A "what do you believe?" poll has no effect on the fact of the matter.  Many people don't have the patience, energy and/or brain power to research "Global Warming."  Many people who are going along with the whole green movement simply repeat what they have heard from others.  Why do research yourself when it is so much easier to repeat?  Try finding out how the promoters of Global Warming obtain their data.  Understand how these predictions are being made with computer models.  Look back at what models were saying back in the 1970s with regards to the whole "Global Cooling" movement.  Not old enough to remember those times?  Neither am I, but scientists back then were saying that (based on temp readings, models, hypothesis, various data) the planet was on the brink of a massive and catastrophic climate change that would quickly lead to an ice age.  How accurate were those predictions?  How could they have gotten it so completely wrong?  Of course, nowadays we have SUPAR COMPUTARZ.  The new computer models say we are heading towards  a dangerous warming period.  Ice will melt and oceans will rise.  These models are very complex and require many variables.  Are we so arrogant as to proclaim we have a solid grasp on how the entire weather system works?  So smug in our knowledge of the Earth's complexities that we know what variables to put into these models and how they interact with any degree of accuracy whatsoever?  Build all the models you want, but garbage in equals garbage out.

Al Gore says his graphs show that in the past when atmospheric CO2 levels rose, surface temperatures rose, too.  He even has fancy line charts in his movie to prove it.  Going past the surface, however, shows that when you "zoom in" on the graphs and shorten the time period it becomes clear that when surface temperatures rose the CO2 levels rose around 200-400 years LATER.  This means that atmospheric CO2 is an effect and not a cause.  It is a known fact that the energy coming from the sun is not constant.  Maybe more energy coming from the sun causes ocean temperatures to rise and allow aquatic animal life to flourish.  This in turn leads to more CO2 to be breathed out by these animals and raise CO2 levels over time.  You know... maybe a couple hundred years later.  This is an alternate theory to the overly simplistic "CO2 = BAD" belief.

Pushing the country or planet into a recession or depression by mandating all sorts of practices (no incandescent light bulbs, alternative energy subsidies, outlawing plastic bags, etc) seems to be the main goal behind these environmental groups who also happen to hate all the big bad corporations.  Same hippy bullshit agenda, new spin.

The trends over the last 100 or so years do seem to indicate that the planet is indeed warming.  The planet seems to be coming out of the last ice age.  Climate isn't a static (unchanging) property.  Climate cycles are well documented. Currently, some places seem to be warming (slightly) and other places are cooling (again, slightly).  Some scientists are saying we are at the threshold of a dramatic and possibly irreversible catastrophic warming event.  Apparently these scientists aren't aware of the fact that the sun was releasing more energy back in the middle ages and also that the surface temperatures were also higher than they are currently.

What does this all mean?  I don't know.  My computer can't predict the future.  Maybe we will do something that seems good at the time but turns out to cause problems somewhere else.  We don't understand how everything works.  My example:  MTBE.  Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) was used as a gasoline additive starting in the early 1990s.  It was used to "oxygenate" the fuel with the intended effect of "improving air quality by significantly reducing carbon monoxide and ozone levels in areas where the additive has been used." (source)  This worked great for years until the pollution of groundwater was linked to MTBE.  Oops.  Gov't mandated the use of MTBE to reduce air pollution and then had to ban MTBE less than 10yrs later.  Just because people have good intentions doesn't mean the outcome will be positive.  Humans have been known to !@$# up plenty of times with good intentions.

I vote we do more research until we have a good grasp of wtf is happening before enacting extreme measures.  In the meantime we should take sensible steps to conserve energy and limit waste.

YES/NO?


see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Oc-Po/Pollution-of-Groundwater.html

I say go start your own Fucking poll or are to too much  of a sheep and have to follow

I am not necessarily saying I completely agree with the theory that states CO2 increases as temperature increases.  The basic graph of CO2 concentration charted with surface temperatures looks something like:


A decent (and fairly long) read into some of the science can be found here:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

Al Gore neglected to include insolation (def: measure of solar radiation energy received on a given surface area in a given time) on his graphs.  This would show that surface temp is directly related (most likely caused) by the output fluctuations of the Sun.

Here is one of many many articles that correlates surface temp with the Sun:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm

What high temperatures?  We're still well below the average in Earth's history.