[One Red Seat]

Stick to social sciences, please.

One of the biggest unknowns in this debate is the level of Earth's sensitivity to changes in the shape of the elliptical orbit around the sun. The elliptical variations occur over approximately 400,000 years in cycle. Combine that type of period with our only approximately 50 years of reliable data collection ability, and you get a lot of ??? in the scientific community. Right now we are in the middle of what is considered a warming part of the period. There is concurrent warming occuring on Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and Neptune's largest moon. Do we blame OPEC and the coal miner's daughter?

I have no doubt that we have contributed to the warming trend. Increase in CO2 will do that. However, warmer temperatures also increase the CO2 emission from the oceans. Data taken from glacial samples suggest this natural increase in CO2 emission from the oceans occurs with a lag from when temperatures started rising. So, natural increases in CO2 are contributing to those spikes everyone is pointing to.

There's too much we still don't understand about how this planet responds to variation in solar energy absorption to consider our impact causal. At least, not without an agenda. One could make the case that the current "consensus" opinion provides a proponderance of evidence. I'd prefer we look for beyond a reasonable doubt before initiating regulations that will hamstring our economy while other industrialized nations become more prosperous at our expense.

And, there is an alternative, and more modern, technology that has been available since 1950, but it has been ignored since 1979. I'm talking about nuclear power. No new plants since Three Mile Island in the US.