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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

Okay first off my using of the words "almighty military"was not a shot at the Armed Services and I apologise if it was taken that way.The shifting of forces part I am actually cool with ,that is where our enemy is,not Iraq in Afghanistan so I have no problem there.Would You leave a resurgent Taliban and Osama Bin Laden to regroup and re plan his next move.As for the money ,take it from the Iraqi expenditures and I don't see a problem,money has been a foreign policy tool for the entirety of my life ...

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

those same enviro-cultists who insist climate change is all our fault, "because we're baaa-aad." 

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

those same enviro-cultists who insist climate change is all our fault, "because we're baaa-aad." 

(my italics)

.......ok, there are extremists who say stuff like that. They're as mad as those who say that humans can have no effect on the climate.
The majority of climataologists though say something quite different. They say that the Earth's climate does indeed warm and cool cyclically. Two important contributers to such a swing, they say, are volcanoes and solar activity, and that we can't do a lot about that. However, they also say that the rate of change has increased dramatically, and that such a change correlates with global industrialisation. They go on to suggest that such a rapid climate change has effects that are stronger than the usual climate change, that these fast shifts have negative consequences for humans. That speeding up is what humans are responsible for and can, if desired, influence.
The idea that this is anything other than science as usual (make a hypothesis, test against the evidence, if it passes call it a theory until the next testable theorem supercedes it) is far more of an act of faith than merely suggesting that trusting climataologists to know their subject is an act of faith.

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http://www.dailytech.com/Myth+of+Consensus+Explodes+APS+Opens+Global+Warming+Debate/article12403.htm
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science.  The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

So the only "change'possible are the ones you posit.I am afraid Popeye you represent to narrow a constituency to pander too

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

       Phil, any hypothesis they want to throw out about the rate of change isn't going to be worth much.  The data set they can work from is 1.  Did you possibly make it through school without ever reading about the flash-frozen wooly mammoths?  Dead with the daisies half-chewed in their mouths?  That's pretty rapid, for not having any SUV's to cause it.

    

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ORIGINAL: Thadius

Like I said they made for interesting reading, the second link is a bit better in my opinion.

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I think there is plenty of room to find out the facts, and at the same time do what we can to keep the environment clean.

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

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ORIGINAL: Thadius

Like I said they made for interesting reading, the second link is a bit better in my opinion.

...i will check it out more thoroughly, i admit to getting side tracked by the first link....

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I think there is plenty of room to find out the facts, and at the same time do what we can to keep the environment clean.

....couldn't agree more. The concept of a human contribution to climate change is contentious......but we can all agree that pollution is not a good thing and ought to be minimised, even if it isn't contributing to climate change.

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth
It would be a hijack, but why isn't global warming a religion? Its science is similar. You have to accept on faith its dogma of humanity's primary cause and effect instead of the natural fluctuations of that big glowing ball of gas 93 Million miles away. Its predicting a future based on models that when applied to the past, don't support it. <snip>For instance, what carbon emissions enabled the best grapes in Europe to be grown in Northern England once upon a time? 

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ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth
It would be a hijack, but why isn't global warming a religion? Its science is similar. You have to accept on faith its dogma of humanity's primary cause and effect instead of the natural fluctuations of that big glowing ball of gas 93 Million miles away. Its predicting a future based on models that when applied to the past, don't support it. <snip>For instance, what carbon emissions enabled the best grapes in Europe to be grown in Northern England once upon a time? 

Not wishing to hijack either but hasn't the "solar explanation" been thoroughly debunked in the US yet?  Since 1978 the sun has cooled, while clearly, the Earth hasn't.  That's the consensus of extensive scientific peer review, not an opinion from some moody blog.

As for the temperature in the troposhere, it's now accepted that current data fits the models very closely globally, with some unexplained fluctuations in the tropics.  Certainly accurate enough to show that warming is not due to solar activity or volcanoes or the other silly stuff.

The claim about vineyards in Northern England is also wrong, although it's difficult identifying when exactly "once upon a time" is supposed to be, or did you quote that from your source?  There are a handful of vineyards mentioned in the Domesday Book, all southerly, but I wouldn't inflict the mediaeval idea of "good wine" on today's palate.  They would drink anything that was relatively germ-free.

Obama shows enough courage and foresight to lead his country to an understanding that the rest of the world has already had to accept.  Sadly, not even the extreme good fortune of your holding US citizenship can insulate you from the facts, or us from your emissions.

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

      Phil, any hypothesis they want to throw out about the rate of change isn't going to be worth much.  The data set they can work from is 1.  Did you possibly make it through school without ever reading about the flash-frozen wooly mammoths?  Dead with the daisies half-chewed in their mouths?  That's pretty rapid, for not having any SUV's to cause it.

   

...oddly enough i have read about those. Not being a climatologist i don't know what they'd answer. So, we have an apparent anomaly. Fair enough, needs answering.......but i'm not going to throw out every other piece of data either.........

There is enough evidence of a correlation between industrialisation and the rate of climate change to warrant concern. To ignore that, just so that industrialised economies can continue with business as usual, is far more of an act of faith than suggesting there may be a problem.

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The claim about vineyards in Northern England is also wrong,

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After a dark period the Roman Empire became stronger and stronger and influenced life in the Northwest of Europe (100 BC – 100 AC). At the same time the climate had changed in such way that the average temperature had risen by +1 °C. This enabled wine growing in countries like The Netherlands. This period lasted at least 200 years. But when climatic changes took place around 450 AC, leading to a much colder climate, not only wine growing disappeared, but also a long, dark period entered Europe lasting till 1000 AC. Source:http://www.delinie.nl/en/en-wine-history.html

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Historic records tell us that Britain grew wine grapes 2000 years ago during the Roman Warming, and 1000 years ago during the Medieval Warming. Since 1300, however, Britain has been too cold for wine grapes. The debate: Is human-induced warming  boosting British temperatures to “unnatural”
levels, or is the gradual warming a repeat of previous cycles? 

So, British wine-making thrived during the Medieval Warming, failed during the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850), and began to make a comeback in the 1950s, after major world temperature surges between 1850–70 and 1920–40.  The uncertain quality of today’s British wine grapes indicates that Britain still isn’t as warm now as during the Roman and Medieval Warmings.

This argues that we’re in a long, natural climate cycle. So does the fact that more than 70 percent of the planet’s recent warming occurred before 1940, and thus before humans emitted much CO2. Ice cores and seabed sediments show the 1500-year cycle extending back 900,000 years, and carbon 14 isotopes say it’s linked to variations in the sun’s irradiance Source: http://www.86counties.com/1-1-wine.html 

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Obama shows enough courage and foresight to lead his country to an understanding that the rest of the world has already had to accept.  Sadly, not even the extreme good fortune of your holding US citizenship can insulate you from the facts, or us from your emissions.