>"First, it is easy to dispute that there is a scientifc community consensus about the cause of global warming."

Sure it is easy to say it, but it's simply dead, flat wrong. All major U.S. scientific organizations, led by the National Academies, the non-profit non-governbment set up by Lincoln to give unbiased, non-political advice to the Congress and people of the U.S. agree that humans are altering climate in significant ways with potentially catastropic consequences. Lindzen, quoted by Harrer, was one of 14 experts on an NAS panel on the subject. He was a minority of one. That does not make him wrong, and there are likely several hundred specialists in the field who share his misgivings. But on the other side are many tens of thousands of specialists in the field - the membership of the American Geophysical Union, which also says climate change is a concern, is 44,000.

To read the current NAS position on human-caused climate change, go to

http://dels.nas.edu/basc/climate-change/

Here's the bottom line from the current report:

"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to begin taking steps to prepare for climate change and to slow it. Human actions over the next few decades will have a major influence on the magnitude and rate of future warming. Large, disruptive changes are much more likely if greenhouse gases are allowed to continue building up in the atmosphere at their present rate. However, reducing greenhouse

gas emissions will require strong national and international commitments, technological innovation, and human willpower.

If Dr. Harrer, disagrees, fine. But if he denies that his views are those of a small minority of scientists, he's a liar.

D and Mike.

There you go again!

Pestering Conservatives with facts and information.

Can't you see that Conservatives do not need facts. As that Bush White House aide was once quoted as saying, "we make our own reality".

You are just seeing it in action here. If a Conservative declares that:

There is no Global Warming

God created the universe in 4004 BC, and there is no such thing as evolution.

We have found the WMD's in iraq.

Then you are supposed to believe it, without question, just like NY Times reporters.

Keep trying to introduce actual facts and real information to the debate and you'll wind up in Guantanamo.... which is somewhere near the edge of the Earth, if I read the Flat-Earthers at all well...

That month has lasted for decades.

Yes, modeling is required to demonstrate that the measured increase in global mean temperature is due to human effects. And your reason for disbelieving the modeling results is......?

Are you kidding, your article is weak. The machine is in motion and it can't be stopped. Fact is the world is becoming Westernized, like it or not. Humans will adapt just like they always have to change. What the liberal bleeders need to do is chill out and quit worrying about everything and everybody in the world, or better yet just shut up for a change. Besides, what workable policies are available, can anyone name one policy that will work, and not disrupt the total economy. And one last point, even if the US adopted a workable policy you think you're going to slow down China, Korea, Iran, or any of the other COuntries that hate the US. These are the facts, and conservatives see it, maybe the liberals need to take off their blindfold.

These flat earth society morons are far more threat to national security than Osama Bin Hidin'. What we need is good old fashioned WWII style gas rationing. Global climate death is, in its own way, as invidious and insidious and Hitler and Tojo. Folks didn't bat an eye about making sacrifices in the war, and wouldn't again if someone had the guts to tell them the truth. Carter tried, and look where it got him. It was the sweater. Obama has to look straight into the camera after his inaugural address and tell Americans that their greatest enemy is not a collection of Islamic suicide bombers, but the existence of the earth itself.

The very old "Geological Society of London' has just voted unaimously to give the present climate period a new name, as we have moved from the Holocene period (in which temparatures and ecology were quite stable) to a new period, with a new name - Anthropocene. Meaning affected by urban society.

These people are very careful and extremely conservative scientists.

Read Mike Davis' article on it at Tom Dispatch or at the Nation. Davis points out that the 'market' in carbon trading in Europe is not working. He points out that corporations, and the Republicans who front for them, think 'environmentalism' consists of things like fake 'clean' coal and boondoggles like "ethanol". And Obama supports both of these.

Climate change and peak oil will affect the poor and the working classes, especially those in some countries, far more than the wealthy and those in 'other' countries. Drought, tsunamis, bad water, and rising food prices are already creating massive dislocations in poorer parts of the world. That dislocation is only going to move into and affect the imperial centers. And that is us, folks.

The word conservative in the political arena has become an oxymoron beyond dimension. These people cannot be described as conserving anything other than their own right to materialistically and rapaciously exploit for personal gain. The very real consequences of anthropogenic climate forcing are with us now, and unless we all become conservative in the sense of conserving energy and coming together to defeat the oil industry we will all become impoverished, including those who “think” they can deny their way to more wealth and power. The poor have traditionally relied on the subsidy that nature has provided for survival, clean air, fresh water, fuel for cooking, and the autumn harvest. Commoditization of these subsidies for profit and exploitation has made the few extremely wealthy at the expense of the many.

A recent study provides quantitative evidence that wealthy nations benefit at the expense of poorer nations through exploitation of “ecosystem services”. If the real contribution to utility is accounted for by “ecosystem services” the apparent prosperity of wealthy nations drops precipitously. Accepting the truth of anthropogenic climate change implies the truth of a contribution of “ecosystem services” to the capital equation. “Current economic models undervalue this provision, because many ecosystem services are ‘public goods’, historically provided for free. (NATURE|Vol 451|28 February 2008 pp 1067-1068). This would explain the resistance to accepting anthropogenic climate change because it means that clean air, healthy oceans, rain forests, fresh water, in essence all the basis of “ecosystem services” are fungible and are not provided free as natures’ subsidy to those few who become wealthy by their exploitation.

The notion that we cannot replace fossil fuel based energy with energy from the sun and hydrogen in water is soundly based in ignorance, collusion, misinformation and political corruption. It is the unfortunate truth that we have past the “tipping” point and unless we begin to use the available technologies to make oil irerelevent and advance to a cleaner, energy efficient (and abundant) non fossil fuel economy, we will suffer the very real consequences of abiding by the will of these so called conservative “leaders”.

Max Planck said,

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."