global warming, illustrated
 

I don't know anything about the guys you are citing, but I have read about (not read) countless studies by seemingly qualified and decorated scientists that refute this conclusion (or at least say there is no hard evidence to reach it).

I don't have any ideology driving my thoughts on this issue, but it seems to me that it has become highly politicized and therefore very hard to trust any source on the global warming topic. Which is why I tend to look at this in the big picture sense and ask questions like "If the oceans rise, will I have beach front property?"

global warming, illustrated
 

There is a big difference between concluding global warming COULD lead to more hurricanes and global warming DID result in more hurricanes in any given season. That is, there is a lot of variation from year to year based on random chance. Concluding that any particular year's variance is the result of warming, rather than chance, is what I am skeptical about.

Of course, this is qualified by not having read the study either.

global warming, illustrated
 

Oddly enough, creating this polarization and uncertainty is something conservatives try to do when science generates inconvenient results:

• A manager at J.C. Penney who attended graduate school at night, Reynolds was plucked from obscurity by William F. Buckley in the 1960s after writing a few pieces for The National Review. (He's still "a couple of classes" short of his masters degree in economics.) He later went to the conservative Hudson Institute and from there made his way to the Cato Institute, where he is now a senior fellow. From this perch, and as a syndicated columnist, Reynolds offers up conventional supply-side economic views; but his specialty is denying that income inequality has grown. He has been at this task for almost two decades, and, as the economic consensus that inequality is increasing has grown stronger and stronger, so, too, has his importance to the right.
  
  Reynolds's crucial role within the conservative movement was on full display at a packed-house Cato forum last week in which he defended a paper--titled "Has U.S. Income Inequality Really Increased?"--he published earlier this month and summarized in a much-discussed Wall Street Journal op-ed. Reynolds was introduced by Chris Edwards, the director of tax policy studies at Cato, who began by noting that it is a matter of opinion whether income inequality matters at all. (In his opinion, it doesn't.) Nonetheless, he suggested, "Economists and reporters need to be extremely careful in looking at trends in income statistics over time. All sources of income data have various quirks and shortcomings." In other words, conservatives aren't sure whether inequality is rising, and they don't really care if it is. Their primary concern is that newspapers treat the question as a matter of dispute rather than a settled fact.
  
  If this sounds like the conservative stance on global warming or evolution, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Like those two issues, the existence of rising inequality is beyond dispute among academics who study it. This applies even to conservative economists with strong Republican pedigrees. (Harvard economist and former Reagan adviser Martin Feldstein: "There has no doubt been a relatively greater increase in higher incomes in recent years in the United States." Columbia's R. Glenn Hubbard, a Bush alum: "We have an issue with emerging inequality in the country.") And so the ambition of the conservative counterestablishment in these areas is not to overturn the scholarly consensus but simply to make the topic appear so complicated that laypeople and the press don't know what to believe.

global warming, illustrated
 

Sure, but if you look at longer run trends it's more reaasonable to draw conclusions. Obviously not all hurricans are caused by global warming. The relevant question is whether it increases their number.

global warming, illustrated
 

change "settled fact" to "dispute" and visa versa, and explain how this is different from your posting graphs when you have no idea what they represent.

global warming, illustrated
 

Oddly enough, as a reader of the Journal and the Natl Review, this assessment is correct. These conservatives have adopted a "we can argue anything" policy similar to the Left. It's amusing and kind of sad because Buckley knows better, and semantic gamesmanship is the weapon of lawyers, a regular target of Natl Review.

Cato should be honest and take a stance in keeping with it's mission statement - inequality is a fact of life in a capitalist system. That would end the debate. Engaging these social engineers in their push toward soft socialism is playing their game. Fuck them. Tell them what immigrants heard when they came over 100 years ago - "you get free air here - the rest is on you."

global warming, illustrated
 

actually, if temperatures are rising, the most important question is why. certainly temps have risen and fallen over time. if they are rising now, are we at fault?

if industry is at fault what can be done to correct? it seems to me that one major step- nuclear power- is opposed by environmentalist. The other thing that will help is developing hybrid cars. We are doing a ton of work on fuel cells (that is, my firm in patents) and if that develops like it should over the next 50 years, emissions from cars should drop quite a bit.

of course, if Ty's chart is accurate, temps are rising 10 degrees every 15 years. that means that 50 years from now it will never be below freezing in Michigan. Scary.

global warming, illustrated
 

I just wanted to see this again.

global warming, illustrated
 

any one of us can quote stuff, what really shows your power is when you delete posts.

global warming, illustrated
 

I may be wong about this, it's been a long time since I researched it, but I seem to recall reading that nuclear power created more heat energy than coal or fuel oil emissions from conventional power, and the massive requirements for using cooling reservoirs leads to more ambient heat absorption in the water table and soil cap than is absorbed through greenhouse gases.

On the other hand, the hydrogen cell technology is very much one of the most significant energy developments of our lifetime.

global warming, illustrated
 

First of all, since when did economics become a science? Second this politization of science is nothing new and happens on both sides of the aisle. I don't know why you want to make this a partisan issue.

Third, why is the rising gap, if it exists, necessarily bad?

global warming, illustrated
 

I read somewhere today that there is a renewed effort to tap into the heat/energy in the earth's core and that not only is this possible, but fairly efficient. Could be interesting, although I'm sure the environmentalists will find something they don't like about it, and it probably will cause more earthquakes or something like that.

Does Adder live in Wisconsin?
 

• Web Site Kicks Sand in Faces of GIs in Iraq Asking for Mats to Ease Hardship of Sleeping on Ground
  
  An American GI assigned to one of the harshest posts in Iraq had a simple request last week for a Wisconsin mattress company: send some floor mats to help ease the hardship of sleeping on the cold, bug-infested ground.
  
  What he got, instead, was a swift kick from the company's Web site, which not only refused the request but added insult to injury with the admonition, "If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq."
  
  Army Sgt. Jason Hess, stationed in Taji, Iraq, with the 1st Cavalry Division, said he emailed his request to Discount-mats.com because he and his fellow soldiers sleep on the cold ground, which contains sand mites, sand flies and other disease carriers.
  
  In his email, dated Jan. 16, 2007, he asked the Web-based company, registered to Faisal Khetani, an American Muslim of Pakistani descent:
  
  "Do you ship to APO (military) addresses? I'm in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq and we are trying to order some mats but we are looking for ships to APO first."
  
  On the same day, Hess received this reply:
  
  "SGT Hess,
  
  Request Denied We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.
  
  Bargain Suppliers
  Discount-Mats.com"
  
  Khetani on Monday told FOX News that the person responsible for the email reply had been fired. The Web site, meanwhile, has been temporarily taken down.
  
  Hess emailed that he has since found two mat suppliers willing to ship to an APO address in Iraq.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245718,00.html

Does Adder live in Wisconsin?
 

You know, I really don't appreciate your suggestion that I have no compassion for the troops that have chosen to serve our country.

global warming, illustrated
 

If you click through to the pdf, you'd see that the article starts with a brief survey. It is by one of the hurricane predictors and climatologists at the NOAA's fluid thermodynamics lab -- the guys who set up and run the models that are used in forecasting hurricanes. His survey of the literature shows more authority for the view that warming would intensify hurricanes, but he is careful to note the issues with the conclusion and highlight where the doubt is cast.

Who have you been reading on this, and where? I ask, because you indicated you thought the idea of intensifying hurricanes was pop science, and this guy doesn't strike me as pop science, nor do the studies he cites.