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cb1000rider, I think you should consider that number 4 is more a reaction to the extreme radicalism of the climate change advocates. Sort of an oh, yeah, well look how cold it is in reaction to the warming is accelerating, we're all doomed!, when any boob knows we're in a pause right now.

I guess I could be called a conservative (although I'm a lot further toward the freedom scale than a lot of people who claim to be conservative). Here's my take on all this:

1) Is the climate changing? Yes. Always has, always will.
2) Is this warming period threatening the survival of mankind? Highly, highly doubtful.
3) Is the warming being forced by man's use of CO2? There is no convincing evidence of that. However, it's very troubling that some scientists have falsified data in an effort to prove it. It's also troubling that some are trying to shout down any criticism of their "findings".
4) Are there some in the warming movement who would like to strip us of our rights? Absolutely. Unequivocally.

Given the above factors, I think extreme caution in pursuing a lets-fix-global-warming agenda is very necessary. I think the public has been changing their mind as the weather changes. As they don't see hotter and hotter summers, they begin to question the scientists who warn of rising oceans, submerged cities and dying polar bears when they see those things not happening.

Personally, I think man's hubris leads him to believe he can affect the weather when his most powerful attempts to do so have been met with nature's chuckle. One major volcanic eruption would do more damage than anything man can or will ever do. (And we even have historical proof of that!)

esxmarkc wrote:

baldeagle wrote:Mine is informed by my opposition to any government other than that that protects my rights and leaves me alone to pursue my life as I choose.

And that is what I'm saying is scary. Your opinion is informed by your opposition to the current administration you don't agree with. You are not making your decisions based on data and research. It sounds as if you disagree with them at all costs even if they may be correct on ACC.

You misunderstand me. Yes, I am opposed to this administration, but I am also opposed to government interference in the affairs of men, regardless of the politics of the administration serving at the time. And assuming, arguendo, that ACC is a fact and is life threatening to mankind, government is NOT the solution to alleviating it. All government does is screw things up royally. Carbon credits is a perfect example of that. Purportedly to offset carbon emissions, it's real purpose is wealth transfer to the privileged few whose influence inside government grants them access to that which the average man has no access to.

esxmarkc wrote:And while I agree that they will use that agenda to further cripple our freedoms, in doesn't mean they are wrong on the root facts of ACC.

I don't really care if they are right or wrong. I don't want them "solving" the problem. Freedom is binary. Once it's taken away, it's very hard to get back. Those who demand governmental solutions are asking for their freedoms to be stripped. And they deserve what they get.

esxmarkc wrote:I agree that the government is the least efficient and absolute worst at accomplishing anything. But if a substantial population of Americans continue to deny ACC then it will indeed drive the government's hand to use force - either economic or otherwise to accomplish a change thus further eroding our freedoms and all the while other countries like China will do business as usual and could care less about the issue. And I agree that all bites.

Government ALWAYS uses force. That's its only leverage.

esxmarkc wrote:If we can't all get together, get educated, get on board and drive this issue ourselves in a direction that will affect worthwhile change then it will get driven upon us in ways that will be broken, useless, expensive half-measures.

And what makes you think that really smart minds in private industry aren't currently working on solutions that will benefit us all?

esxmarkc wrote:Excellent find but simply put I believe the blogger is in error. He attempts to use "grade school math" (by his words) to calculate a value that requires deeper math than a simple division. In their study, they had to weigh and rank expertise by their number of published articles. It all gets much clearer if you look at this graph here: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/1210 ... nsion.html

Since I assume readers who post here are intelligent enough to understand google, I didn't bother to post links. This blogger, however, is not the only one to criticize the study or point out its many flaws. Readers are free to draw their own conclusions about what that means.

esxmarkc wrote:

baldeagle wrote:1) The global temperature record for the past nineteen years shows no evidence of warming. The earth's temperature has been constant since 1995.

I can't agree with this since all of the reputable data that I have ever seen does not agree with this. How about we talk about this graph for starters: [ Image ]
It overlays data from NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Met Office Hadley Center/Climatic Research Unit, NOAA National climatic Data Center and Japaneese Meterological Agency - all on one really nice graph and it's not flat for the last 19 years.

Statements like "all of the reputable data" reflect a certainty that isn't reflected by the evidence at hand. For example - Why did Earth’s surface temperature stop rising in the past decade?

The “pause” in global warming observed since 2000 followed a period of rapid acceleration in the late 20th century. Starting in the mid-1970s, global temperatures rose 0.5 °C over a period of 25 years. Since the turn of the century, however, the change in Earth’s global mean surface temperature has been close to zero. Yet despite the halt in acceleration, each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.

The problem with discussing these issues is that they are highly technical scientific issues that precious few have the expertise to suss out. (I am certainly not qualified.) That forces the average reader to resort to logic and good sense. Logic indicates that surface temperatures not changing is counter to the claims of the pro-ACC scientists and increase my skepticism in their other claims.

esxmarkc wrote:I believe that 5 is way over optimistic and it doesn't account for those lovely oil embargos and OPOEC ransoms:

baldeagle wrote:5) The US government estimates that the energy available through f r a c k ing would supply the US for more than 400 years. That's more than enough time for innovations that will reduce and perhaps eliminate the need for fossil fuels entirely.

The quote has nothing to do with oil embargoes or OPEC ransoms. It refers only to energy available within the continental US. http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; http://endoftheamericandream.com/archiv ... -your-mind" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

esxmarkc wrote:

baldeagle wrote:It's clear that the political goal of the climate change movement is control of the populace. No impartial observer would assert otherwise, and even its advocates admit it when pressed (thus the original post that started this thread.) That alone makes me quite leery of any proposed political solutions.

I disagree. I'm a pretty impartial guy. 10 years ago I would be on the other side of this argument.

Apparently you discount the writer of the article that prompted this thread? Her opinions are not out of the norm for certain segments of the pro-"green" activists. That's fine. You're certainly entitled to your opinion. Mine is informed by my opposition to any government other than that that protects my rights and leaves me alone to pursue my life as I choose. Even if ACC is causing dramatic damage to the planet, I do not believe it is the business of government to solve the problem. Doing so, by necessity, requires that they use force to accomplish their goals, and that is counter to freedom and to what America was founded for. Never mind that government is the least efficient and most ponderous way to accomplish anything, their "solutions" have proven repeatedly to either exacerbate existing problems or create entirely new ones (mercury-filled light bulbs come to mind.)

cb1000rider wrote:Just to be clear - you're saying that they require more energy than they produce when you factor in the cost of maintenance and removal, etc? I don't actually know the answer, but it sure seems like someone would do that math.

I recently took a look at solar energy as well as wind energy to power my home. I found that, for solar energy, the ROI was not there. Even with $20,000+ subsidies from the government I couldn't even break even if I built the panels myself. (Solar panels have a useful life span of about 20 years.) There are some interesting developments on the horizon, however. Solar shingles is an idea that has promise if the efficiency can be pushed over 25%. (Right now top notch panels are in the 15% efficiency range.) One of the keys is durability. Panels have to stand up to high winds, hail and punishing rains. Another issue is energy storage. You really need an outside shed, far enough from the house to protect it from explosions, to store the batteries and conversion equipement.

Wind energy wasn't practical in this part of the country. In order to get maximum benefit the turbine has to be high in the air, where the air is constantly moving. City zoning wouldn't even allow it, if you could afford to erect it, not to even mention that the neighbors wouldn't appreciate it a great deal if the city was crazy enough to approve it. And the likelihood is that public sentiment would eventually force their removal, negating your investment well before it paid for itself.

Improvements are made all the time in solar technology. The key is to get the efficiency levels up to reduce the overall cost per kwh. In the meantime, I find the Solar Roadways idea fascinating and think it might actually be successful, although I'd have to see the numbers to be sure. The two breakthroughs they have made that make them attractive to me is high durability and proving that angling toward the sun isn't nearly as important as people thought it was (although there are many that can't seem to wrap their heads around that.)

esxmarkc, in an earlier post you cited a study that found that 97% of climatologists agree on ACC as though that was the convincing element that proves that ACC is real and needs to be addressed. However, you would be wise to review that argument more closely, as has been done here - http://trustyetverify.wordpress.com/201 ... convinced/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; It appears that rather than querying the climatologists on their position, the writers made assumptions about their positions based on their publications, namely that, if they were published, they agreed that ACC was real and that governments should do something about it. Basically, what their survey "proves" is that those who believe in ACC publish more than those who do not. Which proves nothing about whether or not ACC is actually scientifically provable.

Interestingly, they manage to portray massive agreement among climatologists with numbers that suggest no such thing. "They compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers and classified them either as convinced by the evidence (CE) for anthropogenic climate change or unconvinced by the evidence (UE). Apparently according to where they publish or if they found their name as contributors in for example open letters or protest letters. In that way they came to 903 convinced and 472 unconvinced. 3 scientists were classified in both groups." Unless I've forgotten my grade school math, even using their methods, fully 1/3rd of climatologists "disagree". (In reality, we have no idea what the position of any of the 1372 is, because they never queried them to ascertain their position.

What I have found from my research on the subject (which admittedly isn't comprehensive) is that this is quite typical of the pro-ACC crowd. Rather than argue the evidence (which is unconvincing at best), they quote out of context, arrive at unsupportable conclusions from "evidence" and attack their adversaries as "deniers" or other pejoratives rather than address the substance of their arguments. The very fact that they feel it necessary to "prove" that most climatologists agree with them speaks to their lack of a convincing argument. If ACC was true and causing the earth to tremble, would it matter if a single climatologist agreed? What difference would it make how many of them agreed? Evidence is evidence. It doesn't need argumentum ad populum to substantiate it, and resorting to it implies a weakness in the argument which must be overcome by its use. That alone should trouble anyone openminded enough to consider both sides of the argument.

Here are some known facts about global warming xxxxxxxxxxxxx climate change:

• 1) The global temperature record for the past nineteen years shows no evidence of warming. The earth's temperature has been constant since 1995.
  2) Analysis of the Arctic sea ice extent show sharp declines after 1921, before ACC could account for the change. Later the ice recovered, just as it's doing now, suggesting that changes are caused by something other than ACC.
  3) There appears to be considerable agreement among scientists that ACC exists but far less agreement as to its magnitude or its impact on the environment. That alone should urge caution before expending large sums of tax dollars "resolving" anything.
  4) "Green" energy is far from being useful on a scale that can replace fossil fuels. To scrap fossil fuels in favor of "green" energy would be foolhardy in the extreme.
  5) The US government estimates that the energy available through f r a c k ing would supply the US for more than 400 years. That's more than enough time for innovations that will reduce and perhaps eliminate the need for fossil fuels entirely.

It's clear that the political goal of the climate change movement is control of the populace. No impartial observer would assert otherwise, and even its advocates admit it when pressed (thus the original post that started this thread.) That alone makes me quite leery of any proposed political solutions.

What all this has to do with guns and CHL is beyond me, so, having spoken my piece, I will now retreat to my previous interests and leave the back and forth to those who love to argue.