Here's a Romney supporter (Brig, Gen - served in Iraq) criticising the Republican nominee's proposed decision to okay the Keystone pipeline into the US from Alberta's tar sands.

http://huffingtonpost.com/steven-m-anderson/keystone-pipeline_b_2069304.html

Yuyutsu,

"...better to be a neanderthal,thanks."

On the question of survival of individual species, it's probably better to be stupid than smart - as in bacteria and beetles.

If being smart sees you defiling your environment, you end up in the long run living as if you were stupid.

Intelligence with a lack of wisdom and foresight invariably amounts to "mega-stupid".

Dear Poirot,

I am not defiling my environment more than you are, nor would a neanderthal.

Anyway, my point was that I rather live and die as a neanderthal, subject to the elements of nature but free from the control of men and his states. I don't believe at all that those promoting AGW action do so for genuine care for the environment - they do it for love of control, with the environment being used merely as pretext.

I would naturally care for the environment, I actually used to and I didn't need any prodding, but with those guys around who seek to control my life, all I can feel is - "it's THEIR environment, so stuff them and their environment, let it all go up in flames!"

Just to clarify:

* temperatures have risen by about 1.8-2 degrees in the last century. Is that right ?

* Sea-levels have risen by about two inches in the last century. Right ? Wrong ?

* world temperatures have not risen significantly over the last fifteen years. Is this true or false ?

* Australia has experienced many cyclones over the past 150 years with the ferocity of Cyclone Tracey: Darwin itself has been wiped out at least twice before Tracey, in (I could be wrong, somebody would know much better than me) the 1880s, and in about 1920. Cairns and Townsville have been wiped out before by cyclones. True ? False ?

NOTE: no person was insulted or ad hominemed in making this contribution.

Sorry, I'm so scatter-brained in my old age, I forgot to mention the rapidly growing effects of urban spaces as heat island. Michael Mobbs is on the radio at the moment, talking about greening out cities, and it struck me that the total size of urban populations in the world has probably doubled every thirty years since the War, and the use of air-conditionning etc. has risen even faster, along with affluence.

So besides CO2 production, (and please excuse my ignorance) how much does the urban-heat-island-effect boost world temperatures ?

Joe

Ocean temperature is rising, giving up co2.
More ice melt than ever, especially in the northern hemisphere.
Heavier flooding around the globe.
More ferocious storms and cyclones.
Nature has been compromised, and needs to be repaired.

I must give Julian some due here.

I have always felt [a studied opinion actually] that hydrocarbons, [& fire wood], do more heating of the environment while they are burning, than their product CO2 ever does, in the air. The CO2 merely displaces water vapor which is a more effective radiation absorber anyway.

Of course the total heat emitted is still so small, & so quickly dissipated as to be of not much interest anyway.