Socialized Health Care in the USA

[Jester]

I was thinking of all the scientists who turned out to be right after suffering ridicule during their lifetime (and longer), only to be vindicated many years later.

... and not the hundred-times-more who turned out, after suffering ridicule during their lifetime (and longer) to be cranks with no idea that holds water? If you're using the Galileo defense, then I'm happy to leave you to it. There are few better predictors of crankdom than that.

[*]The climate models do not reflect reality. Even when the data is changed to fit the models, the models continue to fail to predict actual temperature. Clearly we don't understand *all* the mechanisms of temperature within the climate.

The models have predicted the climate trend well enough. No model is going to predict the temperature in any given year, month, or day. Far too many factors enter into the eventual temperature to offer a prediction without very large error bars, and eventually the large-scale "climate" breaks down into unpredictable "weather". No credible climate scientist says otherwise. Could modelers have predicted that this solar cycle would be several years late? Obviously not. But that's not what they need to predict. The specific temperature at any given point is irrelevant. They're not predicting sports outcomes or stock prices. What they need to show is what the approximate trend is going to be for increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. And on that front, they've done more or less fine.

[*]Findings confirm that global climate can change dramatically within a very short period without anthropogenic sources.

Not disputed by any climatologist I've heard of, but a red herring. Who cares if climate can change dramatically without us? What we need to know is whether what we're doing will change it, and how much.

[*]Environmentalists are quick to point out the causes of CO2, but fail to recognize or model the natural processes of mitigation of CO2.

"Mitigation"? You mean re-absorption of atmospheric carbon into the earth? Yeah, those processes are well understood, and they don't amount to a whole lot over a timespan of mere centuries. The assertion that climate scientists "fail to recognize or model" them is, quite simply, wrong. Here's the IPCC discussing precisely those issues, the most authoritative, mainstream AGW publication in existence.

[*]Ice core analysis show global temperature varies independent of CO2 levels.

Again, nobody with any expertise ever denied that there are other forcings apart from CO2. That would just be stupid. The question is what the role of CO2 is, and on that front, it appears it is important enough that if we keep pumping it into the atmosphere, it's going to warm the planet. This is not really in dispute, although the precise values are not known. (Hence, why you get predictions like "between 2 and 6 degrees" and not "exactly 2.984 degrees")

However, ice core data is *very* strongly correlated with historical temperatures. Some discussion of the issue from Realclimate is here.

So, what to do about it, rather than just warm our planet with more hot air? Here is my list;

1. Stop subsidizing all fuels.<>
   
2. Eliminate barriers to nuclear plant construction.<>
   
3. Better land management.<>
   
4. Require cities to develop a zero sum environmental plan.<>
   [st]

One moment you're panicking about how energy costs are going to ruin the economy, and the next, you're calling for the end of all fuel subsidies? I agree, but I'm not sure how you hold both of those positions at once.

Nuclear power is important, we agree on that much.

I don't know what you mean by "better land management". I'd be for "better anything management", but did you have something in particular in mind?

Similarly, what is a "zero sum environmental plan"? Are cities supposed to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics, and pollute exactly nothing? Or are they somehow supposed to remove as much pollution as they produce (without carbon offsets, which you trashed earlier?) I don't understand what this means, or why it is cities in particular, and not individuals, states, or nations that are expected to be "zero sum".

-Jester