Yo Jon...the 'why this matters' link ain't working.

The link to Tidwell's article is broken.

Not that I really need to read it. It's fairly clear that, given the idiots running things and those voting for them, we're fucking doomed. Soylent Green, here we come.

I agree with Tidwell's sense of the danger, but the time to "create a grassroots political uprising" was 2004, before it was a crushing emergency, and when it was crystal clear that there was no way to a solution through either major party. Instead, liberals and progressives in this country chose to back John "the Kyoto Protocol is not the answer" Kerry. And as a result, we're almost certainly screwed.

The one faint positive about this mainstream glide path we're locked into now is that both major party candidates (will) believe that global warming is a problem, and (will) want to take meaningful steps to address it. Their plans for doing so are inadequate, but given the reality that 2004 left us in, it's as good as it can get.

Still, calling that a positive is like driving toward a cliff 25 feet away and being happy that your brakes will stop your car in only 75 feet instead of 100.

From the Washington Post:

Tidwell figures that, since the corn consumed carbon dioxide from the air as it grew, burning it and re-releasing the gases is "carbon neutral."

After all of the recent reports about how much energy it takes to produce the corn for corn-based ethanol, I have to wonder how "carbon-neutral" Tidwell's corn-burning furnace actually is. And how much air pollution does it create? It doesn't seem like a practical solution for large numbers of households.

Man-made global warming is a myth.

http://echochambers.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/the-global-warming-scam/

Scott's argument by proxy is that it's been cooler since the record setting el nino year of 1998, which totally proves there's no instrumental record of long term warming, just look at the graph:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

Or something. Climate, weather, what's the difference.

The key point of the data which I linked is that CO2 has increased over that time period, while temperature has decreased.

I do not doubt that global temperature is increasing over longer time spans; I just don't think it's related to CO2. And even it it were, human beings produce a tiny fraction of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere.

'Man-made global warming' is merely a theory; one that serves the interests of the global elite, and is propagated by one of their own, Al Gore.

For these reasons, intelligent people should be skeptical of the theory, and remain very much open-minded to alternative theories. Hence why I provided the link.

If you shift the key point of your data one year in either direction and start in 97 or 99, the exact opposite conclusion is inevitably reached by the standards of your own nonsense argument. Because you're talking about the weather.

I wish we had some sort of troll-producing "controversy" like this regarding the merely theoretical existence of gravity, just to change shit up a little. Or the weak nuclear force. I never really believed in the weak force much to begin with. Have you ever seen one of these "K-Mesons" decay? How are these "scientists" so sure that the weak force is really involved in decay nobody's seen? Pictures? Squiggly lines a six year old could draw! A hoax I tell you!! Etc.

Just another component in the Fermi Paradox great filter.

My bet on the Great Filter is that it's probably not so much catastrophe (although that could well be common), but that technological civilisations build themselves using locally available resources. Like dandelions, they reach a point where they've consumed the energy needed to disperse their offspring out into space and thus begin the process of colonisation and insure the survival of their species. It may very well be that it requires most of the resources available to an industrialised society to make this work, and that the planet may well be exhausted by the effort. If done correctly, however, the space colonies may then be able to supply the homeworld with new resources (solar power satellites, raw materials from asteroids, etc.). But it's a one-shot deal.

Unfortunately, I'll bet that most intellgences wind up getting bored with space and turn their efforts instead into making shiny new toys, which they fuck around with for awhile longer, until they start running out of the resources required for space travel, at which point it's too late to get off the planet, and their technology collapses. Either that or they fuck around long enough for a big rock to fall on the one basket they've put all their eggs into.

This is the conclusion I inevitably come to whenever I watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and wonder what people could possibly have thought would be more important to spend a few billion bucks on than that.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper. God damn them all to hell.

'Man-made global warming' is merely a theory; one that serves the interests of the global elite

???

Problem-Reaction-Solution

Governments and the ruling class create or exaggerate a 'problem', the public reacts with fear, disgust, etc. Then the government provides their 'solution'. In the case of climate change, there will be global taxation, and increased global government control over every human being on the planet.

What makes the current climate change hypothesis fishy is that in the 70s the media pushed fear of a new ice age. Then in the 80s and 90s it was global warming because of the ozone layer. And now its global warming because of CO2. The story changes but the goal remains the same: taking your money and freedom.

You can follow the links I provided above for more info. Check out World Government and the Club of Rome. There is also ample documentation that CO2 is not the cause of increased global temperature. More likely, it is the sun.