Interesting Science Stuff

No really,
every now and then you can find the most amazing science stuff on the web.  The National Academy of Science has an annual symposium (at least I think it's annual) that allows leading scientists to bring forth discussions on their area of specialty.  Here is a link to the 2005 symposium.  Near the bottom you'll find a series of 3 presentations on Climate Change in the past. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer/PageServer?pagename=FRONTIERS_usfos_2005program&printer_friendly=0

Why am I linking to these, well for one they are interesting.  But to me they illustrate why I'm a climate skeptic.  The fact is when you approach these with an opinion of I don't think we know enough to say climate change is settled science - you find that these scientists: Eric Stieg, Gavin Schmidt and Clara Deser essentially agree.  Gavin in particular talks about thinks like solar forcing and how much of the climate data is built on assumptions and how small changes to these assumptions have significant impact on the resulting data from the models.

The point of ClimateGate (not my choice of a name) isn't that scientists are evil, but rather that they haven't settled the science, that they know they haven't and that if the rest of us know that we'll wait before overreacting.  There's a good book out called 'Not Evil, Just Wrong' which pretty much sums up my opinion of the current state of climate science conclusions.  There is alot of good heck amazing work taking place but the results are far from final much less carved in stone.  As long as much of the work is based on assumptions it means that the science isn't settled, it means that we have to accept that we still don't know... taken with the discussion of how CO2 in the past isn't a forcing gas but rather a reactive gas (it increases after temperature increases not before) it makes much of the current claims seem like so much garbage.

Are there environmental issue for us - yes some truly huge ones, but CO2 isn't currently one of them, and even if it will be it's 100 or so years from real concern (200 years from an actual crisis).

by the way changing the year in that link from 2005 to say 2006 will take you to the following year...