It is all result of higher sun activity, stupid.

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Is a scientist here in Boulder, CO... Bush has tried his best to keep him quiet.

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An easy way to reveal the neo-cons amongst us is to find out where they stand on global warming. If they believe it's a normal development and not caused by human activities, Bingo! We already know that ExxonMobil is spending billions to promote that phony viewpoint so we can assume that either the person is in the pocket of big oil, or is a dupe of somebody who is. No reasonable person can deny what happened in Florida wasn't a fluke, that it is the clearest sign yet that we're in real trouble. More oil isn't the answer, it just makes it worse and we urgently need leaders who understand that.

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Hundreds of thousands of homeowners can GO SOLAR THIS year by renting an array of solar pv panels and paying per kwh what they pay the power company, no purchase, no maintenance and repair, etc.!! i truly believe this could revolutionize national energy production away from fossil fuels by getting 100,000 homes 'panelled up' this year, another 100,000 next year, etc., all generating clean, noncarbon solar energy into the homes and out onto the grid! please look at this program www.jointhesolution.com/solarenew and help spread the word. shepherdsally@hotmail.com

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Whether you believe that global warming is caused by human destruction and pollution or not doesn't really matter. What matters is that you recognize the fact that humans are destroying the very land that gives them life and our precious home cannot/will not continue to survive our attacks. Wouldn't it be better to error on the side of caution in this instance? If we do nothing and find out later that global warming was caused by humans and could have been abated by some common sense measures, it will be too late. I would rather take steps to improve our environment now even if we find out later that global warming was a natural occurrence. We can and need to improve our environment. We simply cannot continue to abuse the lands we live on and expect Earth to keep giving back to us.

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Once I was naive and thought that renewable energy wasn't widespread because of costs and the need for better technology. If you look into the issue, you find that the current energy-economic structure has done all it can to hold back renewable energy production - and to get renewable energy into widespread production means that you have to take on the global petroleum-based empire - you can't just ignore it and hope it will go away. At the same time, however, we need to support every single renewable initiative, from solar to wind to sustainable biofuel production, and put political divisiveness aside (nuclear power is at best a short term solution, since it also relies on mining a non-renewable resource, uranium, plus it leads to nuclear weapon proliferation)

The issue is too important; people of every political stripe will have to work together to create an energy-efficient and renewable economy on a global basis - because even if we were to create a completely renewable economy, if India and China continue to rely on coal it won't make much difference to the global climate situation.

Solar photovoltaics, solar water heating, energy-efficient technology from cars to refrigerators, sustainable fossil fuel-free agricultural production of biofuels, wind turbines - that's what we need to focus on. The entrenched energy corporations with ties to oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear concerns will be certain to fight this every step of the way - as history shows.

Why? Well....you can't put a meter on the sun or on the wind, can you? The global American empire relies on controlling access to petroleum supplies, whether it be in the Mideast or in Africa - and if the whole globe can use renewables instead of petroleum, there goes the empire - it's going anyway, but the addiction to social power is far more difficult to break than heroin, cocaine or nicotine addiction.

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The story is here:
Scientists offered bribes, Sydney Morning Herald

It's in the British press, and in the indymedia outlets in the United States, but NONE of the corporate press outlets are covering the story - not CNN, not FOX, not ABC, not the New York Times, not the Washington Post - that's what a corporate news blackout looks like - and it's obviously a coordinated blackout.

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One thing that everyone has to realize is that was deposited under shels of shale, slate and limestone was the effective concentration ot 10 million years of solar energy. None of our solar panels are yet as efficient in converting solor energy to electricity as plant leaves are at converting solar energy into sugar. So to think we can have a civilation like we have running on renewables which are all dependent on the sun, think again. We will have to cut back drastically on transportation, production of electricity and manufacturing. Biofuel is perhaps worse than oil itself because we will be motivation to converting large swaths of forest into biofuel farms, The same mechanism that is destroying the Amazon rainforest in the interest of cattle production. Solar panels, though they have their place, would do nothing in terms of providing energy to transportation, except as a novelty. So really as a civilation, we have to come up with something that will give the abundance of oil energy, that is renewable, and doesn't produce harmfull gasses that alter the worlds climate nor produce long term radioactive bi-products. We also have to change our relationship with the earth itself if we as people of earth are going to see the end of the 21st century. We have to recognize that the earth is our permanent home, rather than our temporary accomodations while we are preparing to move on to other parts of the heavens. We have to have a love relationship with the earth and all its forms of life, because it is all those miriads of forms of life that make life as we know it possible. The earth isn't for us to conquer, but rather it is for us to find our place within the earth which is in reality our place in the universe. First and foremost on every persons mind should be the preservation of the earth as the permanent home that nurtures us. Without that understanding, all our enterprizes will have a detrimental effect on the earth and therfore on us. There is no reason we couldn't go to the stars, but first we need to have our house in order, and that house is our loving earth earth. We have to love life in all it's spectacular diversity. I think that hydrogen fusion power might be the way forward because it doesn't produce any greenhouse gasses, produces only short lived radioactive by-products that become safe to handle again in less than 20 years, and it is only when a power plant is decommissioned that we would have to deal with that. Even if our consumption of energy continued to increase every year for the next 2,000 years the hydrogen needed to power these hydrogen fusion plants would only represent the hydrogen that is contained in one foot of water off the surface of Lake Superior. Granted that is not a perfect solution, but it is orders of magnitude better than what we currently have in oil or nuclear powered processes. Biofuels consume vegetation and require the conversion of forects into corn fields. I don't like that. Solar requires the conversion of vast tracts of land into solar farms, I don't like that either. Wind power requires the construction of huge wind turbins that detracts from the natural beauty of the land. I prefer an energy system that has the smallest possible footprint on the earth. It should be so small that it has zero effect on any of the natural process of the earth. That's what I want. I want homes that passively heat and cool themselves. I want local transportation facilitated by bicycles. Unfortunately all the structures built since the destructive Bush administration came to power were designed without passive heating and cooling in mind, so we'll have to make a change there. And certainly the oil sands of Alberta Canada require the excavation of hundreds of square miles of land in order to extract that oily sand; that certainly isn't small footprint energy systems. Wave energy system will probably have a deleterious effect on ocean life that we cannot now appreciate.

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People are getting far too eat-up about this global warming nonsense. For people living in North America and Europe, there is no need to worry. We will get a warmer climate, so we wont need to travel half way around the World on holiday anymore. The only people that need to worry are the wretched refuse of the Third world. Their land is increasingly becoming a barren desert and they will suffer and probably perish on a wholesale scale. I'm not interested in the problems they face. Let us be happy in our new warm climate!LOL.

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The issue of global warming and the inadequate reporting - that is, slant - in the US means that, most likely, those of you in the US do not realize how dire the situation is.

When I refer to slant, what I mean is that the New York Times - a supposedly liberal paper - gives the impression that global warming will not cause too much trouble if we respond to it quickly. However, that is very far from the truth. Here in the UK, the real story is being reported, and it's far more dire than that.

Here's the reality: At the best - meaning that we do everything that can possibly be done to stop - not back off, but literally stop - the excess output of carbon into the atmosphere (which is nearly all of the carbon that we put out), the world is facing a 2.4 degree Celsius increase by the end of the century. What that means, according to the UN's report, is that the center of the United States will become a complete desert, from Texas up to Montana. That means deserts as in sand dunes. All agriculture in this area - the heartland of America - will end. All the low-lying nations, that is, the small non-mountainous island nations, will disappear. All delta areas will become inundated. (That means that substantial parts of New York City, all of New Orleans, and untold others will disappear under the ocean.) The coral reefs will almost completely die off. A third of all species in the world will become extinct. In South America, the near complete loss of glaciers - probably complete loss after the end of the century - will result in severe and permanent drought throughout a large portion of South America, meaning that people will not be able to live there.

That's what would happen if, as of today, everyone in the world gets sane, stops bringing too many children into the world, stops using nearly all fossil fuels, and completely changes the way we live. It's the best-case scenario, and it is not considered likely.

The worst-case scenario described by the UN's report, which can be averted only by dramatic action over the next few years, is near-complete extinction of all life on earth. At an increase of 6.4 degrees Celsius, methane would likely be released from the ocean floor, resulting in fireballs tearing across the sky. (Yes, this is literal, not figurative.) The oceans would lose their oxygen, die, and release hydrogen sulfide gas - which is a deadly poison and would destroy the ozone. Super hurricanes would span the earth, running completely around it, resulting in flash floods and stripping the soil off the land. The temperatures would be higher than they've been for hundreds of millions of years. No, I am not being extreme or overly dramatic. This is literally what the report says. You can read about it at www.independent.co.uk. This is the newspaper called The Independent, which has been a consistently honest source of information about the issue of global warming.

Think about this. Think about what it means for your children and grandchildren. Please please please, be aware of how important this is and that we are not talking about opinions here. This is reality. This is the world we've brought about. We are on the brink of complete disaster. President Bush is STILL refusing to agree to any cap on carbon outputs. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman merely says, "We are a small contributor when you look at the rest of the world." (Huh? The US is the single largest contributor to global warming, producing one-fourth of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.) That's nothing short of insanity. No matter what your political views, there is simply nothing that comes near this in importance. Humanity is quite literally on the verge of annihilating nearly all life on earth.

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Recently, a number of Christian groups have sensibly gotten alarmed about global warming, and have publicly called for action - and the American Enterprise Institue sent out this 'open letter (pdf)' in response via the "Interfaith Stewardship Alliance" front group, which includes this:

We believe the harm caused by mandated reductions in energy consumption in the quixotic quest to reduce global warming will far exceed its benefits. Reducing energy consumption will require significantly increasing the costs of energy–whether through taxation or by restricting supplies. Because energy is a vital component in producing all goods and services people need, raising its costs means raising other prices, too. For wealthy people, this might require some adjustments in consumption patterns–inconvenient and disappointing, perhaps, but not devastating. But for the world’s two billion or more poor people, who can barely afford sufficient food, clothing, and shelter to sustain life, and who are without electricity and the refrigeration, cooking, light, heat, and air conditioning it can provide, it can mean the difference between life and death.

Well, that's funny - because poor nations are the ones at greatest risk from global warming:
Global warming peril to Bangladesh: Flooding may hit 40 million by 2100
Jeremy Page, Times/UK Friday, February 2, 2007

The American Enterprise Institute will literally say anything at all - and they're a common source of 'expert commentary' for the corporate press.

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