Global warming deniers like Steele are strangely convinced that it's possible to dump billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year forever and it will have absolutely no effect at all. That's what Exxon is paying him to say so it must be true.

It makes you wonder if he's thought of heating his double-wide with a kerosene lamp in the winter because those combustion products are invisible and therefore couldn't possibly be harmful. Maybe I shouldn't be giving him any ideas.

"Oh, now you're an expert on evolution too. Let me guess, it didn't happen?"

No, I’m not an expert. I just took 300 and 400-level classes in genetics and evolution in college.

...

“Global warming” is a mythological universe unto itself."Only in the minds of idiots like yourself."

See: ”The Great Global Warming Swindle”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=288952680655100870

Do I believe pollution is bad? Yes.
Do I believe corporations, governments, and a consumer culture harm the environment? Yes.
Do I believe that Global Warming is real? No.
Do I believe that CO2 is warming up the Earth? No.

Global Warming is a propaganda campaign to get people to agree to be taxed yet another way. It is for control of the poor and the middle class, and their way of life. It is about money, and it is about control. Period.

"The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal principle of increasing entropy, stating that the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

Those words, "isolated system", are there for a reason. To illustrate this, consider my simple question about a car battery that is charging. Is the entropy of the battery increasing, decreasing or constant? This question is directly pertinent to the significance of isolated systems so please do me the courtesy of providing an answer.

Wikipedia? You've got to be kidding me. I was going to beat you over the head with peer-reviewed articles from professional journals, and you give me Wikipedia?

The statement you quote is woefully imprecise, like something cribbed from a bad high-school textbook, yet you've latched onto it like some kind of infallable gospel. You're parroting something with no understanding of what it means just to be perverse.

Let me assure you that the laws of physics really do function in the real world. Now beat it kid, and stop trying to get my goat.

My last message got mangled in editing. I'll be more careful with this one.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=288952680655100870

This isn't evidence, this is a wingnut marketing video. You have some kind of odd DVD full of global warming deniers. Big deal. I could just as easily make a slick DVD of actual scientists who say that you're full of hot gas. Or I could just point you to countless episodes of Nova.

Science isn't he said/she said. It's mostly mathematics, and the math behind global warming is solid. We have literal tons of data, physical evidence, and scientific reasoning behind the theory of warming via greenhouse gasses. You have a video.

Do I believe pollution is bad? Yes.

Goodie for you.

Do I believe corporations, governments, and a consumer culture harm the environment? Yes.

Do you think you're Don Rumsfeld? Yes.

Do I believe that Global Warming is real? No.

It isn't a matter of belief, wingnut, not for those of us who are educated. If you want to believe differently, it's certainly your prerogative, but don't pretend you have any evidence to back it up, because you don't.

Do I believe that CO2 is warming up the Earth? No.

The basic facts really aren't that complicated. Carbon is black, and absorbs visible and IR light really well. If you fill one bottle with oxygen, and another bottle with an equal amount of CO2, and shine exactly the same amount of light on each bottle, the bottle with the CO2 will absorb more energy, making it hotter. This is an experiment you can do at home without very much trouble, if you have some basic equipment and a science education.

The complication is that the Earth is a dynamic system, with feedback-loops that can be triggered by slight warming or cooling, causing a cascading chain of effects that make it less simple than the inside of a plastic bottle. Having said that, we have ice cores, petrified tree rings, voluminous data from the last 100 years, and other evidence that I'm not going to bother with, since you'll just dismiss it, which proves that, over the long run, the Earth responds in the same way as the bottle.

Global Warming is a propaganda campaign to get people to agree to be taxed yet another way. It is for control of the poor and the middle class, and their way of life. It is about money, and it is about control. Period.

CO2-based global warming was first proposed in 1896. So, to believe your theory, we have to believe that the scammers have been working for over 100 years, and still haven't made a profit. We also have to believe that somehow this vast grand conspiracy hasn't seen the light of day until now, when you showed up with your little video. We have to believe that the scammer scientists got lucky predicting a 1-degree rise in global temperature and a 1 foot rise in ocean levels, 60 years before it happened.

Sorry, wingnut, there's not enough tinfoil in the Reynolds factory for all of us to wear. I'm not at all surprised that you were completely incapable of producing any real evidence. So far no wingnut I've ever challenged has been able to do so.

Why do you want your grandkids to die along with the rest of the human race, when we go extinct as a direct result of your lies? That's the only real question I have for you.

The basic facts really aren't that complicated.

Actually, they are. You'd have to reach into the kinetic theory of gases, spectroscopy, and atmospheric dynamics to explain why carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas and it would all go right over the heads of most people. My good friend pwoxby is confused enough as it is. Steele would dismiss it out of hand because he's either brainwashed or paid.

It wouldn't be that easy for the average person to demonstrate that carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas either. I doubt most high school science teachers, using cheap equipment, could pull it off without practice. The equipment needed for a proper demonstration would be pretty expensive for the average school district.

It doesn't really matter. Anybody could assure themselves that carbon dioxide really is a heat-trapping gas if they wanted to go through the effort. Steele isn't about to deny that carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas anyway, and that's the crucial part of the issue. The rest is just connecting the dots.

Godot's argument is valid. It's unreasonable in the extreme to believe that it's possible to put such vast quantities of a heat-trapping gas into the air and expect there would be no consequences. There's loads of very solid evidence that even a fairly small excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would necessarily raise temperatures enough to have hugely adverse effects.

Steele has been posting trash, but that doesn't matter either. All the facts are against him, and that puts him at an enormous disadvantage.

Happy hunting.