Luke

Caesar, I'm not a fan of PR in the first place, but this dogs breakfast the citizens assembly came up with is even worse than I imagined. I disagree that the outcome was influenced by the Libs. There is no reason for them to want such a system. I only hope that the people shoot it down on voting day.

Equal representation would be nice for a change, as in equal reps per pop in the HOC and equal reps per province in the senate. Or in other words we would all like to be as "equal" as Quebec.

I suggest a program of free valium for all the hysterical types like eureka so the rest of us can continue to enjoy the best standard of living ever achieved brought to us by capitalism which they are trying to destroy. I like cars and suburbs and big warm houses and lots of lights everywhere. If the earth gets a little warmer, big deal. Lets enjoy it while it lasts. One thing the scientists do agree on is that another ice age is coming and it will probably last several million years.

Putin has said quite bluntly that the science is not there to justify Kyoto, and that Russia was signing on strictly because of pressure from other countries - mostly the EU. Eureka, you have swallowed the "global warming/sky is falling" theory hook line and sinker. You are a devout believer. Your mind is closed on the subject, and thats fine - whatever makes you feel good, but don't equate that to intelligence. Intelligence is always seeking, questioning, believing nothing. My hunch is that a little more co2 won't do us any harm. "A recent paper by Robinson, Baliunas, Soon and Robinson concludes, "A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century … has markedly increased plant growth rates… the [future] effect on the environment is likely to be benign. Greenhouse gases cause plant life, and the animal life that depends upon it, to thrive. What mankind is doing is liberating carbon from beneath the Earth's surface and putting it into the atmosphere, where it is available for conversion into living organisms." "

I don't know where you are but if you need 900 feet you've got a problem. Driving a v-8 isn't going to get it! Your going to have to move to where I am - Vancouver Island. Personally, I think high energy consumers should get a discount, or tax breaks or something. There is an ice-age coming. A little extra co2 is probably going to come in handy. Help save the world - turn up your thermostat and drive a big car.

Yes I am a non-believer and will remain so until somebody can answer the question I posed: how could catastrophic climate change be brought about by a variation in a factor (co2 levels) that plays such a small role in determining climate? The greenhouse effect is not the only thing that determines climate, and co2 is less than 3% of greenhouse gases. MYTH #3: 'The Buildup of Human Induced Greenhouse Gases, and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in Particular, Will Cause a Catastrophic Planetary Warming.' The hypothesis that rising CO2 levels result in a direct increase in temperature originated in 1896 with Swedish chemist, Svante Arrhenius. However, the concept was abandoned in the 1940s because global temperatures had not even remotely matched the 1°C rise predicted by the theory. Since then, the rate of global warming has slowed despite the acceleration in industrialization and CO2 emissions. A good example of the sort of misinformation that is being publicized regarding this topic is seen in the following quote from Dr. (Zoology) David Suzuki in the June 21, 2002 version of his "Science Matters" column that appeared in newspapers across Canada: "Increased concentration of carbon dioxide, the most important heat-trapping gas, has pushed up global temperatures, which will continue to rise unless emissions are stabilized and reduced." Dr. Tim Ball, environmental consultant and climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg for 32 years, responds, "The Suzuki comment displays an ignorance of climate science. Even the Greenpeace report on global warming concedes that water vapour is the most abundant and most important greenhouse gas. Water vapour is ignored because the models can't include clouds. Imagine recommending devastating economic and therefore social policy based on a climate model that can't even include clouds!" In fact, CO2 is less than 3 percent of greenhouse gases (GHG). Water vapor constitutes 97 percent. Other GHG are methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and trace gases. It is very revealing that an increase in the production of water vapor at the equator during the 1998 El Niño climate event caused worldwide average temperatures to spike by almost 1°C that year. The human contribution to the atmosphere's total water vapor content is trivial by comparison. A study by Dr. Kevin Telmer, Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, and Dr. Jan Veizer, Professor of Geology at the University of Ottawa, demonstrates that the larger amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere at higher temperature permit more CO2 to be absorbed by plants (see www.spacedaily.com/news/greenhouse-00zf.html). Thus, we have a self-regulating system that helps keep the climate in check. Of the 0.7°C global temperature rise in the past century, half of it occurred before 1940, although most of the buildup in human-induced CO2 has occurred since then. It is also important to understand that our Sun, the ultimate source of all atmospheric warmth, is currently brighter than at any time in the past 400 years. Dr. Tim Patterson, professor of earth sciences (Paleoclimatology) at Carleton University concludes, "With our star's variability accounting for about half of all the recorded warming in the last hundred years, only 0.3°C is left over for everything else, including urbanization and land use. The amount is even less if an additional 0.1-0.2°C of natural temperature fluctuation is factored in. If increased C02 levels have contributed to global warming at all in the past century, its contribution must have been very minor indeed." Dr. Sallie Baliunas and Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics blame variations in the Sun's brightness, not CO2 levels, for most of Earth's climate change. This idea is further supported by climatologists Marcel Fligge and Sami Solanki who demonstrated in a recent edition of the respected journal, Geophysical Research Letters, that the warming or cooling of the Earth during the past four centuries closely matches variations in the Sun's brightness. Whether they were looking at the Little Ice Age of the latter seventeenth century, the rapid warming in the early part of the twentieth century or the relatively unchanging temperatures of recent decades, our star's output and global temperatures were closely correlated. NASA's Paal Brekke explains, "... the Sun may be a much more important contributor to global climate change than previously assumed." Dr. Ball sums up, "Ignoring the Sun and water vapor as causes of climate change is like ignoring the transmission and engine when the car is not working." Like carbon cycle modelers, Dr. Ball and Dr. Veizer believe that CO2 merely responds to temperature changes; it does not cause them. Here is some of the evidence that supports this hypothesis: Global mean atmospheric concentration of CO2 has been found to lag behind changes in tropical sea surface (and hence atmospheric) temperature by six to eight months. As the ocean warms, it is unable to hold as much CO2 in solution and consequently releases the gas into the atmosphere contributing to the observed CO2 level rise; Ice core records show that, at the end of each of the last three major ice ages, atmospheric temperatures rose several hundred years before CO2 levels finally increased; At the beginning of the most recent glacial period, about 114,000 years ago, atmospheric CO2 remained relatively high even as temperatures plummeted. Finally, recent publications in the prestigious journals, "Science" and "Paleoceanography" show that CO2 levels were higher at the end of the last ice age than during the much warmer Eocene period, 43 million years earlier. These studies also found that CO2 levels are far higher today than they were during the relatively hot Miocene period, 17 million years ago. Clearly, variations in the Sun's brightness should be far more interesting to those concerned about future climate change than the relatively trivial and inconsistent effect of changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. Dr. Petr Chylek, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, concludes, "It is highly probable that global average temperature will go up and down during future years regardless of what we do."

Thats a nice attack on Singer, which may or may not be true. I know nothing of Singer. However, it is totally irrelevant since the piece I posted was not from Singer. I find it very hard to believe that castastrophic climate change could be caused by an increase in a factor - CO2 levels - that plays such as small part in determining climate, and since about 90% of all CO2 is naturally occuring, I find it even more difficult to believe that we could effect climate by limiting the small amount of CO2 that we are responsible for.

Hello to all. This is my first post on this board. Is climate change happening? Sure, it always has, but there is no reason to believe CO2 levels are causing it this time or that altering our tiny contribution to CO2 levels would make any difference. MYTH #1: 'Humanity is the Primary Cause of Global Climate Change.' Dr. Tim Patterson, professor of earth sciences at Ottawa's Carleton University, says this is very unlikely. The geologic record reveals that the only constant about climate is change. Long before our species inhabited the Earth, there were far more extreme changes in climate than what we see now. In the past million years, the Earth has been subjected to at least 33 ice ages and interglacial warm periods where temperatures soared far above that ever recorded in humanity's short history. Patterson and others show that, even in the past thousand years, there were periods much warmer and colder than today. For more than 90 percent of Earth's history, conditions were much warmer than today. Two million years ago forests extended nearly to the North Pole. As recently as 125,000 years ago, temperatures were high enough that hippopotami and other animals now found only in Africa made their homes in northern Europe. However, over the last 1.6 million years, it has generally been much cooler than this, with periodic rapid fluctuations from cooler to warmer intervals known as interglaciations. The causes of these dramatic climate variations include continental drift, changes in ocean/atmospheric circulation, natural wobbles in the Earth's orbit called Milankovitch cycles and variations in solar energy. Despite a 0.7 degree C warming that has occurred over the past century (as much warming occurred before 1940 as since then, even though the large majority of the CO2 buildup in the atmosphere occurred after 1940) , overall, global temperatures have dropped about 2°C over the past 5,000 years (depending on latitude: a 6 degree C drop in some Arctic areas; a 0.5 degree C drop in some lower latitudes). Another ice age is expected to begin within the next few thousand years and so any gradual global warming could be a blessing, as it could delay the onset of the next glacial period, or at least reduce its severity.” Many other scientists are skeptical of the fashionable view that people are causing significant climate change. A particularly compelling one is Dr. Fred Singer, president of The Science & Environmental Policy Project.