Billy wrote on Aug 16, 2008 5:29 AM:What's this Greenhouse emissions? Sounds like other countries trying to get the USA to go global and pay for cleaning up their emissions mess.
I agree that we must clean up our emissions mess; however there is not much we in California can do about the emissions mess in foreign countries except stop sending them manufacturing work that produces emissions until they find some way to do the work without trashing their air and the ozone.
Going global is going to be the death of the USA. We send our high paying blue collar work to other countries, putting our people out of jobs, which reduces our ground level ozone to a degree. Then we send the foreign country money to pay for the work and thereby reducing our money supply even further, and the FED borrows money, for the most part from foreign countries to balance our money supply within 3 or 4 percent of our GNP, and thereby increasing our National Debt.
Congressmen and Senators uses the Global Warming hoax to earmark and pork barrel support flimflam projects. In order to successfully misuse money you have to keep it moving so that the loss is less likely to be notices.
California has a good start on cleaning up our environment. We are in fact sitting an example for the rest of the country and the world. But let us concentrate on cleaning up our state while keeping our money home and putting it to good use, and let the rest of the country and the world pay for cleaning up their own mess.

Howiek wrote on Aug 16, 2008 8:18 AM:Billy! You are truly delusional. You seem to have no concept of world affairs or how the system works. Manufacturing was indeed sent to lower labor-cost parts of the world because nobody was going buy anything made in this country due to our very high labor costs—period! But take heart, even China, Japan, and other places are now sending their work to even lower cost areas. It’s all about the cost of labor.

an Idea wrote on Aug 16, 2008 9:16 AM:Lets all sell Real Estate to eachother!

To Howiek wrote on Aug 16, 2008 9:21 AM:China is only sending the factories deeper into China, and not outside China. But, they are also increasing their emissions of CO2 and other pollutants at a rate that makes the US look very Green!

Now, speaking of Green: A recent article in National Geographic had one thing right - Atmospheric CO2 works like a fertilizer to plants, causing them to grow much faster and more dense. The slight increase in tempurature also increases plant growth (that is why it's called the GREEN house effect). Interestingly enough the increased plant growth actually equates to increased usage of CO2 by these plants and also the increased absorbtion of solar engergy that is converted into sugars and plant material. All in all a very unique balancing action to any increase in CO2 or temperature. This is not only the case for terrestrial plants, but even more so for water born plants (planctonic algae).
Finally, as for GLOBAL warming: If it si truly GLOBAL it would mean that the ice in the southern hemisphere would have to be melting along with the northern ice sheet. But, for the last 30 years there has been an overall upward trend in total ice area in the Antarctic region. Not only ice area (now approaching a maximum of 17M sq. miles - average is around 15.5M sq. miles), but also ice thickness and Antarctic snow pack are both increasing as well. So, what is going on in the Southern Hemisphere while we in the North are all so busy worrying about Global warming?

Hoax and Jobs wrote on Aug 16, 2008 9:23 AM:The New Jersey legislator has it right, Global Warming is a hoax. Al Gore is laughing all the way to the bank, Luddites have an excuse to kill jobs and destroy the economy. Now we may have a new scam....the Ice Age is coming, buy a sweater. Interestingly, this was the scam of the 1970''s, that we were about to enter an Ice Age. Folks, nature is nature. There is an ebb and flow of temperature and no amount of legislation is going to stop or promote it. Read about the scientific measures that "prove" and Ice Age. What do you think, it this for real, or just another scam? If true, we better start mining for coal, drilling for oil, growing lots of cows, get rid of the poisoned light bulbs, etc. We need a counter balance to Global COOLING. Do not get me wrong. We need to be good stewards of the Earth. We should not abuse the forests, cows or nature. We must co-exist. Our policies should be determined by science, not those making a buck off of their scare tactics. Shouldn''t we hold off on enforcing AB 32, the job killer bill. But, we are only 4th in the nation in unemployment, we are shooting or Number one.

Billy wrote on Aug 16, 2008 10:36 AM:Reply to Howiek: Where are you from? What we are talking about here is a leveling of the economies. The programs proposed by foreign countries are, of course, in favor of foreign countries, at USA expense. In other words, they want us to pay for their improvements. The fact is the only way other countries can improve in anyway is to build from within using their own labor and ideas and precepions. A country's progress comes from its citizens work and ideas. Not from sucking the economy of another country down to the level of their own. The way it is going now, in twenty years the USA will not know how to make a die or build product, because nobody in our country will know how. And that is when all those countries we have been helping to improve their economies will come here in force. Don't tell me they will not. remember the World Trade Center?

This liars make me sick wrote on Aug 16, 2008 12:32 PM:if they were for cleaning up the environment they would outlaw cars and jets. Hyprocrites is all they are! GO GREEN, GO GORE!

Mike S. wrote on Aug 16, 2008 3:22 PM:Howiek, it is true that plants grow more under higher CO2 concentrations, but that doesn't mean there is a "balance." If these plants were keeping up with the CO2 emissions increase, we wouldn't have the concentration climbing from 280 ppm before industrialization to over 380 ppm now. We can dream that we're going to reach some level at which point the plants decide to really get busy, but that's just a dream.

Also, could you provide a reference for your data on sea ice thickness? All the peer-reviewed literature I could find online seems to suggest the trend in sea ice thickness is still an open question--although there is some clear thinning of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in the Amundsen Sea area.

Snowpack is a different issue--you could have increased precipitation in places that have little melting even with higher temperatures, due to shifting circulation patterns. An increasing snowpack wouldn't be a good indicator of global average warming.

And, of course, I probably don't have to remind you that a global average warming could well include a cooling of climate in some locations, and that this is even quite likely as global air and ocean circulation patterns are affected.

Mike S. wrote on Aug 16, 2008 3:30 PM:Sorry, that last comment was directed to "To Howiek," not "Howiek."

To Hoax and Jobs: We know more about climate now than we did in the seventies, just like we knew more about bacteria in the twentieth century than we did in the nineteenth. So even though a lot of "patent medicines" sold in the nineteenth were hoaxes and frauds, it actually made sense to ingest penicillin in the twentieth. My point? Don't give up on science just because someone was wrong sometime in the past.

Also, I'm thinking that what you're thinking of back in the seventies was the prospect of nuclear winter--not just "secular cooling." In the absence of an all-out nuclear exchange, I don't think there ever was a danger of an imminent ice age.

It is true that the present Milankovich cycles--the cycles having to do with the variations of the Earth's orbit and angle to the sun--would project an overall cooling trend. But that trend would be much slower than the opposite trend we have initiated through dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

Mike S. wrote on Aug 16, 2008 3:38 PM:Finally, with respect to the debate on the role of the market: let the market do more. Regulators can't know about all the good ideas floating around in people's heads. Tax fossil fuels based on the CO2 they produce, and let the market figure out how to most efficiently avoid the tax. People are good at avoiding taxes!

To Mike S. wrote on Aug 16, 2008 4:13 PM:Taxes are just another form of regulation. Those passing the taxes can’t know all the good ideas floating around in people's heads, nor can they know all the bad that their taxes are doing! In fact, raining taxes on something like CO2 without having a DIRECT plan to fully utilize those taxes to benefit the populace with respect to the negative impacts brought on by the taxes, and the CO2 that they are basing in on, is pure madness! In reality the taxes will simply be used for some social welfare program that actually does more harm than good.
CO2 in and of itself is NOT bad for GREEN. It is in fact needed by all GREEN things to live! Increasing CO2 increases growth of plants, and thus growth of the animals which feed on these plants. We have been over fishing and deforesting our lands for many years, so now Mother Nature is fighting back by producing more CO2 to help the plants grow and thus replenish the fish and other animals around the world.
But, is this really all manmade? What about the volcanic eruptions that have been spewing more CO2 into the air than all that produced by the burning of fossil fuels over the past 100 years. Yes, these too are adding to the atmospheric CO2, and we have had in increase in the last 100 years in volcanic activity. The ice in the Arctic Ocean has a very unique melting pattern of late that seem to correlate very well with huge volcanic eruptions that have been taking place along a spreading center under the ice. And these eruptions have also added significant amounts of CO2 to the water and air in the region. But, is this reported in the news? The Antarctic ice sheet has been growing over the last 30 years to near record size and thickness (ever wonder why those large chunks of ice were breaking off down there- not warming! No, it was due to gravity! Add more snow and ice upstream and the glacier moves down and ice breaks off. Wow, nature at work!!!). Do we read about these in the news? No, none of these FACTS will be published in the ordinary news because it does not support the agenda of controlling the masses with fear that we are killing ourselves. Technology is a wonderful thing that only man has been able to create, and technology will do both good and bad depending on how it is used. Unfortunately we have people who only want to focus on the bad things and forget all the good. It is a balancing act and it is your life that is in the balance. Earth will still be here long after we have all gone. It is much bigger than even Al Gore's ego. But, if he and his elites gain control then the life we do have left will be plunged into something most of us have not seen in a few hundred years, and I really don’t most of you would enjoy that for even a moment. Not that it would matter to them, and not that you'd have any means by which to do anything about it either.

Billy wrote on Aug 16, 2008 6:25 PM:Going global does not refer strictly to the environment. The first time I heard the term was in reference to business and the speaker was that great Oxford graduate and socialist Lester Thurow. At that time he was preaching that if we didn't go global the rest of the world was going to avoid us and we, the United States would die a bankrupt death. Well, some 18 years later and we are still here.
Lester forgat to factor in that the United States is the greatest market on earth. There is not a business person on earth that would by pass our markets if the choice was theirs.
If our country is ruined it will happen from within. In our country the people are supreme and we are not taking care of business as we should. Every time a product leaves this country and payment is not received in return we are ruining our country. Every time money leaves our country and we receive nothing in return we are ruining our country. Don't believe me - then why is the National Debt over 3 trillion dollars?

stop wrote on Aug 16, 2008 6:42 PM:gorebul warning

Sense wrote on Sep 2, 2008 10:44 PM:Mike S,
When the CO2 levels reach 15% you let me know, because that's when it's too much for people to live. People will be dropping like flies it won't mater much about rising water levels. Your scientists forgot to tell us what normal levels of CO2 are supposed to be. We keep hearing that CO2 is on the rise but from what to what and when is global warming supposed to destroy the earth? Mike do you believe all the propaganda you hear and use no common sense?