Nad R wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:

It's an issue not handled in the currect discussion. While the fact of
global warming completely real it demonstrates that our current century
is not the warmest of recent times. It demonstrates that the records
cited do not go back as far as climate records in general. It also

If there are no temperature records of the past, how do yo know that our
century is not the warmest century in "human" history?

There are types of records other than direct temperature measurements.
Grazing cattle in the Greenland colony is one such measurement. We
still can not graze cattle on Greenland therefore the claim that this is
the warmest century in the last ten is a weak assertion.

The primary issue is the social change triggered by climate
change and what to do about it ... A point that Nad R hasn't gotten.

That I object to the socialists claiming the topic as theirs and then
proceeding to push their agenda based on that claim. I don't buy that
the socialist approach is the right way to go. It's not like that
approach worked well in the Soviet Union. Global warming is real quite
independent of human causation. What to do about it and how to go about
it matters. For example, not trying again that which failed in the
Soviet Union matters. I do not think that taking the Soviet approach is
the way to go. That's not about whether global warming is human caused
or not. That's about how to react to global warming irrespective of
causation. I think this is my main disagreement with Billy - He favors
the socialist approach without explaining why since it failed for the
Soviets we should try it again now.

When has global warming happened in the past?

I already mentioned the Medival warming via the Greenland colony. I
will also mention the "Little Ice Age" of the 1300s that killed the
Greenland colony and the 1st century AD examples of Caesar Marcus
Antonius Aurelius marching his legionary vexellations across the Danube
without a bridge to rush to fight against the Panonian revolt. To have
two such centuries of global cooling implies at least one more century
of global warming before 1000 AD on some sort of human written record
that does predate the invention of the thermometer.

The planet has had ice ages due to volcanos and possible meteor impacts.
When the dust settled, the earth returned to normal temperatures. Because
the ice melted does not constitute a global warming, higher than normal
temperature..

For the last million years the planet has alternated between warm
periods and ice ages. The causes have been more than volcanoes. There
is variation in the orbital elipse (greater eccetricity gives harsher
winters). There is precession of the equinoxes relative to the
orbital elipse (axis aligned with the eccentricity gives wider range of
seasons). There are cycles of variation in total solar output that have
more effect than orbit/spin interaction. And now there are greenhouse
gases from human activity.

Remember that under 50 years ago projections of the ice age estimates
suggested that the next ice age could start in this century. That the
science has changed so in my lifetime tells me it's current projections
remain tentative not certain. To someone 20 the projections have not
changed in their lifetime. I've also read of very many scientific
revolutions across history and the current science remains tentative to
me.

In the atomic theory of chemistry we now have photographs of atoms. In
the genetic/evolutionary theory of biology we now have genetic
engineering. In climatology we have a growing database and a concensus
among scientists that is new in the last several decades. That's a big
difference in uncertainty. We should act like it. Including the parts
that are definitely certain like the CO2 release into the atmosphere
being huge compared to other eras. Including the fact that the
soviet socialist approach has already been shown a failure.

Current concensus of scientists is the best data we have but it is a
concensus. It doesn't have its equivalent of photographs of individual
atoms or Xray crystalography showing the spiral structure of DNA.

A cautious approach that acknowledges this difference in quality is not
the same as a denial based on religious nonsense. A conservative
approach that remembers the fall of the Soviet Union under socialism is
not the same as jumping into socialism control because it feels good to
be doing something, anything. An understanding that climate change need
not be the actual motivation of politicians but rather their leverage to
get power is not denial. Plant bushes. Install solar cells. Compost.