You mean ‘higher pH’ right?

…we are both members of the same secret scientific society which, of course, I can’t tell you about.

Yeah, this guy has got your number, bud.

I think it is clear that we will not do anything substantive to mitigate global climate change. Even if local change becomes predictable, we probably will do little to preadapt to it. It is not hard to be a gloom and doomer and predict, based on a reasonable argument, that the greatest catastrophe we humans have ever known will occur sometime in the not too distant future.

No, we’re doing things that are CREATING warming.

The forces other than ourselves that are acting on the earth climate would produce a net cooling at the time.

Perhaps you’re completely and utterly wrong.

EVER considered that?

Patrick: How about underwriting the cost of installation of geothermal in domestic dwellings, using bonding, in such a way that everyone’s heating/cooling costs stay the same but they use this technology…. then phase in taxes on natural gas, etc. so that those who make the switch get effective pay raises.

If habitat loss without AGW would have caused a 10% reduction in species diversity, and AGW without habitat loss would have caused a 5% loss, but in combination the loss is 40%, can you really say that habitat loss is worse that AGW?

“… human-caused insults to the planet”

And here is the other thing causing a problem in communication. Perhaps we are doing things to accelerate global warming. Perhaps we need to be thinking about our lifestyle issues as they pertain to global warming. But most of the discussion is on who is going to pay for these things and who is going to be the recipients of that money.

As an example I can refer to the tax advantages of buying a hybrid car. Rather than giving a tax break to those who purchase the vehicle why not take that money and create a high-speed charging station in or around their house, either in a public parking space, in their garage, along side highways to extend their range, etc. rather than giving the a tax break that increases the cost of the car by the amount the tax break. Instead of the money being given to the car companies it would be used to develop the infrastructure that would give the consumers the ability to use those vehicles more often and at an ever-increasing range and the politicians couldn’t decide where the next wealth transfer is going to be made.

Using the same principle in the larger global warming discussion it could be construed that if the solution isn’t transferring wealth but solving problems (from the grass-roots up)then you’d have many, many more people jumping on the bandwagon. We wouldn’t be questioning whether we believe it’s happening but how we’re going to make the changes to get to the solutions.

Insults and power grabs help as much as threats and wealth transfers. What’s that say about your culture?

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” – Albert Einstein