et al are new but I recall crazy guys with sandwitch boards saying "The End Is Near" on the front and "Repent" on the back decades ago. Messianic doomsday cults have existed for centuries, some of them even resort to suicide in attempts to bring about, or save, the world. Some of Bush's supporters are big supporters of "End Days" and "rebuilding the temple of Solomon" and other crack pot apocalypic nonsense so the crazies aren't only on the 'environmental' side, although they get the most postings on Alternet. Remember the whole "Gaia", or is it "Giai" cultists that claim that "mother earth" is crying or "has a fever". It reminds me of Isiah or Revelations the way that Gore and his ilk keep telling us that the "end is nigh". Hilarious in a way, but many people have build whole religions, cults, and made LOTS of money telling folks about the "end of time" so more power to him. I'm waiting for his infomercials or tent revival meetings!!!

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I stumbled upon this tidbit and since I have been unable to find out if the guys who wrote it are biased (aside from some self-serving interests I note below) I'm taking it at face value for now:

J Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green are 2 fellows who study the science of forecasting. Not weather forecasting, mind you, but forecasting of any kind; financial/budget, socio-political, crop yield, etc etc. Believe it or not, there exist such people (they are more akin to statisticians and accountants than labratory scientists) and since everybody likes the idea of dependable forecasts you can rely on, I would think fairly non-partisan, although probably naturally skeptical.

They just published a paper called Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts critiquing the scientific credibility of the forecasting methods used by the IPCC. In a nutshell:

"In our audit of Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s WG1 Report, we found enough information to make judgments on 89 out of a total of 140 forecasting principles. The forecasting procedures that were described violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical. We concluded that the forecasts in the Report were not the outcome of scientific procedures. In effect, they were the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and obscured by complex writing."

The paper is a bit self referential in that it cites a lot of Armstrong's own work dating back to 1980 on forecasting principles and pimps their own Forecasting Principles website quite a bit. It should be pointed out that if this line of thought were to be taken seriously it would mean a lot of good publicity and interest in their "Evidence Based Forecasting" work, so it is definitely self-serving, if not biased in a partisan way.

Incidentally, I am aware that Armstrong is the one who offered Al Gore a $20K bet that the IPCC forecasts were wrong, which was much trrumpeted on Fox News. While it is sensational, this fact alone doesn't convince me he's a partisan hack, since they are just reporting a convenient story.

Curious what others make of this. . .

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The greenhouse effect has been known for a long time, at least as early as the beginning of last century. That anthrogenic emissions would grow so large to affect the Earth's current balance has also been theorized, as evident from this film. We've had spikes in concern over the issue before, but only in the last two decades have we begun to see a massive expansion of emissions with growing energy intensification of lifestyles throughout the world and the consequences in erratic weather patterns in addition to record-breaking temperatures.

As such, the conspiracy theories that abound out there about global warming fall into either two camps:

1) Denial on the part of polluters and the smoke and mirrors game they have played with the public over the issue.

2) Part of a larger-scale insidious plot to install one-world government using environmental regulations as a backdoor to controling people's lives, or as a way to stifle development in the Third World.

Both are at complete variance with the scientific consensus and both involve some incredible summersaults in logic. Both are also easy excuses not to do anything.

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Re those first two comments: You know you are on to something when the paid minions of the military-petrochemical complex jump immediately into the debate to poison the well.

Bad science! Crazies in hair shirts! Boogie men!

They are only trying to distract from the message here: this film pushes the idea of global warming back at least 20 years earlier than most of us previously thought.

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We have been seeing global warming for a century and a
half to 2 centuries. St. Louis is known as "The Gateway to
the West" because, before circa 1850 or so, you could drive
a conestoga wagon across the Mississippi on the ice in the
winter at St Louis. You can't drive across the river on ice
Now except in Minnesota. The ice has moved North by 2
states already. I have definitely seen a difference in my
lifetime. In 1968, you could drive on the frozen river at
Davenport, Iowa. That doesn't happen any more.

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What a stich! Take away the drama and the music and you have some pretty prophetic stuff. I especially like the coastline changes visual and would love to compare it to current ones. It also brings back memories of simpler times:) Can you imagine how the current, fairly rabid, Christian Right would scream about the title???

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AND the film is available on Netflix.

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WE ARE CONFUSING SEVERAL SEPARATE ISSUES.........IS THE PLANET HEATING UP?
SEEMS SO, AT LEAST THE GLACIERS THAT SUPPLY MOST OF THE WATER FOR THE CITIES HIGH IN THE ANDES HAVE DISAPPEARED UP TO 16 THOUSAND FEET, AND ISLANDS OFF BANGLADESH AND INDIA AND IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC HAVE DISAPPEARED UNDER THE OCEANS.

IS IT MANMADE? MAYBE, MAYBE NOT....YOU GET TO WAFFLE ON THIS ONE. You can waffle but that does not change the facts of displaced persons, storms, lack of water which will lead to more starvation, etc, etc.

ARE THE "SOLUTIONS" OFFERED BY MR GORE AND THE MONEY PEOPLE GOING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE? I HAVE A HORRIBLE SUSPICION THE ONLY DIFFERENCE WILL BE IN THE BANK ACCOUNTS OF THE SELLER, BUT THEN, WE ONLY HAVE OURSELVES TO BLAME AS WE DROWN, FRY, STARVE, ARE KILLED IN RIOTS, WARS, ETC, ETC.
WE HAVE BEEN BUYING THE BS FOR SO LONG, IT DOES NOT EVEN OCCUR TO US TO QUESTION, AND IF WE DO QUESTION EVEN PART OF THE EQUATION OFFERED, WE ARE TRASHED.
This is what I said in the comments on the Monbiot article, sorry about the caps, got a bit carried away.

I think we get distracted because we disbelieve the "solutions" that industry and even Mr Gore are selling us, so to counter that it is easier to believe that the whole thing is a construct....then we fall into the thrall of the pr folks that the energy and car cos have been using for a lot of years to keep us believing in forever "growth" and mega consumerism.

I have brought up the subject of military use of resources. It is huge, both the dead end use of resources, and the pollution generated. I see no discussion, ever.

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So, maybe our current warming trend is a natural phenomenom-wait' I'll concede that it probably is. Does that mean it's OK to go right ahead and pollute our air and water? Isn't this a form of Russian Roulette? Even if we weren't helping golbal warming along with vast amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, do we REALLY want to foul our air to the point that it's unhealthy to breathe, and our lakes, rivers, and oceans unfit for swimming or fishing? Our present mind-set and activities are downright sucidal.

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I was a Sr in high school when these guy appeared on the screen in my physics period. It seems to me that right after this scene, they started advertizing for breeder reactors. Even then, the class wasn't terribly impressed with their arguments for going nuclear.
Little did we know then that by the year 2001, a chimp named George would have is finger hovering over the button, and Dr Casey Strangelove would be looming from the shadows in the background, pulling all the strings.

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of the main problem: Unlimited growth of consumption and of pollution is impossible on a globe of limited size. And because the global economy system in blatant disregard of this fact is founded on ever increasing growth ("The sky is the limit"), we are all travelling on luxury class towards disaster.

Possible to avoid the catastrophe?
Theoretically YES
Practically MAYBE
Politically NO

Law of Politics:
When something has become politically feasible, it's too late.

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that there is so much confusion regarding global warming but then Exxon and the boys have a few things to answer for.
There has always been global warming and cooling but prior to about 150 years ago the cooling and warming periods took 6,000 or more years to occur. That length of time allowed much more time to adjust to the change. We are in the middle of changes that will be just as dramatic and these changes will occur in a few hundred years. People, to name just one group, will not have time to adjust.

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Does anybody remember the mid-70's? During that period I read accounts of how the earth was getting colder and colder and how the earth was entering a new ice age. According to scientists, etc., the temperature on the earth was being lowered a degree or two a year and that would result in a shortened growing period globally which would result in fewer crops being harvested and, of course, world wide famine.

Now, a mere 20 or 30 years later, the earth has suddenly gotten significantly warmer which will also result in fewer crops being harvested because they are burning up in the fields. So, which is it?

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Who says we weren’t warned about our current ecological crisis? Ken Boulding was one of many who warned, but few listened. This was written as I graduated from high school, fifty years ago. I didn’t read it until 1972. It cleverly and artfully summarizes our environmental predicament-long before Silent Spring and The Population Bomb. It also summarizes the symposium that it was printed in. Note the "seas are rising" refers to consequences of global warming.
**************************
Conservationist’s Lament
By Kenneth Boulding
In: Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, 1956
University of Chicago Press, p. 1087

The world is finite, resources are scarce,
Things are bad and will be worse.
Coal is burned and gas exploded,
Forests cut and soils eroded.
Wells are dry and air’s polluted,
Dust in blowing, trees uprooted,
Oil is going, ores depleted,
Drains receive what is excreted.
Land is sinking, seas are rising,
Man is far too enterprising,
Fire will rage with Man to fan it,
Soon we’ll have a plundered planet.
People breed like fertile rabbits,
People have disgusting habits.

Moral: The evolutionary plan went astray by evolving Man.

*****************************************

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The end is already here for the countless species of flora and fauna mankind has driven to extinction. I have been told more than half of all life will be driven to extinction, but there will be billions of people, so it isn't doomsday, at least not for us. That meteor that killed the dinosours, that is us!

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I never knew, but am now beginning to wonder just how much of our global warming is/was caused by WW1, WW2, and all the multiple human conflicts that have enveloped our planet in the last hundred years... War is a dirty messy affair and I bet that the amount of pollution caused by warfare is in some way responsible for our current problems
Also, I'd like to know, just how long does it take for human activity to register with dear old mother earth... could the massive destruction and pollutions caused buy WW1 and WW2 just now be getting on the envirometer?

I'm just curious and really don't know, but it maybe worth investigating and discussion...

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