business Daily

The latest Climate-gate shoe to drop is the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) accusation that the Hadley Center of Britain's Meteorological Office deliberately relied on a carefully selected 25% of Russia's weather stations that fit its theory of global warming. ** By ignoring those that don't, the Russians say, the CRU overestimated warming in the country by more than half a degree Celsius. ** Siberia has played a pivotal role in this outright fraud. In 1995, a paper by the CRU's Keith Briffa asserted the medieval warm period was actually really cold, and recent warming is unusually warm. It relied on tree ring data from trees on Siberia's Yamal Peninsula. ** Here too data were carefully selected. Those from just 12 trees from 252 cores in the Yamal data set were used. A larger set of 34 tree cores from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the Middle Ages. They weren't used.

Climategate: … And Just Like That, the Warming’s Gone (PJM Exclusive)

Perhaps one of the biggest issues with the global data is station dropout after 1990. Over 6000 stations were active in the mid-1990s. Just over 1000 are in use today. The stations that dropped out were mainly rural and at higher latitudes and altitudes — all cooler stations. This alone should account for part of the assessed warming. China had 100 stations in 1950, over 400 in 1960, then only 25 by 1990. This changing distribution makes any assessment of accurate change impossible.

Climategate: Something’s Rotten in Denmark … and East Anglia, Asheville, and New York City (PJM Exclusive)

The Climategate whistleblower proved what those of us dealing with data for decades know to be the case — namely, data was being manipulated. The IPCC and their supported scientists have worked to remove the pesky Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the period emailer Tom Wigley referred to as the “warm 1940s blip,” and to pump up the recent warm cycle. ** Attention has focused on the emails dealing with Michael Mann’s hockey stick and other proxy attempts, most notably those of Keith Briffa. Briffa was conflicted in this whole process, noting he “[tried] hard to balance the needs of the IPCC with science, which were not always the same,” and that he knew “ … there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data.’” ** As Steve McIntyre has blogged: Much recent attention has been paid to the email about the “trick” and the effort to “hide the decline.” Climate scientists have complained that this email has been taken “out of context.” In this case, I’m not sure that it’s in their interests that this email be placed in context because the context leads right back to … the role of IPCC itself in “hiding the decline” in the Briffa reconstruction. ** In the area of data, I am more concerned about the coordinated effort to manipulate instrumental data (that was appended onto the proxy data truncated in 1960 when the trees showed a decline — the so called “divergence problem”) to produce an exaggerated warming that would point to man’s influence. I will be the first to admit that man does have some climate effect — but the effect is localized. Up to half the warming since 1900 is due to land use changes and urbanization, confirmed most recently by Georgia Tech’s Brian Stone (2009), Anthony Watts (2009), Roger Pielke Sr., and many others. The rest of the warming is also man-made — but the men are at the CRU, at NOAA’s NCDC, and NASA’s GISS, the grant-fed universities and computer labs.

OV,

Let me get this straight. You don’t believe in what you are saying. You are arguing about this just to be argumentative, because if you said what you really believe, no one would listen.

This is getting better all the time.

Mark

Tina,

While the identity of the hacker who leaked the e-mails is as controversial as the theory they attack, it is looking like the source was Russian hackers, who knew what they were looking for, and who timed the release to disrupt the Copenhagen talks. How you can see that person or persons as “do gooder?” Again, while we can’t be sure of means and motive, I doubt either of us would like these people.

I am glad you clarified the three men who you claim lied. I think three out of 1000s is an isolated instance as well. And like Lyndie England and her crew, any manipulations would have been exposed in the process.

You claim that I am being duped by dishonest scientists and politicians. Could you be being used by former KGB in the service of the Russian oil cartels?

After all these cold years, are you really willing to trust the Russkies?

Mark

"How you can see that person or persons as 'do gooder?'"

I can see him/them as a do-gooder because he/they saw the fraud and was willing to uncover it. He was willing to blow the whistle on the lie of "settled" science as propaganda. He was willing to risk his own skin (he did break the law) to save all of us from draconian laws that will rob us all blind and ruin the economies of the world. He was willing to uncover evidence that data was cherry picked, destroyed, manipulated and controlled and that peers that disagreed were kept out of the public eye.

How can you ignore years of manipulation that ensured grant money would continue to flow to GW hoaxters? How can you ignore years of publishing false conclusions and catastrophic scenarios to effect legislation and emotionally manipulate public opinion? The streams that flow from this massive hoax reach into every aspect of our lives. It's putting people out of business unnecessarily. It has meant that some scientists were denied research grants. It has allowed Al Gore and others to set up this carbon trading scam that in reality does NOTHING but transfer cash into their own pockets.

"I am glad you clarified the three men who you claim lied. I think three out of 1000s is an isolated instance as well."

It's more than three. These are the ones we know were driving this train. Behind them are the politicians many of whom may or may not have been duped. And this isn't just an "isolated" incident because it has been going on for many years.

"Could you be being used by former KGB in the service of the Russian oil cartels?"

The emails speak for themselves. This has been a huge hoax. I don't know to what degree, if any, "oil cartels" figure into the bleaked information. I will say this for all oil producers. If this proves to be as big a scam as it appears to be, and if the disenters are correct, I cannot blame oil producers from wanting to expose a sham that has as one of its goals the complete destruction of an entire industry, an industry that the entire world depends upon. The notion that oil is evil has been part of the propaganda.

"After all these cold years, are you really willing to trust the Russkies?"

The emails are what they are. The findings are what they are. The evidence that there is no man made global warming is what it is. The "Russkies" have nothing to do with any of that.

My disdain for the group of scheming scientists and the politicians (Marxist) at the leading edge of this couldn't be more profound. It frankly makes me sick to my stomach.

Mark after postin my last comment I came across the following article of interest. It speaks to the motives behind this scheme:

"Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri" - Telegraph (UK)

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write. ** No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. ** Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all. ** What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

Father, forgive the global-warming deniers who have fallen for some well-financed frauds, for they know not what they do.

This is depressing. Follow the money, people.