Okay, once again another hoax saying, "Building Solutions can help Global Warming." I think that that is real funny in my opinion. Once again the earth is way to big for Building Solutions to change global warming, it might be energy effiecent, but it certainly won't improve global warming. Plus do they got any proven facts to back up there solution, I really just read just alot of opinions, not facts.

Heating fuels are responsible for more than 40% of Vermont's global warming pollution. Jansen Smith is correct that building solutions in Vermont alone will not solve global warming, but if we are to do our part and lead by example tackling our old buildings is a must. The best part is the we can invest in our own economy at the same time by keeping some of the $600 million dollars Vermonters spend on heating fuel in our state economy (rather than buying it from the Middle East and other parts of the world). You can download VPIRG's report here: www.vpirg.org/documents/vtbuilsolFINAL.pdf

I think that 40% figure quoted by J. Moore is bogus, and just what is global warming pollution? I've got a solution; why don't all the chicken little's just stop breathing for about 10 minutes? Think of how much carbon dioxide will not go into the atmosphere from that exercise, and we won't have to listen to all this fraudulent nonsense afterward.

Maybe the earth is warming up, and maybe it isn't. So far I've read and seen no proof that it is. Maybe we are coming out of a mini ice age. No one knows for sure and no one can prove that any of it is of human origin. In fact, in my opinion, even claiming that humans have that much effect on the earth is the hieght of conceit.

woodNfish, ignorance of factual information does not make the information less factual.

The cites in peer-reviewed literature are unanimous that a) global warming *is* occurring and (b) global warming *is* the result of human activity. Here (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686) is a reasonably representative example, the first hit from a google search that took me approximately 10 seconds to enter and execute (Google on "global warming peer review").

From this piece:
"Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)]."

Please feel free to offer a cite from a peer-reviewed source that offers a contrary opinion. Without such cites, your use of language such as "fraudulent nonsense" is over-reaching, at best.

Your statement that "So far I've read and seen no proof that it is" conveys far more information about what you haven't read and seen than about the material at hand. The facts and data that you seem so resistant to is readily at hand -- it does, however, require that you read it.

Perhaps you might consider actually informing yourself about a subject of such importance before offering such an embarassingly display of your own ignorance in a public forum such as this.

Actually Tom, there is no technology in existence todyay that can factually prove that any warming of the globe is man-made. One freely roaming carbon dioxide molecule looks pretty much like any other freely roaming carbin dioxide molecule and trying to pin them on a particular source is something that just can't be done.

You know trees produce carbon dioxide at night - should we cut them all down? How about the photo plankton in the oceans? Sources I've read say that they produce most of the global carbon dioxide. Shall we poison them to stop it?

Climate change happens, Tom. It's a natural phenomena. New studies are putting forth the theory that we have entered a cycle where the sun is putting out more energy and possibly causing global warming. Shall we draw the shades?

The United Nations is an organization of idiots. I'd be happy if we withdrew from it since we pay most of its costs and get very little benefit from it. The IPCC? Another group designed to give bureaucrats lifetime employment. Christy Whitman? Oh yes, she's a well known scientist right? And the EPA is a well known schlock-science outfit stuffed with environmental whackos.

Nothing about global warming is unanimous, Tom. And you stating it just proves that you haven't bothered to check it out.

Even if it is real, I'm all for it. I live in New England and I'm ready for shorter winters. I've read that fewer people die from warm weather than cold weather. I don't know if its true, but it may be. I do know that the people in Greenland are now able to get two harvests instead of one and that gives them enough to export some of their crops therby enriching the Greenland farmers. So I guess that means global warming is good for the economy.

I read all kinds of sources. Here are a few for you. If you like, you can pass them on to your buddy, Al Gore.

Here is a site where 17,000 scientists signed a petition stating that �there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth�s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth�s climate.�

www.oism.org

So much for consensus, Tom. Maybe you'd like to pass that on to your buddy, Al Gore.

Here are some more:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1350746/posts
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000255.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/sanandaji9.html
http://nov55.com/gbwm.html
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_4387552
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4066189.stm
http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/2002/15.html

You really don't want to go citing that "17,000 signature" site. It doesn't take much searching at all to find out that the way those signatures were collected was questionable at best.

Hi Laura Hannon,

I didn't look at how the signatures were collected, but it is no less valid than BrooklineTom stating, " The scientific consensus is clearly expressed..." There is no consensus, never was. I'm no scientist, and I'm not going to spend my life worrying about global warming or reading the scientific papers on it - I don't have a problem falling asleep at night. But, remarks like fall into the same category of us having accurate global temperature readings for the last 100 years. It's a fairy tale.

Just put me in the extreme pessimist category on global warming. I'm the same way with medical doctors and how much they'd like us all to think they know about things they actually know very little about.

Let me give you a real life example - last week I was watching the weather at 11:15 pm and we were supposed to get rain around midnight and it would stop around 6am from a warm front moving up from the south. It didn't reain all night, in fact it didn't start to rain until around 2 in the afternoon. These guys couldn't even predict the weather a little over 12 hours out, and I'm supposed to believe they can predict climate change? Not a chance.

There isn't enough computing power in the world nor anyone who understands all the variables that go into the system we call Earth. Their models can't accurately predict the past and there is no reason to believe they can predict the future.

But you know what I think is the most unfortunate element of this whole thing? Its that the media morons and Hollywood knuckleheads have picked it up and are running with it. It has turned the whole thing into a side show.

woodNfish i agree with you on some of your points like the warming of the weather might be an improvement to cold countries and also the fact that we really know little compared to the complex systems of this planet and there really is not a very accurate measurement of everything. i also agree with the idea that the earth might also be going to a cycle of global climactic changes. we cannot neglect the idea that this warming of the planet might not be caused by humans and this might be a natural event. and also the power of media is also another factor that we can consider when it comes to "modifying the gravity of the issue". but then since you are considering that the warming is not caused merely by humans (or it sound like its not caused by humans at all according to your ideas) do you also believe that humans have the capability to do it? or might already be causing it unknowingly? its pretty easy to say and give facts that we are not causing the problem but the knowledge that we can and have the ability to cause the problem is one thing that we cannot just neglect. what if we really are causing the warming because of the fact that we have the capability of doing it? shouldnt we all be concerned? and i believe this is what the people around us are doing.

Hi Storm,

I'm not convinced that we are causing any warming other than local, as in cities. For instance I know it is warmer in Boston at all times because of the mass of buidings and roads in a concentrated area. But, I don't think that effects anything outside the Boston area and certainly isn't changing the local climate.

There was a volcano a few years back late 80's or 90's)that spit enough ash into the stratosphere that it actually caused cooler weather around the world for about 2 years. That was one volcano. Our ability to change the environment is nothing compared to the power of nature. And that is why I call thinking we can the height of conceit.

My biggest problem with trying to solve a problem that may not exist is the cost involved that probably will not do anything. We have already paid billions of dollars towards it when we had to change over our AC systems' refrigerant. What are we on now, the fourth version of refrigerant? And that cost continues because the new refrigerants are not as inexpensive as freon was. So, is the hole in the ozone gone? No, it isn't and there was never any proof that man-made CFCs caused it. In fact, there are some who question that manmade CFCs can ever make it into the statosphere and then down to Antarctica anyway.

I am for lettig technological progress move us toward using less carbon-oriented technology. If you look back on all the media-created crisis that we've had in the past, (food, oil, and auto-emissions come to mind), technology has always prevailed, and I think it will again. A recent paper showed that most of the European signers of the Kyoto Treaty have not met their national goals, in fact most of them are well behind on them while the US has outperformed almost every one of them without ever signing the treaty (and I don't want us to sign it.)

One of the biggest problems I have with the enviro-whackos is that they scream at us about this problem or that, but never acknowledge the advances we've made. Did you know that car emissions are over 98% clean or that the Great Lakes are once again pristine? The list goes on and on, but you never hear about it.

If you want to find environmental problems head south of the border or to China or Russia or any other 3rd world cesspool. Convince them to clean up their acts and leave my wallet alone. The government has its hand too deep in my pocket as it is.