Because baptists minister preach on faith and scientists have science Bottomline,rapid enviromental changes are occuring because of large scale industrialization over the last couple hundred years.

P.S. You were being pretty convincing until you threw in the "strawman" arguement at the end(The Al Gore/Nancy Pelosi reference.) That kinda caused the other stuff you said to lose credibility. Just a word of advice

records that have been kept going back less than a hundred years in the best of cases (maybe two) versus a stratigraphic rock record that goes back half a billion or more... a stratigraphic record that shows sea levels rise and fall hundreds of meters dozens and dozens of times and ice caps advance and retreat hundreds of times (and meeting at the equator at least once)

I suppose the fact that it's only been a few million years since the Pananma Straits closed between North and South America cutting off the flow of equatorial waters between the Pacific and Atlantic is just an intersting, yet insignificant side note that only geological academics care about..

couldn't at all be important that less than ten thousand years ago most of the northern hemisphere was covered in ice and sea levels globally hundreds of meters below their current shore lines.. ever heard of the human civilizations found at the bottom of the black sea? how did they get there? prestidigitation? why are there limestones in central Texas and Lower Egypt and at the top of the Materhorn? limestones only form at the bottom of the sea..

bottom line is that this insignificant chunk of rock is robust, its climate dynamic and wide ranging, the life that inhabits it persistent and adaptable. If we set every rain forest in the world alight, sent flares of buring crude shooting into the sky straight from all the well in the world, broke up all the polar glaciers for ice to margaritas, and ice every last pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream in one day, every man woman and child on earth would perish but the climate would take but a few decades, maybe a century or two to right itself but would otherwise just keep ticking right along. tick tock..

if you would laugh at a baptist minister for preaching to you that "the end is nigh", why would you accept it with blind faith when Al Gore or Nancy Pelosi says it??

Perhaps you just embedded your quote incorrectly but I wouldn't laugh at a baptist minister for his beliefs because I respect the beliefs of others. I would not accept ANYTHING at face value from either Nancy Pelosi or Al Gore and feel strongly that they have way more to learn from me than I could ever learn from them. My references in this thread are not political. Did you even read them? Wood's Hole has the experts in the field who are studying the actual problem. Not flakes from other areas expressing their "opinions". The number of temperature "highs" that have been recorded recently is significant and the fluctuation of climate over thousands of years is fully explained in the links.

UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London ridiculed the notion of a scientific "consensus" on catastrophic man-made global warming. "In the early 20th century, 95% of scientists believed in eugenics. Science does not progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts," Stott said on March 14, 2007 during a live debate with other scientists in New York City. "And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let's use an engineer; I don't think I'd want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge," Stott said.

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; Columbia University; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.

The voices of many of these hundreds of scientists serve as a direct challenge to the often media-hyped "consensus" that the debate is "settled."

The most recent attempt to imply there was an overwhelming scientific "consensus" in favor of man-made global warming fears came in December 2007 during the UN climate conference in Bali. A letter signed by only 215 scientists urged the UN to mandate deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. But absent from the letter were the signatures of these alleged "thousands" of scientists.

Over 100 Prominent International Scientists Warn UN Against 'Futile' Climate Control Efforts in a December 13, 2007 open letter. "Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems," the letter signed by the scientists read. (LINK) The scientists, many of whom are current and former UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scientists, sent an open letter to the UN Secretary-General questioning the scientific basis for climate fears and the UN's so-called "solutions." "It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, **** and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables," the scientists wrote. "In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is ‘settled,' significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming," the open letter added. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=d4b5fd23-802a-23ad-4565-3dce4095c360&Issue_id=

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=1a5e6e32-802a-23ad-40ed-ecd53cd3d320

Over 700 dissenting scientists (updates previous 650 report) from around the globe challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 2009 255-page U.S. Senate Minority Report -- updated from 2007’s groundbreaking report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming “consensus” -- features the skeptical voices of over 700 prominent international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC. This updated report includes an additional 300 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial release in December 2007. The over 700 dissenting scientists are more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2674e64f-802a-23ad-490b-bd9faf4dcdb7

Atmospheric Physicist Dr. Garth W. Paltridge, an Emeritus Professor from University of Tasmania, is another prominent skeptic. Paltridge who was a Chief Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research before taking up positions in 1990 as Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies at the University of Tasmania and as CEO of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Center. Paltridge questioned the motives of scientists hyping climate fears. "They have been so successful with their message of greenhouse doom that, should one of them prove tomorrow that it is nonsense, the discovery would have to be suppressed for the sake of the overall reputation of science," Paltridge wrote in an April 6, 2007 op-ed entitled "Global Warming - Not Really a Done Deal?"

"One of the more frightening statements about global warming to be heard now from the corridors of power is that ‘the scientists have spoken'. Well maybe they have - some of them anyway - but the implication of god-like infallibility is a bit hard to take," he concluded. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport

French climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux, former professor at University of Jean Moulin and former director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risks, and Environment (CNRS) in Lyon, is a climate skeptic. Leroux wrote a 2005 book titled Global Warming - Myth or Reality? - The Erring Ways of Climatology.

"Hardly a week goes by without some new scoop ... filling our screens and the pages of our newspapers," Leroux wrote in his book. The media promotes the view that "global warming caused by the greenhouse effect is our fault, just like everything else, and the message/slogan/misinformation becomes even more simplistic, ever cruder! It could not be simpler: if the rain falls or draught strikes; if the wind blows a gale or there is none at all; whether it's heat or hard frost; it's all because of the greenhouse effect, and we are to blame. An easy argument, but stupid!" he explained. "The Fourth Report of the IPCC might just as well decree the suppression of all climatology textbooks, and replace them in our schools with press communiqués. ... Day after day, the same mantra - that ‘the Earth is warming up' - is churned out in all its forms. As ‘the ice melts' and ‘sea level rises,' the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized, lulled into mindless ac­ceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!" he wrote.

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Gerhard Kramm of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks expressed climate skepticism in 2007. "The IPCC would never be awarded by the Nobel Prize in Physics because most of the statements of the IPCC can be assessed as physical misunderstanding and physical misinterpretations," Kramm wrote in a letter to the Associated Press on October 21, 2007.

Dr. David Wojick is a UN IPCC expert reviewer, who earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science and co-founded the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University. "In point of fact, the hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG (greenhouse gas) hypothesis does not do this," Wojick, who specializes in mathematical logic, wrote in a May 2, 2005 commentary. "The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates," he explained.http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/17190/Another_False_Alarm_on_Global_Warming.html

Oxford-educated economist Tony Gilland is the science and society director of the UK based Institute of Ideas. Gilland, who initiated the UK's Science Education Project, declared the debate about global warming far from over in 2007 and lamented the UN's politicization. "The UN's all-powerful climate change panel is no straightforward scientific body. It is a deeply political organization that was born out of disenchantment with progress," Gilland wrote in a June 28, 2007 essay. "The IPCC, an unelected body, holds an unprecedented influence on the lives of everyone on the planet - and any attempt to question this body's legitimacy or actions is shouted down as ‘denial' of the scientific facts," he explained. "It is striking how many in the scientific community have become extremely intolerant of dissent," Gilland added. "The way in which politicians, the media and civil society have come to hang on the latest pronouncements of the IPCC demonstrates how this political failure has allowed a scientific conceptualization of a political problem to become institutionalized across the globe, to the point where conceiving of it differently has become almost unimaginable," he concluded. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/3540/

well, we didd just have the summer solstice.. so.. hot in miami wouldn't be out of character..

It is hot all year round. Always in the 80s or 90s, but yesterday truly felt like hoping into the oven and roasting a good day.

97 with 100 percent humidity is uncommon in June. It usually grows casually in heat throughout the summer. Not suddenly.

but I survived it

Although it picked up a bit recently, the "engine" that powers the Gulf Stream is disappearing as the Arctic ice melts. The difference between the density of the salt water in the North and the ocean near the equator is what powers the Gulf Stream. This flow of water is what warms Europe and keeps it from looking like Siberia. This issue is "big" and has gotten some news coverage but as in all news, if it lacks excitement, it's time to move on. This true story and real problem is the basis of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow".

http://www.gulfstreamshutdown.com/

In case anyone has forgotten, the rainforest is disappearing at an ever increasing rate. There is some evidence that, at some point, the rest may disappear rapidly due to the inability to retain water (rainforsest removal usually results in desert conditions). This factory is what makes much of the air we breathe. The primarily third world nations where the rainforests are located are typically poor and have exploding populations who expand by destroying the rainforest for cropland. Since the soil is poor, they then abandon the land (which promptly turns to desert) and cut down more forest.


http://www.bionomicfuel.com/loss-of-tropical-rainforest-biome-may-be-a-catastrophe-for-mankind/

Any comments?

Yesterday, it was 103 here at Conroe (Just North of the Houston airport). It was 101 at the airport and set a new record. It is supposed to set another one today.

Ice melts. The Arctic ice has advanced and retreated many times over the course of life of the Earth.

Ice melts. The Arctic ice has advanced and retreated many times over the course of life of the Earth.

It melts when the oceans become warmer. When they melt, the ocean height changes and this affects our beaches.

Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."


Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

Faced with this emerging consensus, the denial machine hardly blinked. There is too much "scientific uncertainty" to justify curbs on greenhouse emissions, William O'Keefe, then a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and leader of the Global Climate Coalition, suggested in 1996. Virginia's Michaels echoed that idea in a 1997 op-ed in The Washington Post, describing "a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom." To reinforce the appearance of uncertainty and disagreement, the denial machine churned out white papers and "studies" (not empirical research, but critiques of others' work). The Marshall Institute, for instance, issued reports by a Harvard University astrophysicist it supported pointing to satellite data showing "no significant warming" of the atmosphere, contrary to the surface warming. The predicted warming, she wrote, "simply isn't happening according to the satellite[s]." At the time, there was a legitimate case that satellites were more accurate than ground stations, which might be skewed by the unusual warmth of cities where many are sited.

"There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided," says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. Those recruits blitzed the media. Driven by notions of fairness and objectivity, the press "qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with 'some scientists believe,' where the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-caused [greenhouse] emissions are contributing to warming," says Reilly, the former EPA chief. "The pursuit of balance has not done justice" to the science. Talk radio goes further, with Rush Limbaugh telling listeners this year that "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just all part of the hoax." In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent said the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change."

Now naysayers tried a new tactic: lists and petitions meant to portray science as hopelessly divided. Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they "cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes." Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people's. Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote, of course (ask Galileo), but the number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.

For me it takes far greater compelling data to make me even look at conspiracy theories.

If only that were so. But Mr Gore does not "have science on his side". hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed scientist fully disagree and with evidence, dispute the claims of the Gore Camp. Those that would in the face of such disputation deny the science that it is based in are not scientists at all but charlatains (or politicians, take you pick. It's always been hard to tell the difference)



You attempt to deflect a legitimate question by impuning my motivation.. respond to the question and do not call it a straw man. Speaker Pelosi has gone on television and declared to the world that man has caused this impending gloabal disaster. Mr Gore has done likewise, through film and print media as well as from the bully pullpit in DC for 8 years. It is all lies.

Dispute the arguements I have set forth to you or cease responding to me at all..

ps. only a fool takes advice from his opponent.