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Good information on the global warming hype can be found at www.junkscience.com

I still have a TIME magazine article from January 31, 1994

http://www.time.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,980050,00.html

" Monday, Jan. 31, 1994
Just as last week's tremors were destroying highways, buildings and lives in Southern California, an even deadlier natural disaster was advancing slowly but inexorably south from Canada into the U.S. By midweek a huge mass of frigid arctic air had practically paralyzed much of the Midwest and East. Temperatures in dozens of cities dropped to all-time lows: -22 degreesF in Pittsburgh; -25 degrees in Akron, Ohio, and Clarksburg, West Virginia; -27 degrees in Indianapolis, Indiana. Chicago schools closed because of cold weather for the first time in history, Federal Government offices shut down."

"What ever happened to global warming? Scientists have issued apocalyptic warnings for years, claiming that gases from cars, power plants and factories are creating a greenhouse effect that will boost the temperature dangerously over the next 75 years or so. But if last week is any indication of winters to come, it might be more to the point to start worrying about the next Ice Age instead. After all, human-induced warming is still largely theoretical, while ice ages are an established part of the planet's history. The last one ended about 10,000 years ago; the next one -- for there will be a next one -- could start tens of thousands of years from now. Or tens of years. Or it may have already started."

The real driving force behind global warming hysteria are Socialist/Marxist forces trying to stunt the economic growth of the Western world.

This winter, Europe had one of its coldest deadliest winters in decades. Of course that didnt make the headlines. They mentioned it occasionally when a building collapsed due to heavy snowfalls.

Having studied global warming for a good amount of time I think few informed people could argue that isn't happening. The whole coldest winter in Europe fits perfectly into the current model for global warming. Europe which is warmed by ocean currents no longer gets the gulf current and cools down. This is believed to be the results from polar ice caps metling and causing salt levls to drop. Dramatic climate shifts are also part of Global warming. Imagine severe rainfall followed by severe drought.

The polar ice caps continue to melt at record rates. This is a documented fact. We may eventually be heading into a ice age, but so far we have shown no signs (Increase in global ice packs).

Scientists are not politicians and they are definitely not "socialists/marxists". They are simply using the data and guessing to the best of their knowledge. The implications of global warming could potentially devestate much of the farm land in the world. This is something which deserves attention.

What politicians do with it is an entirely different business. Plain and simple, we all live on the same planet so lets not pollute a good thing.

Reed, you're talking out of your ass. Yes, the cilmate is changing, but the climate changes all the time. It's a chaotic system, not an linear. Thousands of years of evidence have shown us that the climate will change very rapidly - and, unless you're a subscriber to the atlantis myth, without human intervention.

The AGW story has long been based on computer models, which are used as evidence when they're nothing of the sort. Of course all the models assume that the sun has no effect on the earth's average temperature. Only a fool would ignore the single largest contributor of energy in a system and focus on the smallest effects, which is exactly what these models do. By ignoring the sun, they magnify everything else. AGW has reached the point, now, where the models are believed despite actual physical evidence to the contrary. This isn't science. It's propoganda.

If you put feedback in to a computer model, you can prove anything.

The polar ice-caps aren't melting at record speeds; the distributions are changing. Antarctic ice has thinned, between the 1980s and today, but between the 1940s and the 60s it grew thicker, which indicated a possible cyclic event that, oddly enough, coincides with the NAO. The greenland ice-cap is currently growing, and quite rapidly, as is the antarctic ice-cap.

Aside from all that, the gulf stream cannot collapse unless the planet stops turning. It's an artefact of the coriolis effect and is driven more by the wind than anything else.

In short, this cold winter has bugger all to do with the AGW scam. Europe has enjoyed a string of warmer than average winters, and is now experiencing a colder-than-those-warmer-winters winter. It's just the weather changing. Nobody disputes that the climate changes - except, apparently, the climate change lobby, who push the idea that the climate was in perfect equilibrium until humans started "polluting" it. I'm all for reducing our pollution, but lets do it for the right reasons.

The AGW is doing it for the wrong reasons. The scientists are one thing - often they've spent a great deal of time proposing their theories, and it becaomes hard to divorce yourself from all that effort. Newtonians still argue against einsteinian physics, for instance, because they have a lot invested in the newtonian model. Buit that's just the scientists. You only have to look at the leading lights of the AGW theory to see where it's origins are, and those leading lights are,... people like Giore, the Sierra Club, various stripes of communist and socialist groups; green parties that formed from socialist parties in the 70s. Their stated goals are only a little different from their time as socialist parties. They dress up the class struggle in the language of environmentalism, and propose taxes that will, in their minds, remove the power of the rich. All it will do is destroy the poor they claim to be fightring for because, like it or not, our lives depend on industrialisation. Medicines, clean water, safe food and ling life are all part and parcel of an industrial society. Farm productivity too; the idea that rising temperatures will destroy farmland is so much rot. African countries, as an example, suffered droughts and famines during historically cooler periods and increased yields during warmer periods. Europe, too, suffered more droughts and wars in the period known as the maunder minimum than before or after; and during the period known as the medieval warm period went through a period of previously unknown prosperity. Remember, warmer overall temps = more precipitation. The air can hold more moisture. More moisture means... more rain, and more rain means more usable land. Generally.

Archonix says it well. In a nutshell:
-- yes there is climate change, always has been and always will be;
-- it's due to a variety of sources, chiefly the sun, most of which we have no more control over than we do the tides;
-- most environment-related "issues" have been exaggerated by those on the left as a weapon to oppose capitalism, technological progress, and (truth be told) freedom generally, and so the panic over purported human-induced component is naturally suspect given who is pushing it;
-- the AGW panic is based on a questionable premise that the environment is a collection of "ecosystems", integrated environmental units all of whose parts are required to be intact for proper functioning, when there is little evidence to support the existence of such a construct in physical reality and much factual evidence to suggest such a construct is inaccurate;
-- furthermore, the AGW panic is based on the article of faith that nature exists unchanging or nearly so in perpetuity, except by the intervention of Man...when there is ample evidence of past change (often catastrophic change) having nothing to do with Man;
-- this misanthropic variation of uniformitarianism places Man and all his actions outside of nature...and what is it that separates Man from nature in this view, but his capacity to think, and to act on his thoughts? (Which is, of course, the real target...the environmental movement is not about protecting the sacred environment, but opposing profane Man.)

(Oops: "the AGW panic is based on..." should read "popular environmentalism is based on...". PIMF.)

Wow!!! Three out of four great comments on AGW and one wimp too insignificant to cast a shadow. I'm impressed that the UK visitor is so vigorous and well armed against the herd of European hot gas purveyors of eco-catastrophe.

The sun is indeed the thing whereby we warm Gaia's bosum (~1000 watts per square meter gross at noon). Her bellyful of molten goodies also helps to warm the surface through minerals doing the radioactive e=mc^2 dance. The biggest negative affects on insolation (solar energy input) are the albedo (cloud-cover blockage) and reflective solids in atmospheric suspension like soot, sulfurous mist and the occasional big boom volcanic dumps (e.g. Mt. St. Helens, Krakatoa). The Greenhouse Gas Warming phenomenon involves "trapping" of infra-red (heat) radiation by gaseous water, methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Solar activity is variable as seen in sun spot cycles, solar flares and intensity fluctuations. Energy input is also unsteady due to wobbles in the earth's orbit and in, addition, wiggles in the tilt of our axis. Knowledge of these things is far form complete. The sun blocking aspects - the clouds, sols and volcanic trash - are poorly predictable. The greenhouse aspects are fairly predictable BUT ARE PROBABLY THE LEAST IMPORTANT.

Also of interest are the observed cycles of the ocean circulations that do periodic severe climate shifts like El Nino and fluctuations in the Thermo-Haline Circulation - the Gulf Stream's warming of Europe.

OK, after all of this laying out of the story, BOTTOM LINE IS THIS - the models for Climate Change are not very helpful, nor precise, nor trustworthy. Chicken Little eco-activists are balmy. Scientific Experts pushing the warming scenarios are most probably grant funded by green friendly sorts, even the US government. Politics is a very slippery lubricant, enabler and even driver of this activity and will continue to be so this year and into the 2008 cycle.

Good grief, to state that scientists can neither be politicians or socialists/marxists and to say that they simply read the data and theorize is naive to say the least but mostly is very dangerous thinking.

Scientists are not unbiased individuals by any stretch of the imagination, despite all the propaganda to the contrary. Their living is grant-driven, with more than a few under the gun of the "publish or perish" rule. Many harbor agendas just as non-scientists do, and not a few are quite open about driving their opinions into the skulls of graduate students. Also, science is extremely competitive, (cutthroat principles would be a kind term), and does not make room for those who disagree with the current paradigm espoused by the establishment.

Regardless of one's views on "global warming", thinking individuals should always evaluate data with caution, including long-term observations particularly where climate is concerned.

I am not sure what you guys disagree over, you seem to accept that global warming is happening, but disagree what is causing it. If you were informed about the debate you could cite that globabl green house gasses have been determined by some scientists to have the opposite effect on our climate and cause a cooling trend. I don't think you guys really care about the science though. You seem focused in on the politics which is really rather silly.

Scientists are peer reviewed. This means if they were just trying to prove their stupid political beliefs they would be blown out of the water. I think we owe these scientists a lot more credit than we are willing to give. I would trust their opinion over some extremists disgruntled blogger.

The majority of the evidence for global warming comes from ice cores that prove beyond a doubt that green house gasses have been on the rise. Does this mean they are causing global warming? That is a debate that hasn't been concluded yet. As I stated with record dereases in polar ice caps it is hard to deny what is happening.

Moderates view the environment, like all systems, to be a careful set of checks and balances. We have added in an enormous amount of variables with the pollution we produce. Ideally this should be limited. This is not a political stance, it is a stance which uses reason about the environment to protect it. There is no political agenda behind protecting the planet we all live in. Those that try to find one or create one are part of the endless political problem that exists today.

BTW this whole link to protecting the enviroment with "communists" and "socialists" and "those who hate capatilism" is pretty lame. I know many die-hard conservatists that believe we are destroying our envrimonet faster than it can replenish itself. One only has to look to the virtual collapse of every fishery in the world to see we have problems with sustainability.

Listen. The ice caps aren't going through any kind of record anything. I know which study you're likely to be referring to and I can tell you this: a study based on a mere 32 to 34 months of data and then extrapolated out to the future is not, in any conceivable way, scientific. 32 months is not enough time to establish even minor variability, let alone century-long trends.

As for Peer review, well, it's been fairly conclusively proven that peer review is worth sweet fanny adams if all the peers doing the reviewing happen to share the same conclusions as a particular paper. Science is dead, my friend, and has been replaced with a religion. It masquerades as science, but the scientific method has been abandoned in favour of "proving" (!) theories. Anthropgenic Global Warming theory doesn't even lay out any tests to disprove it, or the tests are so esoteric and narrowly defined as to be essentially untastable. Compare this with Einstein, who wrote out the circumstances that would disprove his theory of relativity, and all the variations thereof. The AGW mob don't do that. They simply redefine the theory to include contrary evidence, or just abandon it.

And again, I say, leaving out the single largest contributor of energy to a system makes any predictions of that system worthless.

Amen Archonix...I am in the sciences...and you're dead on.
It's the new priesthood. Peer review is damned near worthless.

Reed -- it's called "eating an elephant". You can't discuss every aspect of the climate change issue in just one comment thread.

And don't assume that just because we're talking about the politics and cultural aspects of the climate change issue here, that we don't understand the purported science behind it. It's precisely because the scientific "evidence" is so often contradictory, irrationally formulated, and blatantly and obviously steered to support an a priori conclusion that just happens to fit the agenda of the anticapitalist (and in this contect often anti-human) left, that I am skeptical about the matter.

Does the climate change? Yes, no question about it -- there is ample evidence of it gathered from historical and geologic records prior to AGW, etc. becoming a corrosive influence on the associated areas of science. Oddly enough, the ones who seem to believe in a static environment are those pushing the notion that human activities are the primary or only cause of climate change...that is, where I believe climate change is natural and largely beyond our ability to influence, those pushing AGW argue (by implication where not explicitly stated) that the environment does not change except due to human intervention.