If the US military was taken out of the equation as global warming promoters, how much better off wouldn't we all be!

And the US tax-payers would be much happier chappies as well.

And maybe someone will come in, arrest and put the Bush maladministration on trial, and hang all those war criminals.

But alas, only wishful thinking!

As to Krautkopf, - does his opinion matter in the least?

He appears to be as dim as Shrub.

I totally agree with the sentiment of the article that we must act quickly, though my personal thoughts are that the timeline mentioned in the article is, if anything, longer than we're likely to have. I think it's going to happen much faster. (There's an essay at my personal site detailing my reasons for this. Click on my signature to find it.)

But I also wanted to respond to the sentiment that some have expressed, and that is echoed in the opening graphic, that the problem is not man-made. I think the problem is man-made, but I agree with the suggestion made by the graphic that there are people who are in denial about that. Still, if it turns out it's not, my feeling is that the problem is worse not better. That is, if everything we've done to the planet has had no effect, and it's just getting warmer anyway, then we're giong to need more work, not less, if we're going to have any effect at all to fix things.

The suggestion always seems to be that we should be comforted if the problem is not man-made because perhaps that means man is not responsible to fix it. But the fossil record is littered with the skeletons of long-dead animals who didn't survive such changes, and there's no reason to suppose nature will be kinder to us. So I just don't know why the naysayers are comforted by a belief (whether or not correct) that it's not caused by us. People should be seriously worried about this issue regardless of the cause, and all the moreso if we are not the cause.

This may sound strange but there's absolutely no proof that God doesn't exist.

The lack of proof in favour of God's existance is proof that God probably doesn't exist.

He doesn't have a defined niche in our universe that cannot be explained by some other agency, there are arguments over whether his best witnesses even existed, and the reliability of those witnesses is questionable.

To you Jesus is the son of God. To me, and a lot of the people of his time, he is a guy who went out into the desert without adequate provisions, claimed to have heard the voice of the devil tell him to eat rocks, and came back claiming to be the son of God.

Go back a bit and everyone was listening to a guy who listened to a burning bush of indeterminate species, possibly the original wacky weed. Real reliable.

Now, we don't accept the existance of things based on that sort of testimony. Particularly when that something wants money. And particularly when that something's best argument is that you can't disprove its existance - a shitty argument at the best of times seen as one could just as easily worship the flying spagetti monster.

Remember back when we thought the ocean's were an unlimited resource? That fish stocks would never be depleted? Funny that.

The Earth is a closed system and we are prematurely and artificially releasing a lot of gas into this system. While it is true that the Earth has experienced drastic warming, cooling, and ecological changes (and that they will happen again in the future) we are dicking around with something that we as a species have not been around long enough to understand.

Its just like dumping ammonia into a fish tank. True, it can build up naturally but that doesn't mean it won't kill all the fish.

We are experiencing a warming trend at a rate that is causing great consternation amongst the many scientists I know (and as a biology/ geology undergraduate student, I know quite a few).

Even if human activity is not the leading cause of current climate trends, we are still in a position to artificially affect environment change, in our favour and for the better.

We, and most other species alive today, evolved (yes, EVOLVED) under a set of conditions that are going to change. Who knows which will become extinct. My money is on the anthopods becoming the next dominant phyla, but I'm just a scientist (in training) so what do I know.

There were only 40 (unverified) climatologists:

[www.petitionproject.org]

The other 31,032 signers are NOT climatologists. To top that off, zero names identify the field of the signer for a follow up of credentials or published works. The application process is also laughable. Hell, I could top it off at 41 climatologists if I wanted to.

Now let's look further:

The site is run by:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

Arthur B. Robinson, BS Caltech, PhD UCSD

Professor of Chemistry is the only full-time employee.

[www.realclimate.org]

In its IRS Form 990 form 1999, OISM reported revenues totaling $355,224, most of in the form of contributions from unspecified sources. As president, Arthur Robinson received $16,691 in salary and benefits. OISM listed $945,427 in total assets, $735,888 of which was in the form of land, buildings and equipment. By 2005, OISM reported $1.0M in revenue and $2.8M in assets.

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) describes itself as "a small research institute" that studies "biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging." It is headed by Arthur B. Robinson, an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools" and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war.

Some hilarious points asserted by Robinson include:

"As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.

Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as [sic] that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."

Enough about him...the real man behind the curtain in this "Oregon Petition" project is Frederick Seitz:

"In 1998, Seitz wrote and circulated a letter, asking scientists to sign a petition asking the Government to reject the Kyoto Protocol. Seitz signed the letter and identified himself as a former president of the National Academy of Sciences. He also directed attention to a report by Dr. Arthur Robinson, which concluded that carbon dioxide posed no threat to climate. The report was not peer-reviewed, but was formatted to look like an NAS journal article. The NAS later issued a statement disassociating itself from the petition and the article."

Another nice tidbit:

He founded the George C. Marshall Institute. The institute has, in order to resist and delay regulation, lobbied politically to create a false public perception of scientific uncertainty over the negative health effects of second-hand smoke, the carcinogenic nature of tobacco smoking, and on the evidence between CFCs and ozone depletion.

Between 1985 and 2001, the institute received $5.5m in funding from five foundations, including the Earhart Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Guess who those guys are? BIG OIL...

In 1999, George C. Marshall Institute received grants from the Exxon Education Foundation. The institute's CEO William O'Keefe, formerly an executive at the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, is a registered lobbyist for Exxon Mobil. The GMI was described in a 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists as an ExxonMobil-funded "clearinghouse for global warming contrarians". ExxonMobil still currently provides funds to the Institute.