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Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

One thing I got out of the Maclean's article was the repeated reference to "group rights" and regionalism. Ignatieff is using/creating artificial divisions (since groups and regions are fairly arbitrary) to do the old Liberal "Divide and Conquer".

+1 for Malice
 
Hrm, a new study going back through 800,000 years of ice records....

.... Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms.

The in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2km-long core of frozen snow shows current greenhouse gas concentrations are unprecedented.

The East Antarctic core is the longest, deepest ice column yet extracted.

Project scientists say its contents indicate humans could be bringing about dangerous climate changes.

"My point would be that there's nothing in the ice core that gives us any cause for comfort," said Dr Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"There's nothing that suggests that the Earth will take care of the increase in carbon dioxide. The ice core suggests that the increase in carbon dioxide will definitely give us a climate change that will be dangerous," he told BBC News. ....

.... The picture is the same: carbon dioxide and temperature rise and fall in step.

"Ice cores reveal the Earth's natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range," explained Dr Wolff.....

And, like most of the other studies I posted, this has nothing to do with Mann et al (once again, a couple of faulty studies out of hundreds means little to nothing...sorry...)

So....precidence over 800,000 years of earths history enough, or is this still a natural phenomon that will just go away? If you want to wait, they're looking at some records that could go back 1.5 million years.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5314592.stm
 
One still has to buy the underlying assumption is that the Greenhouse effect exists; the argument is not whether concentrations of "Greenhouse Gasses" are increasing (although that is not a given, either), it is whether any "Greenhouse Effect" has been demonstrated in the models.

The propensity (in the "pro-Greenhouse" camp) to turn a blind eye to this logical trap is nothing new: if you theorize that warming is a function of the changes in the levels of certain gasses, you cannot use changes in those gasses to prove (iby way of proxy) that the warming exists.  It is a circular argument that (perhaps) seems to confirm the watming argument, but actually is meaningless.
 
couchcommander said:
...When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change...

Yes, that is my point: they start with the assumption of climate change (Hockey Stick), try to show covariation, and then claim that the covariation is proof of the original assumption.
 
le_coq_rapide,

There is no assumption about it.

It's effects were theorized more than 30 years ago, explored through hundreds of models, and confirmed by cooberating evidence.

This isn't "hey look, the earth warms evertime CO2 goes up"... (despite the fact that is a pretty good connection, unless you can demonstrate that raising temperatures causes C02 build up, enough to account for the increase?)... it was "Hey, I think C02 warms the planet, lets test this"..."hey, our models confirm this, with radiative forcings we can reasonably simulate the macroscale environment"..."hey look, ice samples over 800,000 years conform to this thinking, along with many many other observations, some of which couchcommander was nice enough to link to on page 6"...

The greenhouse effect has been thoroughly researched and validated. Even Mr.Sallows admits it (;)), he just questions human effects.

From three pages back (there is actually a list of about 19 related papers, you should read them):

CLIMATE CHANGE AND GREENHOUSE GASES

Infrared (IR) active gases, principally water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and ozone (O3), naturally present
in the Earth’s atmosphere, absorb thermal IR radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. The
atmosphere is warmed by this mechanism and, in turn, emits IR radiation, with a significant portion of this energy
acting to warm the surface and the lower atmosphere. As a consequence the average surface air temperature of the
Earth is about 30° C higher than it would be without atmospheric absorption and reradiation of IR energy
[Henderson-Sellers and Robinson , 1986; Kellogg , 1996; Peixoto and Oort , 1992].
This phenomenon is popularly known as the “greenhouse effect,” and the IR active gases responsible for the effect
are likewise referred to as “greenhouse gases.”...


...Of the several anthropogenic greenhouse gases, CO2 is the most important agent of potential future climate warming
because of its large current greenhouse forcing, its substantial projected future forcing [Houghton et al ., 1996], and
its long persistence in the atmosphere (see above).

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/pubs/BNL66903.pdf

 
couchcommander said:
It's effects were theorized more than 30 years ago, explored through hundreds of models, and confirmed by cooberating evidence.

Like the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice age....... ::)
 
a_majoor said:
Like the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice age....... ::)

I couldn't agree more! What a great point!

The fact that the models correctly simulate these apparently "anomalous" periods is a great indicator we are on to something.

Crowley, in Causes of Climate Change over the Past 1000 Years, makes note of the warming and cooling trends in the past millennium...

Despite the different number and types of data and different methods of estimating temperatures, comparison of the decadally smoothed variations in each reconstruction (Fig. 1) indicates good agreement (r = 0.73 for 11-point smoothed correlations over the preanthropogenic interval 1005-1850, with P < 0.01). Both records [and the Jones et al. ( 13)and Briffa ( 14) reconstructions] show the "Medieval Warm Period" in the interval is similar to 1000-1300, a transition interval from about 1300-1580, the 17th-century cold period, the 18th-century recovery, and a cold period in the early 19th century. Even many of the decadal-scale variations in the Medieval Warm Period are reproducible ( 12), and both reconstructions [and ( 13, 14)] indicate that peak Northern Hemisphere warmth during the Middle Ages was less than or at most comparable to the mid-20th-century warm period (is similar to 1935-1965)....

With this, he compares his model:

.... Combining all forcing (solar, volcanism, GHG, and tropospheric aerosols) results in some striking correspondences between the model and the data over the preanthropogenic [pre-1850] interval (Fig. 4)....

And he thus concludes:

One way to highlight the unusual nature of the late-20th-century warmth is to subtract all forcing other than CO2 (solar, volcanism, and tropospheric aerosols) and examine the late-20th-century residuals within the context of the previous 1000 years (Fig. 6). There is an unprecedented residual warming in the late 20th century that matches the warming predicted by GHG forcing. Projection of the "Business As Usual" (BAU) scenario into the next century using the same model sensitivity of 2.0 Celsius indicates that, when placed in the perspective of the past 1000 years, the warming will reach truly extraordinary levels (Fig. 6). The temperature estimates for 2100 also exceed the most comprehensive estimates ( 50) of global temperature change during the last interglacial (is similar to 120,000 to 130,000 years ago)--the warmest interval in the past 400,000 years.

So yea, as I said, excellent point a_majoor.

The fact that previous variations can be accounted for without anthropogenic forcings, but the current trend can ONLY be modelled if human influence is taken into account is really a great demonstration of how natural factors do not account for the present warming.

;)

(yes, I know that's not what you were going for, but I couldn't resist).
 
Signs of a drastically changing climate, once again, nothing to do with Mann, et al...

Scientist: Planet going back to dinosaur era

NORWICH, England (Reuters) -- Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday.

Not only will carbon dioxide levels be at the highest levels for 24 million years, but global average temperatures will be higher than for up to 10 million years, said Chris Thomas of the University of York...

...Thomas said scientific observations had already found that -- as predicted by the climate models -- 80 percent of species had already begun moving their traditional territorial ranges in response to the changing climatic conditions.....

...Not only had the animals, birds and insects started to react, but there was evidence vegetation was also on the move.

For example, climate-triggered fungal pathogen outbreaks had already led to the extinction of more than one percent of the planet's amphibian species, Thomas said.

Not only would some species simply find no suitable space to live anymore, but there would be confrontations with invasive species being forced to move their territory. This would produce not just wipe-outs but species' mixtures never seen before.

And the changes would all happen at a faster rate than ever before in evolution....

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/09/07/climate.change.reut/index.html



 
So the plants and animals are on the move are they?

And we're the intelligent ones?  ;D

"......They flock into the cities; love to receive and communicate knowledge; to show their wit or their breeding; their taste in conversation or living, in clothes or furniture. Curiousity allures the wise; vanity the foolish; and pleasure both....." David Hume, 'Of Refinement of the Arts' 1758.

And there you have the rationale for the city. Reason enough to keep all your eggs in one basket, and on low ground for that matter?  Or is it time to think about heading for higher ground and dispersing?  ;)

Of course you could head over to Holland and get some hydraulic engineering skills under your belt.  Could be a good market for them.
 
And here is absolute proof that human agency is involved:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4266474.stm

Mars 'more active than suspected'

New images of Mars suggest the Red Planet's surface is more active than previously thought, the US space agency (Nasa) reports.
Photographs from Nasa's orbiting spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor show recently formed craters and gullies.

The agency's scientists also say that deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the planet's south pole have shrunk for three summers in a row.

They say this is evidence to suggest climate change is in progress.


Mars rumble

The new gullies appear in an April 2005 image of a sand-dune slope. A previous shot from July 2002 had no trace of them.

The team operating the Mars Orbiter Camera on MGS has found many sites on the Red Planet with fresh-looking gullies, and checked back at more than 100 gullied sites for possible changes between imaging dates, but this is the first such find.

Such gullies might have formed when frozen carbon dioxide, trapped by windblown sand during winter, vaporised rapidly in spring, releasing gas that made the sand flow as a gully-carving fluid, the team speculate.

"To see new gullies and other changes in Mars' surface features on a time span of a few years presents us with a more active, dynamic planet than many suspected," said Nasa's Michael Meyer, Nasa's Mars Exploration Program chief scientist.

Bright future

The newly released images also show boulder tracks at another site, which were not there two years ago.

Michael Malin, the principal investigator on the Mars Orbiter Camera, said it was possible strong winds or even some kind of seismic activity had caused them to roll to their new positions.

But some changes may be happening slower than expected, the scientists report.

Studies suggested new impact craters might appear at only about one-fifth the pace assumed previously, Dr Malin said. This had important implications, he added, because crater counts were used to estimate the ages of Martian surfaces.

The Mars Global Surveyor has been orbiting the planet since 1997; Nasa expects it to carry on doing so for several years to come.

"Our prime mission ended in early 2001, but many of the most important findings have come since then, and even bigger ones might lie ahead," said Tom Thorpe, project manager for Mars Global Surveyor.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4266474.stm

Published: 2005/09/21 01:38:32 GMT

Got to hand it to the big oil companies and the evil Republicans, they don't own the world, they own the Universe!  ;)
 
DAMN! I always new something was up with those "mars missions"... I mean, how did NASA get all that fuel huh??? Should have figured. Next, you'll see, they'll be sending someone OVER THERE to do their dirty work... then we'll know...;)

However, the climate does change on it's own, and CO2 levels go up and down and up and down, all natural like.

The issue is the entire human influence since 1850 pushing CO2 levels "well outside their natural ranges" leading to environmental changes that would happen "at a faster rate than ever before in evolution"...
 
All those camp fires "forced" the climate.....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1867936,00.html

Climate change caused civilisation, scientist says

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Friday September 8, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Severe climate change was the main driver behind the birth of civilisation, a scientist said yesterday.
An increase in harsh, arid conditions across the globe around 5,000 years ago forced people to start living in stable communities around remaining water sources. The major shift in climate, caused by natural fluctuations in the Earth's orbit around the sun, weakened the monsoon systems in the northern hemisphere, where humans had previously enjoyed a fruitful hunter-gatherer existence.

"We can certainly say that the earliest civilisations arose on the backdrop of increasing aridity, which are driven by natural, global-scale changes in climate," said Nick Brooks of the University of East Anglia. "The cultural transitions track changes in environmental conditions quite closely."

Speaking at the British Association festival of science in Norwich, Dr Brooks said his research turned traditional ideas of how the world's first civilisations - such as those in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley region and South America - on their head.

Many anthropologists think that civilisation was spread gradually among populations after it began in some part of the world. "A current popular theory is that the world's first civilisation developed because it could; the environment was relatively benign," said Dr Brooks. "This is based on the argument of the last 10,000 years being climatically very stable and quite conducive to flourishing of agriculture and large, urban civilisations."

But Dr Brooks argued that civilisation arose instead from environmental catastrophes. His work is focused on the Sahara region, where he says the cultural history shows that, around 5-10,000 years ago, the humid areas there abruptly changed into the Sahara desert we see today.

The Garamantian tribe, which lived in what is now south-west Libya more than 3,000 years ago, emerged when the land there dried out. "After this period, we see the first stone structures, the beginnings of urbanisation, agriculture and the development of novel technologies to access ground water, such as wells," said Dr Brooks.

"As the desert dries out, we find the emergence of architecture, the development of strange cattle cults, people migrating to the final refuges as the place dries up, forcing a more organised approach to land use," said Dr Brooks. "What we see here is the story of people responding to the environmental change with the drying up of the region. That leads to the emergence of the Garamantian state."

He added that the story was similar in the other cradles of civilisation around the world. "We find similar evidence for increasing aridity ... and the emergence of urban centres where people have been forced to congregate by a drying environment."

Dr Brooks said that the emergence of society was not a universally positive development. For a lot of people, life got harder. "We have increases in social inequality, hierarchy, organised violence and warfare," he said. "People are labouring in the fields as agriculturalists not only for themselves but also for non food producers."

There was even a decrease in life expectancy in some areas: an ancient Egyptian or Roman had a shorter life than the average hunter-gatherers that preceded those societies, for example.

Without the driving force of climate change, human societies might have evolved far more slowly, said Dr Brooks. "Maybe we would have remained village farmers and herders, hunter-gatherers and so on," he said. "Perhaps you'd have a more disparate, less population-dense kind of civilisation."
 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060912.wxcowent12/BNStory/National/home's

Margaret Wente - Today's Globe and Mail

...All the evidence says no. In fact, the notion that we can meaningfully alter the course of climate change any time soon is a piece of stupefying hubris. You might as well expect King Canute to turn back the tides...

What might adaptation look like? Better flood defences and tougher rules about building on flood plains, for example. (Watch out, New Orleans.) Developing more drought-resistant crops and trees that will thrive in hotter weather, especially for the poorer nations of the world. If the polar bears (which aren't really drowning) are ingenious enough to adapt to climate change -- as they have done several times in the past few hundred thousand years -- maybe we are too.

Ms. Cairncross has one other case to make. She argues that we desperately need to improve scientific literacy among the public, so that citizens will have a better understanding of environmental issues. I'll second that. Maybe we can include the politicians too.

Hydraulic Engineering and lake front property north of 60.  ;D



 
Some more commentary by Jerry Pournell over at Chaos Manor. Using light coloured roofing and paving material (to reflect solar energy ratehr than absorbing it) is probably the most useful and effective way of effecting local climate changes (and of course a large "cool spot" over North America could make for interesting changes world wide); but of course producing light coloured shingles, paint and paving materials would involve using energy and releasing CO2....... ::)

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view431.html#Thursday

Russell Seitz called yesterday to tell me that Greenlanders brought in the first barley harvest in over 600 years. That's global warming.

Viking settlements in Greenland endured if not exactly thrived between approximately 1000 AD and 1300 AD. From 1330 to 1410 they dwindled and died. While there are more detailed accounts and explanations, the simple fact is that before 1325 it was warm enough to support the colonies, and after 1330 it got cold and they died.

Note that the west coast of Greenland is not part of the Gulf Stream climate system. It is not closely coupled with Northern Europe, which also enjoyed a Medieval Warming from somewhere before 800 AD until 1330 when the Little Ice Age began. Kyoto addicts have dismissed that warming period as weather, not climate, a local phenomenon and not an indication that the globe was warmer in historical times.

The "hockey stick" theory is that global temperatures have been flat until recently and how are headed higher and higher in a dramatic manner. The long period of flat temperatures is inferred from ice cores, lake sediments, tree rings, and other such data. The algorithms for converting these data into temperatures is the critical item, and there is considerable controversy over its validity. The hockey stick theorists long resisted publication of their algorithm.

In computer science, Garbage In -- Garbage Out is an axiom; but of course if I can manipulate the algorithms in a secret fashion, I can get any output from any input.

The bottom line of all this seems clear enough: there is global warming. As Arrhenius told us about the turn of the Century, increased levels of CO2 can contribute to that warming, and there is no reason to suppose that is not true. The warming trend began before CO2 levels rose enough to cause it; the warming trend began early in the 19th Century as the Little Ice Age ended.

How much CO2 contributes to the present warming trend is unknown. It did not contribute to the Medieval Warming. There is considerable evidence that during the Medieval Warm period the Earth's temperature was higher than it is at present.

We survived the Medieval Warm, as we survived the Little Ice Age. Civilizations thrived during the Medieval Warming Period.

It would be useful to know just what is happening, and whether we can do anything about it. One thing we could do is paint all our roofs white. For some reason there is no national panic about dark colored roofs.
 
More commentary:

http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/11408/an-inconvenient-truth-sos-from-al-gore.html
 
From Matt Drudge, today.....

GORE: CIGARETTE SMOKING 'SIGNIFICANT' CONTRIBUTOR TO GLOBAL WARMING
Fri Sep 29 2006 09:04:05 ET

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a "full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth."

Gore showed computer-generated projections of ocean water rushing in to submerge the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, parts of China, India and other nations, should ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland melt and slip into the sea.

"The planet itself will do nicely, thank you very much what is at risk is human civilization," Gore said. After a series of Q& A with the audience, which had little to do with global warming and more about his political future, Annan bid "adios" to Gore.

Then, Gore had his staff opened a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his new book, "An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It," $19.95, to the U.N. diplomats.
 
It may be, I dunno.

But considering this quote is from one source, newsmax, which also proudly sells bill O'Reilly products, I'm going to wait until someone officially comments on what was said.

But it is amazing how many thousands of times this has already been quoted as fact in the conservative blogosphere, despite the fact that Newsmax doesn't even have a copy of the full address yet.

But, since we're back to citing blogs, here's one that reviews a lot of what has been said. See the previous pages for studies backing up many of the claims.


I don't have the time or energy to refute every piece of disinformation, but here are some highlights, so you'll know what to look for the next time you discuss the subject with a conservative skeptic:

The "Hockey Stick"
The so-called hockey stick study, by a team of researchers led by Michael Mann of the University of Virginia, showed a recent spike in global temperatures. The study has become a conservative bete noire, a white whale that righties have pursued all the way up to congressional hearings. According to Inhofe and other skeptics, the congressional investigation discovered that the hockey stick is worthless and thus that the entire edifice of climate science has fallen. The congressional investigation did not, in fact, find that. They found small errors in Mann's statistical methods, but the main finding was that the basic results of the study -- the recent spike in global temperature -- are basically sound and have since been confirmed by numerous other studies using a variety of methods. The hockey stick is a conservative obsession, but it's ultimately a sideshow. For more, see RealClimate here and here.

The 60 Canadian scientists
Inhofe is not alone in making much of the fact that 60 Canadian scientists wrote a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to reject the global warming consensus. The letter was a vapid collection of myths; among those 60 scientists were long-time skeptics, known liars, and at least one guy who was tricked into signing. A few weeks later, 90 scientists -- who unlike the original 60 were Canadian and active in climate research -- wrote a letter of their own, denouncing the first. The moral: in a world with tens of thousands of PhDs, you can find at least 60 to sign anything.

Computer models aren't real science
Yes they are. Furthermore, there's plenty of empirical field data supporting the basic conclusions of climate science. More here from RealClimate (written by, you know, real scientists).

Peiser refuted Oreskes; there is no consensus
Back in 2004, Naomi Oreskes did a survey of peer-reviewed climate science and discovered that there was not a single piece questioning the basic climate change consensus. This confirmed what everyone knew already, which is that the consensus is broad, deep, and stronger every day, despite the absurdly high profile of a few media-beloved skeptics. Later, social scientist Benny Peiser claimed to have refuted Oreskes' results by altering her search terms. Peiser's work has since been completely discredited, and he has admitted to major errors. But that doesn't stop this zombie claim from marching on in right-wing circles (as though Oreskes paper were the sole evidence of consensus).

Kyoto would cost too much and wouldn't work
Estimates of the cost of complying with Kyoto vary wildly. But there's reason to believe it would be considerably less cataclysmic than Inhofe's crowd claims. In an influential piece in the Washington Post, U. Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein claims it would cost roughly as much as the Iraq War. Gregg Easterbrook argues that virtually every attempt to control pollution has been met with predictions of economic doom from all the same people, and all have ended up much cheaper and easier than anticipated. As for the fact that Kyoto doesn't do enough ... isn't the logical conclusion that we should do more?

Scientists used to predict a "coming ice age"
In the 70s, they were predicting an ice age -- now they're predicting warming! Those scientists and their kooky hype. Only, that never happened. A few media reports hyped the possible ice age, but scientists never did. Climate science has been developing, as science is wont to do. Early on, there was some question about which "forcings" would be dominant, the ones that cool us off (e.g., pollution blocking sunlight) or the ones that warm us. Because scientists, unlike Senators, cannot find all the information they need in their own rear ends, it took a while to settle the issue. But now it's settled -- the warming forcings have it, by a mile.

And, as a bonus, here are a few rhetorical tricks (as opposed to factual errors) to [try if you are a "skeptic"]:

Use the words alarmism, hysteria, and hype at least once a sentence, more if possible.

Instead of attributing claims about climate science to scientists -- the ones who originally made them -- attribute them to "the media" or "Al Gore" (this one's especially helpful when bashing An Inconvenient Truth, which Inhofe does at self-parodic length). After all, saying that the majority of scientists are flat wrong kinda makes you sound ... crazy. But everybody loves bashing Al Gore and the media!
Equate political involvement with financial involvement. Climate skeptics, almost to a man, receive funding from fossil fuel industries. But scientists concerned about global warming, like the legendary James Hansen, support political candidates that promise to do something about it. Bias here, bias there, same thing, right?
 
CC:

http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/sustain/report/histry/histry.htm

When would you prefer we stopped global warming?

18,000 years ago when you could coast along the sea ice from Newfoundland to Bristol? 
12,000 years ago when Calgary and Toronto were under water and Montreal and Vancouver were under the ice?
9,500 years ago when the same conditions generally applied in those towns, although Montreal was now under water and the Bering Sea had been created
8,500 years ago when the prairies and the St Lawrence lowlands were free and clear but there were still glaciers in the Fraser Valley, Hudson's Bay was under 2 km of Ice and there was one great fresh water water way from Great Bear Lake to Lake Ontario along the edge of the ice.
7,000 years ago, perhaps when there was still 1.5 km over Northern Quebec
or perhaps 5,000 years ago when the Sahara finally dried out and lost its lakes, alpine glaciers and foothills, grazing economy?

Or perhaps you would prefer the notion that for good or ill, left to her own devices, Mother Nature (seeing as how Gaia is more acceptable than God these days) she would already have us heading into another Ice Age?

The problem that I have with too many of those involved in the debate is that they are ready to chastise those nasty religious fundamentalists for their peculiar views on evolution and yet they are willing to assert a static world when it comes to climate.

The corollary to evolution is change.  Full stop.  ;D

People don't want to accept that randomness is.  That is too frightening.  Almost as frightening, perhaps moreso, are uncontrollable events.  For the modern rationalist that can't bring themselves to believe in God - good, bad or indifferent - it then becomes easier to believe that somebody or something must be to blame - and if only we can find the right virgin to sacrifice then all will be right with the world.

You may be partly right.  We may actually be getting to the point where we do know enough about our environment to know what causes problems.  We may even have the ability to control our environment and effect stasis.  But that would require man-made intervention and result in the ultimate unnatural environment.

PS OT - this is Jack Layton's problem with Afghanistan.  He can't bring himself to believe that there is nobody in charge in the tribal areas.  Ultimately those anarchical tribal areas stretch from the foothills of Pakistan to the Red Sea, across the Suez Canal to the Atlas Moutains and the Atlantic Ocean.  The great joke of history may be that the Ottomans lasted as long as they did by convincing the Europeans that they were actually in control.

PPS - could somebody contact me and instruct me how to post images into the body of the text.  I can't seem to get the image function to work for me.

Cheers.
 
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