Here is some more "propoganda" from the media.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/02/17/global.warming.reut/index.html
> In fact there have been about 20 cooling and warming cycles in the last
> 2 million years or so. None of the past warming cycles were caused by
> humans.
> Temperature and CO2 are not always linked. CO2 levels were much higher in the
> Ordovician than they are now, but the Earth was experiencing one of the worst Ice
> Ages in the fossil record.
No one suggests climate is stable. The earth was totally different in the
Ordovician, you can't compare now versus then as many of the factors that
cause our present climate are different now. Ocean currents, positions of
the continents are all completely different, etc etc. And yes, the earth
has been constantly warming and cooling over it's entire history at both
short term regular periods (largely thought to be influenced by
Milankovich Cycles, although the degree of influence is not solely due to
M Cycles). But there have also been long term changes too, since ~40
million years ago the earth as a whole has generally gotten cooler and
drier.
For those who may be interested,
http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/ees123/milank.htm is a good explanation of
some of this stuff relative to shorter term climate changes relative to
Milankovich Cycles, but there is still a massive amount that we don't
understand and there are many positive and negative feedback loops.
Another nice page is
http://deschutes.gso.uri.edu/~rutherfo/milankovitch.html
And of course, from a biogeographic perspect this all gets more
interesting, as obviously all of the critters we have everywhere on the
planet today have survived quite large fluctuations in climate (bigger
than we are talking about relaitve to global warming). Few have really
explored this issue as it is very difficult to figure out. One difference
relative to modern times though is that many populations are significantly
more fragmented today and many formerly continuous habitats no longer
exist. These were probably critical for the natural movement of critters
during former climate changes. Throw on top of that introduced species
which also act to fragment populations in a big way. Thus, the next time
climate changes, whether natural or not we are likely to see some
significant losses. These are of course more long term. But obviously
the best way around that is to restore habitats at a large scale, but that
just isn't going to happen anytime soon as far as I can tell.
> similar "consensus" activity is currently taking place within the United
> States with respect to teaching evolution/natural selection. I wonder
> how long before US scientists adopt a "consensus" denouncing evolution
> and/or natural selection? If so, how long before the rest of the world?
> Evidence is what is needed, not consensus.
I don't really understand your analagy to evolution here. In the USA
creationists have made the argument about the "controversy" of evolution.
But this is wrong, as in scientific circles there is no controvery about
whether evolution has occurred or not. The creationists use this to
suggest to non scientists that doubt exists regarding evolution to try
and bolster their case for teaching creationism / intelligent design in
high school science classes.
Tootles
Peter Unmack