Have you been to the APPLE home page today?

[krissel]

I really don't want to get in the middle of this but I did follow a few links to some articles listed.
As a result, I caution that listing an article by it's title can be totally misleading.

This link is about whether the glaciers on Kilmanjaro are shrinking due to global warming:

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/...l/assetid/55553

However, if you actually read the 8 page article you will come across the following:

QUOTE

When pieced together, these disparate lines of evidence do not suggest that any warming at Kilimanjaro's summit has been large enough to explain the disappearance of most of its ice, either during the whole 20th century or during the best-measured period, the last 25 years.

QUOTE

If human-induced global warming has played any role in the shrinkage of Kilimanjaro's ice, it could only have joined the game quite late, after the result was already clearly decided, acting at most as an accessory, influencing the outcome indirectly. The detection and attribution studies indicating that human influence on global climate emerged some time after 1950 reach the same conclusion about East African temperature far below the peak.

QUOTE

Any contribution of rising greenhouse gases to this circulation pattern necessarily emerged only in the last few decades; hence it is responsible for at most a fraction of the recent decline in ice and a much smaller fraction of the total decline.

So the article actually gives global warming a pass in the shrinkage of the glaciers.

I recall back in the 60's reading a scientific article about how Long Island (NY) was losing coastline at the rate of about a foot per century due to the rise of water levels. Oddly, just the other day I saw a program that said the very same thing. No change in 40 plus years?

On the other hand, the mere fact that 6 billion people are on the earth is cause enough for us to be worried about the consequences of human activity and repercussions to the planet. There was a Harvard study a couple decades ago that said the Earth could support about 2 1/2 billion people at a moderately comfortable lifestyle. Well, we're way over that limit now.
Can we, as consumers of 25 % of the world's energy continue in our wasteful activities? And how long do those in third world countries stay quiet as they watch those who 'have' live the good life?

I think the argument over whether Al Gore and his minions are absolutely correct or not is irrelevant.  The global warming argument has been used as ammunition for various groups to attain their goals and likewise rebuffed by those groups who fear restrictions placed because of the resultant fears.

As far as I'm concerned the real discussion should be on population control and resource conservation.

[RHPConsult]

Now yer talkin', Krissel.

Remember when the Club of Rome (1970) solemnly and ominously declared (not "predicted") that all the world's oil would be exhausted by 1984? One of our sons was an undergrad at the University of California Santa Cruz, where one of his liberal arts professors intoned that theme on a regular basis as, I guess, revealed truth.

A couple of years ago, at a client's management meeting, the Chief Scientist from Chevron estimated that already discovered reserves will provide enough oil for the world's growing population until 2090!

Knowing a little about human problem-solving, I would, however, "estimate" that entrepreneurial capitalism will have long since innovated alternate forms of personal transportation not using internal combustion engines, or petroleum-based fuels . . . if governmental bureaucrats do not appear at their respective thresholds "to help".

Read the story of the difference in paperwork (and creativity) at Kelly Johnson's Lockheed Skunkworks and at "traditional" aircraft manufacturers, where legions of cost accountants were engaged in staying ahead of government auditors, rather than building airframes. Surprise, surprise.

Oh yes, and let's not forget, the best birth control is a rising standard of living . . . as a cause, rather than as an effect.

[sandbox]

Kris, I'm certainly not suggesting that human impact alone is responsible for the changing climate. I was raised very close to Purgatory and discovered early on about such things as glacial activity. http://www.nichols.edu/departments/purgatorychasm/ What science is demonstrating is that the cycle is being accelerated by our activity, the evidence is found in ice core and tree ring samples among other marine observations. These old samples can not be altered by industrial fraud.

What the Swiftboat Al Gore crowd wants to do is let industry continue to do as they please without citizen or their representative government interceding, but if history has taught us anything it's that industry serves itself first and has never accounted for environmental concerns unless forced by government or there was a profit to do so.

Time and time again it has been concerned citizens and a responsive government that has stopped water, air and ozone pollution. It is demonstrating itself today in the recall of toys, designed by OUR industry and manufactured to Spec by other nations. Smaller government translates into less observation and more poison and pollution which serves the needs of the bottom liners at any cost.

Greed has gotten us to this point of pollution, well known in the 60's and 70's when the first air pollution controls were installed in vehicles, long over due and rejected by industry for years with lies about efficiency and cost prohibiting expenses. Not unlike they demonstrated with CFC's and air conditioning system.

Any article on global warming that does not consider natural causes is being disingenuous to its readers. Of course there are natural cycles and of course industry will do what it can to exploit as much as it can from a planet that for to long has been more than willing to give, but, at 6 billion and growing, with an emerging population wanting to be as wasteful as our own, this planet will be in peril if left up to Swiftboaters to steward.

Here you go Dick, http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/scndkili.htm maybe these guys will be more convincing.