"Scott Seidman" wrote in message
. 1.4...
"rb608" wrote in news:1173806008.383231.53870
@t69g2000cwt.googlegroups.com:

Based on what little I recall from my readings, I believe the general
scientific opinion is that the human race has it in its power to
significantly reduce or halt GW.

"General scientific opinion" may be too strong a term. Choices are limited;
one can proceed on the assumption that the consequences of global climate
change could be dire enough to warrant drastic and immediate action.....and
that there is still time to do something substantive about it.....or one can
sit back and do nothing. No one has yet made a convincing case for havoc
resulting from reduction of greenhouse gases and other heating factors. As
a bit of an aside (as which it must be regarded since no one talks about it
much), those other factors are more than enough, without taking greenhouse
gases into account, to expose the utter stupidity of suggestions that human
activity cannot possibly have a significant effect on global temperatures.

I was right with you until now. If we don't have an estimate of the human
contribution to global warming, how do we know if its in our power to
reduce or halt it through conservation efforts?

Do the experiment. Check the results.

I'm still trying to catch
up with the '70s projections of an ice-age, and the giaia (sp?) flower-
world model that said increased temperature lead to increased cloud cover
lead to decreased temperature.

Stupid ideas never die. Theories concerning the possibility that current
trends in global climate change might trigger a precipitous decrease in
temperatures are interesting and have not yet been demonstrated to be
untenable. They will likely be with us for a while. If any of them prove
to be correct, their proponents will be vindicated and all of us (meaning
your offspring, or theirs, of course......not my problem) can spend the next
few thousand years sitting in smoky cold caves, alternately smacking our
heads against the cold stone walls and ****ing on our ancestors graves. If
not, they will die. The idea that these theories ever gained any widespread
and firm acceptance among people who occasionally took their heads out of
their asses long enough to see what oxygen is all about, is a stupid one.
It will never die.

Again, I don't doubt global warming, but I'd really like to see the firm
numbers before I sign on to the cause du jour. When people say we can
change things, I'd like to know how much.

This isn't like exit polling in an election.......you'll be dead before the
numbers come in.

Wolfgang