Global Warming is real, but natural. There have been no proof I have seen that we, humans, have contributed to this cycle.

Does it not bother anyone that the records we are breaking now were set in the late 1800's and early 1900's? The problem is, we are a victim of our own success. We can see things they could not. There are more named hurricanes than ever before, but we have only been able to see ALL of them in the last 50 years. Who knows how many hurricanes there were in the early 1900's? Can you say for sure?

We have devices and computer models that can measure things like Ice cores (do they take into account that ice melts?), soil samples, etc. All of the devices are based on a theory.

Here is what I think. Science has found something that they should watch and record, because the more accurate records we have, the better we will understand the cycles. Liberal have found something also, a way to regulate and control industry, and make a buck in the process. Algore is making a killing on the hysteria of his infomercial. Nancy Pelosi has already started pushing Calif. values on us. Arnold has been brainwashed into this crowd.

The country is moving towards a new mentality that will help the global warming crowd, all they have to do is shut up. Money make the world go around and when it is ECONOMICALLY viable for us to something, we do it. We, as Americans, want to get away from dependency on foreign oil. There is already a push for hybred cars. The auto industry is responding. The oil companies are responding. There are investors looking into alt fuel refineries. Wait...this problem will fix it's self in a 20-40 years, which is a very short time in the cycles of this planet.

I just hope the crow is not extinct by then, I would love to see the Chicken Little crowd eat some.

Oh god ... here it comes, this is going to get very ugly the next two years. Soon will have Al Gore back in Washington.

Oh yes, please do....Please Ms. Pelosi, implement your marxist agenda...With more government regulations....Because Global Warming is going to kill us all....What a joke!.....You people are the limit....No matter what you people say, you will never get me to believe that this politcally motivate myth exists.....and if it does, IT IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE HUMAN RACE!.....When are these leftists going to realize that you can NOT control the weather?...

Oiznop

Cmon Oiznot, if Bush can steer a hurricane to hit NO then we can fix the climate. Right?

Hi Laura:

A congressional committee monitoring the scientific aspects of global warming can have mixed blessings. Such a group studying a scientific phenomenon has a responsibility to the general public to pursue the truth. However, members of Congress are primarily lawyers and frequently pursue science in the same adversarial manner as criminal or civil cases. Consequently, lawyers pursue their agendas politically and not scientifically. As lawyers, they carefully select data to substantiate their particular points-of-view.

Al Gore's recent movie on global warming is a clear example of this biased process, as the former Vice President carefully crafted a scary movie with the skill of a trial lawyer attempting to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Rather conveniently, he avoided facts contrary to his point of view, knowing there are many well-considered reasonable doubts based upon scientific evidence. While this practice may be germane in jurisprudence, it corrupts due process in science. Hopefully, any Congressional committee will be responsible to the public and not pursue a political agenda that conveniently fits the platform of either major political party. All Americans should be concerned about the use of political power fraudulently manipulating carbon dioxide and global warming to influence international energy policies away from hydrocarbons. As expert witnesses, testifying scientists must not allow themselves to be politically intimidated and manipulated by skilled lawyers masked as Members of Congress.

Congress already has the means to significantly reduce atmospheric emissions by pursuing investment tax credits for domestic and commercial installation of rooftop solar electric panels. Electrically, hundreds-of-millions of square feet of existing commercial rooftops, especially those of large retail centers, can be massively pressed into community service harnessing solar power via newly developed rigid or flexible solar panel technology. Coincidentally, a major operating expenditure for large retail centers is electricity. Environmentally, we can turn these structural behemoths into integrated parts of our state and national electrical grids, thereby replacing the natural photosynthetic subsidies physically eliminated by these buildings and their carparks. Simultaneously, the mass production of solar electric panels for commercial installations will lower the average selling price for solar products making them affordable for domestic use. Currently, the infrastructure for residential solar electricity is budgetarily beyond the reach of most households, despite rebates offered by some power companies with accompanying state tax incentives.

Ethically, there is no better way for individual households or a community to effectively reduce radiative gas emissions than with solar power. Beneficially connected to our national electrical grid, domestic and commercial center solar power generation can massively reduce the need for carbon and uranium fuels by the human ecosystem. Similarly, individual households can significantly reduce their energy consumption by up to fifty percent by installing tankless electric or gas water heaters. Currently, the federal government is offering a tax credit of $300 on installations this tax year for those homeowners replacing inefficient water heaters with on-demand tankless heaters. See the website of the Noritz Company for more information. If energy policies are the true motivation of such a committee, and I believe they are, then it should pursue solutions such as these, not ill considered carbon credit schemes and 'environmental fixes' to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Hayes Galitski
Claremont, Los Angeles County, CA

Dear Laura:

Unfortunately, a political committee focused on global warming may be tempted to pursue poorly considered remedies to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. I'll elaborate with the following example.

Exemplified by its prodigious salmon runs, sea birds, mammals, and productive benthic fisheries, such as halibut, the north Pacific basin is the world's most productive ecosystem. Holistically, it includes alpine terrestrial mountain streams and circulatorily confined deep water from northern Japan, Korea, China, and Kamchatka to Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. A dynamic interaction of organisms, materials, and energy exists in this vital, regional ecosystem.

Data from the World Ocean Circulation Experiment and Global Ocean Data Analysis Project demonstrate the north Pacific basin is well fertilized, probably as a consequence of animal waste products. Clearly, organic food and the organismal respirational demand for diatomic oxygen, especially by bacteria, is approaching overloading ... correctly measured as biological oxygen demand. Broadly, the smallest mass of subphotic diatomic oxygen measured in any oceanic basin occurs in the circulatorily restricted north Pacific basin. Informatively, the National Oceanographic Data Center of NOAA produces colored temperature and oxygen data for the north Pacific basin as part of its World Ocean Atlas 2001.

Undoubtedly, a significant amount of atmospheric nitrous oxide is bacterially produced in this basin. Facultatively, bacteria consume excretory nitrites and nitrates from animal wastes for additional oxygen, producing nitrous oxide and diatomic nitrogen as waste products. Similarly, de-nitrification occurs in organically overloaded wastewater treatment plants, observable as pieces of sludge attached to bubbles of nitrous oxide or diatomic nitrogen rising for atmospheric ventilation from the mechanically raked, oxically limited layer of sludge accumulating at the bottom of treatment plant clarifiers.

Apparently, some atmospheric oceanographers view iron as a limiting factor for photosynthesis and oceanic primary productivity. Theoretically, massive diposiferron fertilization is viewed as a possible method for biologically reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its possible radiative impact on global warming. Boldly, lack of modeling data has prompted the National Science Foundation, NOAA, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the United States Navy to experimentally manipulate oceanic water quality under the auspices of the United States Joint Global Flux Study. Deliberately, this group fertilized illuminated surface waters in different regions of the ocean with soluble diposiferron aquions (Fe++) to determine the subsequent uptake of oceanic carbon dioxide. Their activities are reported in the June 2002 Iron Workshop Report at http://www1.whoi.edu/mzweb/iron/iron_rpt.html.

Electrochemically, phytoplankton are sensitive to even the minutest changes in ocean pH, strictly regulating illuminated surface waters at a pH of 8.1. Vitally, cells are protected against strong acids and bases by the buffering of carbonic acid, some catalytically converted from aquagasic carbon dioxide mixed in illuminated surface waters via the important enzyme, carbonic anhydrase. Not surprisingly, the Study's experimental fertilizations enhanced photosynthesis and biological productivity. Consequently, reduced partial pressures of aquagasic carbon dioxide were measured in fertilized surface waters.

The behaviors of aquagasic carbon dioxide and aquionic carbonic acid and its dissociated salts, bicarbonate and carbonate, are very different. Unfortunately, it is the practice of atmospheric oceanographers to mistakenly lump all three species together into the parameter of total inorganic carbon. Many atmospherically trained oceanographers, therefore, poorly comprehend aqueous chemistry and miss the truthful realization that the carbon cycle is cybernetically regulated by meteorology, aqueous chemistry, and organismal physiology. They pass their poor comprehension of aquatic systems to the general public and politicians who mistake their poorly calibrated mathematical models and inaccurate testimony as expertise.

Experimentally, the extra hydrogen protons, electrons, bicarbonate, and diposiferron provided artificially by the Joint Flux Study's fertilizations were used for photosynthesis. Additionally, diposiferron is electrochemically useful and a vital structural component of proteinaceous electron transfer enzymes, including our own. Structurally, the supplemental diposiferron was reproductively incorporated into the metabolic enzymes of new cells. Viola, fertilized carbon dioxide regulation and water quality maintenance via biological productivity. Horticulturally, Ironite is a popular retail garden center product providing the same subsidized boost for ornamental landscape plants from chelated diposiferron.

Correspondingly, increased photosynthesis and planktonic mass can increase the mass and metabolic respiration of phytoplanktonic consuming animals, especially in the non-illuminated, colder waters of the subphotion to which many of these animals vampirically descend each morning after a night of feeding in the photion. Paradoxically, fertilization of the ocean with iron to stimulate photosynthesis may regionally increase aquagasic and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, results contrary to those anticipated, if massively undertaken by the United States or other national governments, particularly in the enormously productive north Pacific basin.

As described by its authors, the Iron Workshop Report group seems uncertain of the biological significance of their experimental findings. Bacterially, fertilization of the north Pacific with Fe++ to reduce the mass of atmospheric carbon dioxide could additionally require oxygen in excess of its availability in the subphotic zone of maximum respiration, which in the north Pacific basin is from 200 to 2000 meters, a process the study did not monitor for computer modeling. Lake Erie in the 1960's and 1970's is a prime example of a human-sponsored, over-fertilized aquatic ecosystem. Unfortunately, productive fisheries collapsed in this important lake. Recently, summer fish kills have been reported in coastal Oregon as warm offshore winds and evaporation pulled organically overloaded, oxically limited waters into illuminated waters from below.

Ironically, other regions of the north Pacific could experience a similar outcome if irresponsibly fertilized with diposiferron by the U. S. Joint Global Flux Study to promote photosynthetic uptake of oceanic carbon dioxide. Currently, these study groups are comprised primarily of atmospheric oceanographers and other physical scientists, including computer modelers. As citizens, we must insist their participants also include environmental engineers, biologists, and water quality scientists with true expertise in aquatic systems.

With wastewater treatment plants as examples, increased nutrient loading produces more biomass, biological oxygen demand, and carbon dioxide. It can also produce methane, nitrous oxide, and sulfides if diatomic oxygen becomes limited for aerobic respiration. Consequently, governmentally funded environmental fixes can have ironic, detrimental outcomes unless judiciously and ethically considered by scientists with the required expertise.

Hayes Galitski
Claremont, CA

Why should we fix the climate??...Let's get Al Gore to do it....After all, this is his baby, and he invented the internet too!....;-)....

Can anyone explain the multiple ice ages that have occured prior to human existence? One look at Yosemite National Park will tell you that the earth cools and warms all by itself...Although maybe it was dinosaur flatulence.