Student Activism = Marxism, Socialism, and Fascism..Which is what the Global Warming issue is and which is typical of the minds full of oatmeal on the college campuses, who should be devoting their time to their studies to make their own lives better, and not to these radical left wing causes. These students and their leftist instructors need to get a clue the the 1960's are over, and that they can't control the weather...Making a difference...Change the world...How about getting a life, instead?

Penn and Teller also did a show about second hand smoke not being harmful. They have a libertarian agenda on that show. Trying to discredit the idea of public protest by insulting the participants is shameful and antidemocratic.

Carbon neutral? Please, there is no such thing! Our entire existence is based on carbon. This is all just so much "I'm better than you!" posturing by people more interested in show over substance.

Who cares what college students think - their just children who don't even know what life is all about and still being supported by mom and dad. Even more important - they don't vote!

Lastly, many college kids aren't as stupid and lemming-like as the MSM would like us to think. When I was angry about an anti-US poster at my son's college my boy told me not to get upset about. He said it was about 6 kids and the other kids passing by just laugh at them because they are ridiculous fools. They just get a lot of press.

100 years from now, new technology will have phased out old technology. The earth will not die within this span. If the temperature globally goes up 2� Fahrenheit, The Apocalypse will not happen. Please. The earth will be here long after you and I and our great, great, great, great grand children are gone. It may not look exactly the same, but that will be due to evolution, the flowing course of nature. Stop worrying so much. Human life is too short. Again, human life is too short. Appreciate and embrace our advances in technology. It will only get better, not worse.

If the earth could talk it would laugh and say silly humans. You can�t destroy me. I will be here forever�but you humans won�t�.remember the dinosaurs? Do you really think humans will roam the earth forever? Old species die, and new species are born. Please, enough already. I leave you with this, in relation to the environment. People are complaining about mercury levels in fish that swim in our waters. Up here in the great state of New Hampshire, some scientists are recommending that women, who are pregnant, only consume 1 fish for their entire pregnancy, due to the mercury levels. If this is true, then how come our beloved American eagles or bears have not died from consuming too many mercury tainted fish? They eat fish everyday, a part of their diet. Is there a wide outbreak of these species dying because of poisonous mercury levels? No. Stop politicizing things and stop trying to scare us. It is good to have open debate, but don�t try to silence opposing view points. We are not all educated to be intellectuals, however many of us have a significant amount of common sense. This can be just as balanced. Stick that in your IQ pipe.

The bottom line is, and I reiterate, new technology will phase out old technology. The earth is resilient. Appreciate and live your lives. Thank you for reading my rant.

Students are not the only people who are uninformed. That is a serious problem when there are so many hucksters like Al Gore running about trying to sell books.

To many people global warming has become a religion thus they are easy prey to the alarmist crowd. Facts counter to their beliefs are discounted as inventions of rightwingers, big oil or other imagined devils. Why so many people can so easily be gulled is a mystery to me. Nevertheless, it is there.

There are thousands, maybe millions, of people waiting for the rapture. Some of them undoubtedly believe that global warming will hasten the coming. I despair.

We must figure out how to educate our children so that reason guides their thoughts and the way they live. Blind faith always leads to disaster. History is filled with the sorry record. One recent example. Rachel Carson wrote a book several years ago raising the spectre of terrible consequences from the use of DDT. It was rather quickly banned worldwide. Subsequently her "science" turned out to be faulty. Meanwhile millions of people have died of malaria simply because people were willing to take on faith predictions of doom. Those who stood up and counseled for more study were shouted down.

I place a large part of the blame for this sad state of affairs on the media whose hunger for news outweighs their commitment to balance and truth. Another important factor is the vast amount of money available to scientists and other "experts." They must keep the ball rolling lest their funds evaporate. Imagine for a moment what would happen to the financial well-being of these experts if the earth started to cool dramatically. As they have done in the past they would go into deep denial and undoubtedly come up with some rationalization.

Education is the only answer. Somehow we have to make it happen.

How many either never took, weren't paying attention in and/or failed to retain in ormation from chemistry class? Lots, I'll bet.

Actually I've seen the DHM trick pulled before. It works to the extent it does (but see below) because people register on the word they're familiar with ("monoxide") and associate it with the only place they've ever seen that word used ("carbon monoxide"), and of course everyone knows that CO is a bad thing. That said, the trick really only works if you give people no time to think about it (as in if they're trying to follow a speaker while signing). As well, I'll bet that petition was carefully designed to obscure what was really going on. Lastly, "no shortage" of signers isn't exactly a scientific survey of the responses, is it? How big was the rally? How many people were asked to sign and refused? Do Penn and Teller have an ideological axe to grind about envronmentalism? Etc., etc.

Summing up, I think your analogy was wholly inapt.

Friday, May 23, 1997

The Clinton administration has decided to commit the United States to finalizing a treaty in December 1997 that would impose legally binding, internationally enforceable limits on the production of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2). That decision was based on the belief that global warming is significant, that humans are its primary cause and that only immediate government action can avert disaster.

Yet there is no scientific consensus that global warming is a problem or that humans are its cause. Even if current predictions of warming are correct, delaying drastic government actions by up to 25 years will make little difference in global temperature 100 years from now. Proposed treaty restrictions would do little environmental good and great economic harm. By contrast, putting off action until we have more evidence of human-caused global warming and better technology to mitigate it is both environmentally and economically sound.

Much of the environmental policy now proposed is based on myths. Let's look at the four most common.

Myth #1: Scientists Agree the Earth Is Warming. While ground-level temperature measurements suggest the earth has warmed between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1850, global satellite data, the most reliable of climate measure-
ments, show no evidence of warming during the past 18 years. [See Figure I.] Even if the earth's temperature has increased slightly, the increase is well within the natural range of known temperature variation over the last 15,000 years. Indeed, the earth experienced greater warming between the 10th and 15th centuries - a time when vineyards thrived in England and Vikings colonized Greenland and built settlements in Canada.

Myth #2: Humans Are Causing Global Warming. Scientists do not agree that humans discernibly influence global climate because the evidence supporting that theory is weak. The scientific experts most directly concerned with climate conditions reject the theory by a wide margin.

* A Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of the members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society think that the warming of the 20th century has been a result of greenhouse gas emissions - principally CO2 from burning fossil fuels. [See Figure II.]

* Only 13 percent of the scientists responding to a survey conducted by the environmental organization Greenpeace believe catastrophic climate change will result from continuing current patterns of energy use.

* More than 100 noted scientists, including the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, signed a letter declaring that costly actions to reduce greenhouse gases are not justified by the best available evidence.

While atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 28 percent over the past 150 years, human-generated carbon dioxide could have played only a small part in any warming, since most of the warming occurred prior to 1940 - before most human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.

Myth #3: The Government Must Act Now to Halt Global Warming. The belief underlying this myth is that the consequences of near-term inaction could be catastrophic and, thus, prudence supports immediate government action.

However, a 1995 analysis by proponents of global warming theory concluded that the world's governments can wait up to 25 years to take action with no appreciable negative effect on the environment. T.M.L. Wigley, R. Richels and J.A. Edmonds followed the common scientific assumption that a realistic goal of global warming policy would be to stabilize the concentration of atmospheric CO2 at approximately twice preindustrial levels, or 550 parts per million by volume. Given that economic growth will continue with a concomitant rise in greenhouse gas emissions, the scientists agreed that stabilization at this level is environmentally sound as well as politically and economically feasible. They also concluded that:

* Governments can cut emissions now to approximately 9 billion tons per year or wait until 2020 and cut emissions by 12 billion tons per year.

* Either scenario would result in the desired CO2 concentration of 550 parts per million.

* Delaying action until 2020 would yield an insignificant temperature rise of 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100.

In short, our policymakers need not act in haste and ignorance. The government has time to gather more data, and industry has time to devise new ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Myth # 4: Human-Caused Global Warming Will Cause Cataclysmic Environmental Problems. Proponents of the theory of human-caused global warming argue that it is causing and will continue to cause all manner of environmental catastrophes, including higher ocean levels and increased hurricane activity. Reputable scientists, including those working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations organization created to study the causes and effects of global climate warming, reject these beliefs.

Sea levels are rising around the globe, though not uniformly. In fact, sea levels have risen more than 300 feet over the last 18,000 years - far predating any possible human impact. Rising sea levels are natural in between ice ages. Contrary to the predictions of global warming theorists, the current rate of increase is slower than the average rate over the 18,000-year period.

Periodic media reports link human-caused climate changes to more frequent tropical cyclones or more intense hurricanes. Tropical storms depend on warm ocean surface temperatures (at least 26 degrees Celsius) and an unlimited supply of moisture. Therefore, the reasoning goes, global warming leads to increased ocean surface temperatures, a greater uptake of moisture and destructive hurricanes. But recent data show no increase in the number or severity of tropical storms, and the latest climate models suggest that earlier models making such connections were simplistic and thus inaccurate.

* Since the 1940s the National Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory has documented a decrease in both the intensity and number of hurricanes.

* From 1991 through 1995, relatively few hurricanes occurred, and even the unusually intense 1995 hurricane season did not reverse the downward trend.

* The 1996 IPCC report on climate change found a worldwide significant increase in tropical storms unlikely; some regions may experience increased activity while others will see fewer, less severe storms.

Since factors other than ocean temperature such as wind speeds at various altitudes seem to play a larger role than scientists previously understood, most agree that any regional changes in hurricane activity will continue to occur against a backdrop of large yearly natural variations.

What about other effects of warming? If a slight atmospheric warming occurred, it would primarily affect nighttime temperatures, lessening the number of frosty nights and extending the growing season. Thus some scientists think a global warming trend would be an agricultural boon. Moreover, historically warm periods have been the most conducive to life. Most of the earth's plant life evolved in a much warmer, carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere.

Conclusion. As scientists expose the myths concerning global warming, the fears of an apocalypse should subside. So rather than legislating in haste and ignorance and repenting at leisure, our government should maintain rational policies, based on science and adaptable to future discoveries.

This Brief Analysis was prepared by H. Sterling Burnett, environmental policy analyst with the
National Center for Policy Analysis.

Dear Ms. Hannon,

A "follower" concerned about climate change is in the company of nearly every climate scientist in the world actively involved in research on the issue.

See:

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus.htm#individuals

and:

www.realclimate.org

This would place a young "follower" of the 2007 scientific consensus on climate change in the same bracket as a follower of the scientific consensus on special and general relativity.

Your point is well taken that sometimes "followers" do not have a thorough understanding of Topic A, but that seems to be beside the point on the subject of climate change, given that if they are concerned about the issue -- even without thoroughly understanding its nuances -- their concern is fully consistent with the scientists who know the subject exceedingly well.

This is just media hype - Pls stop wasting bandwidth

Remembering my own days in college, the ratio of 'well-informed' students to 'bandwagon' students is most likely very small. Whenever there was an opportunity to get out of class, we took it. Student activism cannot be counted as an accurate barometer of real conviction about an issue.

In addition, to think that puny mankind can influence the weather is laughable. Perhaps 'global warming' is indeed a trend, but I wonder what the folks in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas would have to say about that.

One of the problems I see is that we don't know whether this global warming is the result of man-made problems or a natural cycle. Going back some 2,000 years, the climate in the United Kingdom was very much warmer than it is at present. When the Romans invaded and settled in England about the time of Christ, they brought grape vines with them. These would have been the Mediterranean varieties not the modern cold climate modern hybrids. These were grown as far north as York (about halfway up England) and produced grapes for wine.
In the Lake District (in the north of England) is the Hardknott Pass, The highest Pass in England, which is only passable in the Summer for about 4 months in the year. The Romans had a substantial Fort near the summit, the remains of which can be visited to this day. There is no way that the Romans could have maintained a garrison there under today's weather conditions.
From the evidence I would say the the temperature in England was probably 10 deg. C. (18 deg F) higher than it is today.
Perhaps the students could do some useful research into our historic weather conditions because the present day weather records only go back a few hundred years when weather cycles may extend for thousands of year (eg the ice ages)

Dear Laura:

Scientifically, the politically motivated Kyoto Protocol is flawed and ripe for economic fraud. Earnestly, the IPCC and its supporting scientists are focused upon atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming as a poorly veiled means to influence international energy policies. Consequently, they have proposed a system of carbon credits for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide without correctly acknowledging the physiological regulation of the carbon cycle and the impact of water and water vapor on global warming. Naively, many sincerely motivated people with a strong sense of environmental stewardship, such as those mentioned above, have embraced their activities. Thirty years ago, I probably would have been one of them. Over the years, I've learned our lives depend on carbon. As living, breathing, excreting people collectively participating in the mass socialization of the Human Ecosystem, none of us are truly carbon neutral. Carbon neutrality is nothing more than creative bookkeeping worthy of the former accountants at Enron and MCI.

Quite possibly, the system of carbon credits is a fiasco waiting to happen, ripe for international political intimidation and general accounting fraud from tyrants, thugs, and confidence artists. Once again, we're setting ourselves up for conflicts between the Haves and Have-nots. Carbon dioxide is not a commodity to be controlled on a closed market, since it is an essential requirement of all living organisms. Leaders or followers, the student activists you discuss are merely preparing for a lifetime of energy and money actively directed to maintaining the Human Ecosystem in our country. Young, narrow-minded, and jaded, they just aren't aware of how significantly their future efforts and earnings will be fiscally directed to maintaining their collective quality of living. I suppose you and I should tell them about it.

Truthfully, no citizens on the planet actively expend more energy and money on environmental protection and conservation than Americans. Directly, the citizens of the United States subsidize water systems, wastewater systems, solid waste landfills, solid waste recycling, industrial and automotive air pollution control, parks, forests, grasslands, wetlands, seashores, coral reefs, wildlife management, soil conservation, water quality protection, special ecosystem protection, orbital imaging systems, basic and applied research, public and private education, emergency management, and all the administrative requirements necessary to physically and financially manage these programs from tiny municipal townships, regional river authorities, and air management districts to the supporting bureaucracies of county, state, and federal governments. Collectively, our efforts extend from Maine and the Virgin Islands to the International Date Line in the central Pacific Ocean and from above the Arctic Circle to south of the Equator. Meanwhile, there are machines and occasionally people orbiting overhead monitoring our activities and those of other nations. All require expenditures of energy and money. They are not free. Many would make excellent topics for AccuWeather's Headline: Earth video series.

Directly, our activism and subsidies benefit the entire planet. Virtually all the information gathered through these programs is freely available online or by written request to anyone, anywhere on Earth. Extraordinarily, this vast sum of expenditures does not include the significant monies expended privately in the United States for conservation ... such as a membership to the National Geographic Society or Nature Conservancy. Correctly, these subsidies, our solids wastes, and all carbon wood products used for building construction, including cabinetry and furniture should be counted, as should all woody landscape ornamentals publicly and privately planted for urban habitat improvements.

Is anybody anywhere truly accounting for these subsidies in carbon book-keeping? Accurately, atmospheric scientists and the policy makers they advise must include these substantial investments, directly accountable from personal, corporate, and governmental budgets by Americans and other industrialized nations. Apparently, they are not doing so in their sweeping attempts to influence international energy policies. Unfortunately, Al Gore, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi are not. Undoubtedly, they should know better. Naively or deliberately, they are defining planetary energy policy through the non sequiturs of global warming and sincerely heartfelt environmental stewardship.

Can any of these four tell us the mass of carbon stored each year in our wastewater sludges, sanitary landfills, and our managed forests from Maine to Samoa? Can each of them recite the board feet or meters of lumber handled by American merchants in 2006? How many tons of paper and cotton were processed in the United States last year? What is the total standing crop of carbon produced by American farmers since 2000? Crops produce far more inedible mass than good stuff. Are any of these figures being credited against our direct emissions of atmospheric carbon dioxide? How many millions of one gallon equivalent units of landscape trees and shrubs were sold to American homeowners in 2006 at retail garden centers for homestead improvements? Nationally, how much sales tax was collected on those items? Even scientists studying carbon dioxide burn hydrocarbons flying through the atmosphere, sailing across the ocean, or driving to work. Is the direct labor these people and other Americans expend subsidizing the study or maintenance of managed ecosystems credited against our emissions?

Correctly, the system outlined in the Kyoto Protocol must clearly account for all carbon credits, such as wastewater treatment, solid waste disposal, environmental management, carbon-based products, and recycling. Absolutely, operational managers, certified public accountants, and auditors must be involved in this process, since few atmospheric oceanographers apparently have accounting educations or operations experience. Additionally, many scientists may have serious conflicts of interest via their respective professional services contracts with particular corporations, special interest groups, or governmental agencies.

Fairly, let's give credit where credit is truly due. It's no wonder many older Americans are actively frustrated and distrustful of crusading scientists and politicians regarding atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions and measures to eliminate them. Many understand such systems are already in place. Their proof arrives as monthly fees for sewer and solid waste collection and annual tax statements from special purpose, municipal, county, state, and federal governments. Yet these are entirely ignored by atmospheric scientists clearly lacking expertise in ecology, economics, and general accounting principles as they crusade to protect us from the speculative future impacts of global warming. It's time for journalists, including AccuWeather, to ask scientists and politicians these tough questions about carbon and the Human Ecosystem. Undoubtedly, their answers will be very illuminating, even for young American activists, our future revenue payers.

Hayes Galitski
Claremont, CA

Dear Carbon Activists of America:

Ecologically and economically, a wastewater treatment system, including its extensive subterranean collection system and its hundreds to hundreds-of-thousands of residential, commercial, and industrial connections is a major governmentally subsidized capital investment with continuous maintenance expenditures, an entire facility physically and chemically demonstrating that all environmental energies, regardless of their source, are clearly subsidies and not free. Environmentally, treatment facilities and their human-sponsored subsidies are necessary to prevent the degradation of natural waterways and the Human Ecosystem. In addition to the fees each connection must pay for wastewater collection and treatment, each person connected to that system directly makes an annual per capita contribution to the system's wasted carbon sludges that require subsequent handling and disposal.

As required by state and federal statutes, each wastewater treatment facility must continuously measure, calculate, and report the per capita contribution of individual collection system connections as pounds of total suspended solids, biological oxygen demand, or total organic carbon. Yes, Virginia, there really are people with great dedication and little recognition regularly measuring the flushed wastes of Al Gore, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and George Bush and reporting their contributions, along with others, to local, state, and federal governments for accounting. I was once one of them, travelling all across South Texas collecting municipal wastewater samples for analysis and reporting to state and federal authorities. Massively, wastewater treatment systems produce an abundance of composted, humic sludges which too frequently are buried in local landfills. Historically, New York City dumped millions of tons of carbon sludges into the Atlantic Ocean negatively impacting oceanic water quality before upgrading their municipal wastewater treatment systems and sludge disposal methods. Have those tons been deducted against OCO emissions?

Importantly, the production of goods and services, such as water procurement, wastewater treatment, landscape improvements, solid waste disposal, general and enterprise revenue funded environmental management programs and all other Human Ecosystem expenditures and capital improvements necessarily created as replacement subsidies to non-human dominated ecosystems, must be properly recognized, considered, and correctly accounted for by academic and institutional ecologists. Simultaneously, economists must include natural energy and structural subsidies in their detailed analyses of human cultural institutions to correctly assess capital and operational budgets.

Commonly, the Greek root word for each ... ecos ... means housekeeping. Dominated by exacting field work and tedious statistical analyses, both house-keeping disciplines have academically ignored each other. Historically neglecting the physical interactions of the Human Ecosystem with its non-human components, economists are often chauvinistically chastized by ecologists, even though the former have a much higher standard of accounting and auditing than the latter. Scientifically, all house-keeping scientists ... ecologists and economists ... must be held to the same level of confidence and public accountability through the auditing process.

Factually, researchers and editors preparing articles proclaiming substantial quantities of planetary carbon as 'missing', as appeared several years ago in National Geographic, an outstanding, generally objective journal dedicated to science and conservation, should have access to scientific audits via certified public accountants, such as those of the Congressional General Accounting Office to verify statements of scientists with political agendas attending the Washington, London, Ottawa, and Canberra cocktail party circuits looking for more taxpayer subsidies to study carbon dioxide. Planetary carbon is not and never has been missing. Only scientific accuracy and public accountability have apparently disappeared without a trace.

Ironically, as Speaker Pelosi and Senators Feinstein and Boxer rush to protect us from the speculative threats of atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming, their home state of California is reeling from a billion dollar hit to its agricultural economy as a consequence of cold, the third economically impacting freeze in just fifteen years. Only twenty hours of freezing temperatures were required to damage the state's citrus and avocado groves. With milder weather, it has become quite apparent that many trees suffered significant damage to the conductive tissues of their stems, especially actively growing avocado trees, thereby negatively impacting future production. Undoubtedly, this will not stop the calls for carbon dioxide emission reductions as the state's motoring commuters massively waste carbon dioxide and water vapor into the atmosphere while creeping in traffic on California's congested, outdated 'freeways'.

Rep. Dingell may be correct in his assessment of Nancy Pelosi. She may be a poorly informed crusader using global warming as means for her future political ambitions. As our House Leader, Speaker Pelosi should be demanding that American environmental subsidies are correctly accounted. Clearly lacking a comprehensive understanding of the carbon cycle, she wants to debit our nation for carbon emissions without properly applying carbon credits. Wisely, she should seek counsel from the General Accounting Office of Congress before hastily pursuing ill advised carbon schemes to enact by Independence Day of this year. Telling her about the hazards of global warming while affectionately exhaling anthropogenic carbon dioxide into her ears and writing personal checks for her campaign treasury while eagerly seeking more federal dollars for climate studies, the gracious patronization of courtesans from the extensive University of California system is not a substitute for an education in aqueous carbon chemistry and general accounting. Congressman Dingell, I feel your pain.

Hayes Galitski