Global Warming The debbil made me do it

"Dan Luke" wrote in message


What's the old saying? "Lies, lies and statistics"?

There is enough ice on Greenland *alone* to raise msl 20+ feet. That
is an incontrovertible fact.

It's also incontrovertible that Greenland was much warmer just 1000 years
ago than it is today. In fact, Greenland temperatures reached a maximum
around 1930, but they have decreased since (based on ice core readings by
Dahl-Jensen, et al). The Greenland glaciers didn't suffer a dramatic melting
event.

Will we have a 10 foot rise in 50 years?

Not according to current models, but ominous things are happening in
Greenland and Antarctica that indicate there are previously unknown
accelerating phenomena at work.

The real question is: Why?

But let me ask you something: Are you 100% sure your house is going
to burn down this year? If not, why are you wasting your money on
insurance? Why don't you just wait until you see flames, then buy a
policy?

Ah, the Precautionary Principle. Let's throw in "for the children" while
we're at it.

We had far warmer temperatures earlier in our history, and far
colder.

Far warmer in our history? Says who?

Says just about anybody's temperature reconstruction record which will show
periods such as the Holocene Maximum and the Medieval Warm Period -
assuming, of course, you consider the years 5500-2000 B.C.E. and 1100-1300
C.E. to be "in our history."

Speaking of statistics, satellites can measure temperature over a wide area
of the earth at a time and have been doing so continuously for the past 18
years or so. They report a modest rise of 0.05° C per decade
(http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...t21jul_1m.htm). This contrasts
sharply with the 0.25-0.4° C change reported by surface readings between
1978 and 1998.

Oh, I'm sure many of us here also remember the "coming ice age" predictions
of the '70's. It's certainly been mentioned in this thread before.

Further, we humans have supposedly warmed the earth due to all the CO2 we've
created since the beginning of the Industrial Age. Human-produced CO2
accounts for a far minority of the atmospheric CO2 (vice natural sources)
and total CO2 content of the atmosphere is 0.054%. What's more, CO2 is a
poor greenhouse gas - far less potent than water vapor, for instance - and
at a mere 0.054%, it simply cannot drive warming trends. This combined with
ice core records proving CO2 peaks lag temperature by hundreds of years (as
much as 800 years) is a major reason the "pro-anthropogenic global warming"
(pro-AGW) crowd have abandoned Gore's famous graph trying to link CO2 as the
cause of warming.

My point?

1. Earth's climate has changed dramatically over the millenia from
extraordinarily warm periods to very cold ice ages long before humans came
along - only in the current interglacial, by the way.

2. It is the pinnacle of arrogance to think humans are capable of changing
*global* climate - especially in a mere 150 years.

3. A review of the players for the pro-AGW crowd shows a littany of
leftists, former Communists and general anti-capitalists.

I'm just not buying the "humans are causing global warming" line. There are
simply too many holes in that theory for it to be any more valid than the
former "coming ice age" scare of the '70's.

--
John T
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