Berkeley.

UC Berkley. *snicker*

Pefectly unbiased. *snicker*


No seriously though, I'll check it out. I enjoy reading all the different points of view- especially when it is admitted that there ARE different points of view.

Well I can see the naysayers have been busy today.
But halaluha, Will has brought everyone to the agreement I thought was undebatable from the beginning. The Earth is warming up.
I'll iterate what I mentioned before, that the mean temperature of the world has risen and still is rising. Spot checks not withstanding. There is no serious debate in the scientific community about this.

What is being debated hotly (oooh touchy touchy) are the causes and the ramifications of said changes. Some think it a natural occurrence that we can't stop (even if we want to), others think man has contributed more then his share to a huge problem that needs addressing now. That my friends is the debate, and if you read back over the thread you'll find that's how it shook out here as well. You're all right on this point, there is no consensus.

I wouldn't put to much faith in any computer model when talking about the climate myself (garbage in, garbage out). The only real model we have for the climate of our world is the Chaos theory, and there are too many variables to run to get a final picture of what it looks like in the end. We don't now nor any computer in the foreseeable future big or fast enough to run through all that will contribute to tomorrows rosy or bleak day for the world. The small models people like to run to prove this or that really mean nothing at all in the larger scope of things.

For myself, I frame the debate in a much wider context. Whatever we are contributing to the climate change I think of it as just another pollutent from mankind.
We throw so much garbage into the air, the water, and the ground.....well, one would run out of adjectives and space trying to describe how we're spoiling our own nest.
Look around, the evidence has been there for a long time.

I for one think it's time we start cleaning up our act.
Randy

Naysayers, Lol. Junk in junk out. We agree Randy. But why is it called Greenland?

because a thousand years ago it was Green enough to grow crops by the Viking settlers, global cooling set in and the Viking settlements nearly died out

It was called "Greenland" in an attempt to lure more of the Norse to live there...and although it was warmer back then, it was still false advertising.

The world cycles through periods of warm and glacial periods, as the planet has a feed-back mech. depending on CO2 absorption via rocks. That's basic science.

If man actually affects the Earth's climate, it is by a tiny amount that is not worth destroying our economy over.
And it's an established fact that many of the hard-core communists and anti-growth crazies now make up a significant number of the "Global Warming and it's all America's fault" crowd.

I remember back in the 1970's when all the hoopala was that we were going into an ice-age, it was on the cover of Newsweek and all the other rags that people got their brainwashing by.
And low and behold....no ice age!

LOL.
Steve, I know next to nothing about Greenland except that it's a continent. It was covered in ice during the last ice age. And it's glaciers are now melting at an alarming rate.
That's it, that's what I know.
I can spectulate that it's had a coastal region thats been bare aside from some hardy grasses for at least the last 2000 to maybe 3000 years.

Why did they call it Greenland. Was it because the Vikings had a sense of humor?
Randy

I look at it that whatever the amount or percent of damage to the earth we humans do, we can back off without destroying our economy. I would love to see slowing of pollution and even repairing of environmental damage contributing to our economy as bright young engineers and scientists and entrepreneurs bring their newly-minted educations to bear on the issue.

 Quote: steve strom

Naysayers, Lol. Junk in junk out. We agree Randy. But why is it called Greenland?

The early Vikings who discovered and settled Iceland and Greenland had a sense of humor, and wanted to throw off their enemies. So they named their main home Iceland and their much less hospitible colony Greenland to make their enemies think Greenland was a nicer place to live than Iceland. It wasn't. That is one theory.

The other is that at one time Greenland was warmer than it is now. It had over 3,000 Norse residents. As the climate turned cooler the residents were either unwilling or unable to adapt and so left or died.

A round about way of saying that yes, Greenland was once warmer than it is now, in historic times, and became cooler.