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That thread is from 2003, before Physics Forums took on a position to oust psychoceramics quickly. Nonetheless, the thread was locked rather quickly. Since that happened 2003, the only inference I would make is that it is utter nonsense.

Cap and trade. "The goal: To limit the rise in global temperature to approximately 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2050 by reducing carbon dioxide and other emissions from companies as part of a larger plan for curbing global warming. The cap: To achieve this goal, the U.S. government should steadily tighten the cap until emissions are reduced to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050." This exact phraseology is used in several places: http://www.pppl.gov/colloquia_pres/MC13JUL09_SGoldberg.ppt http://www.earthlab.com/articles/capandtrade101.aspx http://www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2009/090311.pdf http://www.jennerrodandgun.com/SCD/forest.ppt Similar phraseology is used elsewhere. The question was vague; your debating style is anything but. Ask a vague question, twist the response, howl fallacy at the drop of a hat. As a better question and you'll get a better answer.

Let's look at this list. Energy independence. That is a worthy goal. However, will cutting CO2 emissions to 20% of 1990 levels in 40 years achieve that goal? Is that goal, let alone the more aggressive goals of accomplishing the same in 20 or even 10 years even feasible? If energy independence is the real goal, then make that the real goal. That goal is achievable. A goal of energy independence would not require abandoning the energy resources we do have at hand within our borders. (e.g., coal, natural gas). In fact, it would well encourage further development of those resources. Those CO2 reduction goals on the other hand preclude the continued use of coal. There is a double-edged sword here. Transitioning from oil to wind and solar will make us more energy independent, but it will make us more mineral dependent. The reserves of the lithium, rare earths, and rare metals are, for the most part, outside of US boundaries. Going Cheney on the climate would just trade one set of foreign demons for another. Preserve rainforests. Preserve my sanity! The biggest threats to the rainforests are burgeoning populations and economic pressures in the tropics. Going Cheney on the climate would vastly increase those economic pressures. Brazil is one of the biggest sources of biofuels. "Brazil, Paraguay, Indonesia among others have huge deforestation programmes to supply the world biofuel market" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2007/aug/17/biofuelsmenacerainforests). Green jobs. First off, that is a tautology. Second off, So what? What about real jobs? What is the net impact on us as a whole? Getting there requires a TARP-style investment every year; see post #182 -- and that is assuming the intentionally low-balled estimates. That kind of spending would impoverish us, not enrich us. Healthy children. That requires cooking the books (e.g., the articles cited in post #53). I posit that an unsustainable 20 year spending spree that impoverishes us all would make for rather unhealthy children. Maybe more later; I have to go for now.

You should have researched this before you speculated that "the Moon's molten inner Core almost melted its way through the Moon, towards the Earth." Doing your research for you, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v287/n5782/abs/287520a0.html The compositional asymmetry between the nearside and farside of the Moon and the natural remanent magnetism (NRM) of lunar rocks are poorly understood. The compositional asymmetry is indicated by the 2-km offset towards the Earth of the centre of mass relative to the centre of figure and the concentration of both KREEP and mare basalts on the nearside. You can find this 2 km offset cited again and again in the scientific literature. While scientists still vigorously debate the cause of this offset, the nature of the offset is well-known. Not necessarily. The easier explanation is that the Moon became tidally locked after the the asymmetry appeared. The lunar magma ocean crystallized fairly rapidly, 100 million years or less. The crust took even less time to form, ~61 million years. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n2/abs/ngeo417.html http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Mar09/magmaOceanSolidification.html You are positing a differential spinning of the Moon and some transport mechanism to move material from one side of the Moon to another. What makes you think this? Not necessarily. You have not made any claims for the lunar tidal locking time. This needs to be less than the 61 million years it took for the Moon's crust to form to justify your claim. An easy alternative: The Moon is asymmetric because it formed from an asymmetric mass distribution and cooled so quickly that that initial asymmetry became frozen. The Moon is somewhat random because it was born that way. http://www.springerlink.com/content/l2652w08h5l28513/

Those banners were obviously presented by people who are not climatologists. They are people with a political axe to grind, like yours: And no, I am not talking about the objectives of just a few eccentrics. Just as Republicans lapped up the Laffer Curve, Democrats glom on to global warming. "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing." The solution to global warming requires much greater involvement of the government throughout society. Back to the Denialist crap, are you? Just to let you know, I have two vehicles: An American-made pickup and a Japanese-made subcompact. When I need a truck, I have it around. When I need to get to work or the grocery store, my car works just fine. My 5 year old truck has 16,000 miles on it. My car: 136,000 miles. I buy electricity from Green Mountain Energy. These were *my* choices. I have said many times that I acknowledge that our output of CO2 has affected the climate to some degree. I have made personal choices, not government mandated non-choices, to reduce my impact on the environment somewhat. I do not need the government sticking its nose in my business. I do not need the government telling me I can't drive my truck the few times I really do need it. I do not need the government mandating an over 80% reduction in CO2 in 40 years when there is no clear way of how to even begin to achieve that goal. It is an unattainable goal.

Careful! One freak weather event does not provide evidence for or against global warming. Use that argument and you open the door to counterclaims of an abnormally low number of Atlantic hurricanes, a very cold October in the US, or the earliest snowfall in Houston on record. Those are not valid arguments against global warming; nor is typhoon Ondoy is not a valid argument in support of global warming. Global warming is the change in the climate over the span of a decade or more.

No, it is not plausible. Comments follow. The giant impact hypothesis naturally leads to an asymmetric distribution of crustal material. The lunar magma ocean crystallized fairly quickly (~100 million years) after formation. That quick crystallization meant the crustal material did not have time to spread over the surface uniformly. The center of mass of the Moon's crustal material is about 2 kilometers from the Moon's center of mass. On the other hand, the Moon's core is quite close to the Moon's center of mass. In short, you are reversing cause and effect here. Explaining weird phenomena is always a good thing to do. Doing so with unfounded speculation is not a good thing to do. That is a huge unsubstantiated leap. We haven't seen that, let alone have you demonstrated that. The rest of the post makes further unsubstantiated leaps on top of this huge one. First off, the two kilometer separation between the Moon's geometric center and the location of the core does not qualify as "almost melting its way through the Moon". Secondly, that two kilometer separation is primarily due to the asymmetric shape of the Moon's crust rather than motion of the core. Nonsense.

See section 4.2 of the article. Also see the other paper by the same authors, http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0108005. Antigravity is so much sexier. This is not-quite-lunatic fringe stuff. DoD and NASA have funded some rather fringy stuff in the past. NASA more or less stopped because (a) they don't have the budget they had in their heyday, and (b) it's a bit embarrassing when the news comes out. DoD has a huge budget and a nice way of keeping their wacko investigations private. The rationale is obvious: Every once in a while it pays off. (Note well: This is the same rationale used here at Science Forums to justify the existence of the Pseudoscence nd Speculations sub forum.) That heat ray stuff was straight out of science fiction -- and it works.

What I cited was not a risk/cost/benefit analysis. It was just a waving of the hands. I would like to see a valid risk/cost/benefit analysis of this. So far, I have seen cook-the-books type analyses (e.g., post #53), analyses that hand-wave the costs away (e.g., Scientific American's November 2009 article) Overall construction costs for a WWS system might be on the order of $100 trillion worldwide over 20 years, not including transmission. But this is not money handed out by governments or consumers. It is investment that is paid back through the sale of electricity and energy. That $100 trillion is an extreme low-ball estimate. As a starter, it ignores the costs of building transmission lines, it ignores supply and demand, and it assumes a 31% decrease in needed power. Nonetheless, let's take that $100 trillion as a basis. Where does that kind of money come from? In the US alone, that amounts to $16.6 trillion dollars. Spread over 20 years, that is $828 billion per year. That is over 3 times the total annual gross revenues of the US electric power industry. Pipe dream economics! I am not claiming that action will necessarily hurt capitalism. The point of my showing those banners was to visually demonstrate the claim that some have glommed onto global warming because the solution furthers their political agenda. QED Why do you want the world to suffer? The video was shown at the opening of COP15. The banners were from COP15 demonstrations, with the full intent of urging the COP15 delegates to choose a path that furthered the political agendas of those carrying the banners. Where exactly is the ad hominem? Please retract that false accusation.

A technical description is here: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0209051. Note well: This has not been replicated. In the ensuing years the author, Evgeny Podkletnov, has fallen deep, very deep into the Woo. In this case the research is indeed into antigravity. Some other articles: July 29, 2002 BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2157975.stm. Overly sensationalistic. July 31, 2002 SPACE.com article: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/gravity_research_020731.html. Brief, not quite so sensationalistic. August 1, 2002 SpaceDaily article: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-02t.html. Also brief, and also not quite so sensationalistic. February 2003 Popular Mechanics: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/1282281.html?page=3. Deep in the Woo (flip to the previous two pages to see what I mean). The full-of-Woo CNN article is dated September 2003, more than a year after the initial reports. From this I conclude two things. (1) CNN's source for science reporting is Popular Mechanics. (2) They are slow readers. The DoD does fund (at a very low level) some rather fringy work under the guise of "Hey, if its right..." Sometimes that woo-woo stuff turns out to be not so woo-woo after all. Military heat rays? Real. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6297149.stm. Antigravity? So far, not real.

I wasn't replying to you, bascule.

You and the cited page are talking about different things. You are talking about angular velocity while the web page is talking about plain old vanilla velocity. The two are related via [math]\vec v = \vec{\omega}\times \vec r[/math]. Ignoring things like Earth tides, the Earth as a whole is rotating as one. The Earth's angular velocity is one rotation per sidereal day = 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds1. The article was talking about speed, not angular rate. A person standing on the equator is 6,378.137 kilometers from the Earth's rotation axis, and thus is moving at [math]6378.137\,\text{km}*2\pi/86164.0905\,\text{sec} = 465.101\,\text{m}/\text{s}[/math]. The distance between a person standing at the North Pole and the Earth's rotation axis is zero, so this person's linear velocity is zero. 1 Why not one rotation per 24 hours? The Earth moves in its orbit during that 24 hour period, so the Earth needs to complete a bit more than one full rotation to make the Sun appear to be in the same place from the perspective of a person standing on the Earth.

Solid proof of confirmation bias will have to wait until the various climate centers release their data, including raw data and methodologies. Until then, there is plenty of proof of cherry-picking. Briffa's tree ring data are just one such example. Others: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/stern’s-cherry-picking-on-disasters-and-climate-change-3981 Mann's hurricane study, which starts with "Atlantic tropical cyclone activity, as measured by annual storm counts, reached anomalous levels over the past decade". This ignores research by Christopher W. Landsea (National Hurricane Center, not ExxonMobil) et al, that shows that tropical cyclone activity is not anomalously high. In fact, the recent (since 1900) hurricane frequency and the long-term record inferred by Mann are statistically indistinguishable in the sense that there is no way to reject the null hypothesis at any reasonable level of confidence. Groupthink? Easy. Those emails. Here is but one: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=419&filename=1089318616.txt They are saving the world. What could be a better motivation? NVGGgncVq-4 That climate science being used as a political tool? DWEzLoUgXw0 Finally, iNow talked about going Cheney on the climate. The penultimate paragraph from that article: If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent. I realize Friedman is playing devil's advocate here. However, it shows his hand. So does this devil's advocate statement by Tim Wirth (United Nations Foundation president, former senator from Colorado): We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. There are plenty of reasons to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. (As an aside, coal is for the most part a native product.). Would going Cheney on the climate truly accomplish that end, or would it just trade one foreign demon for another? Most of the reserves for the rare earths, precious metals, and lithium needed for solar cells, wind turbines, and batteries are in foreign countries, and countries that are not necessarily our friends.

That's only a problem on the timescale of millions of years. On timescales of human concern, loss of atmosphere (what atmosphere?) isn't a huge problem. That parenthetical remark (what atmosphere?) represents a a *huge* problem. How exactly are you going to generate a planet-engulfing breathable atmosphere on Mars? That is problem #1. There's an even more basic problem, call it problem #0: What about life on Mars? This is an open question right now, one that has taken on bigger proportions since the discovery of trace amounts of methane and formaldehyde in the Martian atmosphere. Life on Mars may well put the kibosh on any grandiose terraforming plans. The Prime Directive and all that. There's an even more basic problem, call this problem #-1: By the time we get to the stage we can even think of colonizing we will have to solved the basic problem of escaping a gravity well. WTF are we doing diving back into another one? Two pieces of essential reading: Astrobiology Magazine's Great Terraforming Debate, http://www.astrobio.net/debates/6/terraforming-debate Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. Yes, it's science fiction. This is a science fiction question, and the Mars Trilogy was/is one of the best, particularly if your political leanings are well left of center. Addendum: Neither of the above addresses problem # -1. You'll have to address that on your own.

Where? In response to various people asking what I "believed," I did note that "beliefs" are the domain of religion, not science. I have not called global warming a religion. I have in fact admitted multiple times that our CO2 output almost certainly affects the climate. First off, there are plenty of natural scientists, including climatologists, who disagree with various aspects of the IPCC reports. Some are listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming. Secondly, a conspiracy is not needed. Amongst the scientists, all that is needed is groupthink and confirmation bias. As far as politicians go, politicians of all ilk pounce on scientific statements that happen to comport with their goals. The solution to global warming is a vastly increased involvement of the government in the economy, industry, technology, and the very way we live. Needless to say, this is not in line with a libertarian or conservative point of view. It is in line with a left of center point of view. Note very well: Nothing here about a silly global communist conspiracy. That is laughable. These kinds of convenient marriages between politics and science happen all too often. Look at how monetarism framed the US government's economical thinking for the last 30 years. Groupthink and confirmation bias were almost certainly at part to blame for the 2007 economic collapse. (Regulations?!? We don't need no stinkin' regulations!)

Post #6.

Quick response (don't have time for a long one): Joni Mitchell said it best: "They paved paradise and up a parking lot". We have changed the face of the planet. These land use changes have had a big impact on the climate, biodiversity/habitat loss, increased flooding, ...

I'm more active at Physics Forums than I am here. For one thing, the community is larger there, and that makes the knowledge base a bit broader and considerably deeper, particularly in the realms of physics and engineering. The engineering section here has a paltry 741 threads, and very few of those have anything to do with engineering. For another, crackpots aren't tolerated at PF, period. A goodly fraction of the threads in the physics sections at Science Forums would never see the light of day at Physics Forums. There is a lot more discussion of merit over there than there is here (in the realm of physics, that is).

That is exactly what I meant in post #50, emphasis mine Look at it this way. We have a limited amounted of resources we can spend on fixing various problems. We have caused problems, some big, some not so big. The cost of remediation is not necessarily related to the magnitude of the problem. We have collectively picked most of the low hanging fruit since the start of the modern environmental movement nearly 50 years old. What's left isn't so easily solved. We need to be smart about where we apply our limited resources. I do not see global warming as being anywhere close to the biggest man-made environmental problem. Yet the proposed solution, an unattainable 80% reduction in our CO2 output in would put all other environmental mitigations at risk. We don't have an infinite amount of resources. We can't have it all; we have to pick and choose.

These "cars that run on water" are a re-occurring scam, and they are just that -- a scam. Think of it this way. The water has to be split into its constituent parts, oxygen and hydrogen. Whether this is done by electrolysis, electromagnetic radiation, or whatever process you can think of, if it runs at 100% efficiency it will take 286 kJ of energy to split one mole of water into its constituent part. Burn the resulting hydrogen with oxygen and you will get 286 kJ of energy back. Any claims of excess energy violates the first law of thermodynamics. In short, the first law of thermodynamics says that the best you can do is break even. The second law of thermodynamics is a much harsher mistress: You can't break even. Onward, then. Regarding That was not meant to be a personal attack. I'm sorry that I gave that impression. That environmentalists have occasionally gone all-out to stop wind farms because they kill birds and are ugly is a fact. This however, is not the main point against wind power. It is expensive. Were it not for the massive subsidies given to wind farms and the like, they simple could not be competitive with other sources of energy. British Parliament, The Economics of Renewable Energy - Economic Affairs Committee, Chapter 7: Recommendations and Conclusions, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/195/19510.htm 233. The cost of electricity from onshore wind farms at good locations would only be comparable with that from fossil fuel generators when the prices of oil, gas and coal are very high or allowance is made for the price imposed for carbon emissions permits (effectively a tax). It is more expensive than nuclear generated power—base cost 7 pence per kWh, as opposed to around 4 pence per kWh for the other technologies. Offshore wind, biomass, wave and tidal power are even more expensive. And these estimates exclude the additional costs of integrating more renewable generation into Britain's electricity grid (paragraph 74). 234. Future developments depend upon many variable factors But it seems clear that the base costs of generation of electricity from onshore wind are likely to remain considerably higher than those of fossil or nuclear generation and that costs of generation of marine or solar renewable electricity are higher still (paragraph 85). We hope that the Energy Technologies Institute's work will yield technological advance and lower costs. The Government should consider, perhaps in collaboration with others, offering a substantial annual prize for the best technological contribution to renewable energy development (paragraph 93). 235. Although their declared purpose is to improve the environment, it is clear that renewable energy installations can also have adverse environmental impacts which the Government should bear in mind as it weighs the benefits and costs of expansion of renewable generation (paragraph 96). Wind Energy - The Case of Denmark, https://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf The exported wind power, paid for by Danish householders, brings material benefits in the form of cheap electricity and delayed investment in new generation equipment for consumers in Sweden and Norway but nothing for Danish consumers. Taxes and charges on electricity for Danish household consumers make their electricity by far the most expensive in the European Union (EU). The total probable value of exported subsidies between 2001 and 2008 was DKK 6.8 billion (€916 million) during this period. A similar amount was probably exported prior to 2012 and larger quantities will be exported following the commissioning of 800 MW of new offshore wind capacity in 2013. More on this study, http://www.masterresource.org/2009/09/iers-danish-wind-study-response-to-critics/ Wind is heavily subsidized; Wind power is an inefficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. (The Danish wind study, for example, found that it costs on average $124 per ton of carbon dioxide reduced); and Subsidizing wind power is a very inefficient way to create jobs. (The Danish wind study found that, optimistically, “the subsidy per job created is 600,000-900,000 DKK per year ($90,000 – $140,000 USD). This subsidy constitutes around 175-250% of the average pay per worker in the Danish manufacturing industry.”) I can find plenty more; it's not hard. Wind power is far from a panacea. See above. What happens when your solar roof gets hit by a hailstorm? When they fail? (They're exposed to sunlight, which has rather deleterious effects on lifespan.) Those solar cells are laden with nasty chemicals. They need to be disposed of as hazardous waste. Do you how incredibly nasty the manufacturing process is? Think of it this way: The manufacturing is very similar to that used to make your computer, only those solar cells many times bigger than your computer. Your computer, and your solar cells require rare earths. Because they are rare, mountains need to be torn down to provide the materials for your precious solar cells. For example, see http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html. That figure is off by a factor of 5-10, and maybe more. Turkey Point, two new reactors, 10-12 years from inception to first power, at a cost of $24 billion dollars. http://scitizen.com/stories/Future-Energies/2008/11/How-Much-Will-New-Nuclear-Power-Plants-Cost/ South Texas Nuclear Generating Station, two new reactors, 8 years from inception to first power, at a cost of $17 billion dollars. http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Nuclear_cost_estimate_rises.html The people who live in those houses need jobs to pay their mortgages. To do that, the need to work somewhere, and those businesses use a lot of power. That is a pipe dream. That money is probably mighty tempting to a politician. However, they know that to touch it for these purposes would be political suicide.

Ths is a pipe dream. From the debate in the article you cited: 'The Director of MIT's Sloan Automotive Lab told Congress this month, "the total time to noticeable impact" for hydrogen fuel cell cars "is likely to be more than 50 years."' Also see Hydrogen Cars Won't Make a Difference for 40 Years (Wired News), Honda's striking, amazing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle may be the most expensive, advanced and impractical car ever built. (LA Times), to name a few. This isn't even a pipe dream. It's a nightmare. Where does the hydrogen come from? Current answer: Electrolysis, which means power most likely from coal-powered plants, burnt inefficiently, and electrolyzed even less inefficiently. Gasoline is a *lot* cleaner than this. Future answer: We are not going to get rid of coal powered plants any time soon. Sorry. Next. That electricity comes from somewhere, and right now that somewhere is coal-fired electric power plants. Those who buy electric cars because they think they are saving the environment are fooling themselves. The power losses in the generation, transportation, and battery storage of the electricity magnify the problem. Compared to hydrogen, there is some hope with this technology -- but only if power generation can be made significantly cleaner than it currently is. Then there is the problem with batteries. Those things are hazardous waste, big time. If CO2 emission is not the big scary climate destroyer some think it is, we are solving a non-problem here but creating a very real one. The Patent Office out-and-out rejects any claims to an over-unity machine. A car that runs on water is such a machine. (The original idea is not. It also is not useful. The inventor, John Kanzius, admitted that more energy goes into electrolyzing the water than comes out in combustion.) Sorry, there are two laws of physics at play here. Oh, that's right. How could I possibly have forgotten that Congress can rewrite the laws of physics? Better get your environmentalist buddies to stop blocking them, then. They kill birds. They also eat money. Power from windmills cost considerably more than that from nuclear plants, which in turn costs more than power using existing hydrocarbon technologies. They also don't work when the wind doesn't blow, and when peak usage times come (which happens five days a week), we don't yet know how to conjure up a convenient wind to generate the extra power. Maybe, but once again, this is completely unproven technology at the scope needed to replace our existing power plant base. And like batteries, these are a pile of toxic waste. Nuclear power plants take five or so years to build -- once construction starts. It takes more years to plan them and get past all the regulatory hurdles. Then there is the cost. These things are flipping expensive. France and Japan have built up a significant nuclear power generation capability, but they did this over decades. Where is the money going to come from to build up the nuclear power capabilities outside of these two countries? The US is already deeply in debt. The waste problem is a big problem. France hasn't solved it. We thought we had solved it, but that plan was nixed. Finally, there are the NIMBYs. Environmentalists, unless they have had a change of heart, hate nuclear power. The reason that Yucca Mountain was put on mothballs is because the Senate Majority Leader is on of the biggest NIMBYs of them all. The NIMBYs might have good cause. Anthropogenic global warming might not be as big a problem as some think, and there is no argument about which of anthropogenic CO2 versus nuclear waste sticks around in the environment longer. Is switching over to a power generation capability really the right thing to do? Bottom line: The only way we are going to cut our CO2 output by 80% in a 10-15 year time span is to give up 80% of our power consumption. I guarantee that if such a scheme is passed, Republicans (and Republicans of the worst sort) will be put back in office lickety-split. We care about the environment, but not if that means reverting to a standard of living from a over a century ago.

One more time, I am not disputing that we are dumping lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, nor that it is building up in the atmosphere because of us. Read posts 46 and 97, for example. Why are you harping on this? For Fs sake! Enough with the broken record on this stupid video! Yes, idiots have jumped on the emails. Showing their idiotic pronouncements does not serve your cause. This is poisoning the well. I have already said I don't give a crap what the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News have to say about this topic. Here is one of climate science's biggest fans on the matter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response

Three possibilities come to mind: 1. Did you do what was asked, or did your just paste in the 12 to 16 digit number from your calculator? 2. What were those two angles again? One of these two (25 and 35 degrees) is inconsistent with the problem as stated. 3. And are you calculating cot(25 degrees) or cot(25 radians)?

Did you read my posts? I am not disputing that we have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is the climatological significance of that increase. With net zero feedback, the IPCC claims a forcing of 3.7 W/m2 and predicts a warming of 1ºC. To get the claimed figure 1.4 to 5.8 degree figure (or more), they had to posit significant positive feedbacks. Take away most of those positive feedbacks and there is no crisis. With a net negative feedback this becomes a non-problem. The claimed cure to this maybe problem is to reduce our CO2 by a whopping 80%. That is an extremely extraordinary claim, and as been stated many times, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I don't see the extraordinary proof. I used to be a luke warmer on global warming. I could ignore the wackos on the left because (a) they were well-balanced by wackos on the right, and (b) they're all wackos. I didn't see the science as solid as I would have liked, but I did see the projected problems as being credible. Not yet actionable, but credible. Those emails, along with some recent bad articles and reports that represented the top of the field (e.g., Mann's hurricane study, the initial release of the UN's Climate Change Science Compendium 2009), have made me a bit more skeptical. No, a lot more skeptical.

Read posts #46 and #97.