On Jun 25, 3:29?am, Short Wave Sportfishing

Just be honest - you believe in it, you think it's humanity's fault
and go from there.


Thanks for telling me what my opinion should be in order to be
"honest". :-) But, honestly, I don't fit your stereotype as neatly as
you might hope.

The three big questions, again, are.

1. Is the climate changing? (I believe the climate is changing. I
also believe that the climate has never been constant and is always in
a state of warming or cooling)

2. If the climate is changing, is it changing more rapidly or to a
greater degree than it has in the past? (I don't know about this. I
suspect it may be- although certain climate changes have been so
catastrophic in the past that they may be the underlying events behind
world wide stories of global deluge (ie Noah and/or Gilgamesh) or even
the planetary imbalance that could have led to the sudden shifting of
magnetic poles several times in the history of our planet. Is the
current change as rapid or severe as changes that may have contributed
to deluge mythology or pole relocation? We darn well better hope
not....)

3. If the climate is changing more rapidly or to a greater degree than
it has in the past, is there something mankind should do or should not
do as a result? (As a conservationist, I recommend that everybody
examine their lifestyle for any ridiculously destructive or unduly
wasteful practices and consider modifying their behaviors when
necessary to put less stress on resources and the environment. But I'm
not an extremist. Some of the measures recommended by global warming
factions make sense from other considerations, like pollution
ccontrol, as well.)

My specific concern is the rapid disappearance of the polar ice caps.
Most of our weather, winds, and currents are generated by thermal
gradients between the poles and the tropics. If wind and currents get
screwed up weather will follow and life as we know it will change- a
lot.

One major risk is that organisms, including man, may not be able to
adapt rapidly enough to a new weather and climate dynamic to survive-
so it would be in our best interest not to accelerate the rate of
climate change if we can avoid doing so.

Is it man's fault? All of it? Any of it? Can't personally say for
sure. Nor can you say, for sure, that it isn't.

Global warming at the kitchen table?:

Last night one of my wife's girlfriends dropped by to see our photos
from Alaska. She was last in Alaska in 1980, and she brought over her
photos to show us.

We started with ours, and when we showed her the picture of the
Mendenhall glacier she almost went into shock. "That can't be!" She
said. "I've got a photo of the Mendenhall glacier, and there's no
great big huge lake like that in front of it....in fact there's this
insignificant little pond and nothing more!" She got out her photo,
that according to the profiles of hills and landscapes in the area
appeared to be taken from a location not too far from where we took
ours. The difference was dramatic. If her photo was indeed of the same
glacier, (as it appears to be) it has probably retreated a mile and a
half to two miles in the last 27 years. It is also substantially lower
than in her photo. That's hardly scientific evidence- we don't know
for sure where her photo was taken or how our photo would look if we
stood on the *exact* same spot where she took hers, but it brings the
possibility home more credibly than photos from any single source on
some website that may have a pro or anti-warming agenda.