What Could Falsify Man Made Global Warming Theory?

[HMS_Beagle]

For the umpteenzillionth time... I never SAID that... I just said... tell me what you plan on doing about it... how much will it cost, who will oversee the "fix".... what are the expected results...

And I said I don't know. Probably nobody has a single one-size-fits-all solution. But there have to be some steps taken, some compromises made between comfort now and a secure future for our descendants. Ignoring the problem really isn't an option.

(And just so you know, given the fact that we lack tone of voice and facial expression and all that... I'm not the least bit worked up about this... just a bit dismissive of the hype)

No worries, same here. Opinions are like noses, everybody's got one. Some are just much better supported by the scientific evidence than others.

[Juvenal]

Perhaps I should have said weather events or climate.

Dear seer,

Well, that's a budge, so ...

No perhaps about it. A post asking about "climate events" puts you right back in Pauli mode: "That's not even wrong." Climate is an average, and climate change is a rolling average. There's no event here. That face plant puts you in no position to comment on anyone else's intelligence, and if anything gives your target cause to preen a bit. After all, disparagement from anyone that wrong is nearly equivalent to a compliment. And your face is still planted in mud so long as you keep asking about weather events.

If you want to make it all the way back up to merely wrong, you might want to try morphing over to weather event frequencies. But, while I've seen some work's been done, that's not yet within the sphere of settled science, and, even if it were, still not something that could be used as falsification of the big three:

1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
2. Its concentration is increasing.

That's the settled science of GW in a nutshell.

3. The increase is traceable to fossil fuels.

And that's the settled science of AGW in a nutshell.

You want to crack those nuts, you've got to show fraud in the presentation of at least one of those data-sets.

But the question remains...

I'm not your copy-editor. It's not my job to fix your question, which remains incoherent.

But, to be as generous as possible, it's possible the rolling average temperatures by which we measure global warming could bend back down to pre-industrial averages, providing empirical evidence that global warming was no longer occurring. There is no way to show that it has not been occurring up to this point short of proving an enormously clandestine fraud stretching back over a century at the weather stations. Too many competing scientists, along with the odd Koch-paid critic, have been over that data, and verified it independently.

At that point, as others have posted in my absence, we'd be looking for another, currently hidden, generator of climate forcing counteracting those of which we're already aware.

As ever, Jesse

[Juvenal]

Can i rephrase your question for you? Let me explain why.
The greenhouse effect exists. We measure it on Earth and on planets like Mars and Venus. None of those planets would have the temperatures they do if it weren't for the greenhouse effect.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. That's basic physics, and we've measured its absorption properties.
Humanity is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and CO2 levels are going up. Again, measured in a variety of ways.

So, if you want to falsify concerns about anthropogenic climate change, you've got to knock one of those three pillars out. And that's almost impossible to do, given how thoroughly the above have already been tested. Put another way, we've already subjected it to lots of falsifying tests, and it's passed.

Now, back to your question: there are two ways to think about this. One is, could there be another influence on the climate, one beyond all the ones we've studied and accounted for, but not yet discovered? That could mean that, although the greenhouse effect exists, it will be moderated by something else entirely - something that's big, but we've somehow managed to completely miss. I don't think that's especially likely, and it probably wouldn't reveal itself through weather events anyway.

A more useful question: we predict a lot of weather consequences from a warming climate. Could specific classes of weather events, if occurring in sufficiently large numbers, falsify these predictions? The answer is yes, lots of them. But it's not an area i know especially well.

Bravo, TheLurchninja! You beat me to it.

[Juvenal]

It wouldn't be as hard for me to buy AGW if it weren't for the fact that fat cats like Al Gore stand to get filthy richer from it.

You're far from the first I've heard say that. We all filter what we accept or not through things like that - cultural and political influences and such (it's actually its own field of research). I'm no different. Ultimately, it comes down to a choice: does the evidence matter more to us than who else has accepted it?

Yeah, but there's always the "follow the money".... WHO BENEFITS from all this AGW? The very RESEARCHERS who present the data! I'm skeptical, and I think it's a healthy skepticism.

OK, so the question NOBODY has ever been able to answer... let's assume it is 100% man caused (forgetting, of course, that it was blamed on cow farts, and all kinds of other things) ---- HOW MUCH MONEY will be enough to fix it? What guarantee is there that, if we spent a ZILLION GILLION DOLLARS on this, that there would be 1/100th degree of "correction"? WHAT, exactly, would "solve" this problem?

And for all the whining and crying the lefties to over "carbon footprints", and the fat cats are private jetting all over the place, and hypocrites like Al Gore have palatial palaces that offset.....

I'm just tired of the hype --- and I don't trust politicians any further than I can throw them. Like these stupid electric cars that cost WAY more than regular cars, and you plug them into .... into what.. THE GRID!!!!!! So they "run clean" during the day, then counter that with their own carbon crap at night...

Follow the money.

Hello CP,

I agree with you that we should follow the money. It's a useful principle. But I don't agree with jingoing the phrase "follow the money," and that's what you're doing here.

1. Is Al Gore going to get filthy rich from this?

2. Is it the climate researchers who are going to benefit from this?

3. Do Gore's offsets work?

4. Does electrical energy from the grid used for transportation release as much carbon, mile for mile, as energy from an internal combustion engine?

Have you done any investigation at all before shooting from your lip?

The answers, by the way, as far as I've run examined them: No, no, haven't checked, and no. I've an opinion, but you're in better position to answer that last one yourself.

1. The "filthy-rich" Gore meme revolves around a risk model created for his investment company, easily duplicated by anyone else who wants to be similarly "filthy-rich." The big winners, as always, will be the ones with the big bucks to take advantage of the model. I spent most of a Saturday afternoon checking that one when I first heard it.

Forgive me this my atheistic sin, but I still expect a preacher to take special care about telling the truth, as best they can, especially when they're speaking of a fellow Christian. Call it early childhood conditioning I still can't break. Y'all do realize there are Christians who aren't Republican? Gore's one of them.

2. The "paid-off liars" slander directed at climate researchers originated from fossil fuel companies with trillions in underground carbon resources at stake, and came from their "paid-off liars" at the Marshall Institute, which started off as a cold warrior think tank before moving on to tobacco science denialism. In for a penny ... now they do climate science denialism. It's worse than even the classic case of hypocrisy; it's the cauldron dumping its black on the sidewalk hoping for someone to slip on it.

Trillions in coal and oil are sitting underground under lease by fossil fuel companies. You're swinging cudgels at penny piggy banks in comparison, not that a photo trip past the parking lots of a big oil company followed by a research university wouldn't tell the same story without doing any further math.

Now, I've used research grants. They buy equipment and computer time, and that's about it. You can't use them to pay your mortgage or car payments, or even for buying your groceries. That money comes from your regular salary. My regular salary is far less than the salaries of students I've had from jobs they've landed based on my recommendation. Put that into your "follow the money" mix.

3. My bad. I really should look into that.

4. Gas mileage equivalents are posted in every electrical car review and available from the maker websites as well. Some are already over 100 mpg, but those are raw energy equivalents. There'll be a net adjustment down on carbon footprint if the electricity is coming from a nuclear or natural gas plant, and a net adjustment up if from a coal plant. Coal plants are still the biggest portion of base, but won't be for much longer. We're swimming in fracked natural gas; that's what's being built.

If your numbers say differently, let's see them. If you don't have numbers, you should be aware that you're engaged in rumor-mongering at best. Additionally, at the least, unless you can show mine are wrong, you're engaged in reckless libel, and at worst, firmly inside the Exodus top-ten list.

Now on to costs for lower carbon footprints ... My electrical bill went down when I swapped over to CFLs. My gasoline bills went down when I bought a fuel efficient car. Have you been following the prices of solar panels? They're falling like Jack, with Jill tumbling after. They're at break-even across most of the U.S. and Europe already, and projected to fall further. Wind farms are going up across the country, too, and they're getting cheaper and more efficient as well.

The biggest costs I've seen involve rebuilding our distribution grids. They're out of date anyway, and ridiculously inefficient in comparison to off-the-shelf designs available right now. If it takes money to make money, we spend money, and I expect my government to do the same with the money I'm sending in. Distribution grids are public works. No one company or consortium can own them.

So it's time, I think, for you to stop your hyperventilating about that.

CP, you strike me as an all-around decent guy, generally salt-of-the-earth, the kind I pick for friends. But sometimes ... damn. Just damn.

As ever, Jesse

[Cow Poke]

So it's time, I think, for you to stop your hyperventilating about that.

That's a bit of an overreach, lt... no hyperventilating at all... very calmly pushing, trying to learn something new -- ANYTHING new, but it's the same ol' same ol'.

CP, you strike me as an all-around decent guy, generally salt-of-the-earth, the kind I pick for friends. But sometimes ... damn. Just damn.

I had typed a very well written and well reasoned (imohbao) response to Beagle, but I think the new Tweb's "time out" is shorter than before, cause I got kicked out as I hit "post quick reply".

Basically, I'm just trying to hear something besides the sky is falling and we don't have any answers.

As ever, Jesse

I really would love to have a sit-down talk with somebody who really knew their stuff on this, and, yes, I'm well aware that there's a lot of hype on BOTH SIDES. I think "your side" tends to think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you guys have it all figured out, and we're just a bunch of morons.

But, I love ya man!

[seer]

The weather is an extremely - extremely! - complex phenomena. It is so complex that even with supercomputers cranking away for years they STILL haven't been able to model it correctly. Why? For several reasons - one being multilevel nested feedback loops, another being that global weather is a highly dynamic system and another being the 'Butterfly Effect' of Chaos Theory.

That said, promoters of "global-warming-is-caused-by-humans" (Al Gore and his followers) will NEVER be 'convinced' of the contrary in the same way as promoters of Evolution Theory will never be convinced of its flaws. Why? Primarily for these four reasons: (1) they selectively accept any data that even appears to support their position; (2) They interpret all observations so as to support their position; (3) They discard/dismiss/ignore any data or observations that doesn't support their position and, last but not least; (4) there is an extremely powerful political, economic and ideological agenda behind "global warning" (just as there is for Evolution).

In short, TRUE science takes a back seat to these 4 agenda-driven factors and that is why no weather condition can falsify this theory.

That answers your question, seer.

Jorge

Jorge, I don't disagree with a lot that you said especially about the political, economic and ideological influence. Now I'm a layman and from what I read, there has been warming over the last century or so - scientists on both sides seem to agree with this. And since this coincides with the industrial age and increased Co2 being pumped into the atmosphere - that is the likely driver. I'm not sure if that is an illogical jump. I mean what else could be causing it?

[Juvenal]

a ZILLION GILLION DOLLARS

OK, HOW MUCH is enough?

"lets' throw ZILLIONS of BILLIONS of dollars

How much money would it take to do WHAT?

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS

spend BILLIONS of dollars ... horrific cost.

For the umpteenzillionth time...

(And just so you know, given the fact that we lack tone of voice and facial expression and all that... I'm not the least bit worked up about this... just a bit dismissive of the hype)

So it's time, I think, for you to stop your hyperventilating about that.

That's a bit of an overreach, lt... no hyperventilating at all... very calmly pushing, trying to learn something new -- ANYTHING new, but it's the same ol' same ol'.

Sorry, CP ... I keep forgetting you speak Texan. But don't be whaling on me for forgetting your dialect while you're forgetting everyone else's. All caps is shouting. That's a lot of all-caps'ing up above. That takes a lot of air.

I had typed a very well written and well reasoned (imohbao) response to Beagle, but I think the new Tweb's "time out" is shorter than before, cause I got kicked out as I hit "post quick reply".

Go advanced, ya old coot!

Basically, I'm just trying to hear something besides the sky is falling and we don't have any answers.

Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?

The sky isn't falling and we do have some answers.

I really would love to have a sit-down talk with somebody who really knew their stuff on this, and, yes, I'm well aware that there's a lot of hype on BOTH SIDES. I think "your side" tends to think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you guys have it all figured out, and we're just a bunch of morons.

But, I love ya man!

[TheLurch]

I just want SOMEBODY to tell me WHAT they intend to do, HOW MUCH it's going to cost, and how much impact it can have....

So, the thing is, these things are tough to predict. Let me try a couple of examples.

A few years back, everyone was predicting solar thermal would be huge, because it was more cost effective than photovoltaics, and it stored heat for a few hours after the sun set, allowing it to cover the bump in demand that occurs when everyone gets home from work and turns their lights and TVs on. But PV can be deployed much more quickly, and a combination of incentives had a lot of people installing it, which ramped up mass production that brought costs down. That kicked off a cycle, and PV costs plunged, so that solar thermal is no longer likely to be a big player, and will be more of an edge case.

The lighting efficiency standards are another case in point. It was clear that they favor LEDs, so companies started working on producing more of them more efficiently. Over the last five years, the cost of making an LED has dropped by 30% every year. So, LEDs now are in the $10 range, and save an enormous amount of electricity. And, personally, i love the fact that i no longer spend any time replacing lightbulbs.

I'd like to think that those are models. A light government touch - some small subsidies and some efficiency standards - without any specific technology being favored, and let companies fight it out to be the best placed to take advantage of it. Economies of scale kick in, and suddenly exotic tech is affordable. And it becomes affordable globally, so that developing economies don't repeat some of our more wasteful habits as they develop.

How much will doing so cost? The LED example shows that it might actually save everybody money. But there's also a lot we could do with money we're already spending. The International Energy Agency estimates that globally, subsidies for fossil fuel use are 5X the amount we spend to subsidize renewable energy. Imagine what we could be doing if we reversed those numbers?

[seer]

Yes, there's an irreplaceable role for government in this. Hasting's Corners can't sign international treaties targeting carbon dioxide emissions for the world, which is what needs to be managed. They can't tell Detroit what fuel efficiencies they need to build into their cars, or tell General Electric what emissions they have to scrub from their power plants, or refuse imports to incandescent light bulbs. But we're the ones who can buy those cars, and plug some of them into the grid, and change over our light bulbs when the better ones come to market.

And when we do, we do it because it saves us money. There's a lot of things I can figure about folks buying in to denialism. Hey, it's being marketed, and that's nearly a science in itself. Give me 400 GRPs to spend over three weeks, and I'll fill your store for that grand opening, even if your name is "Buy My Crap." But pushback over saving money using better lightbulbs? Fiscal conservatives refusing to be frugal, what's up with that? Humans are doing it, so it has to make sense somehow, but how is beyond me.

As ever, Jesse

This is the problem. Most people are like me, live from pay check to pay check. I don't care where my electricity comes from, but I don't want to pay three times as much - not only will that help to break me, it will break our economy. Free flowing energy at reasonable prices is the life blood of the free market system, and that is the main driver of worldwide prosperity. Even now my carbon foot print is very low - it was so cold in my bed room this morning that I could see my breath. I personally haven't purchased incandescent light bulbs for years - I have found fluorescent blub to be a better deal, they last for ever. Then there is the whole specter of government control - and as we have seen with Obama care that is often a disaster. So I think a lot of people deny man made warming more because of what they see coming behind it - totalitarianism. We don't think it is an accident that former communists like Gorbachev ended up in the green movement.

[Cow Poke]

NOTE: I used smilies, but Tweb spanked me and wouldn't let me post, both because of the smilies, AND because "too much text". : doh :

Sorry, CP ... I keep forgetting you speak Texan.

Melodrama, lt.... ZILLIONS of BILLIONS of dollars is not hyperventilating, I'm just tired of government finding new ways to spend more and more money. But, yeah, I get your point. But, seriously... whatever "solution" the government comes up with... do you think it will be a "biggest bang for the buck" solution?

Do you HONESTLY believe it won't involve more government employees and offices and staff and money?

But don't be whaling on me for forgetting your dialect while you're forgetting everyone else's. All caps is shouting. That's a lot of all-caps'ing up above. That takes a lot of air.

Meh.... just tired of people coming up for ways to spend money we don't have.

Go advanced, ya old coot!

Thninkin' about it.

Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?

What a novel concept? Why don't the alarmists come out "up front" with some solutions?

The sky isn't falling

Yeah, I know. : smile :

and we do have some answers.

And I'm about to get some? : smile :

I spent years in the mix right here between sylas and Glenn Morton hashing out objections and their responses. Oh, the data we crunched! All those threads are gone now, alas. I can't and won't say I'm as expert on the science as many posting right here alongside us now, but I'll match any of them toe to toe when it comes to answering objections.

OK (and, yeah, full disclosure --- Glenn is my friend. : smile :)

Yes, the raw data has enormous issues.

And coming up with accurate models has proved to be quite a challenge, and they don't have such a good track record. And it doesn't help when somebody uses "we're going to have the worst hurricane season in history" as "proof" that global warming is real, when that claim was made also in 2012 for 2013, and 2013... well, I live on the Gulf Coast, so I WATCH (sorry for screaming) for those things.

Hmmmm.... is that the "side" I'm on? Cause I ain't ne'er heerd nuthin like that. Matter of fact, in my theology, He, Himself plans on destroying it some day.

The other looks at their scientific principles,

I wish I were as trusting as you, lt.... cause there's fraud all over the place, and scientists are no less human than the guy who fakes cold fusion, or a cure for cancer... Milena Penkowski in Demnark, Joachim Boldt, Silivia Bulfone-Paus, Jan Hendrik Schon and Fridheim Herrman in Germany, Cranfield University, Richard Eastell, Malcom Pearce and Andrew Wakefield in Great Britain, Teruji Cho, Akio Sugino, Kazanari Taira in Japan.... and on and on and on.... Heck, the United States leads the rest of the world in the special arena of fraud in science.

and draws conclusions about what their politics should be ... and for me, personally, despite the fact I don't like those answers.

From the science side, hell no! We don't have it all figured out. We've what we think of as large doubts about the change in average temperature values we'll see from global warming. No doubt at all, though, about whether those values will be positive or negative. And no doubt at all, either, about whether they're being driven by things under our control, as much as we can control our own behavior, anyway.

Ok.....

Those values are important! The right values will tell us how many feet we'll have to add to the seawalls how fast as the ice melts off of Greenland and her big sister down south, or whether we should stop insuring coastal housing, forcing folks to relocate further inland.

OK, that's another bone... people already live where they know there have been disastrous natural disasters, but we still keep bailing them out... but that's a whole 'nuther issue. What President is going to take the political heat of NOT (trying not to use caps, but it's just so durn habitual) bailing out a bunch of people who "lived on the edge" but haven't prepared for the consequences?

That's what we're spending billions of dollars to discover, and it's well worth it, as worthwhile as hiring an engineer to tell you how far your skyscraper is going to bend in the wind.

ok....

But when you're in the middle of an engineering problem, yeah, you're going to give the green eye to anyone telling you "Young's modulus be damned, steel doesn't bend." When it comes to folks telling us it's either not warming, or not because of industrialism, there's no difference here, because that much, the basics of AGW, is settled science.

I still can't buy that it's caused by people, but I'll go with your assumptions for the sake of argument.

How much AGW we're going to see ... well, too much, unfortunately, but we can't say much more than that. While you're thinking about the "hype" and calling the hypers "alarmists," think also ... they may be right.

That would be much easier if they had a better track record, lt... But, heck, even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.

Our conservative, middle-of-the-models projections may be understated. There's a lot of motion up in Greenland that's well beyond previous projections. The timeline is still too short to say anything certain, though.

And while one part of the globe has "motion that's beyond previous projections", are there not parts of the globe that are "under-achievers"?

Yes, there's an irreplaceable role for government in this. Hasting's Corners can't sign international treaties targeting carbon dioxide emissions for the world, which is what needs to be managed.

OK, who's gonna go over to China and tell them to stop belching coal smoke or to clean up their own act?

They can't tell Detroit

You mean that city up in yankeeland what's been run by liberals since 1962, and has an entirely liberal city council? Aren't these (and "big union") the guys that are responsible for the condition of Detroit today? (yeah, I know, a whole 'nuther discussion)

what fuel efficiencies they need to build into their cars,

Did ya see MY car company came out with a mostly aluminum pickup truck? The new F-150?

WOW... Tweb told me "your text is too long, could you shorten it to ....."

There will be a part II to this response..
WOW, now it won't let me post cause I used too many smilies!!!!! @#$!^!^!^$%@Q%$!Q#$!@#$

[Cow Poke]

PART II --- because Tweb wouldn't let me post -- too much text, too many smilies..... must be some new government regulation!

or tell General Electric what emissions they have to scrub from their power plants,

I lived, for a few years, in South Lorain, Ohio, which was (don't know if it's still true) the home of US Steel, and anybody who parked their car on the street overnight would find the red-brown ash covering their cars in the morning, or the blackish-gray ash from the coal-fired plant that supplied them with electricity... and nearby was the "burning river" which more than occasionally caught fire because of all the chemicals dumped in it by industries upstream....

Yeah, I'm 100% for being good stewards of our resources, and our planet, which I have stated multiple times.

However, I worked in the natural gas industry for 11 years (left about 3 years ago) and saw the absolutely ridiculous way that the EPA boys would get angry when they couldn't find faults with our operation (our business model was to run clean and lean) so they would just make stuff up and cite us for something, costing major bucks to "comply"...... we had to hire people and purchase equipment and change practices to comply with their rules and regs which we were already EXCEEDING... (exceeding, meaning that our compliance was far better than what they were demanding, and it just ticked them off) But, yeah, I know... anecdotal.

or refuse imports to incandescent light bulbs. But we're the ones who can buy those cars, and plug some of them into the grid, and change over our light bulbs when the better ones come to market.

And when we do, we do it because it saves us money. There's a lot of things I can figure about folks buying in to denialism. Hey, it's being marketed, and that's nearly a science in itself. Give me 400 GRPs to spend over three weeks, and I'll fill your store for that grand opening, even if your name is "Buy My Crap." But pushback over saving money using better lightbulbs?

You're barking up the wrong tree, lt... not only do I have CFLs all over the place, I also have home automation with zoned climate control, setback thermostats, ALL of my closets and "less used" spaces have motion sensor "on off" devices, 16 SEER AC, and my electric bill for my entire ranch... house, garage apartment, well house, shop, cow barn... $200 is a "high" bill for me!

Now, the one thing I WILL fight... I absolutely refuse to have them thar "water saving" terletss that you have to flush 2 or 3 times and use MORE water than a standard terlett just to get ... well, we're talking about crap, right? I bought my flushmaster 2000's from Mexico, and ya gotta hold onto the towel bar when you flush, or you're going down! (One of these days, I'd like to see if it's just the "frustration factor" of having to stand there and do multiple flushes, or if this really WAS another dumb idea from the Feds )

Fiscal conservatives refusing to be frugal, what's up with that?

Again, you might wanna save that for somebody who fits that mold, lt.

Humans are doing it, so it has to make sense somehow, but how is beyond me.

As ever, Jesse

Ok, on that last part, ya lost me...

[Cow Poke]

So, the thing is, these things are tough to predict. Let me try a couple of examples.

A few years back, everyone was predicting solar thermal would be huge, because it was more cost effective than photovoltaics, and it stored heat for a few hours after the sun set, allowing it to cover the bump in demand that occurs when everyone gets home from work and turns their lights and TVs on. But PV can be deployed much more quickly, and a combination of incentives had a lot of people installing it, which ramped up mass production that brought costs down. That kicked off a cycle, and PV costs plunged, so that solar thermal is no longer likely to be a big player, and will be more of an edge case.

The lighting efficiency standards are another case in point. It was clear that they favor LEDs, so companies started working on producing more of them more efficiently. Over the last five years, the cost of making an LED has dropped by 30% every year. So, LEDs now are in the $10 range, and save an enormous amount of electricity. And, personally, i love the fact that i no longer spend any time replacing lightbulbs.

I'd like to think that those are models. A light government touch - some small subsidies and some efficiency standards - without any specific technology being favored, and let companies fight it out to be the best placed to take advantage of it. Economies of scale kick in, and suddenly exotic tech is affordable. And it becomes affordable globally, so that developing economies don't repeat some of our more wasteful habits as they develop.

How much will doing so cost? The LED example shows that it might actually save everybody money. But there's also a lot we could do with money we're already spending. The International Energy Agency estimates that globally, subsidies for fossil fuel use are 5X the amount we spend to subsidize renewable energy. Imagine what we could be doing if we reversed those numbers?

I'm already doing that. I bet my property is more energy efficient than yours. But that's not all the alarmists want.

[Cow Poke]

This is the problem. Most people are like me, live from pay check to pay check. I don't care where my electricity comes from, but I don't want to pay three times as much - not only will that help to break me, it will break our economy. Free flowing energy at reasonable prices is the life blood of the free market system, and that is the main driver of worldwide prosperity. Even now my carbon foot print is very low - it was so cold in my bed room this morning that I could see my breath. I personally haven't purchased incandescent light bulbs for years - I have found fluorescent blub to be a better deal, they last for ever. Then there is the whole specter of government control - and as we have seen with Obama care that is often a disaster. So I think a lot of people deny man made warming more because of what they see coming behind it - totalitarianism. We don't think it is an accident that former communists like Gorbachev ended up in the green movement.

I'm in a fairly decent financial position, Seer, but I've also done the practical things to save money. (well, unless you ask my wife -- she thinks i'm an extremist at doing "practical" things to save money) I draw the line, however, at multi-flush "water-saving" terletts. Whoever thought of that outta be terlett-boarded!

[seer]

I'm in a fairly decent financial position, Seer, but I've also done the practical things to save money. (well, unless you ask my wife -- she thinks i'm an extremist at doing "practical" things to save money) I draw the line, however, at multi-flush "water-saving" terletts. Whoever thought of that outta be terlett-boarded!

And what really steams me are these carbon pigs, from Al Gore to the UN hierarchy, who live in mansions, use the best hotels, and fly around in private jets. Like they have the moral right or authority to tell us how to live - hypocrites one and all.

[Cow Poke]

And what really steams me are these carbon pigs, from Al Gore to the UN hierarchy, who live in mansions, use the best hotels, and fly around in private jets. Like they have the moral right or authority to tell us how to live - hypocrites one and all.

I think Al Gore is to the environmental movement what Sheila Jackson Lee is to the civil rights movement.

I have some black friends who tell me they cringe any time they see her on TV.