"Total US GHG Emissions Rose 1.4% in 2007;"

This is FANTASTIC news! The Earth has been cooling for the past eight, or so, years. According to indisputable science, GHC causes Global Warming. We now need Global Warming to correct this Global Cooling that has been occurring.

Have a look at the fifty year trend in climate. Year to year variations are weather not climate. 1998 was exceptionally hot and broke all the records so it's easy to point to a supposed cooling trend. Thankfully it hasn't been as hot since 1998 but accumulating GHGs in the atmosphere mean it will get there again.

Use some common sense. If you burn hundreds of millions of years worth of stored carbon in the form of fossil fuels in just one hundred years it is going to have a big impact on climate. To compare it with breathing is patently ridiculous.

"Mr. Environment",

Where did our exhaled carbon come from? It was fixed by a plant, probably within the last year. Such short-term carbon cycling is obviously not the problem.

How can the real issue, pumping fossil CO2 into the atmosphere, possibly be solved without emissions regulation? Unless you're arguing for an alternative to the market economy, there is no alternative.

Cleaning up the environment is important, but unless we eliminate the motivations to pollute, we'll only end up having to do more and more cleanup in the future.

itmatters,

Interesting argument. So if my local Appalachian coal mining company "materialists" want to blow up mountaintops and flood my waterways with sludge, I should "live and let live"? Acceptance is absolutely not the right answer. How about, pick a side and fight for what you think is right.

Rob:

Your suggestion that to "enjoy matter" is "taking matter" locates the problem. You may own a car, billions of people on the planet do not. Have you "taken" that car from the needy, those who have less - or from your future grandchild? If own a piece of land, and enjoy growing summer tomatoes - have you "taken" the land from those who have none? Is your consumption of the tomatoes "taking" the food from the mouths of others?

And if you sell your tomatoes for profit and use the money to educate your child - have you "taken" the money from those who have less or none? If you drive your car to work where you are paid to heal people - have you taken that car and money wrongfully?

My point is that terrestrial matter is finite and it must be administered as such. If we agree on ways to obtain matter through trade or commerce we cannot claim to be "taking" it unless we break the agreement. Your philosophy suggests that those who accumulate matter - even in the remarkably short period of a lifespan - have "taken" or stolen it from someone else. In your world there is no exchange of goods for work or effort or trade - because consumption of any material thing including the air we breathe - is an act of thievery.

I think you mean to suggest that stewardship is endemic to material possession. If you own a piece of land, how you steward its use is moral responsibility. Moral responsibility is a matter of individual choice - which is a consequence of education. If we successfully educate people to take moral responsibility - the enjoyment of matter is simply enjoyment. Therefor I agree with you that even the temporary consumption of matter requires responsibility. And *knowledge* informs responsibility. I accept your position and trust that you will accept mine.

Does a grizzly bear who eats a salmon and then cr*ps it out in the forest "steal" the salmon from others? Or is it redistributing nutrients from one ecosystem to another?

Now, what if some guy in a fishing boat caught that salmon in a sustainable way, and canned that salmon and sold it at Save-On-Foods. Then I buy it and eat it and recycle the can, and then cr*p into our septic system. What if that septic system feeds and recycles all the wastes back into the nearby forest and grows nicer trees?

Evern if GHGs are a genuine problem and modern 21st century Science increasingly questions the "scintific" superstitions laid down by the simple concenpts of the AGW scientists of the late 19th and early-mid 20th century scientists.

To show how wrong they can be, lets look at Scientific "truth" that was prevalent and correct back then. When the Scientific truth was that the Universe consisted of a single "Island Universe" called the Milky Way. There were no other Gsalaxies. When scientific truth said there was no Big Bang and the Universe according to well accepted Fred Hoyles' view, just WAS, eternal in Steady State. Back when scintific truth said that thee Atom couldn't be split, and no one really knew what powered the Stars. That is a the era of scientific understanding when the GHG proponents developed thier Global Warming theories and hypotheses.

Well Science has come a long way since then. And the World is a lot more complex than they posited. The Atmosphere behaves more as a "saturated GHG" condition, an energy controlled machine in equilibrium with the Oceans of liquid H2O (infinite GHGs!) and doesn't runaway into a GW catastrophe. They never asked "Why Not"? Instead the posited a small patch of outer space vacuum existing between the tops of your toes and the soles of your feet.

Have you looked for that vacuum or felt it? If you can't find it, or walk around barefoot sometimes, you have just undermined conventional GHG theory, and disproved it. You cannot find the invisible dsicontinuity; a non-contact medium that separates teh atmosphere from an infinite pool of very powerful GHGs, namely the Oceans of H2O.

hose unsophisticates needed to posit that barier exists, so their primitive mathematics would function to describe the atmosphere. And I say that as a graduate mathematician, not soem politcal propagansdists hwo doesn't know what the sume of 2+2 is. Incidently their mathematics produces enormous errors when they try to simply calculate the temperature of the surface of the Earth, since it MUST be separated from the atmsophere by this invisble chunk of Outer Space! They just decided not to do it, and sweep the fact that they can't get a reasonble answer under the rug.

Modern saturated GHG theories, developed by NASA scientists, can and do calculate reasonable answers.

In any case AGW theory says there won't be any real problem for fifty, a hundred or two hundred years. The same people say that OIL is running out, so there won't be any in fifty or a hundred years. That would cure the problem wouldn't it, if there were none to burn?

Do you really think that a crash program this year or next or even next decade, will make a difference, a hundred years from now?

Besides in another few years, we begin the conversion of Ground Transport away from fossil fuels, to electricity. The technology is finally here,after forty years of searching. That is the big and overwhelming reality. Industry uses no more fosil fuels that it did in 1970 when America had 100 million fewer people, and a GDP half the size.

If you are really concerned about Global Warming, worry instead about the pollution effects of adopting wide spread "Solar energy". Solar energy alters the Albedo, (the proportion of the Energy the world absorbs versus what it reflects) and that would warm the world very quickly, with its Albedo altering effects.

Now that is a much more genuine global warming threat. Take to the Streets if you must, and march against adopting wide-spread, thermally polluting, Solar energy.

Who Cares China is number one in gross emissions, and if you start on the per capita nonesence we just wont listen anymore. China is the number one polluter and needs to be held accountable just like everyone else its not our fault we industrialized first thats life and life IS NOT FAIR. But CO2 is a global problem and China is as much to blame now as we are, We may need to use force to stop them from increasing CO2 emissions and bring them to a global treaty with military backing to bring down EVERYONES CO2 production. its not about fairness it is about ppm levels and CO2 knowns no borders. so even if we go to 0 CO2 emmissions and China does nothing its all for not as they just took our place. Lets pull the troops from Iraq and get ready to fight China over CO2 emissions. IF the greens will just let china pollute then the true nature of the program is revielded as having nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with redistrobution of capital from the first world to the third world the lithmus test is can China keep polluting while we downsize our lifestyles. if yes then the person you are talking to is a marxist plan and simple.