really? wow. ok. you win.

Dean (#10), agreed, but it is a matter of time scale perspective. Geologically, it’s the same amount of time. From the human perspective, yes, it is hard to make it comparable.

“You can’t debate this with people who deny the basic science,”

LOL. Can you enlighten us on just what is the “basic science” you are referring to. Please try to put up something more specific than “the consensus is…” pap.

“However, we can look at history and see that many human cultures and civilizations have declined and even disappeared due to climate change.”

LOL, again. If you read your history books, it has ALWAYS been A DECLINING TEMPERATURE THAT HAS CAUSED “CIVILIZATIONS THAT HAVE DECLINED.” If you have some facts counter to this, we would love to see them.

However, we can look at history and see that many human cultures and civilizations have declined and even disappeared due to climate change. Some of it was even human-caused, but regional, not global. Deforestation, for example, is well known to cause regional climate change in certain circumstances. Roger Pielke _SR_ recently blogged on that in his ongoing effort to convince people that AGW is more about land use than CO2.

The Maya and the people of the Colorado Plateau may well have suffered a dieoff comparable of a nuclear war due to climate. But some people (who accept the science but don’t fear the impacts) have an article of faith that our civilization can do better. That ain’t science, it is the very religion they accuse us of. That we are fundamentally different from civilizations of the past. Clearly we are different in many ways, but only time will tell if we are different in ways that count in this case.

“Considering all the likely hidden positive and negative feedbacks inherent to the climate system that we haven’t even characterized yet, I’m willing to concede their characterization of risk here.”

How on God’s green Earth can you concede a risk, when there is ABSOLUTELY not a shred of empirical evidence that indicate any risk? There has not been a significant rise in temperature for over 12 years, and even the “theory” is highly debatable. Are you sufficiently confident in computer models and the opinions of famous climate scientists whose very livelihoods rely on “belief” in such risks to agree with destroying our standard of living and causing millions more to starve/freeze to death?

Who are the scientists, and how are they “legimately” seeing “the threat of AGW in Armageddon clothes”?

For example, if you’re talking about James Lovelock (of “few breeding pairs (of humans) at the poles” fame), I would not consider his views to be “legitimate” science.

“None of us have any idea whether AGW will be a pussycat in 50-100 years or a total game changer, but I think all of us would agree that both extremes are within the set of possibilities.”

Well, “pussycat” and “game-changer” are not scientific terms, but if “none of us have any idea” about AGW in 50-100 years, then none of us are practicing science.

The whole point of science is to be able to predict future events (e.g., “the atmospheric CO2 concentration in 2050 will be between 450 and 550 ppm; will result in an average global temperature that’s between the present temperature and 2 degrees Celsius warmer than the present temperature”).

“…but that’s a strawman distraction from the point that these scientists are driving at: unchecked CO2e into the atmosphere could destroy us just as effectively as thermonuclear war could.”

Absolute nonsense. The *minimum* number of people killed by a “thermonuclear war” would be tens of millions of people. In contrast, even accepting the WHO estimate of 150,000 people killed annually by global warming (a very scientifically debatable estimate), it would take 67 years to even kill 10,000,000 people. And the difference between property damage caused by “thermonuclear war” and AGW is even more dramatic. (For example, even assuming that Katrina was caused entirely by AGW, the property damage caused by Katrina doesn’t even begin to compare with the property damage that would be caused by dropping a thermonuclear weapon on New Orleans.)

I see that the New York City barrier that took 30 years to build failed at the first important challenge to it.

I told them and told them that a portable barrier was the way to go, but nooooo…they wouldn’t listen!

So now New York City is deserted. I think Greg House Jr. had the most appropriate quote, on hearing that the fixed permanent barriers failed: “Idiots!”

A regular nuclear armegeddon, that. Oh, the humanity!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10254009-54.html