1veedo

It's a positive freedback system. If you look at yearly CO2 levels, they rise during the summer and fall during the winter. Every year of course it goes up a little higher and doesn't drop as low. CO2 does not cause the summers/winters, the sun does, but CO2 makes it even warmer then it would be. (and from what I understand, this makes the latter part of summer warmer then the beginning even if it's getting less sunlight???) It's a complex correlation. We all know that correlation does not imply causation. But what scientists have found out is that while CO2 causes the temperature to rise, higher temperatures also cause C02 levels to go up. The same thing that is true w/ our seasons is also true with ice ages. Orbital variations cause ice ages approximately every 25k,40k, and 100k years. Every 25, 40, and 100k years, you can see both CO2 and temperature rising/falling. There's a neat graph located here, http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig2-22.htm

There really is no best temperature for the Earth. If there were rainforests in the arctic, I'm sure we'd get along fine. It might actually be better. But the problem isn't that the earth is getting warmer. The problem is in the rate at which the earth is getting warmer. We (civilization) are suited to particular climates and so are other animals. Any sort of dramatic change has caused many extinctions in the past. A couple almost ended the human species entirely before civilization started. However, right now the earth is warming at a rate 10 times faster then it ever has in the past several million years. If you want to see what happens when the climate changes a full 10 times slower then it is today, read about what happened during the paleocene-eocene maximum. It was, to say the least, catastrophic. Many species, from land animals to deep sea fish, went extinct. The thing about the medieval warm period is that we know what caused it -- mostly orbit around the sun -- and we know what's causing global warming today -- greenhouse gases. Also, the medieval warm period only happened in the northern hemisphere during the summer months. It was also much cooler then today: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html

Culture shock anyone? Don't be so critical of other cultures, I'm sure if you were raised where they put milk in tea, you would find it hard to drink tea w/o it. Sociology 101. C'mon people.

Well according to President Bush, if we set a time table, we're going to embolden the enemy. http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=81562&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=%2Fshows%2Fthe_daily_show%2Fvideos%2Fheadlines%2Findex.jhtml%3FplayVideo%3D81562&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true

A lot of people dont seem to understand that the United States is a post-industrial economy. One defining characteristic of a post-industrial economy is a divide between the upper and lower class. That's just the way it is. The funny thing is, we dont know what comes after post industry. You go through pre, industrial, and post... but what's next? If you look at an industrial society, it has a large middle class. Very few poor and rich people. Even the rich people aren't as rich, compared to the middle class, as those in a post-industrial society. During the transitional periods the divide starts to become more apparent. I'm not an economist but maybe the rich just keep getting richer and the poor/middle class just keep getting poorer -- everyone just becomes, essentially, slaves to the upper class. Or maybe the economy eventually collapses back into preindustry

If you think that's bad, read Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. Note, this is not an anti-Republican book. Democrats are just as guilty in the past of doing things like this. It's something that happens all the time and lately the Republicans have been doing it.

There's about a 90% chance the Earth orbits the Sun.

The medieval warm period did bring Europe out of the dark ages but this has nothing to do with today. We can grow crops just fine.

There are a lot of news stories that talk about this one study. The basic thing is that casein blocks the catechins in tea. All or most health benefits from tea come from catechins and specifically egcg. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6241139.stm http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2007-01-09T002337Z_01_L08837814_RTRUKOC_0_US-TEA.xml&pageNumber=1&imageid=∩=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage1 Btw we're talking about green/white tea here (maybe black tea as well? They all come from the same leaf...).

Global warming will actually increase the planet's ability to produce more food. Several years ago economists were predicting by 2020 or 2030 we'd start having food shortages but the date has been pushed back to 2050 because of global warming.

Milk counters the positive health benefits of tea.

This isn't me trying to nitpick your post but the average worker in China makes a little less then $2 a day (I think it's like 1.98). That means for $400 you can pay their salary for more than 200 days.

That's a huge stereotype. Most people who go on welfare end up finding another job within six months. People on welfare are not lazy people who dont want to work. In fact, people on welfare actually want to find a job! Welfare serves a completely different purpose then minimum wage though.

Pangloss this is nothing new. It's always one thing or the other. When Bush was running, I think the first time, he brought up a bunch of irrelevant topics such as gay marriage, stem cell research, etc. It was a good strategy; got "stupid" (poor) republicans to vote for him, but in reality was completely irrelevant.

I agree that it's probably a bad thing but why do you think Iran or some other country would invade?

I actually see what he's saying. Public transportation works a lot better in places like Germany cause there's a larger population density. Around larger cities in the US, and here I may just be mistaken, we do actually have relatively good public transportation. Maybe it could be better but if you go to a place like New York, you can get around with out a car. I was talking about having mass public transportation like they do across Europe. In America I guess we have that train that goes across the East coast, but this is nothing compared to a train you could get on in Europe. If you want to catch it where I live, you need to be at the train station around 1 in the morning. With a larger population density, they might be able to afford running a second one around noon.

Yeah, I think you're talking about global dimming. The irony is that global dimming has actually caused scientists to make conservative estimates about the temperature. While you're saying "global shadowing" might slow down the effects of global warming, the opposite is actually true. Because we've cut back on aerosol emissions, temperatures might rise even more then what was previously thought. Before anyone suggests we reverse global warming by causing more global dimming, let me point out that this has already been suggested and has been found to impractical. It would be nice to let everyone use aerosol, and even create factories with the sole purpose of pumping this stuff out in the atmosphere, but it's bad for humans and there are other unwanted environmental effects.

This is about global dimming? ("shadowing"?) Not actually related to the existence of global warming?

This had nothing to do with Windows being a bad operating system. Callipygous turned it into one, and if you look, nobody else, besides Callipygous, is actually debating whether Windows is a good operating system. They're just cool flash movies. That's all. Calm down people.

More like poor personalities and immoralities.

The problem isn't with cars but with how we've laid out our country. I dont know what it is but English speaking countries have very poor public transportation: America, Britain, and Australia. Other countries have excellent public transportation that is used by the vast majority of people. I'm not sure what it's like in any other country, but I assume the reason is similar to what's happened in the US. Everyone lives outside of cities in suburbs. The suburbs are essentially the worst missallocation of resources on the history of this planet. Engineers have been saying for over forty years that we're simply not going to be able to continue to afford it. If you want a good investment plan, invest in city residential property. In twenty years, property value for the suburbs is going to drop dramatically and increase in the cities. If everyone lived closer to the city, public transportation would work a lot better. What a lot of people don't understand is that we chose to be dependent on foreign oil. Everyone talks about reducing dependency but the simple fact is that nobody actually wants to. What we really want to do is to continue living the way we are but magically find other sources of energy. It's not going to happen. We, as a nation, have a choice. Do we continue to live like we currently are, or do we reduce our dependence on foreign oil? The obvious answer is that we're going to continue to live the way we are now. The only reason gas taxes in the US are so low is because they have to be. If we had to pay $8 per gallon, our entire country would fall. In better countries, like Germany, they can afford to pay higher taxes because people dont drive like they do around here. Raising taxes in the US would be disastrous. If it were possible, the government would have already done it.

I like icon wars: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/icons.php

The Democratic position was always less troops. I don't know anything about this but I always thought more troops would be a good idea -- more troops now and we pull out sooner. The armor got fixed a while ago so that's why you dont hear about that anymore.

The person read some of Robert Cialdini's and/or other relevant books.