James Watt, the first Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan administration, testified before the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said.1 http://www.cennz.org/SPattemore1.pdf

never a better arguement for the separation of the secular from the religious in government. "Two kooks from jihad" whether it be the middle east or the middle west or Washington DC.

wrote:Well, if studies are still ongoing, and there is nothing very conclusive to show me, a scientific layman, then what can you hope for?

On going studies will determined the effects of global warming, especially the anthropogenic component, more accurately.

student_on_the_rebound: Studies are ongoing on the best ways to treat cancer, fight infection, treat heart disease etc. What would you like to do if you get sick?

I agree that he is the wrong man for the job, but I think it is a bit of exaggeration to say he is leading the scientific community; in certain ways, yes, but not completely.

I do not like his 2006 letter regarding the Kansas school board thing. Saying that there is no conflict between science and religion is just plain wrong. You can argue about how serious the conflict is, bit it is certainly there.

Dear Editor,

it is unfortunate that you have allowed one of your writers, Joe Romm, to continue writing as an authority on the subject of highly nonlinear physical phenomena with only one scientific citation. He even goes ahead and cites himself more than that in the course of one piece, but cannot produce any citations in this last story and then blames Congress for not using the latest scientific findings. Where are they? What are they? Are we to just assume that they exist with no proof from Romm at all? Salon.com is not a scientific journal, but if your writers are going to take up scientific stories than the least you could do is provide readers with a way to look at the "science" for ourselves instead of letting a self-grandizing interpreter make our minds up for us. That is unethical journalism and is the same torment that the conservative portions of Congress are throwing at the American people. If you want to complain about transparency, you better be transparent.

Aaron Rury

Applied Physics Program

University of Michigan

wrote:That is unethical journalism and is the same torment that the conservative portions of Congress are throwing at the American people. If you want to complain about transparency, you better be transparent.

Missing references (especially since a web search is so easy) and outright lies are not the same thing. But I agree it would be better to include the references.

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.