Global Warming?

I for one don't deny that the globe may be warming (or at least that the climate may be changing), nor even that man may have exacerbated this trend. And I am willing to do my part to help minimize my impact: I telecommute when I can, I minimize my driving (e.g. walk to lunch when I'm at the office), we have a garden, we compost, I drive a car with decent gas mileage (albeit 11 years old--trading the footprint to produce a new car vs the slightly better mileage I could get with my next car, which will be a Jetta TDI), and we're planning for our retirement house to be as off-grid capable a possible.

On the other hand, the earth has gone through severe climate shifts even within the last few thousand years--none of which were precipitated by man-made pollutants. 11,500 years ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered with mile-thick ice sheets. Yet that ice all melted. Why? Was the ice an aberration (no) or was the warming an aberration (no)? What is the earth's "correct" temperature? If the earth was cooling and glaciers were expanding and the seas retreating (as ice build-up captured more and more water) would these same scientists and politicians be recommending that we burn more stuff to put more CO2 into the atmosphere? Why is water vapor--the #1 grenhouse gas by a 7-1 margin--never mentioned? What caused the medieval warm period when olives last grew in England and Vikings last lived on the shores of Greenland and silver mines in Sweden were not covered by glaciers? What caused the subsequent Little Ice Age that saw the Thames freezing solid every winter for 200 years, and farms and villiages in northern latitudes were destroyed by expanding glaciers?

At Copenhagen, the AGW crowd lamented sea-level rise: "Just two years ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted a worst-case scenario rise of 59 centimetres. But the accelerated melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland caused by faster warming means the worst case is now put at 1.2 metres. " When? By 2200... Current satellite data going back to 1993 has sea-levels rising about 3mm per year. The average, based on a set of tidal measurements over the last 220 years is 2mm/yr.

Fifty-nine centimeters in 190 years is just 3.1mm per year; a rise of 2 feet over 200 years seems like something we could plan for and adjust to and not at all like a geologically recent event. About 8500 years ago the largest lake in the world, Lake Agassiz, which once covered almost half-a-million square kilometers (about 180,000 square miles) of central Canada simply drained, virtually overnight in the geologic timescale, into the Arctic ocean. "The last major shift in drainage occurred about 8,400 calendar years before present (about 7,700 14C years before present). The melting of remaining Hudson Bay ice caused lake Agassiz to drain nearly completely. This final drainage of Lake Agassiz contributed an estimated 1 to 3 meters to total post-glacial global sea level rise. Much of the final drainage may have occurred in a very short time, in two or one events, perhaps taking as short as a year. [emphasis mine]"

In India, we find that "Useful data on sea level fluctuations have been collected during the present expedition. Three wavecut benches were encountered at depths of 11.22 metres, 4.6 metres and 1.34 metres. The proto-historic city was built on the lowest bench, the early historic and the medieval townships on the higher benches. The island of Bet Dwarka, 30 km north of Dwarka, which is also famous as the pleasure resort of Sri Krishna, was connected with the mainland between Otha and Aramda. The reclamation referred to in ancient texts was made in this zone when the sea level was lower 3,500 years ago." The sea has risen 120 meters over the last 20,000 years, albeit with virtually all of that rise taking before about 5000 years ago. All without the help of man.

I'm not against "doing something" and certainly agree that pollution is bad. I'm just not willing to agree that the proposed so-called cap-and-trade legislation is going to do anything about pollution, and if it does have a minor impact on pollution and/or warming (by the bill's supporter's own admission), will it do so without crippling our alreadywounded economy.

And further, I think that the cap-and-trade bill expects some magic technology to spring into being simply because the bill mandates it--how else to get 65% reduction in emissions from coal-fired plants (except to shut them down). Why not mandate 500MPG cars (and $1M/year unemployement benefits to stimulate the economy)? So while I'm willing to "do something", I'm not willing to put my faith in a demonstrably ineffective Government, nor am I willing to live in a cave, naked and eating dirt (but my carbon footprint would be pretty low if I did), nor am I willing to cripple our economy.