Riverwind

What I find ironic are the same people who think they can arbitrarily change constitutional rules on prorogation are the same people who oppose Harper's attempt to limit senators to 8 years because they see it as an arbitrary change to constitutional rules.

How do you know it is too fast? Where is your evidence supporting this 'too fast' meme? When look at the temperature record I see many times when temperatures changed much faster than 0.7 degC/century in the past 10000 years. The suggests to me that the ecosystems are far more adaptable than you seem to thing. I don't expect 100% but I do expect a lot more than the wild a** guesses from someone with a PhD. Unfortnately, wild a** guesses is all climate science is and the guys with the PhDs making these guess are starting to make lawyers look like paragons of virtue. Where your evidence there this is more 'extreme' weather? Once you establish that we are actually experiencing more extremes you will have to demonstrate that there is a link to the warming. I am really getting tied of environmentalist propoganda being waved around as scientific 'truth'. Lovely talk but ultimately meaningless since we can't put a price on any of these things. The economists who have tried to put price on it have a nasty habit of deciding what policies they want to start with and then making whatever up numbers are required to make those policies sound rational.

I suggest you re-read the context. I think you will find my meaning was different that you assumed.eyeball said: I responded:

50 years ago the courts believed that it was impossible for a man to rape his wife since she gave her consent by agreeing to marriage.

Palin can deliver a good speech when it is written for her. Does that mean the 'left' is wrong to criticize her inability to sound coherent when unscripted?

These sudden flips in the polls over seemingly inconsequential issues will make for a interesting election campaign. The final results will likely be determined entirely by how parties conduct their campaigns and the media reaction to it.

That is when the latest IPCC models started predicting the future. It is the ONLY suitable starting point since it is easy to get a model to "predict" temperatures when you already know what they are. The sun's effect was known to the modellers. If they believed it had such a strong role we would see the effect in the model outputs. The fact is the modellers ignore the sun because they believe it has no effect. It is rediculous to say now that they 'forgot' to take the sun into account. If they did forget they are incompetent if they left it out because they believed it had no effect then they are wrong. Take your pick.

The amount of cooling experienced is much larger than what can explained with the solar cycle given current understanding. If warming does resume when the solar cycle starts that will be extremely strong evidence that the climate models underestimate the effect of the sun and, consequently, overestimate the effect of CO2.

The cooling is a fact and you know it. The only person being deceptive is you. If you were actually interested in discussing science you would accept the *fact* of cooling but try to explain why you think that the cooling is not significant. However, you are only interested in peddling alarmist propoganda which means you are unable to acknowledge facts and prefer to hurl various insults at people who are not interested in enabling your fantasies.As for the significance of the cooling: the are mathematical techniques which can be used to determine whether it is signicant and when applied properly those techniques show that the cooling is significant when compare to the claims made by the IPCC.

I suggest you read what you wrote. You agree that it is the consequences which are a concern - not the rate of change in itself. It has not been established that the current 'rate of change' is outside normal variability for climate. In fact, there is evidence from the ice cores that the kind of change we are seeing now is perfectly normal. I, for the most part, have ignored your endless attempts to divert discussion away from climate policy. However, it is worth noting that the argument that AGW is something to worry about is fundementally an economic argument and if you accept that premise then you are accepting the views of some economists. So the question becomes: why do you blindly accept the pronouncements of some economists but not others?

The rate of warming is irrelevant too. It is the consequences of warming which we care about. If you believe that then you must believe the scientific consensus in the 70s said that the planet was heading into an ice age. In any case, there is a huge difference between a report that governments use to justify policy and the claims of random individuals. Yep. Which is why skepticism is always required - even when dealing with scientists.

ROTFL. I did that myself after his 3rd post - only one in my list too.

So what? The climate has gotten warmer over the last 100 years and that is probably a good thing. The problem with AGW alarmists is their obsession with the idea that warming must be bad. In the last week, two of the main arguments (glaciers melting/more hurricaines) used by alarmists to claim that warming is bad have been exposed as not only false - but as deliberate lies by people who are supposed to be giving us unbiased scientific information.

Moral dilemmas need to resolved and the process of resolving such a dilemma is not clearly defined and changing a small detail of the scenario could result in a different decision. For example, lets say in one scenario the person in question refused to help because helping would put him/her in danger. Lets say in another scenario the person in question refused to help because they we just selfish. I would say that the majority of people would be more likely to choose killing in the latter case.In same way the fact that the person is attractive young woman would tip the balance away from killing in many cases - especially with men. That does not mean that men would never choose killing as an option. It just means that it is a factor that will be taken into account when people attempt to resolve the dilemma.

That is not what I said. I said, *given the same circumstances*, a man would be less likely to kill a young attractive women than a old man.

It is not prejudice - it is instinct.

It gets worse. It worth remembering that people who have been complaining about these issues for years have be repeatedly dismissed as 'anti-science deniers'.

The notion that our own offspring have more worth than others is rooted in our DNA as is the desire to preserve the life of those that could be used to produce more offspring.

The point was to make people think about their deeply held prejudices - i.e. most people (especially men), given the same situation, would be less likely to kill a young attractive women than a ugly old man. It would not surprise me to find that such prejudice is in our DNA.

I have said this before but you seem to have problems understanding it: in climate science there is no reliable data or experimental results that can be used to prove/disprove theories and all scientific claims are built on a huge number of unverifiable assumptions. What this means that the 'consensus' is really nothing more than a popularity contest among scientists. The scientists which produce the most convenient analyses are presumed to be correct and if data disagrees then the data is presumed to be wrong and adjusted accordingly. In a different universe a different group of scientists with a different theory could easily take the same data, adjust it according to their biases over many years and build up 'many lines of evidence' that support that theory. IOW - climate science is the perfect environment for group think to take hold. When you combine that with a huge pressure on scientists to support certain political agendas you have a toxic environment which makes it impossible to trust any of the science that comes out of it. It could be fixed but people have to start by acknowledging there is a problem.

HadCRUT cooling since 2001 UAH and RSS are similar but I don't have a recent plot handy. GISS is flat. Claiming that the temperatures are 'consistent with' the models is meaningless claim since virtually every plausible temperature outcome is 'consistent with' the models.Here is good debunking of the 'consistent with' nonsense.

From the report I linked above:

Yep. For the 20 years any explanation for past climate that did not involve CO2 was systematically expunged from the record. Data that did not support the conclusions was dismissed or adjusted. Data that supported the CO2 hypothesis had its significance exaggerated. Scientists are herd animals. They go where the grants are. Scientists that try to disrupt the gravy train are vilified and attacked. Scientists that cook up bogus analyses which provide 'another line of evidence' are lauded as heroes and have grants showered on them. All it takes is a little 'cognitive dissonance' to turn the grant hungry scientist into a true believer. As Jerry Seinfeld said: its not a lie if you believe it.

It is worth noting that system where MPs can act as free agents leads to its own set of problems - just look at the US and all of the absurd provisions that get tacked onto billing in order to appease various local interests. Perhaps the most odious example was the health-care bill were the Senator from Oklahoma negotiated a clause that exempted Oklahoman seniors from the Medicare cuts which are inevitably coming.

Surely you jest.Here is a report on Germany's experience