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Well although it may be ad hominem to argue against a paper based on where it received its funding, most scientists lose their credibility by publishing false information just to make some money. And if you notice SkepticLance, he says that the paper "provide very compelling reasons why some of the reports cited in this thread to help refute climate change are wrong and/or completely invalid." So the paper is doing two things: 1) Showing scientific reasons why these papers are incorrect. 2) Showing where people are getting money to purposefully publish this false information. You are picking out #2 and ignoring #1 which is known as confirmation bias, and it borders a straw man. You can't just dismiss this report off-hand -- If you are interested in the scientific reasons why many of these papers against global warming are incorrect, which is exactly what you indicated in your post, then you should read this report.

That is absolutely not what I'm doing. You just don't seem to understand that a few million years ago, the Earth's climate was completely different. We're talking about what's happening currently, not what happened fifty million years ago. A fifty million year average may have "such and such" climate change, but we're talking changes in climate that is a direct result of continental shifts and other long term variability. You end up leaving out a lot of important details that are necessary to understand what's going on today. This is really just basic science 101. When doing an experiment you alter one variable and rarely any more then one. When you go changing a bunch of things it becomes hard to deduce the relationship between variables. When we're looking at data that goes back 100 million years we're literally changing thousands and thousands of independent variables and we're looking at just a couple dependent variables so there is very little we can actually conclude. Icemelt is bringing the wrong tools for the job, so to speak. Currently man is causing over 90% of global warming, and this comes with a 90% certainty . Previously we have not had nearly as great of an influence on global warming. Before 1950 it was about 64% to 84%. Recently though (after the mid-to-late 1970s), human influences have been an entire order of magnitude grater then non-human influences. Saying that all of global warming sense 1900 has been 90% caused by humans is however incorrect. edit-- just so we know why 65 million years is important, and not a "random number" that I "pulled out of a hat," I'm referring to work done by Zachos et al, and verified data for 65 million years which is about as far back as you can go with oxygen isotopes while still keeping a small error margin , "Trends, Rhythms, and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present." Science (2001) 292, 686–693. I assume too often that people know what I'm referring to that I forget to explain things. Any climate data after 65 milling years is largely unreliable on short time scales and is fairly inaccurate. Go back far enough and scientists are pretty much guessing what the climate was like. 'There were glaciers down to the equator? It must have been pretty cold!"

Coal really is a big deal in this state. I personally don't know anyone who is directly employed by a coal company but I also live in a suburb of Charleston (capital and largest city of wv). But there are coal mines, processing plants, and really random piles of coal just about everywhere. And there are billboards all over the place that read "coal keeps the lights on" and more recently "coal is cleaner and greener..then ever before." There's been a new move to "clean" coal which really isn't all that clean. It is cleaner but we're just replacing "really dirty" with "less dirty then before." edit -- I just realized that our state baseball team is called the "Power," referring to the coal industry! (One of the mascots is a miner). It really is everywhere like I said. Our baseball park is about three blocks from a random pile of coal. Well the thing is' date=' the mathematical proof is in post 102. It's just basic data. 1.6 >> .12. The human contribution to global warming is more then ten times that of natural factors, or in other words, humans are causing more then 90% of global warming. Btw Icement I don't like straw men, nor ad hominem posts. "panic and hysteria?" Not in the least. I was the one who posted earlier saying that the issue isn't about "saving the world;" the issue is just accepting that global warming is in fact real -- I do not advocate anything beyond that (although I do personally agree that we need to do something). I argue that global warming is real in much the same way I argue to religious nuts about evolution being real. And I can assure you I don't just pull numbers out of a hat. Sometimes I put them down just out of memory but more often then not, if you look through this thread, I have provided a reference for every "number" I have used. If I have failed to do so I would happy to provide one for you. Your charts really aren't all that important to the discussion either. You keep coming up with data for millions of years which venture into entirely different climates then today. What a lot of people don't realize is how different the Earth's climate has been throughout history. Just the movement of the continents is enough to dramatically shift the climate (this happens over millions of years though). What you're really trying to pull off here is a red herring. I actually have no problem with your charts (I've never looked to see where they come from but I'm just assuming they're correct). Demanding that I "agree with your charts" does not help your position out any because the validity of your charts has little to do with the validity of your arguments. Hence the logical fallacy here.

Factually speaking' date=' humans have caused almost all of the observed increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Albeit this may be a small portion of total CO2 but our contribution has knocked CO2 levels 79ppm above the natural range. Water vapor has increase markedly as a result of this extra CO2 that we've put in the atmosphere. Arguing on the grounds that scientists don't understand water's dominant role in the atmosphere is an argument from incredulity, a logical fallacy. Scientists do in fact understand water's role in the atmosphere. I don't think you've uncovered anything new here. Please read the thread before posting nonsense because more likely then not its' already been addressed.

I was talking about the paleo-eocene maximum -- the basic fact that current temperatures are rising at a rate 10+ times faster then any other time in the history of the planet. The effect on global warming from different sources are measured in W/m^2. Humans have the largest effect on warming, w/ 1.6 W/m^2 (Greenhouse gases such as CO2 actually have a larger effect, but we release pollutants that decrease the temperature of the Earth, so it all adds together at 1.6). The only measurably relevant non-human cause for warming is the sun, at .12 W/m^2, which is an entire order of magnitude smaller then humans. "FIGURE SPM-2. Global-average radiative forcing (RF) estimates and ranges in 2005 for anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and other important agents and mechanisms, together with th typical geographical extent (spatial scale) of the forcing and the assessed level of scientific understanding (LOSU). The net anthropogenic radiative forcing and its range are also shown. These require summing asymmetric uncertainty estimates from the component terms, and cannot be obtained by simple addition. Additional forcing factors not included here are considered to have a very low LOSU. Volcanic aerosols contribute an additional natural forcing but are not included in this figure due to their episodic nature. Range for linear contrails does not include other possible effects of aviation on cloudiness. {2.9, Figure 2.20}" Another relevant study specifically dealt with the percentage of influence that the sun has. Stott, Peter et al. (2003). Journal of Climate, vol. 16, p. 4079-4093. "Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" According to this study, between 1900 and 1950, humans contributed 64% to 84% of global warming. Today, of course, this factor is even less (with over 90% of global warming being caused by humans).

sure, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html (this is in my above post as well), "Preindustrial CO2 mixing ratios were in the range 275-284 ppm" Yes, he referenced a couple sources. What he also did was make up numbers (as in charts 3 and 4) and manipulated these numbers with absolutely no theoretical justification for doing so. He apparently doesn't even understand that water vapor is a direct result of CO2! Where he says, "Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.," for instance or ,"Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin," he's ignoring that the increase in water vapor after 1750 is actually 99.999% indirectly caused by human activities. So he represents CO2 as a human factor, and the 95% of global warming from water vapor that is caused by humans as "natural," because he does not understand what a feedback system is, which are exceedingly basic concepts you could learn in meteorology101. But no, the scientists don't know what they're talking about. Apparently this one guy on the Internet who would fail meteorology 101 has proven a hundred years worth of research incorrect.

No, we're talking about a FACT here and this issue is absolutely not debatable. CO2 would have been between 180 and 300ppm before 1750 (because this is natural range for CO2). Today it's up to 379ppm (79ppm if you cant do math, or at least 26%). This is just data and nothing more. On a matter-of-fact basis, the total increase of CO2 during the 20th century was almost entirely anthropogenic. Volcanoes put out a whopping 1% (pdf). This is again a fact. End of story. Disagreeing here without proper citation is just blatant denial, contributes nothing to the conversation, and has no place on these forums. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of scientists agree with global warming. You can find the same magnitude of "qualified" scientists that disagree with evolution. Does this make evolution incorrect? No, of course not. Why is climate science any different? Global cooling during the 1970s was completely different then today. During the 1970s there was really very few scientific paper published in peer-review about global warming. Most of the information about global cooling came from the media. If you want to argue that in the media global warming is a fad, I am in 100% agreement with you, but as a science, global warming is definitely not a fad. The reason that CO2 is so effective is because of water vapor. CO2 increases water uptake in the atmosphere (by rising the temperature) -- it's a sort of feedback loop. Water vapor is a function of CO2. Water vapor can be added and taken out of the atmosphere very quickly while CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a very long time. This has the effect that if you could remove CO2 from the atmosphere, water vapor would then decrease as well. As I pointed out, it's almost entirely caused by man. I think it's funny though that you quote 60% while another global warming denier quotes like .02 and "insignificant" -- even you global warming deniers cant get your arguments together! Yes, and the sun has been getting "cooler" for about 8 thousand years. Irradiance has also decreased in the short term sense 1950, which also happens to be the period of time when most of the warming has occurred. So the suns influence on temperature decreased while at the same time, temperatures actually increased. This is factually not true. What you're referring to are about 800 years after a glacial period where temperatures rise before CO2. This is actually a very small portion of geological history (when we're talking about 25,40, and 100k year cycles) and definitely does not constitute "always." Furthermore, what we've actually found out is that CO2 is a feedback agent. Higher temperatures cause more CO2 to be released in the atmosphere and at the same time, CO2 causes temperatures to increase. I remember learning at uni that the northern hemisphere gets uneven sunlight distribution that causes ice to melt in the north or something, which warms the Earth for about 800 years before CO2 kicks in. Without CO2, temperature variations in the past would not be nearly as large. The sun alone would change temperatures very little -- you need all of the different feedback agents at work to amplify the effect.

Well the .0023 figure is incorrect as I pointed out in post 13 (it is factually incorrect so there should be absolutely no debate here). No, it was not CO2 that caused all of this destruction. The pollution "blanket" was made up of what's known as particulates. Particulates are just little particles that block out the sun. Volcanoes emit very little CO2 compared to human activities so it's no wonder that CO2 readings didn't spike. You have actually defeated one of your thesis because the very fact that CO2 graphs didn't spike is evidence that volcanoes put out very little CO2.

Yes, there are a significant number of people who do not accept global warming. However, we have a gap of credibility. The scientific community has taken a very, very strong stance on global warming. And let me emphasize that we are talking about a huge consensus here. Naomi Oreskes found after examining 928 papers published between 1993 and 2003 absolutely no articles whatsoever published in any science journal that contradicted the scientific consensus on global warming: NONE. According to Oreskes, scientific research against global warming must then be "vanishingly small." Scientists agree with global warming by the same magnitude that they agree with relativity or evolution. Even Science editor-in-cheif Donald Kennedy noticed, "Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science." (Kennedy, Donald. (2001). An unfortunate U-turn on carbon. Science, 291, 2515.) There is no debate about the validity of the statement, "Humans have caused the majority of global warming." There are debates within climate change in much the same way there are debates within evolution, but these debates are not about the validity of the tenets of the model -- they're debates about specifics. The only debates about global warming, much like evolution, occur outside of science. Every major scientific institution on the face of the planet agrees with the scientific consensus of global warming. It is taught in our colleges, and has been for quite some time. Global warming is in fact one of the most well-supported theories in science, shy only of the physical sciences and evolution. But the magnitude of agreement in the scientific community should not be what sways you to accept global warming. The evidence itself is massive -- climate models are extremely accurate about making predictions. People always say, "well they've never projected in the future and been verified," but in reality there have been a couple climate simulations that have gone twenty+years of being correct. One example is the original NASA simulation back in 1988 which, still today, is "right on the money." (actual quote from NASA -- Hansen, James. Michal Chrichton's "Scientific Method.") If the very fact that climate models are extremely successful is not enough to hint at how well scientists are doing, then I don't know what is. You should probably go invent a new form of evidence because if the mountains of empirical evidence aren't convincing, then you are either denying the facts, or committing intellectual dishonesty. It's alright to be skeptical. Being skeptical just means that when presented a claim, you ask for the evidence. You do this when you don't know anything about global warming. But once this plethora of evidence becomes apparent, you turn from skeptic to denier (Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things). Btw the Skeptic Society, Skeptic Magazine, "Skeptic" column for Scientific American, and Michael Shermer himself (the worlds leading skeptic and investigator of urban legends and claims of the paranormal) accept global warming. The term "global warming denier," a spin-off of "evolution denier," was actually made popular by him, a so-called "skeptic." And if that isn't enough, you're actually talking to a skeptic right now. (ex: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000B557A-71ED-146C-ADB783414B7F0000 ) At this point I am not skeptical of global warming, I am skeptical of the claims of global warming deniers. The evidence is abundantly clear -- the burden of proof lies on the global warming deniers.

Ok Icemelt find a report that fits the criteria specified that contradicts the general scientific understanding of this issue and has not been shown to be incorrect itself in peer-review. Then, and only then, will you have a case. There is no need to analyze every random climate model in the first place. The goal of the IPCC is to summarize what the scientific community thinks about global warming, and in doing so they have chosen to do a little bit of population statistics regarding these studies. If you know anything at all about statistics, know this: you only need a small sample of the demographic being studied in order to discover an accurate trend. There is not some sort of a conspiracy to hide the truth, I can assure you of that. Besides this, these studies are unimportant to the issue at hand that global warming is primarily caused by human activities. So even if you were correct and the IPCC is purposefully leaving out information, it would be a red herring and nothing more. This is simply not true. The statements of the IPCC have been endorsed by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (UK). ( http://www.royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619 ). On top of this, as I posted above and you ignored, many other institutions have came to the same conclusions, including a number of universities (most notable is Columbia University). I am sure that there are some people who disagree with global warming. There are still people who disagree with evolution. But the vast majority of scientists do in fact agree with global warming -- it's called a scientific consensus. This is a straw man. Climate science in and of itself does not say that the world is going to end. Scientists do agree that global warming is a bad thing, but nobody is saying that society is going to come to a screeching halt anytime soon. This is what the media and politics do -- you're confusing reputable scientific research with media hype. Source? Eg what assumptions, specifically, are being made, and provide a proper scientific reference for this assertion. This is just a misunderstanding of what climate science is. Again, and I don't know how many times I have to tell you this, there is absolutely no conspiracy within the scientific community to hide the truth. This is just not how science works. What we find is that individual scientists from around the planet are all finding the exact same results. Global warming is not just based on computer simulations. Computer simulations happen to be a very successful aspect of climate science because of their accuracy at making predictions (they are not inconclusive, but are in fact extremely accurate), but there are many other reasons to accept global warming besides the accuracy of computer simulations alone. What scientists have done is discover how different factors in the climate influence each other, and they have done a very good job at it (even if they did implement AI algorithms to understand the relationship between different aspects of the climate). Climate science is one of the most well-supported and well-understood branches of science and is better able to make predictions then any other theory with just about the only exception being the physical science. Please answer the question: What is it that you would consider proof of global warming? Please answer directly; do not weezle or tip-toe around this question. If you do not want to answer it, just say so. This is full of many assumptions that are really not true. The biggest of which is the assertion that the next glacial period will begin in 2000 years when, in reality, the quickest it could occur is in 13,000 years. I cannot give you an exact number because, frankly, I don't know what part of the cycle we are in. But big glacial periods have historically come every 100k years with 25k and 40k year subintervals. The last glacial period ended 12k years ago. I think you might be interested to know that temperatures have in fact been decreasing for roughly 8k years. Right now glaciers should be growing, not shrinking, as indicated by both the 5 million+ year trend and historic Holocene temperatures, and this is of course opposite what is occurring. Right now temperatures should be drooping, not increasing, as indicated again by both the 5 million+ year trend and historic Holocene temperatures, and this is again opposite what is occurring.

I thought France was already building a nuclear fusion plant.

I didn't think this had anything to do with procrastination. Their pattern of behavior is dependent on the schedule used. In variable ration you get constant positive response because the more they respond, the more reward they get. But in fixed interval, they lean that they wont get a reward until after a certain amount of time has passed, so they don't do anything until they know they can be rewarded. This could have something to do with procrastination but I just don't see the link here.

Well the thing is, the IPCC is not the only organization that has came to the same conclusions. I don't know why everyone always wants to attack the IPCC because it does you very little good (and most arguments are ad hominem, which is even worse for your position!). I think I read about one section that a few scientists think could have been done better, which is what most people use to argue against the IPCC, but I don't have a problem with this. The issue is that there is some more recent research that the IPCC didn't include, so they think it's one-sided. At the same time, however, these scientists applaud the IPCC for the rest of the paper! (and this particular section had nothing to do with humans being the primary cause of global warming!) So just ignoring the IPCC completely, do you have any problems with the National Academy of Science( http://www.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html ), NASA ( http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/ ), The National Center for Atmospheric Research ( http://eo.ucar.edu/ ), The Environmental Protection Agency ( http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html ), or the American Meteorological Society ( http://www.ametsoc.org/POLICY/climatechangeresearch_2003.html )? And I also have no problem accepting the discrepancy between tropospheric and lower atmospheric temperature change -- you're just putting words in my mouth. I believe I've made a couple posts addressing this, with the main thesis being, "Maybe we're missing something but this doesn't change the fact that climate models are still accurate in making predictions." Yes, the troposphere is a problem, but what you're ignoring is everything that we do know, which is the same tactic that Big Tobacco used and Holocaust deniers still use today. At least we're getting somewhere though, because you have not contradicted any of my points in my above post (don't think you can change the subject and get away with it!) We've established that 1) The idea of the IPCC using only 29000 out of 80000 isn't that big of a deal 2) The current climate trend is opposite what is expected to be happening 3) You still havn't addressed this, and I want to know what your answer is: edit-- Brw Dak you do have a good argument. And thanks for clarifying "albeit" I guess it's cliche but I really don't think we, as individuals, can do much to mitigate global warming, with the exception of political activism. I do think we should try to mitigate global warming, I just don't think there's all that much we can do -- shy of sucking CO2 directly from the atmosphere.

Lol I don't know if this makes me a hypocrite but I don't really do much to "help" the environment. I do recycle, my house is energy efficient, and my car gets good mpg, but none of this is really "out of my way" and I'd probably be doing all these things even if it weren't for the environment (for instance I have no plans to donate $1000 to a save-the-earth foundation). Saving the environment has never been the issue for me about global warming. Especially when you consider that if we stopped polluting today, the temperature would still continue to rise, more then a degree©, in the next century. I'll be it, that's an entire degree lower then what's expected, but the little bit of conservation that is possible really cannot lower temperatures by any beneficial amount. It's just the outright denial from people who don't know what they're talking about that I don't like. You can drive around your hummers all you want for what I care. It's just the blatant in your face "global warming aint real and you can't convince me" that I don't like. It's the same thing with evolution. I don't much care about proving that God doesn't exist or that genesis/the Bible is wrong. It's your religion, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. But evolution is real, like it or not, and you're just downright stupid if you don't accept this (and in the end I think most Christians will tell you that it's perfectly ok to accept evolution AND believe in God).

The historical trend in relation to our position in a very well-defined pattern indicates an average decrease in temperature. This pattern has been going on for at least five million years. What is expected to happen has not been occurring, and this is why scientists noticed it in the first place. I asked you earlier what you consider proof of [anthropogenic] global warming. Technically speaking there is no such thing as proof in science, all we have is what's known as the "balance of evidence." What we find in climate science is a mountain of evidence supporting global warming, and very little that seems to contradict it. The accuracy of climate models to predict climate trends is outstanding, and this in and of itself is proof enough that it works (I mean, on a matter of fact basis, they work). These models work so well because they include human factors into the equation. Without human factors, you see a very poor correlation between temperature and projected temperature. But when you add in human factors, it correlates very well. Climate science is one of the most successful sciences we have. Few theories are more successful in terms of making accurate predictions. Outside of physics and related fields such as cosmology, I'd say evolution is the only science that has more evidence ("proof") then climate science. The problem with saying, "well the climate has changed in the past so we shouldn't expect that humans are causing ti today," is that the past tells us that the climate should not be acting in the manner that it is. The climate doesn't just change randomly for no reason. Most large changes in temperature have been caused by solar cycles, and they are very predictable. Glacial periods historical come in a pattern every 25, 40, and 100 thousand years, coinciding with our orbit around the sun. Scientists don't just label these patterns as "natural" and move on; this would be bad science. So scientists didn't just look at current warming and conclude that the temperature is rising for no apparent reason. They asked why the Earth is getting warmer, and found out that the reasons are almost entirely anthropogenic. The largest driver for global warming is, of course, a greenhouse gas known as CO2. Because of human activities, CO2 and other greenhouse gases are significantly higher today then they have ever been for over 650,000 years I think you'll find that conspiracy theories don't get you anywhere on these forums. We tend to like facts and explanations, not conspiracies, and this does more to discredit yourself then it does to discredit the IPCC. There are many studies that have nothing to do with climate change, for instance studies under 20 years. The nature of many of these studies in and of themselves do not lend to be useful. And on top of this, we're talking about 80,000 studies, which would require a lot of work to go through. I'm not saying that it's perfect, but in statistics, 29000/80000 is extraordinarily good. Most (probably all) population studies rely on a much smaller portion of the population then this (we're talking orders of magnitude here). The entire science of sociology, even, is based on statistics that survey smaller portions of the population.

Not to derail this thread but I think you might find this link useful: http://skepdic.com/psychoan.html Isn't this quite literally psychology's job? I think the formal definition of psychology is something along the lines: the scientific study of behavior and cognition.

Actually, there is. The ice age (ahem, glacial period) is at the far right and the present the far left. The temperature has been decreasing for roughly 8000 years, as you can clearly see. When we hit the industrial revolution, this several thousand year trend ceased and started moving in reverse. The data obviously shows that current warming is a dramatic departure from the norm over the past 10,000 years. But why should we stop at 10,000? Why don't we look at the previous 650,000 years where CO2 has always been between 180 and 300ppm and today it's over 379ppm? Previous "natural cycles" indicate that right now the Earth should be cooling -- going into another ice age, and this is exactly what we saw from the graph of the Holocene. But when you look at today's changes you can see that the jump in temperature is very sudden and unexpected. Actually, "New analyses of balloon-borne and satellite measurements of lower- and mid-tropospheric temperature show warming rates that are similar to those of the surface temperature record and are consistent within their respective uncertainties, largely reconciling a discrepancy noted in the TAR. {3.2, 3.4}" "Warming of the climate system has been detected in changes of surface and atmospheric temperatures, temperatures in the upper several hundred metres of the ocean and in contributions to sea level rise. Attribution studies have established anthropogenic contributions to all of these changes. The observed pattern of tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is very likely due to the combined influences of greenhouse gas increases and stratospheric ozone depletion. {3.2, 3.4, 9.4, 9.5}" Well what we have is a climate model that combines all of the different relevant factors to make predictions about what the climate should be doing. These models have proven to be extremely accurate. We even have one climate model started in 1988 by Columbia University and the Goddard Institute for Space studies of NASA that, still today, is "right on the money." So I ask you, despite the fact that climate science is consistent with mountains of data, what exactly is your criteria for "evidence?" Sense when was empirical evidence not good enough (do we even have a for of evidence that is better)? Sea levels are in fact rising for two reasons. 1) Warmer water temperatures cause expansion of the ocean. 2) Melting polar ice caps are adding to the total mass of the ocean.

This is factually not true. Right around 99% of the total increase of CO2 in the atmosphere sense 1750 has been caused by human activities. It's an increase of at least 79ppm from 300ppm (I'm not sure how high the running average for 1750 was, but the natural variation of CO2 in the atmosphere is between 300 and 180ppm) which is a total percentage of 20.844 to 52.507 (and I would wager it's closer to 50% because CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been decreasing for roughly 8 thousand years). But regardless of the actual percentage of CO2 that we've contributed, human activities are actually causing over 90% of the total increase in temperature. Humans are also responsible for 100% of the total increase in CO2 above the 650,000 year natural range for CO2. (Climate Change 2007: The Scientific Basis) btw what's up w/ pst 11 where you're just quoting KLB's entire post?

We were fighting communism. And lately we've been looking for oil (ahem, terrorist attacks and weapons of mass destruction). I don't think a lack of empathy caused either war, I think the basic military strategy and political position of the United States and other countries caused the wars. I believe this has been known for a quite a while. If you ask someone to draw abstract art of a certain emotion or quality, everyone's drawings come out about the same. Ex: anger, feminism, happy, etc. This hints at the connection between a work of art, the artist, and the interpreter. From what I know I don't think this is absolute and objective, there are just certain archetypes that are shared by humans. Btw psychoanalysis is largely believed to be incorrect, along with the majority of Freud's works. Why they still teach that stuff in college is beyond me. Freudian psychology (aka psychoanalysis) isn't a necessary part of psychology, but is still part of the course for psychiatry (given that Freud pretty much invented psychiatry). Backing up a thesis with psychoanalysis isn't going to get you anywhere. Cognitive science also is merely one part of psychology. I don't know if you're trying to infer the gestalt from learning these two models, but you'd be much better off to get a 101 book and read it instead (eg Psychology [8 ed] by David G Myers) to understand the bigger picture.

This is really just basic chemistry. CO2 causes water's pH to decrease. I don't think you can look at one time period and talk about animal adaption because, like you said, it was a long sustained period. What we're talking about is just a basic fact that increased CO2 causes the oceans to become more acidic. This doesn't mean the plankton are going to die. What it means is exactly what it sounds like on face value: the oceans are going to (correction, they currently are) becoming more acidic. This isn't a good thing though, and we can already see some of the effects of this. Increase ocean acidity, along with increased ocean temperatures, etc, are causing some mild adverse effects. If you have ever had fish, you know that a change in pH of just a couple tenths or a change in temperature of just a few degrees can cause your fish to die.

I've only recently started accepting that I'm a little different from everyone else (about a year, but relatively speaking: I've known for 7 years). I denied it for the longest time and tried to teach myself how to be social because I just don't want to be different (this is why I've read so much about conversation and everything else). I'm a senior in high school and it feels like I've missed out on a lot of things. I work at a baseball park just to get out cause I never go anywhere with friends, and several of my closer friends work there as well. People always think it's weird that I don't go out and do things, and they think it's even weirder when I tell them that I consider working "going out." (which I've stopped telling people cause of it -- is it so wrong to enjoy working? Should I go find a place I hate working that maybe pays more? People see working like a chore, and in the end I don't even care about the money cause I only spend about $10 a week, plus I have my entire college payed for with excess money over top of that!) I was just wondering what you think about telling people that you have AS. I've only told one person (two days ago) because I've been denying it, and recently because I figure people might think of it negatively, but I kind of feel like it might help my relations with people if they knew. I was working at the baseball park wrapping hotdogs and met this new 40 or so year old lady, who inevitably asked me why I was quiet and "focused." We were actually talking for quite a while -- we met each other, talked some about each other, talked about hotdog wrapping (she wrapped hers like she thought marijuana was supposed to be wrapped, but I asked someone who actually smokes marijuana and he says that's not right), everything was cool and she stooped talking so I didn't talk anymore. When people are quite it means that they're either content or angry, and sense she wasn't angry, I figured everything was fine. I was just focused on wrapping hotdogs because people were taking our hotdogs as fast as we were wrapping them, and I really like the wrapped hotdogs to be in the warmers because it heats up the buns and they taste better. People were taking newly wrapped hotdogs with cold buns, so there were customers who were receiving sub-par hotdogs! So when she asked me about being quite, I thought for a second, and decided that sense she doesn't know anyone I know, it'd be alright to tell her I had autism. She said I didn't seem like I had it, which I guess is a good thing (of course she probably doesn't know much about autism but this means that I'm not totally deranged from society, which I'm pretty sure I'm not anyway). But instead of her maybe feeling better about me, it sort of seemed like a cry for help, and then it was used as an excuse for me to not really try to talk to her. It really felt like a relief because she was a very talkative person, and once I told her I had autism, I could talk less then she was and not be seen as rude. Besides, talking is a distraction. Our job was to wrap hotdogs -- what didn't she understand about that? There's this forum called wrongplanet for asperger's syndrome, but I'm asking here because there are a lot of neurotypical people here, and also because a lot of you seem to have good insight (wrongplanet seems divided on the issue anyway). So if you were to meet someone who was maybe a little strange do you think it'd be better to think of her/him as being a little weird, or to refere to him/her as the person with that "condition?" I'm still 17 so at this point it's ok for me to "lack common sense" but as I get older I think people are going to start expecting things of me that I really cant pull off, and telling them I have aspergers might be able to help. Btw getting out or working is probably the best thing to do if you have aspergers. I think it's really helped me a lot, not just working with other people, but interacting with customers. Talking to customers in the context, "you ask for something and I get it for you" allows you to gain social skills without being in an informal, undefined random context. There is a purpose to the interaction and small talk is kept to a minimum. My nametag even says, "enjoy the game" so I don't have to tell them (though sometimes I do cause getting told to enjoy the game twice might make them more happy)! And I think the employees respect me as well because they always ask me to do things or to help them. I always end up fixing the cheese machine or running down to storage to pick things up. And when they mess up a register they're always like, "shit, can you come over here and fix this?" One day there was nobody there who knew how to change the kegs so they decided to send me to the beer cooler and "figure it out." (you're on your own but we know you can do it!) It was really pretty simple -- I just looked at how the current one was set up, found the appropriate number, and copied that exactly over to a new keg of the same beer. I've actually noticed a couple things. Like if you list prices, start most expensive and go down cause they'll be more likely to buy. Even neurotypical people don't seem to realize this. Like if they ask, "how much is a hotdog," don't say "2.50 but cheese/sauce is extra," instead tell them chily-cheese is 3.50 and plain is 2.50, but you can get ketchup/mustard over there." If people aren't sure that they want something you can always say, "they're really good" or "people have been buying a lot today" and that'll reassure their decision to get something. If there's no line and you want to serve more people when they walk over, say "can I help you" and they'll come over to you instead of the other person. It's funny cause people (male and female!) usually go to the female cashier if there's a guy running the other one, but if you say "can I help you," this reverses the rule. Same thing w/ the two middle ones verses the two on either side (we have six registers, three groups of two). People always walk past the first two registers and go to the middle ones, even if there's a line! But as they walk past, you can inform them that you're there w/ "can I help you" and they'll go to you instead of to one of the middle registers. (and if there's a line this stops them from having to wait in it, and it eases the load on your coworker. Of course if there's a long line people will get in whichever is shortest, and don't much care if it's a male or female or one of the middle registers.)

Is there any way we can report abuse from an admin using his power improperly?