Global Warming "consensus" disputed by 400 scientists.

evidence in geographical history to prove it. As I recall from college lectures and plate techtonics, there have been numerous significant climate changes in the Earth's 4.5 billion year history.

Saudia Arabia wasn't always a pile of sand. Huge forests once existed on the Great Plains.

I think we can all be thankful it happened or there would never be coal and oil to consume and Toledo would still be under a glacier or at the bottom of an ocean depending on which time period you choose.

So, it happens without the intervention of mankind. In my opinion it is hapless saps and political hacks that have found a new reason to stir up people's emotions to accomplish another agenda, whatever it may be.

In any case, debating what constitutes the mainstream thinking on climate change is not particularly enlightening. Regardless of how one defines "the consensus," scientific truth is not revealed by a show of hands. As Thomas Kuhn demonstrated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the history of scientific progress is a history of once-solid consensuses being overthrown by minority skeptics. In short, today's consensus proves nothing.

Even more heated than the debate about the cause of climate change is the debate about its likely effects. In fact, most of the so-called skeptics who publish in peer-reviewed literature accept the contention that mankind is probably responsible for most present-day warming. They argue, however, that the warming has been and will continue to be quite modest, and that the pattern of warming we're seeing does not suggest that a parade of horribles awaits us.

The skeptics are on solid ground here because the atmosphere simply has not proven to be as sensitive to industrial greenhouse-gas emissions as some theorists have feared. Unless some temporary phenomenon is masking the effect of such emissions, atmospheric physics suggests that warming will occur at a linear rate -- a conclusion affirmed by almost all the computer climate models in existence. This insight suggests a simple exercise: Plot temperature data over the last 50 years and draw a trend line to see what the future has in store. Doing so suggests that warming will likely be at the low end of the IPCC's projections -- about 1.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.

Should we worry about such modest warming? From an ecological perspective, probably not. Because water vapor is responsible for 94 percent of the natural greenhouse effect, industrial greenhouse gases have a greater impact in dry air masses than in wet ones. Fully 78 percent of the warming has been concentrated in the driest air masses, which are primarily found during the winter (when 69 percent of the warming has occurred), at night, and in the northern latitudes.

The fact that winter nighttime lows in the Northern Hemisphere aren't quite as cold as they used to be need not cause anyone to panic -- and there seems not to be an increased incidence of the destructive weather events that would follow from warming in wet air masses. According to the IPCC, "[T]here is little sign of long-term changes in tropical storm intensity and frequency," and "no compelling evidence" that local severe-weather events are on the rise. Most important, "no significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected." Precipitation in the northern hemisphere has likely increased by a meager 0.5-1 percent a decade, but "no comparable systematic changes in precipitation have been detected in broad latitudinal averages over the Southern Hemisphere."

There are good reasons to think that a warmer world might be a better world. Agronomists, for instance, are fairly convinced that heavier concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as well as the longer and somewhat wetter growing seasons that follow from the greenhouse warming pattern, have already increased crop yields and will continue to do so. Warmer weather also leads to declines in energy use, and probably fewer weather-related deaths.

Not surprisingly, economists who have examined the implications of the warming projections offered by the IPCC have had a hard time proving the existence of net negative effects. In fact, Yale forestry economist Robert Mendelsohn has demonstrated that nations north of the equator will probably benefit from global warming, and that warming will likely prove an economic wash for the world as a whole.

Both sides in the global-warming debate contend that "sound science" should dictate public policy. For the foreseeable future, though, it's unlikely that scientists will be able absolutely to prove or disprove the proposition that industrial greenhouse-gas emissions are ushering in a dangerous warming trend. Even if scientists could prove this, they have no particular expertise at choosing among competing policy responses. Nor are scientists' levels of risk aversion, or their choices about how to hedge against risk, necessarily superior to those of anyone else.

Scientists cannot tell us how best to handle the threat posed by global warming, no matter how much we, or they, wish otherwise. They can help inform the debate -- but they have less to contribute than most people think.

here's the report that started it all:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RQKV7O0&show_article=1

1) Volcanic eruptions emit CO2 than man can ever dream of. Google Mt. Pinatubo

2) Solar activity is rising as well as temps on Mars. Perfect Baseline.

3) Why is southen hemisphere getting cooler?

4) Where is the hurincane activity been the last 2 years?

5) Why is 95% of the greenhouse gases made up of water vapor?

6) Why are cow farts classified as contributing 20% to global warming? Perhaps the cows would like to eat something else? And who the heck measures cow farts?

7) Why is China and India always exempt from Envrionmental Scrutiny?

8) Why was it the warmest in 1934 vs. today?

9) Why was the U.S. under water 7 times prior to modern man?

10) Most Importantly, how do you measure baseline, improvement, and success with fluid data points in rotation traveling around a sun with no constant thermastat.

Conspiracy! It's all a trick to socialize the world. First Al Gore invents the internet. He then uses his "invention" to spread the word of his global warming invention. With the help of Saddam Hussein, he takes down the WTC. Soon (unless Ron Paul foils his evil plan), everyone in the North American Union will be driving Prias all over the NAFTA Superhighway----and illegal immigrants will transporting cows all over the place to continually supply the world with their prescious farts. The illegals will be bad drivers, but it's ok because they have Universal Healthcare coverage. And even if they are bad drivers, what are ya going to do---they're unionized! Ah, but Al Gore is merely a patsy. The real lone gunman is none other than George Soros!

From Tapped...

It's not too hard to dredge up 400 people in all the world who think the lunar landing was a farce or believe that Elvis is living in Albuquerque, much like it isn't too hard to dig up 400 people with a vague background in the field of science who find something to dispute in climate science.

Ironically, there's talk that we are actually getting ready to enter another cooling cycle similiar to the late 70"s when the media was predicting another ice age. We will see how the next 5 years plays out. While it maybe hotter in metro cities with parking lots, bldgs, high concentratrions of activity, overall we should see a cooling period. Who knows?

Amazing how the weather got political!

What would be neat is to start recording temps on the International Space
Center and a bunch of satelities as they orbit the earth.

Somehow inconsistent solar activity from our sun needs to measured to determine a baseline. If the earth warms up 2 degrees and our satelites warm up 1.9 degrees - then purely there's macro trends that need to be communicated and understood.

But then again, short-term increases in solor activity is not something that can bosst fund raising for environmental / political groups or make the push for a global carbon tax.