The global warming data is many experiments all concluding the same thing. These include physical measurements such as temperature, plant and pollen distributions,ice gases,ocean flows, levels and temperatures, satellite data, and geophysical modeling. The controls are historical (then is different from now,) and forward looking - are predictions working on small and large scales and interlinking with other data.

The issue with global warming isn't whether man will disappear but quality of life. Civilization is finely tuned to what we have now - cities and agriculture are all dependent on existing rain, ocean levels and weather. The 1930's dust bowl was a 8% change in rain for 10 years. Climate models show a permanent 20% decrease in rain in the whole American west. Africa and the middle east will likely starve and fall into more turmoil. 80% of the world lives within a few percent of sea level - subject to storms and level changes.

Man has not survived big temperature changes - DNA data shows that early humans almost disappeared in the last ice age.

Romm's point about caps is that peak oil is also real - oil will get more and more difficult and expensive to get. Seismic mapping has gotten really good- there are fewer new places to look.

The political and economic deck has been stacked against energy efficient technologies. Big cars and trucks, roads and inefficient housing have all received tax and regulatory breaks. Solar, wind and nuclear and conservation are all capital intensive, paying off in the longer term. Companies need short term capital return. We are seeing an explosion in these technologies now because peak oil means the price can no longer come down to bankrupt new construction. The government can help by supplying longer term capital to these industries. Interestingly, nuclear has received huge subsides for years - but not gone anywhere. The issue with nuclear is whether it is still too expensive to be worthwhile.

Obama'a move on FISA ia worse than crimminal - it's stupid. The voters who understand the FISA law are appalled and the voters he's abandoning his promise for won't notice.

Given Harry Reid and the Senate embrace of the Blue dogs, is it really certain that Joe will lose his chairmanships, power and perks after the election? It's not like they can rely on the other Senate democrats to vote with the party line.

I'm perfectly happy for people to say there are questions which are beyond science to know or understand. What annoys me is that those same people inevitably claim to know the answers to those questions and that I should act or obey based on those revealed answers. Then they tell me I can't have ethics without religion or science as religion.

The basis for my ethics is an understanding that I biologically have an understanding and empathy for what's going on in my fellow humans. From that you get the golden rule and all else follows. This means I can respect societal traditions and desires such as religion but I will not accept those petty dictates that have harmed so many people over the millenia - inquistions, wars, persecutions of the different- religuously, racially, culturally and sexually. Once you accept a postulated religious higher law that law has no real moral footings: witness freaking over Janet Jackson's nipple, and interracial and same sex marriage. So don't tell me I can't have any ethics without religion - your emperor has no clothes.

There are several poorly informed letters attacking science itself as faith-based becasue of the starting points of science: measurement, evidence, occam's razor and the constancy of laws over time and space. Science is descriptive and these are merely the most compact and useful of possible models of the universe. If a law is going to change over time then I don't have a good description of the universe. However, if I know how that law is going to change over time, then that understanding is itself a constant in time and becomes the scientific law. Relativity replaced one set of universal constants with another.

I could create a mathematical model of the universe where the earth is flat and at the center of the universe, however it would produce a bizarre world where gravity, light and everything else followed a strange, spatially varying and enormously complicated set of rules, but it wouldn't be science because a simpler and more consistant model exists. This isn't faith, just efficiency.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1829495,00.html?cnn=yes

How Solid is the Anthrax Evidence?

I am a physicist who heard Tommy Gold give technical talks at Cornell on his methane hypothesis around 1980. He suggested on very loose theoretical grounds there might be significant amounts of methane produced by radiactive processes in the earth's core and that this might be trapped at the mantle. He urged the drilling of very deep wells to test the idea. Scientists and some of the oil companies have since drilled very deep wells and no significant methane has been found. His hypothesis was simply wrong. There was substantial skepticism even then as the hypothesis was more of a what-if than anything suggested by evidence.

Gold was talking only about methane and fully accepted the fossil origin of oil. Indeed, he said he felt the deep drilling tests were especially important because the supply of oil was finite.