There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate... Increasing greenhouse gases are causing temperatures to rise... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.

You paste this a lot.

If the global warming threat is not addressed I think massive damage - economic, health, and property - can would likely would be incurred. And beyond 100 years that damage becomes both more likely and more devastating.

That doesn't change the fact that global climate change is an unstoppable, continuous process that we've ignored. This whole thing isn't about science, it's about economics. The economics of relocating a lot of things we've had in place for a very long time. Oceanfront property alone is US$trillions. Throughout their entire history, the ocean levels have never been stable.

The damage here is to our infrastructure and NOT the environment. The envionment is simply doing what it has done, and continues to do, and that is change.

You say that as if it were a bad thing - all scientific predictions are based on "conjecture." Look it up.

We're basing our everyday lives on a "best guess?" I suppose, right or wrong, we've been doing that for untold centuries.

The scientific data, of which there is a lot of. Since you pass yourself off as literate in climate science here then you should know exactly what I'm talking about.

Yes, you're talking about best guesses and possibilities and maybes that all have dissenting opinions which run the gamut from the credible to the insane.

traumatic: "Are we talking about the thermometer hanging out on the barn we ordered from Montgomery Ward? Or the thermometer a weatherman in Boston ordered from Montgomery Ward? Are we talking about tree rings or tea leaves?"

We are talking about many different things, including for example direct measurements from thermometers and indirect measurements from CO2 concentrations in ice. But you knew that, right?

The term "Margin for error." figures very heavily into what you are talking about. What bearing does a concentration of CO2 in any given area of ice have to do with the present day? Can you expound?

traumatic: "Do you honestly think we're facing a global warming catastrophe that will make the world of our grandchildren unlivable?"

"Unlivable" for our grandchildren? No, but that's a straw man: no reputable climate scientist is even suggesting as much, and I'm not either.

These "straw man" arguments are the arguments the PEOPLE and the MEDIA are making. They are not my arguments.

traumatic: "Do you honestly think that a planet that has been bombarded by untold numbers of huge asteroids, been subjected to countless warming and cooling events that were strong enough to change the very geology of the planet is going to be destroyed (Save the Planet!) by a tenth of a percent increase in CO2?"

Another "of course not" straw man.

And, once again, this is something a LOT of people worldwide believe in. Call them straw man arguments all you want but they are the driving force.

No one has ever seen any species evolve into any other species. Isn't this supposed to be an ongoing thing? No one I know has ever seen a man take a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish and feed a multitude. Yet, we're led to believe in both? If it's not conclusive, there are always other possibilities and closing our minds to these possibilities is the very antithesis of the thing we call science. We learn from skepticism. We don't learn anything when that skepticism is squashed for whatever reason. When that happens, we tend plunge headlong into straw man arguments.

traumatic: "We make a big deal about sedimentary strata and the fossils they contain. We date these fossils from the strata they're found in. For instance, Cambrian. Did you know that we also date the strata from the fossils they contain? We date a strata to Cambrian times because it contains Cambrian fossils and we date the fossils as Cambrian because they were found in a Cambrian strata. Amazing, isn't it? I'm not making it up. :) My specialty is paleogeology. You brought up "Straw man" and now I've brought up "Circular reasoning." It would seem we really don't know how old the damned things are but we pretend we do and people, of course, believe it."

Are you really trying to suggest here that science is ultimately nothing but circular reasoning, and does not have consensus opinions that one can or should beleive in traumatic?

And if not: then what, exactly, is your point here?

I wasn't talking about science. I was talking about the dating of fossils and layers of sedimentary rock. My point is that everything we think we know about the age of fossils, the age of the rock layers they're found in and the age of anything in correlation is founded on circular reasoning. Just as I said. Am I going to stand up and call CNN and tell them I have news about these things? Of course not. That would seriously affect my wallet and my life. This is precisely the same reason none of my colleagues have done this.

Even though we don't find any proof of evolution in these fossils and rocks it is still a main tenet of the theory of evolution. I merely pointed out that we don't really know how old they are and the fact that no one questions this at all.