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Help me understand this.

OK, today,  Jan. 28, 2009, we are having an ice storm here in NE Texas (or at least what passes for an ice storm here - about a quarter inch is all we need to shut down every school in the county!)

Now, at the beginning of this school year, no meteorologist in the country could tell me that we were going to have an ice storm on this date.  A month ago, no one could say with any certainty whether the high today would be 40 degrees or 70 degrees (both fairly commn January highs in this area!).

Now, the global warming crew are telling us that the planet will not begin to cool off for another thousand years.

First of all, have they stepped outside?  North America is in the grip of one of the bitterest winters in a decade.

Secondly, how the heck can the KNOW all this for sure?  I just don't get it.  The whole thing seems to be based on complex computer models that only a handful of people on earth understand, yet the media and the public swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse.  I understand that climate change is a part of the planet's natural life cycle.  I guess what angers me is the stubborn insistence that THIS particular uptick in temperature is ALL our fault, and that WE must therefore change our lifestyle in order to reverse it.

What I fear is the greatest assault on private property rights and individual liberties in the history of the United States, all in the name of "saving the planet."  And, in a hundred years, if Al Gore turns out to be dead wrong, will all those lost freedoms be given back?  I think not.

I feel like a lemming, standing in the midst of the herd as they rush towards the cliff, pausing and saying "Does anyone know exactly where we are going?"

They originally came out with computer models showing the earth would warm up - then they ran those same models on past times and found they showed that the earth should be warmer right now.  Then the UN came out with a big global warming report - we're all doomed! it said.  But then they found out that all the scientific evidence to the contrary was left out, and the politicians basically rewrote the whole thing to spin it in a pro-global warming direction.

Etc. etc.

They blew their credibility so many times it's pathetic.  In the past, we've had ice ages, and in between the ice ages, there were obviously periods of global warming - otherwise there would have just been one long ice age and we'd still be in it right now.  All this happened thousands of years before cars and factories.  But if we're in another cycle of warming, then it's all our fault!  I think it's painfully obvious that it's just propaganda from the environmentalists, that the media is eager to repeat over and over. 

Watching the weather reports, with actual meteorologists, they scoff at the idea of global warming.  It's sometimes hard to keep them from going on a good rant about the whole thing.

Whatever.  People will believe whatever they want to believe.  We can't predict next week's high temperature to withing 20 degrees, but we're fairly certain what the temperature will be 50 years from now.  And I've got some oceanfront property in Minnesota if anyone's interested.

Here's a wonderful piece from back in the '70s, with all the very serious scientists, all the dire warnings, all the dramatic music - see if any of this sounds familiar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZKtJSlhFsA&feature=related#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NimH5w_fzM&feature=related#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2yHACNPcL4&feature=related#

in the 60's or 70's it was said we were in the beginning of an ice age. That idea was scrapped. Some scientists believe, with some supporting evidence, that global temperatures are consistent with solar output. IOW, the sun is not have a 100% steady output, and the temperature of the earth changes with that. Penn and Teller did an episode of their show B.S. and brought out some of the evidence supporting the idea the global warming was B.S. I know, not the greatest source of info, but an interesting read.

My questions is, on a related subject, is just how do CFCs destroy the Ozone. I know that the chemical breaks o3 down, I know that part, but the question is: They all are made of elements with fairly high molecular weights, so how do they end up way up into the stratosphere and above where the Ozone layer is to damage it? 

Indiana, your observations are anecdotal. 

Our lives are brief.  The planet has had a biosphere for a billion years, nature is indifferent to our civilization, and civilized Mankind's time on this planet short.  The burning of fossil fuels, land reclamation, strip mining, bottom trawling, etc., are relatively new phenomena and human activity unprecedented. 

In the past, very moderate fluctuations in global temperature had disastrous effects on humankind (think the "Little Ice Age").  What effect might a minor 2-3 degree Celsius change have on farming, transportation, technology, resource allocation, water supplies...?  It's not about who's to blame, but can we preserve our way of life? 

Meanwhile human populations explode, the demand for fuel ever increasing, wars are already being fought over arable land and water... the polar ice caps are tumbling into the sea, cooling the water, lowering its salinity, altering currents... There is enough evidence that GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE may be a real phenomenon and a genuine concern.