I wasn't trying to be comforting.  I was just refuting what a lot of global warming alarmists like to claim: "We are killing the planet" or CNN's series "Planet in Peril."  The earth will survive until the sun expands and swallows it up in a couple billion years.

Animals were going extinct long before man came along.  Now may be the polar bears turn if they are unable to adapt to the new environmental conditions.

It's not that they didn't quote a source but that they did not write a fair and balanced article that included the opposing side.  There are many scientists out there that disagree with global warming and have mountains of evidence to support their side that completely contradict the global warming argument.

To which I say so what.  We have also lost a lot of planetary ice coverage since the last ice age, big deal.  What a lot of global warming alarmists are ignoring is the fact that weather is cyclical.  There are bound to be warming trends, and there are bound to be cooling trends.  Sometimes those trends can last for decades but the cycle will repeat itself it is all completely and totally natural.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for more environmentally ways of living just that the situation isn't as dire as many make it seem.

If you want to accurately get a picture of whether we are in a catastrophic global warming trend you need to really pull data from the past 50-100 years (even that is too short a time span) and see how weather has been cycling up and down and then determine if we are trending upward faster than any other warming trend of that time period.  The problem is that a lot of that data isn't available because global weather trends haven't been tracked for that long which renders this entire discussion rather moot.

Yes.  Since that has already proven to be false.  The readings were defective and the claim has been withdrawn.  The HOTTEST years on record were during the 1930s.  Some of them have been since Clinton was inaugurated, but not THE hottest and of course not the top 10.

A pretty hilarious 'counter' given just a moment before you were implying that 1 year seemed to be sufficient evidence against a trend. You can't have it both ways you know!

Well you've only managed 1 year so far, which is even less than the quoted "propaganda" from the OP.

Hence you have to work with what you're given. Better to have a very rough idea than no idea at all. It's also why you don't rely on the statistics alone, but make sure there is actually some reasoning(/science) to back them up. For example if the area of ice in the arctic appears to have fallen inversely to industrialisation/certain gas emissions, then it suggests there might be a relation between the two. However to actually be confident that there could be such a relation you'd then need the backing reasoning - such as the industrialisation producing gases which cause the suns rays to heat up the earth more than they were before which causes temperatures to rise which causes the ice to melt, causing the area to decrease (and obviously the science would come in to play wrt the gases causing the earth to heat up more since the rest are already fairly logical consequences)

I can understand how you'd misinterpret it but actually, no.  I did not offer it as evidence against a trend and didn't state that it was the sum total of 'contrary data'.  I merely commented on the fact of it and speculated on how the zealots would 'explain' it away in the context of the AGW religion.  'Evidence of a trend' requires a geologic timeline extending back thousands, perhaps millions, of years.  Besides, if you look at my edit, I am not arguing with the notion that climate change occurs and have no intention of trying to refute it.  I strongly argue against the notion that man is the proximate and substantive cause of the current warming trend, however.

Unless the 'rough idea' is wrong.  Making decisions that impact us on such a massive scale on the basis of a 50/50 proposition is pretty dicey, at least in my opinion.

thats true for both directions though, taking no action is just as much a decision based on luck as taking action then (that is from your standpoint that all the studies which indicate the probability of a manmade influence are not even slightly better than a cointoss.)

If you argue this way why it is better than to take no action than to take action? The difference is that in scenario "taking action" you pay money now to prevent a potentially much bigger damage later and in scenario "no action" you save your money now and risk a much bigger damage later on. Risk-affine people tend to avoid short-term losses even if that means bigger potential long-term losses, while people who prefer to be on the safe side accept short-term losses to prevent bigger potential long-term losses.

I personally don't blame people who are >50 for totally ignoring the potential harm which is done later, it won't affect you so its the rational thing to do but many people who have the probabilty to live 80 maybe even 100 more years are willing to invest now to prevent potential damage later. Its like an insurance. I mean when you have an insurance it can turn out it was totally bullshit to spent money on it because there was never an accident, so you payed money for nothing, but it can also turn out that you profit from that insurance because you lose your leg in a tourist-sawmill.

That argument assumes AGW is a fact - it's not.  It's a hypothesis at best.  And I have no problem 'going green' at a reasonable cost, but not to the point that we disadvantage our children's future.  Adapting to environmental change is something we can do and where we should expend our precious capital.  We've been doing it for thousands of years and I have complete faith in our ability to do so in the future.  The species has a knack for self-preservation that does not, and never will, require a Kyoto Protocol.

It's a conceipt, however, that whatever we do will 'save the planet' since there is no evidence whatsoever that we know WTF we're doing when we try.  We are clueless.  Al Gore can huff & puff all he wants and we won't know an iota more than we did pre-huffing.  The scale of the problem is simply too vast.  The stuff proposed (so far) to deal with climate change is premised entirely on the acceptance of AGW as fact (and, conveniently, on a process that would/will make Mr. Gore a very wealthy man).  The notion that we must 'fix the problem' at all costs will cost all - it's simply impossible.

Very, very wrong.  First the global warming alarmists need to prove that man has a significant enough impact on global warming.  They have yet to satisfy the burden of proof (which lies on them).  As I pointed out there is not enough data from which to pull to truly get a sense of whether this warming trend is abnormal or not so it is nearly impossible for the global warming alarmists to prove their point.  Therefore we cannot undergo extremely expensive methods to attempt to lessen our impact on the environment.

And there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of diabetes cases since Coca-Cola was introduced so it must be due to Coca-Cola so we should just get rid of all soda-pop right?  A correlation is hardly enough to act on, especially when we are dealing with something as complicated and expensive as dealing with global warming.

And this is the stance that is the most reasonable.  Yes we should attempt to lessen our impact on the environment, but we shouldn't be doing it at great expense.  Yes we should look into solar and wind power but at the moment they cannot replace fossil fuels for this country's power needs.  Maybe one day they can, but they are no where near being able to do that today.  Especially in todays economy we have more important things to deal with than global warming.

there is no thing as a proof in sciences (except for formal sciences like mathematics and logic), you can only proof that something is wrong, but never that something is right.

While I will agree that this is applicable in some areas of science, like the theory of evolution, gravity, theoretical physics, etc.  You can prove things in science, what you can't do is prove a negative which is why the burden of proof is on the person making the affirmative claim (ie global warming exists).  And even if you can't prove something you still need to have a proponderance of evidence with which to create a strong theory (like evolution and gravity).  To date there simply isn't that proponderance of evidence for man-made global warming.  In fact there are scientists out there that have just as much evidence disproving man-made global warming.

Here, take a look at what might happen over the next few years (could take decades or even centuries) as a result of global warming (man-made or otherwise):

1. Global Warming leads to snow and ice melt which in turn leads to increased water levels in bodies of water and a decrease of sunlight reflected back into space leading to more warming.

2. That increased warming causes increased evaporation of the various bodies of water leading to decreased water levels.

3. That increased evaporation leads to increased cloud cover which then leads to increased amounts of sunlight reflected back into space.

4. That increase sunlight relected back into space causes a period of global cooling.

5. The cooling allows the clouds to start releasing more precipitation.

6. The precipitation causes increased snow and and cooling along with precipitation creates increased ice.

7. This returns us to roughly the same place as we were in part 1 of this cycle and the cycle repeats.

Now are all of these steps going to happen, I don't know I'm not a scientist but based on my limited knowledge of science I would say that they certainly could and would render global warming as part of a cycle that will self correct.

Old saying in science: association is not causation.  As in 'I haven't had a cold since I bought my new shoes.'

Wasn't an Ice Age declared in the 80's? 

Not to my recollection, but then I was extremely young in the 80s.  I am fairly sure that in the 70s they were talking about global cooling instead of global warming though.

If you're going to argue against someone, at least make sure you read to the end of their or you end up embarrasing yourself, seeing as I already addressed that in the very next sentance.

No, they don't need to obtain 100% proof. Or even 99%. You seem to be arguing that being say 75% confident of something and acting on that basis is bad (sorry, "very very wrong"), since if you're 75% confident you haven't proved that outcome, you've simply made it the most likely. By requiring ridiculously high burdens of proof you delay action, and make things far worse than if you actually started to entertain the possibility.

To give you a simple idea, lets say you think there's a 75% chance that man has a significant impact on global warming, and that failure to take x actions will cost $100bn more, while there's a 25% chance that actually the impact is negligable. Now lets say that taking x actions will cost $25 bn. Should you consider taking such actions, or should you bury your head in the sand and demand pretty much irrefutable proof beyond any possible doubt whatsoever that human activities have a significant impact on global warming? Oh and if you're really really scepital of man contributing towards global warming, then make that a 10% chance, and just change the $25 bn cost to $2.5 bn, and yet again you can show that it would be the best outcome to act in such circumstances. You see this with insurance+security all the time - there's a small likelihood of a particular outcome occurring, but if it does occur you stand to lose big time, and hence it might be worth spending some money to reduce that likelihood, meaning you can expect to save money overall (although in the case of insurance you wouldn't expect to save money, but would still likely expect to benefit overall if risk averse)

I read your entire response before I made that comment and I still stand by it.  While you are correct that we don't need 100% proof that man has an impact on global warming we do need a proponderance of evidence to suggest that we are having an impact and that this isn't just a normal cycle.  The problem is that we don't have that proponderance of evidence.  There are plenty of scientists out there that disagree with man-made global warming and they have mountains of evidence to back them up, you simply can't ignore that because you want to "save the planet".

Look I am not saying that we shouldn't be taking steps to lessen our impact on the environment, we definitely should but we need to do so within reason.  There is no reason to legislate carbon caps on businesses when we don't have enough evidence to suggest that their carbon is escalating global warming.  Yes we should be researching solar power and wind power and other forms of "clean" energy but we can't mandate that companies start using this extremely expensive technology since it may end up putting them out of business.  If we can make solar, wind, etc. power more efficent and cheaper then businesses will naturally migrate to those forms of power.

Yes we should be looking to "cleaner" forms of travel but that doesn't mean we should be legislating high fuel effiency guidelines on auto makers if implementing them make the cars unaffordable.  What good is a fleet of cars that get 50 mpg if no one can actually buy them because the cheapest among them costs 50 grand?  You also need to look at the damage to the environment from getting the raw materials all the way through final production of the vehicle.  The batteries used in electric cars are made from some pretty nasty metals and chemicals that are in some cases damaging to the environment just to create (especially the old nickle-hydride ones).  Then there is the matter of what do you do with the batteries when they are dead?  You can't just throw them out in the trash they are technically hazardous materials.  You need to look at the total environmental impact from beginning to end to assess the environmental impact and what we are being sold is just the environmental impact of the cars when they are being driven around.

You simply can't say that man is having an impact on global warming so the car companies need to make hybrid only cars and everyone needs to drive one instead of their gas guzzling cars and suvs.  (keep in mind that the you there is not directed at you specifically but is directed at most global warming activists).  We need to attack this issue rationally and it just seems that most global warming activists just want immediate rash action which is a recipe for disaster.

Yes, in Economics they are called Type I and Type II errors.  Basically, doing nothing is a type I error.  Doing something that is wrong is a Type II error and much more severe.