There is an old saying that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Make of that what you will, but obtuseness at some point loses its charm.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/16/pruden-the-red-hot-scam-begins-to-unravel/

And, the mainstream media is following:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/02/16/climategater-jones-stunning-global-warming-revelations-ignored

Imagine that, economics and global warming together:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/ipccs_latest_great_source_a_newsletter_than_doesnt_even_back_its_scare/

How many wells or desalination plants would be constructed to help feed those starving kids in Africa?

Think our priorities have gone somewhat eschew?

So, I don’t really buy the statement: “We need to be concerned about the NEXT generation”.

Who’s next generation?

When told to “get the heck out”, what happens, people stay and refuse to believe the unacceptable. And if the worst occurs, “the Government will bail us out” or its their fault. Gotta blame someone….

Our main concern is each other. But from blog events, I’m not sure that’s possible……

And I’m not sure whether the Earth really cares. Look at Katrina, 1904 SF, 1964 Anchorage, Earth pretty much did as she pleased?

But in our arrogance, we’ll continue to try to CONTROL nature, as many do to each other…..

That equates to about, what, lets go back to the Jurassic, 1.5 e-6 knowledge of Earths Climatic patterns and cycles.

Not sure if that grade would give you an F in College. You surely wouldn’t pass Engineering by retaining that amount of knowledge taught to you.

And in Engineering, a profession on a completely higher level than Natural Science, the cost-benefit analysis with those numbers would demand much more additional understanding of the system.

A lot of people on this Earth are depending on a proper decision, meaning, their lives will depend on this.

Nevertheless, a warmer globe would increase growing degree days and advance agriculture to the northern zones. All would increase food production which, I believe, is our biggest problem, though very little stated.

Very, very well said…..

There appears to be several different standards of science. For example, with physics there is a well established protocol that demands theory be backed by repeatable and independently reproducible experimental results. By this protocol one is able to claim the phenomenon is governed by law. The consequence being that society is able to embrace the scientific discovery with confidence. The telegraph, telephone and television, E=mc2, the transistor, computers, communication satellites and so on. The operation of each of these discoveries was not based on hope or hypothesis but on the harnessing of a theoretically demonstrated and experimentally verified physical law.

Then there are the life sciences. Here the standard is a well regulated (FDA) process whereby medical treatments are proposed and the outcomes analyzed. In the case of drug therapies the science demands that observations be conducted as double blind tests so as to not allow the bias of the observers to contaminate the results. The successful outcome of life science research being the discovery of a treatment that demonstrates a high probability of being efficacious with a low probability of harmful side-effects.

Earth science has a whole different standard. One reason may be that geophysical processes take so much longer to play out. As a consequence models play a significant role in both the building of theory and in the validation. Another twist is that engineering plays a more prevalent role. By this I mean that the outcome of a geoscience discovery is usually the engineering of a work-around (ie earthquake resistant buildings or horizontal drilling) and not the manipulation of the phenomenon itself. An inescapable aspect of engineering being that the economic benefits of the implementation are compared against the costs.

It appears to me that global warming science is trying to take a geophysical observation and treat it as a physical law but climate scientists do not want to live up to the standard demanded of physics research. If the phenomenon of AGW is to qualify as a physical law there must be reproducible and independently verified experiments proving this. Yet even the leading global scientist confess uncertainty that this can ever be done. What we have are models and datasets that that advocates of AGW have prepared themselves (no double blind protections whatsoever)

If AGW was treated as an engineering problem than we, as a society, could have an honest debate of the costs and benefits of a solution. By treating AGW as a law this debate has been shortchanged. We are left in a no mans land where proponents are defending unsustainable claims, opponents are distrustful and lawyers, rather than scientists, will have the final say.

Well, when your bellies are touching your backbones, then you’ll realize…….. but it may be too late by then.

No one will be protected. All the info and history is out there and history surely repeats itself, unless stopped, and usually, by just a few. That’s a given.

Remember Greece, California, Peru, Brazil, the Lost Decade of Japan, etc., etc.

Good Luck