My atheist and agnostic relatives and friends would likely get edgy right away reading something that starts off: Jesus said in the Bible that if one or more gather they can be in relationship with Him.

When you love and respect people with a different perspective, you also recognize the potential and devastating harm that can be done when trying to be who you are yet not throw gasoline where a mere spark may cause a violent explosion.What I want to do may not what I achieve, but if I'm successful I will tread in barefeet over the hot coals, not spill any fuel, and step again on to the cool safe ground with no harm to myself or others. Writing these thoughts has been prompted by someone who came into my life with amazing impact considering the circumstances and length of our acquaintance.

I believe, after much thought, that to begin this story it is necessary to talk about the context in which I feel it must be taken. It is a story of incredible belief in God. So that creates a problem right off the bat for those who do not belief there is one.

If there is no God then this is simply seen as something conjured up in a human brain.

If there is no God then every religion that worships one has been created by humans .

If there is no God then everything bad blamed on religion can be traced to bad humans who exploited innocent, good intentioned humans.

If there is no God then the teachings in Holy Books holds little significance.

However, even if one believes all of the above to be true, there is no denying the powerful force of people who believe in God. Even if it is totally a human creation, it was recognized early in the history of mankind that this was a very real force even if you could not see it, hear it, touch it, feel it or smell it. Humans just seem to sense it.

As with anything in the human realm it will be used for good and it will be used for bad. I believe it is so unfortunate even if inevitable that the strongest emotions gaining strength in our times is the bad uses and consequences of actions identified as religious in nature. The extreme response is to somehow destroy all religions and their activities.

I am hoping that the reader is already figuring out that this really isn't where I am going with this conversation....defending/condemning......condemning/defending. But I do have to color this with my own pencil because of the fact that I try to live my life based on principals taught in the Christian Bible and attributed to possibly the most controversial figure in human history. His name is Jesus. And frankly I don't really know much about what is said in other Holy Books. I do know that Jesus represents the only God claiming to have shown himself in human form on earth.

What I am trying to create context for, is that personal relationship between one person and one God.

There is no religion, no great infrastructure, no superiors to answer to. It is simply believing that there is someone who you can lay your whole life before, most desireably in secret. And when you are able to do that to the very best of your ability, you will receive answers to your deepest darkest fears, your highest most improbable desires and you will receive at least some deep understanding of why events happen for which we have absolutely no answers.

And that is where this story begins. Part of a recent holiday trip included some time on Prince Edward Island. Its a beautiful place to just go on drives over lightly travelled country roads, past impeccable homes with giant manicured lawns, immaculat looking churches and graveyards, huge fields of potatoes and corn, idyllic rolling countryside and cooperative September weather bathing everything in sunshine. One drive took us from the major centre of Charlottetown to the islands next biggest place of Summerside. Arriving in time for lunch to discover that many of the neat restaurants on the waterfront had already closed with the tourist season pretty much over. However we were directed to one that was still open for another week.

It is right on the water and provided an excellent view. A couple of tables have customers and there is a notice that the full menu is not available due to the impending winter closure. The girl who served us had incredibly severe disfigurement on her face and at first it required good concentration to look her in the eyes and understand her words when she spoke. She on the other hand seemed fully confident in her work. We watched as she chatted with the other customers. Eventually we became the last ones there so we struck up a conversation.  Val courageously (I thought) asked what had caused the scars. What we heard was the amazing testimony and courage of a young, openly Christian 24 year old girl who had half of her jaw removed when she was about 2 due to bone cancer. Then as a teenager she had a good portion of her face practically torn off in a automobile accident and at that time was given last rites with little expectation that shew would survive her injuries.
This is her mothers restaurant and she has always worked here since she was a little girl and told us her main goal after the accident was to get back to work before the end of the tourist season that year.
Nicole talked so candidly about her life and how she will be getting more surgeries next year to rebuild her face and told us stories of how she has been able to help others in the community that have faced extreme difficulties in their life. She is also involved with an organization called About Face(www.aboutface.ca) that helps people deal with facial disfigurement.

We became friends within a matter of a few minutes. Her amazing story of unquestioned faith in God and how that faith provided victory and hope over such daunting challenges really touched Val and I very deeply. We felt really blessed to have been brought to this place to hear this story.  We will certainly be keeping her in our thoughts and prayers as she prepares for extensive surgical procedures in Toronto in the coming months.

Such are the mysteries of God. He gives strength when we are at our weakest. Prayer works even though we really don't know how. We are also allowed to discount him as nothing more than a figment of the human brain. One thing for sure God and Jesus usually evoke emotion in the human brain and seldom promote apathy.

I have questions about the atheist point of view. The main point is that there is no god. But what I often read is their anger at religion and churches. ' There can be no peace until the last church is destroyed.' So would that prove that there is no god?
The 'fact' that I am working around is that there are some 60 million gods among the cultures of the world. So must the trappings of all of them be eliminated to prove there is no god?
So who was the first god? Didn't there have to be a first one some where back in time....and then another one and another one. Where did this urge to worship a higher power come from?
Having a god to worship does not make you a better person. In fact putting yourself out there as a person who can help you communicate with a god is really the worst kind of deceiver.
So are these the people that atheists want taken out? That is the end game is it not? If nothing else 60,000,000 gods should tell you this is a pretty widespread aspect of human nature and I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say it is pretty much hopeless to convince anybody but a minor minority that there are no gods. not a single one....

The most well known attempt to go down this road was the rule of communism in Russia. One of their main thrusts was to educate the people that there was no such thing as god. They murdered 60 million people who disagreed with them. It does become the only solution if you insist on enforcing a fundamental belief make over. And how did that work out in the end....I do believe that the human desire to worship a higher power won out.
I do not pretend to know how to explain god. I consider myself a rational human being who believes that at the end of the day there is one God, our Creator and that the Bible provides the operators manual for understanding who human beings are and how we fit into the scheme of things. Its obviously a complex book as people have been trying to fiure it out for nearly 2000 years and there's no end in sight that that I can see.
When I look up at a starry night I know with certainty that we are a microscopic speck in a bigger scheme. So for me it calls into question the issue of who is a human? And that is a whole other question. My biggest difficulty with it being able to rationalize the theory that we came out of the slime.
As human beings we are free to choose what we believe. When we look at the billions of us on the planet, that freedom is pretty obvious. We've gone every which way but loose....as the Clint Eastwood movie said.
But at the end of the day isn't there just one right answer, one truth? At this time in human history it just seems to be that the concept of no god is one of the weakest possibilities if you look at how humans in great percentage seem to lean toward the connection to a higher power.
The humans who use god, and religions as vehicles to do many, many bad things are bad humans. So anger against them is justified. Atheists would have a lot more friends if they stated that is how their anger is directed at. But it looks and smells like atheism is a veiled political attack on the concept of god and somehow points its bony finger at Christianity more than other religions and their gods.
Us humans are such an imperfect lot. All I know for sure is that when I try to live a life based on some basic rules laid out by fellow named Jesus it is the most complete form of living on this planet that I've found.
An atheist needs to tell me what set of rules he/she lives by...if its anarchy when you hold it under a bright light then I can't buy it.

Hanging out with Dad

Whenever I go back to Prince Rupert I like to make a point of visiting my Dad.
His spirit has remained part of me since September 12 1982. But I still like to visit the veterans section of the Prince Rupert Cemetery. I usually clean away the encroaching moss from the small rectangular granite grave stone that bears his name, military information and the quotation, A Proud Canadian.
This summer I decided to ask someone to join me. My cousin, Carroll, was always like another son to my Dad. It was Carroll who took on the unenviable task to call me when Dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. He and I have carried on that spiritual connection we seem to have even though our lives have often go in different directions.
Now Dad was a proud Canadian who served overseas for 5 years but there is an underlying significance to this tribute. There is a Canadian Whiskey called Royal Reserve and on the back of each 26 ounce bottle was a removeable sticker the read A Proud Canadian. There were a number of these stuck on various things and places around my parents house.
So when I asked Carroll if he would be interested in visiting Dads place where his earthly remains lie, I already had in hand a bottle of Royal Reserve and a couple of Cokes. So we drove up to the Cemetery one afternoon. We had a ‘snort’ as Dad would have called it straight from the bottle. Then dumped some of the Coke to make room for the other liquid. We stood with Dad and talked about the good times we remembered with him, his sense of humor, how we remembered his life, his never complain attitude even though the last 12 years were diminished somewhat from the effects of a heart attack that shortened his life to 63 years.
His was a simple and sometimes difficult life, yet surely not forgotten by many who knew him. Not perfect by any means. But a teeshirt given to Carroll by a close friend had these words, which I think fit my Dad as well: I’m not for everyone, but those who like me like me a lot.
It probably explains why Carroll and my Dad were so close.

We poured some of our drinks around the grave stone in a loving and sharing way that a lot of people might not understand. Mighty irreverent by some standards. But no true Christian is perfect and in that time Carroll and I spent with Dad that afternoon we discovered something pretty amazing ….that each of us in his own private way yet in a real and meaningful way know that we will be together again some day.
It’s the best news I could have ever prayed to have.

enjoying the wastefullness of grace

The Shack by William P. Young

How does it feel to have a personal relationship with God? William Young has written a story that has made me truly believe that God can and will approach any one of us...and not be surprised if the way He does is unorthodox.
The complete heart of God is revealed in scripture. The immensity of fully knowing this on a personal level is a challenge that has not been completed in the time the Bible has been available. It is why Gods' word is vibrant, alive and responding to each new generation as it come along.
The Shack takes the reader on an incredible journey. Reinforced through Biblical truth the reader is conjoined to a chain of life changing events in Mack's life. Events that show the reader how to comprehend the way God might work into our very own lives and do it in away that could change our lives forever.
In a note on the book cover, William Young portrays his own life these days as 'enjoying the wastefulness of grace'. For anyone that is thinking at all about the meaning of life in this hectic world of ours, The Shack will start you on a journey to understand what that phrase means.
I believe that understanding Gods grace and the abundance of it, is the beginning of living life the way it is intended to be lived

Jesus and the Rosetta Stone

Recently a friend asked me if I had heard about a translation of one of the languages on the Rosetta Stone that told a story that paralleled that of Christianity there by proving the Jesus never lived and Christianity was basically a hoax.
I had not heard this story and probably wouldn't have thought much more about it except for the fact the the friend is someone whose opinions I take seriously.
So I decided to inform myself and came up with the following information. It is nothing I wrote or revised just copied to pass along the 'rest 'of the story.
I of course passed it along to my friend.


The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light by Tom Harpur. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2004. pp. 244. $34.95
The title hints at the enormous task that Mr. Harpur has undertaken, which is nothing less than the radical transformation of Christianity as we know it.
His thesis is that there is nothing original in Christianity, since it was copied or plagiarized from the ancient Egyptian religion. He adduces an impressive list of parallels between the life and teachings of Jesus and the primordial mystery religion, that, if true would silence most skeptics.
For Harpur, the gospels were originally intended to be mythological, expressing deep spiritual truths flowing from the ancient religion. A combination of the machinations of fanatical ecclesiastics and colossal blunders resulted in the gospels being interpreted in historical fashion, thereby robbing Christianity of much of its spiritual power. In a fraud unparalleled in history, the evidence of this deceit was destroyed or covered up in the early centuries of the Christian era, and the pagan roots of Christianity repudiated. The historical Jesus never existed; he is a mythological expression of the god in every person. The events related in the gospel stories describe archetypal interior experiences common to all humanity, and the Jesus story is a spiritual allegory of the soul.


These are serious charges with enormous consequences, requiring a meticulous assemblage of evidence. This is where the problems with the book begin. There is virtually no dialogue with current mainstream scholarship. Much of the book draws on outdated or fringe work. It is questionable whether Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, should be considered a suitable source for a work of this nature (page 165). The bibliography is weighted very strongly in favor of esoteric and theosophical works, and relies very heavily on the works of Gerald Massey (1828-1908) and Alvin Kuhn (1881-1963), two orientalists who wrote extensively on esoteric religion.
Their works, however, are idiosyncratic, and not accepted within the field of Egyptology. One can see why: both of them work from the narrowest range of sources, making tortured and questionable word etymologies and esoteric interpretations of hieroglyphics and Egyptian art. We are asked to accept their interpretations at face value with little or no supporting evidence or proof.
Little supporting evidence
Harpur repeats these interpretations with little further supporting evidence. It would be expected that one could confront and cross-examine the statements offered as evidence; in fact, it is very difficult and in some cases nearly impossible. For example, on page 77, he states that Massey has found 180 correlations between the lives of Horus and Jesus, proving the identity between the two. Neither the name of the work nor the page numbers are given to us.
In numerous instances, bold and sweeping statements are made with little or no supporting references, and there is often the same problem with extended quotations. The startling statement by Meister Eckhart on page 41 begs for a reference, but in vain.
Over the last 50 years, a tremendous amount of research has been generated on both the historical Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and the social and economic conditions of the first-century Roman empire. Mainstream scholarship has situated Jesus securely in the context of Second Temple Judaism, Greco-Roman society, and the structure of empire. Additionally, it has revealed the social and economic impact of the early Christian proclamation and the religious currents that nourished the life and message of Jesus. With the exception of references to the work of the Jesus Seminar, most of this research is absent from this work. Ironically, even the work of the Jesus Seminar is dismissed by Harpur, because they still mistakenly believe that Jesus was an historical person. A failure to anchor the argument in sound historical research leads to assertions such as on page 5 that there was a 'Jesus' in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE--astounding when one considers the fact that the earliest pre-historic sites in Egypt date to about the 6th millennium BCE with the familiar Egyptian civilization beginning about 3500 BCE.
Several striking quotations from the Church Fathers admit that Christianity is not new. The statement by St. Augustine on page 27 is a fine example: the true religion has always existed among the ancients, and began to be called Christianity with the coining of Jesus Christ in the flesh. This line of argument was quite common during the patristic era, for one of the most uncomfortable accusations against Christianity was that it was new. The peoples of the ancient world, unlike modern people, revered old and venerable traditions rather than innovations, especially in the area of religion. Apologists had to prove that Christianity was not new, but had an ancient and respectable pedigree. These quotations do not imply that Jesus did not exist or that Christianity was a myth.


Start with the bibliography, and it reads like a Rogue's Gallery of Scholastic Incompetence: Freke and Gandy, Acharya S, Tim Leedom, T. W. Doane, Earl Doherty, Helen Ellerbe, Kersey Graves, John Shelby Spong, Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey, Alvin Boyd Kuhn. These last three (in reverse order) are Harpur's most favored sources; throughout Harpur expresses bewilderment that these three "scholars" (the word he applies liberally to just about anyone, regardless of credentials), especially Kuhn, have been so vastly ignored. The very idea that they have been ignored because of their incompetence and inability somehow never manages to cross Harpur's uncritical mind.
Some critical work backing this up was done for us by W. Ward Gasque, a Canadian Biblical scholar, who reports that he emailed 20 Egyptologists to get their view of these last three writers. Of the 10 who responded to Gasque, only one had ever heard of any of them. I think it worth reporting much of what Gasque reports, in full:
Harpur refers to Kuhn, Massey and Higgins as 'Egyptologists'; but he does not quote any contemporary Egyptologist or recognized academic authority on world religions, nor does he appeal to any of the standard reference books, such as the magisterial three volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001) or any primary sources.
He is especially dependent on Kuhn, whom he describes as "one of the single greatest geniuses of the 20th century" -- [one who] "towers above all others of recent memory in intellect and his understanding of the world's religions." Further, "Kuhn has more to offer the Church than all the scholars of the Jesus Seminar together. More than John Spong, C. S. Lewis, Joseph Campbell or Matthew Fox." Harpur declares himself "stunned at the silence with which [Kuhn's] writings have been greeted by scholars."
As it turns out, Kuhn was a high school language teacher who earned a PhD from Columbia University by writing a dissertation on Theosophy; his only other link with an institution of higher learning was a short stint as secretary to the president of a small college. Though he was a prodigious author, most of his works were self-published.
I emailed 20 leading international Egyptologists, regarding the contributions made to the field by Kuhn, Higgins and Massey. I also asked their opinion of the following claims by Kuhn (and hence Harpur):
* That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian Iusa, which means "the coming divine Son who heals or saves."
* That the god Horus is "an Egyptian Christos, or Christ . . . He and his mother, Isis, were the forerunners of the Christian Madonna and Child, and together they constituted a leading image in Egyptian religion for millennia prior to the Gospels."
* That Horus also "had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was 'a fisher of men with 12 followers.'"
* That "the letters KRST appear on Egyptian mummy coffins many centuries BCE, and . . . this word, when the vowels are filled in . . . is really Karast or Krist, signifying Christ."
* That the doctrine of the incarnation "is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least 4,000 years BCE."
Only one of the 10 experts who responded to my questions had ever heard of Kuhn, Higgins or Massey! Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool pointed out that not one of these men is mentioned in M.L. Bierbrier's Who Was Who in Egyptology (3rd ed, 1995); nor are any of their works listed in Ida B. Pratt's very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt (1925/1942).
Since he died in 1834, Kitchen noted, "nothing by Higgins could be of any value whatsoever, because decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs was still being finalized, very few texts were translated, and certainly not the vast mass of first-hand religious data."
Another scholar responded: "Egyptology has the unenviable distinction of being one of those disciplines that almost anyone can lay claim to, and the unfortunate distinction of being probably the one most beleaguered by false prophets." He dismissed Kuhn's work as "fringe nonsense."
These scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested etymologies for 'Jesus' and 'Christ.'
Peter F. Dorman of the University of Chicago commented: "It is often tempting to suggest simplistic etymologies between Egyptian and Greek (or other languages), but similar sequences of consonants and/or vowels are insufficient to demonstrate any convincing connection."
Ron Leprohan, of the University of Toronto, pointed out that while sa means 'son' in ancient Egyptian and iu means 'to come,' Kuhn and Harpur have the syntax all wrong. In any event, the name Iusa simply does not exist in Egyptian. The name 'Jesus' is Greek, derived from a universally recognized Semitic name (Jeshu'a) borne by many people in the first century.
While all the scholars agreed that the image of the baby Horus and Isis has influenced the Christian iconography of Madonna and Child, this is where the similarity stops. The image of Mary and Jesus is not one of the earliest Christian images -- and, at any rate, there is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born. Further, the New Testament Mary was certainly not a goddess, like Isis.
There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was 'a fisher of men' -- or that his followers, the king's officials, were ever 12 in number.
KRST is the word for 'burial' ('coffin' is written 'KRSW'); but there is no evidence whatsoever to link this with the Greek title 'Christos,' or Hebrew 'Mashiah.'
There is no mention of Osiris in Egyptian texts until about 2350 BCE, so Harpur's reference to the origins of Osirian religion is off by more than a millennium and a half. Elsewhere, Harpur refers to "Jesus in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE"; and he quotes Kuhn as claiming that "the Jesus who stands as the founder of Christianity was at least 10,000 years of age." In fact, the earliest extant writing that we have dates from about 3200 BCE.)
Kuhn's redefinition of 'incarnation' and his attempt to root this in Egyptian religion is regarded as bogus by the Egyptologists I consulted. According to one: "Only the pharaoh was believed to have a divine aspect, the divine power of kingship, incarnated in the human being currently serving as the king. No other Egyptians ever believed they possessed even 'a little bit of the divine'."
Virtually none of the alleged evidence in The Pagan Christ is documented by reference to original sources. The notes -- which refer mainly to Kuhn, Higgins, Massey or various long-out-of-date works -- abound with errors and omissions. Many quotations are taken out of context and clearly misinterpreted.
The book is chock full of questionable claims, such as: that "Christianity began as a cult with almost wholly Pagan origins and motivations in the first century"; that nearly all of the most creative leaders of the earliest church were pronounced heretics and reviled by "those who had swept in and grabbed control of [church] policies"; that "apart from the four Gospels . . . and the Epistles, there is no hard, historical evidence for Jesus' existence coming out of the first century at all."
Harpur claims that "the greatest cover-up of all time" was perpetrated at the beginning of the fourth century; and that thousands of Christian scholars have a vested interest in maintaining the myth that there was an actual Jesus who lived in history.
Presumably, the Jewish, Unitarian, secular and very liberal Christians who happen to be recognized scholars have no axes to grind regarding whether or not Jesus actually lived, or whether most of the ideas found in the Bible stem from Egyptian or other Near Eastern religions. It would be unlikely that you could find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not live and walk the dusty roads of Palestine.
Harpur's book is based on the work of self-appointed 'scholars' who seek to excavate literary and archaeological resources of the ancient world the way a crossword puzzle enthusiast mines dictionaries and lists of words -- rather than by primary scholarship.
While this was an extensive quote to use, it corresponds with what will be shown further: Harpur, though once a minor Biblical scholar himself, has clearly hoist his integrity upon the petard of gullibility. Even the few real scholars he uses (Crossan, Borg, Funk, Pagels, etc) are used sparingly, would powerfully disagree with his sources like Massey and Kuhn, and themselves are considered to variable extents "fringe" by the mainstream. There is not a hint of any knowledge of specific evangelical scholarly responses (just vague references to angry "conservative" respondents). In this book and in his columns, Harpur merely uncritically follows preferred sources and pretends that contrary material either does not exist, or is just sponsored by fundamentalists. Not surprisingly, Harpur reacts like a spoiled child when called on his errors; you can see this below with Gasque. Willful and gullible misinformers should never be permitted any leave to get away with anything, and that includes Harpur. We will also be responding to his common retort that his critics simply need to read the works of his sources and appreciate their genius, by indeed looking at these sources and exposing their nuttiness. Here is what we have:
· Alvin Boyd Kuhn -- includes a look at one of his works on a marginally related topic, The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet. The insanity of this work alone should put intelligent readers off Kuhn for a lifetime.
· Gerald Massey -- three items here, two from work done prior to out work on Harpur.
· Godfrey Higgins -- his work is hard to come by, but we managed it.

On the Subject of Bio Fuels

Bio-Fools is becoming a catch phrase in the growing case against the bio fuel advocators.
Globally the European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. Biofuels production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and other government leaders are publicly still buying into the whole misguided conception that human endeavor can reverse climate change. That topic provides a whole other issue and body of scientific evidence that is a closely related but biofuel is the focus of this commentary.

The evidence that will be cited here at the very least clarifies the opportunity for Canadian government leaders to make their political decisions based on more than the house of cards built in the last few years by people such as Al Gore and David Suzuki.
The global spin gains momentum when organizations like the European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel. The negative factors to this statement have only been footnotes in the calculations that substantiate them.

Two recent studies further bring this issue to the forefront of the bio fuel buzz. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development. Timothy Searchinger is the lead author of one of the studies and a prominent researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. His study details how the destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces. The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. In the wake of these new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’ most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists sent a letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of biofuels policies.

Vegetable oil prices are going up globally because of increased demand for biofuel crops.
More new land is being cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits.
Existing crops go for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.
U.S. Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.
Compounding these issues: tax credits for ethanol. The cost of reducing CO2 emissions through this subsidy exceeded $1,700 per ton of CO2 avoided in 2006 and the cost of reducing oil consumption over $85 per barrel according to the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S.

Here is another issue presented by Paul Crutzen, Nobel chemistry prize winner. He claims that corn-based biofuels could in fact be much worse due to the NO2 emissions caused by fertilizer application.

Farming for biofuel production is helping fertilizer company stocks be a hot buy for 2008. Companies such as the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, the worlds largest supplier of such products enjoyed record profits and a more than doubling of share prices in 2007 due to demand for their products.

Globally there are numerous negative factors that are not getting much visibility when compared to news items such as British billionaire Richard Branson announcing plans to run biofuel in his passenger jets. Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., the U.K. carrier controlled by Branson, is preparing to fly a plane powered by biofuel, the first in commercial aviation. Boeing is also expressing some public interest in this direction.

On the other hand high environmental impacts of bio fuels are not sparkly news items.
A study by leading scientists in Switzerland exposed the environmental impacts of biofuels caused by increased agricultural cultivation. In moderate latitudes low crop yields, cause intensive fertilizer use and mechanized tilling that cause the unfavorable environmental impacts and increased soil acidification. In tropical regions agriculture development causes biodiversity loss, the clear-cutting of rainforests agriculture sets great quantities of CO2 free and causes air pollution. Pesticides such as Daconate used in Brazilian sugar cane bioethanol production contains a lot of arsenic causing harmful toxicity.

The results of this study show on the whole that promoting biofuels, for instance, through a tax break, must be done in a differentiated way because all biofuels do not reduce environmental impact as compared to fossil fuels. The report downplays the potential of domestic bioenergy and concludes it will remain so in future. The report says if energy plants were cultivated in Switzerland on a large scale, it would have a negative influence on the food self-sufficiency of the country, or would cause added environmental impact by requiring the intensification of food production. This report comes from a Switzerland, a country that is seeking to increase bio fuel consumption.

Globally, staples such as pasta in Italy, corn based breads in some of the poorest countries and barley for beer are increasing in price partly because cheap nutritious food products are being converted in an inefficient energy source.
A team of UK-based scientists recently suggested that reforestation and habitat protection was a better option. Writing in Science, they said forests could absorb up to nine times more CO2 than the production of biofuels could achieve on the same area of land. The growth of biofuels was also leading to more deforestation, they added. "The prime reason for the renewables obligation was to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions," said Renton Righelato, one of the study's co-authors. "In our view this is a mistaken policy because it is less effective than reforesting," he told BBC News. Dr Righelato, chairman of the World Land Trust, added that the policy could actually lead to more deforestation as nations turned to countries outside of the EU to meet the growing demand for biofuels.
Experts at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm voiced concern that growing food crops to be used to make biofuels could jeopardize water supplies. "When governments and companies are discussing biofuel solutions, I think water issues are not addressed enough," Johan Kuylenstierna, director of the annual conference, told AFP.
Recently in the Smithsonian magazine, Richard Conniff attacked the bio-fuels industry. Food price inflation ("Cargill's chief predicted that reallocation of farmland due to biofuel incentives could combine with bad weather to cause food shortages around the world"); CO2 pollution ("when ethanol refineries burn coal to provide heat for fermentation, emissions are up to 20 percent worse for the environment than gasoline"); supply unreliability ("Switching to corn ethanol also risks making us dependent on a crop that's vulnerable to drought and disease"); soil erosion ("…growing corn requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. It contributes to massive soil erosion, and it is the main source, via runoff in the Mississippi River, of a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico"); and wildlife destruction ("The United Nations recently predicted that 98 percent of Indonesia's forests will be destroyed within the next 15 years, partly to grow palm oil").

Europeans, who have been on the environmental bandwagon much longer than in North America, get a substantial percentage of their energy from nuclear power whereas a new nuclear plant hasn’t been built in North America in a generation. That conveniently is a non factor in their carbon foot print.
It is an important question whether or not Canadian politicians will respond to this evidence. This is not secret information. It is factual reality and needs to be validated by politicians with the fortitude to bring it to the forum of public debate. Not be intimidated by the likes of David Suzuki when he says those who do not agree with him should be thrown in jail.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton would raise the national renewable fuels goal from the current level of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012 to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022 and to 60 billion gallons by 2030. “Advanced biofuels,” such as cellulosic ethanol, would comprise an increasing share of that target over time. Hillary will set a greenhouse gas emissions target for cellulosic and other advanced biofuels to ensure that they move over time towards a standard of emitting at least 80% less greenhouse gas as compared to gasoline. In addition, she would provide loan guarantees to spur the first two billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol capacity. This is flawed logic.

If all the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol production (and only 14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would have dropped by only 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline all U.S. cropland would have to turn over to ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land on top of that.

Here in Canada it is very disconcerting to say the least when our highly respected Prime Minister Harper sidles up to this kind of political logic. It is the flavor of the day for environmental lobbies to talk about dirty oil from the oil sands in Western Canada and bizarre carbon storage plans. Who in Canada is talking about for instance, the future of nuclear energy production?
The PBMR(pebble bed nuclear reactor) could leverage gas by 30%, and coal by 100%, an especially significant statistic when applied against recoverable hydrocarbons from oil sands in Canada. The introduction of nuclear process heat into the world's energy market is happening in South Africa, China, Japan and to a lesser extent in the U.S.
PBMR technology could economically provide large amounts of heat in the range of 900 degrees. It is also the only carbon-dioxide-free source. Canada was once a world leader in nuclear technology but doesn’t appear to have any political will to move toward reestablishing this position.
We in Canada need strong hearted politicians who do not bow to ‘truthiness’ and stand up to public opinion that resembles lemmings lunging after the headlines on the 6 o’clock news. Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejuvenated global respect for Canada and the issue of energy needs to be tackled from this high ground not the mushy swamp of ‘inconvenient truths’ that are so easy to step into because sometimes it seems like such a harmless thing to do..

Healing Through God's Love

White(count me) Christians need to hear what this man says.

James H. Cone
'The Father of Black Theology'
The Cross and the Lynching Tree
''Work to make the world the way it ought to be”
I listened to Mr. Cones' 2006 Ingersol Lecture at Harvard and made these notes.
It is exponentially more powerful to listen to this speech on the Internet.
There is White Gospel and Black Gospel
Black Church Worship transforms a nobody in white society to a somebody in black society.
The contradiction – How is Gods' Love explained to black people over 400 years of white supremacy.
What is the truth of the Gospel-Many preachers, black and white, claim that they have special communication with God. Be wary of these people.
Faith is the primary way to gain knowledge of the gospel, not by how intellectual you are.
The Gospel (Gods Word) is not in this world.
Everyone is corrupted by sin-even theologans and preachers and disciples.
Paul said it this way: Romans: 7 :15-20
I do not understand what I do.
For what I want to do, I do not do,
But what I hate I do.
And if I do what I do not want to do,
I agree that the law is good.
As it is, it is no longer I my self who does it,
But it is sin living in me.
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is,
In my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good,
but I cannot carry it out.
For what I do is not the good I want to do;
No, the evil I do not want to do-
this I keep doing.
Now if I do what I do not want to do,
It is no longer I who do it,
But it is sin living in me that does it.

Jesus is the physical slave form of the oppressed.
It requires a powerful religious imagination to find life in death and hope in tragedy.
Linking the cross and the lynching tree presents the audacity to challenge supremacy.
Their (the cross and the lynching tree)obcenity(in the original way) is linked.
Black gospel makes beautiful what white supremacy made ugly.
The gospel of Jesus on the cross is not a happy story. It is a story of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat – finding life in death- transforming lynched blacks into a symbol of victory.
The paradox -physical, ugly bodies can be transformed into beauty through faith.
Todays lynching tree- one half of 2,000,000 people in jail in the U.S. Are black.
If you have never been lynched by another group it is hard to understand the need to remember it.
Jesus did not want to die on the cross and blacks did not want to be lynched.
In confronting the legacy of white supremacy there is hope beyond the tragic for all humankind.
Hope beyond the lynching tree.

Climate of Fear

Martin Hertzberg, PhD, a scientist with a meteorological background in the Navy…he had this to say:
As Hertzberg says, water in the form of oceans, snow, ice cover, clouds and vapor “is overwhelming in the radiative and energy balance between the Earth and the sun….
Carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases are, by comparison, the equivalent of a few farts in a hurricane.” And water is exactly that component of the Earth’s heat balance that the global warming computer models fail to account for.



Excerpts from the Glenn Beck Show


In the 1970s, global cooling was the consensus. This article from the "L.A. Times" in 1978: "No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere". Or "TIME" magazine`s big spread from 1974, asking "Another Ice Age?" "Newsweek" said global cooling evidence had "begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard pressed to keep up with it." Just switch out warming for cooling, and they`ve written it before. The only thing that has changed is the temperature of the catastrophe. Take a look at this headline for the "New York Times" in 1959 claiming "A Warmer Earth Evident at the Polls". But just two years later, in the same newspaper, we find this: "Scientists Agree World is Colder." Even in the mid-`90s, the "Times" was talking about a frozen earth, except it wasn`t the 1990s. It was 1895. You get whiplash reading these things. Climate changes all the time. Get used to it.

On Inconvenient Truth…..
GORE: There`s not a single fact or date or number that`s been used to make this up that`s in any controversy. Isn`t there disagreement among scientists about whether the problem is real or not? Actually, not really. Meet people that aren`t really real. ROY SPENCER, PHD, FORMER SENIOR CLIMATE SCIENTIST, NASA: Politicians and some of the scientists like to say that there`s a consensus now on global warming or the science has been settled, but you have to ask them, what is there a consensus on? Because it really makes a difference. What are you talking about? The only consensus I`m aware of is that it`s warmed in the last century. They completely ignore the fact that there`s this thing called the Oregon petition that was signed by 19,000 professionals and scientists who don`t agree with the idea that we are causing climate change. JOHN CHRISTY, PHD, ALABAMA STATE CLIMATOLOGIST: One of the statements in the SPM was the statement that, if you boil it down, it says we are 90 percent certain that most of the warming in the last 50 years was due to human effects. I don`t agree with that. I think things are much more ambiguous

How about the so-called hockey stick graph. This is the version shown by Al Gore. However, the original version used by the IPCC contained a wide margin of error not shown in "An Inconvenient Truth." Inconvenient, huh? Critics say there`s even more missing. PATRICK MICHAELS, PHD, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA STATE CLIMATOLOGIST: There are two factors that most climatologists think happened that don`t seem to be included in it, which are the little Ice Age, which is a very cold period that ended in the late 19th century, and the medieval warm period, around 1000 or so. CHRIS HORNER, "POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO GLOBAL WARMING": Since the third U.N. report, for which this was the smoking gun, there`s been a fourth U.N. report. Does anybody see a hockey stick in there anywhere? I can`t see you. It`s not in there. Guess what? It`s air-brushed out, in classic fashion, and they don`t even mention why it`s not here. What hockey stick? I didn`t see any hockey stick.

What about that really cool animation of Florida and Manhattan drowning? Huh, cool, huh? You`ve seen these horrific scenarios everywhere based purely on catastrophic hypotheticals that dramatically exaggerate even what the U.N. says. It`s Al Gore`s best supporting actor, the word "if." GORE: If we have an increase of five degrees, if Greenland broke up and melted...... if this were to go, sea level worldwide would go up 20 feet. MARIO LEWIS, PHD, GOVERNMENT POLICY ANALYST: Where he`s misleading is that he gives the impression that this is something that is likely to happen. The likelihood of this is next to nil. DAVID LEGATES, PHD, CLIMATOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE: The IPCC report is that the upper limit of sea level rise by the year 2100 is going to be about 23 inches. Al Gore makes up 20 feet. The truth isn`t scary. The bottom line is, no one is denying that the globe has warmed. It has, 0.74 degrees Celsius.But there`s a disagreement on why, and there`s even more disagreement on if it will be catastrophic or not. The tactics Al Gore uses in "An Inconvenient Truth" deserve an Oscar. We all have to remember: There`s a difference between science and science fiction.

A "New York Times" story reported that 84 percent of Americans now see human activity as at least contributing to warming. What they didn`t put in that same story is that 75 percent of those think that it is just one factor of many. Another survey from a New York-based educational provider shows kids are now more scared of global warming than terrorism, cancer and car crashes. The organization that took the survey said one of the main reasons was the media coverage of tragedies, like the tsunami. The tsunami was caused by an earthquake. And as far as is known, even Al Gore isn`t claiming a link between global warming and earthquakes. I think to solve these problems, we need to take a step back. Isn`t it amazing that fossil fuels have become the enemy? The rise in our CO-2 emissions have coincided with the rise in our wealth, our life expectancy, and technological advancement. Fossil fuels are, in some ways, a victim of their own success. They`ve helped us in so many ways: We`ve stopped worrying about whether we can heat our homes or get sick people to the hospital. Instead, we now focus on developing new kinds of energy simply to avoid the possibility of future environmental problems. When you think about the history of the Earth, that`s a pretty good problem to have, isn`t it? Now, that doesn`t mean that we don`t want clean air. No one wants the Earth to die. But it`s what we do about it that`s at question. The correct decisions will not be made when fueled by frantic alarmism. Kids are now being shown "An Inconvenient Truth" completely unchallenged, not just in science class, but in art and math classes. A green hotel in California has just replaced the traditional in-room Bible with an in-room copy of "An Inconvenient Truth." Al Gore`s version of climate change has no longer become science. It`s dogma. And if you question it, you are a heretic. For now, all we can do is look for sober solutions in a world drunk on hysteria. The debate is not over. I have a feeling it`s just beginning.

more on climate

Hi Kes,

I’d like to begin where you left off. The Will Ferrell piece is quite funny but it is this continual cross pollination of topics that prevents reasoned out debates that would actually help people make better decisions. When I (and others) think this is just a huge political football, it is because politics is always thrown in for extra measure—the clear message being that if we get rid of the Republicans in the U.S. all our problems will be over.
When you and I find scientific evidence to back up our point of view doesn’t it seem to you that even the scientists disagree. So who is right and who is wrong?

There are a couple of points on CO2 and solar output. Go to CO2 science.com to get a more complete picture of what is actually happening.
Terry Ball is not at the centre of a huge media counter attack. In fact, he is a retired Canadian climatologist, living in a leaky apartment, driving a 1992 vehicle and trying to use his knowledge and that of others to show people that we should not be watching Al Gores movie and swallowing it hook line and sinker.
If you dug a little deeper into the information provided in that movie you would determine that the predictions and data they are using is based on ‘computer models’.
I am paraphrasing here but;
Computer models have been wrong on every single 'prediction' to date and they leave out two of the major solar factors that cause climate change. They do not include negative feedack, they do not cope with particulates in the atmosphere and they barely include clouds at all - this include the latest research by Svensmark. NASA got the official temperature record wrong. This agency is under the direction of James Hanse, ardent Gore supporter. Ironically, the error makes all the staetments in Gore's movie about temperatures of the last few decades incorrect. Now we learn that four of the warmest four years in the record were in the 1930s before humans began producing much CO2. We learned 1998 was not the warmest year, it was 1934. These changes change the slope of the temperature curve so that the claim of 0.6°C increase over the last 130 years is wrong and well within natural variability contary to the claims it wasn't. These were the only pieces of evidence of a human signal. Apart from anything else the ice core and other records show that temperature changes before CO2, not as is assumed and as built into the computer models.

I know this is a little more of the ‘he said she said’ kind of rhetoric that doesn’t add much to the real questions but since you mentioned them as a source of information:
Desmogblog is a web site paid for by a Canadian who pleaded gullty to massive fraud. It was set up by James Hoggan who is Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation. Hoggan also has a publicity company and the Suzuki Foundation is one of his clients along with Ballard Fuel, wind turbine companies and others that stand to profit from the 'go green' philosophy. The Foundation also receives money from three oil companies but somehow that is acceptable because it doesn't have an agenda.
The claim in Dessmogblog that Terry Ball is paid by the energy companies is false and when he helped set up Friends of Science (FOS) he warned them about the slur campaigns that would occur. They put the money they received in a blind trust run by the University of Calgary.

When David Anderson said he had consulted Canadian climate experts on Kyoto, eight Canadian climate experts including Terry Ball went to Ottawa and held a press conference saying we were not consulted. Terry Balls expenses of about $800 were paid by Friends of Science. It subsequently turned out that a very small percent, about 2%, of FOS money came from an oil company. From this Desmogblog argued that since a small percentage of the expenses came from an oil company that he was paid by the oil companies to spout their line.
No spin here eh?

As for Kyoto…
True 160 countries signed the original agreement but most were not required to meet any reductions including China and India. Can you name any countries that met their Kyoto commitments? . The truth is if every country met its requirements the reduction would be so small no scientist in the world would be able to detect the difference. Why? Because CO2 is less than 4% of the Greenhouse Gases and the human generated portion a minute fraction of that.
Ironically, the US using George Bush's voluntary program achieved a greater reduction in the growth of their CO2 production than any other developed nation.
The entire Kyoto thing is political and was made so by Maurice Strong (board member of the Suzuki Foundation) and his formation of the IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Their rules require the scientific report be written, then a Summary for Policymakers is produced by politicians. This is then released to the public but also goes back to the scientists to make sure the technical report fits with the political conclusions. India sent a single delegate.

Its true about information. Its amazing what’s out there when you done a little research and there’s lots for both sides of any question.

This is a good discussion and I think that in many respects we’re not that far apart because we both understand that polluting is bad and if each of us takes personal responsibility to do our small part it can make a huge difference.
I don’t know however how emerging economies especially like those in India and China can be made to buy in when they’re just getting an appetite for a consumer based society. Its difficult enough here where we figure that we have access to all this information that can help us make better decisions.
I recently heard a UBC professor(can’t remember his name) who has just completed a significant study that looked at the human ability to make better decisions based on more information.
His findings basically were that better educated people do not show any better ability to make better decisions. I thought this was pretty radical coming from a professor. He said better educated people tend to make more money and spend that money on more of the products that we claim are ruining the planet ie big suvs, living spaces much bigger than required and then filling them with all kinds of ‘stuff’.

In my eyes this is a form of ‘elitism’ and I really don’t like that concept which basically anoints a privileged few while telling everyone else they should follow a different set of rules. If you want to learn about the extreme condition that develops when this sort of thing is out of control, study the rise and fall of communism in Russia.

Signing off for now,
Love,
Dad

P.S.
I actually had a copy of Inconvenient Truth in hand and was going to buy it so that I would have that information on a first hand basis. I opted for not spending the 30 bucks but I will rent it sometime.
I did more research that continues to debunk a lot of what is said and i was going to send that to you but I won't unless you are interested in reading it or add it to the blog.

A lot of people are debating this issue and I especially reespect and enjoy the fact that we can be part of that conversation.

Kes responds

Thanks for the reply.
I would like to point out a few more things to you though.
"I never got from Timothy Ball that there is no need for concern."
Once again I would like to point out his organization is making radio commercials saying it's ok to pollute (they claim C02 isn't harmeful). Do you not find this even a little bit irrisponsible? Especially for an organization claiming to want to better our enviroment?
"I am sending you some other information regarding solar warming of other planets etc."
Here is some great information on the sun and it's solar output: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/FAQ2.html
"While a component of recent global warming may have been caused by the increased solar activity of the last solar cycle, that component was very small compared to the effects of additional greenhouse gases. According to a NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) press release, "...the solar increases do not have the ability to cause large global temperature increases...greenhouse gases are indeed playing the dominant role..." The Sun is once again less bright as we approach solar minimum, yet global warming continues."
I found it interesting that a lot of reports that point out increased solar activity as a likely cause for global warming show data that ends in 1980. Why? Because after 1980 there was a decline in sunspots on the surface of the sun and a decline in solar output.
More information here:http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4CF1-4202-1508-820283414B7F0000http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.stm
In regards to other planets one must take into account all planets and moons in the solar system not simply point out a few planets and one moon that could possibly be warming. I think it's important to point out that we know far less about the geological makeup of the other planets in our solar system then we do our own.
More information can be found here:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11642http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070404-mars-warming.html
"These should be two different arguments. What is causing Climate Change? And how should all of the rich people of the world be proactive in reducing the levels of pollution and polluting activities?"
I disagree, the vast majority of our wealth is in the hands of a few. It's not a few that are going to make a change it's the masses. It is the consumer is the one who ultimately holds the power with there buying dollars. Why are the major north american car makers in deep trouble? Because they failed to see the growing demand for more efficient less polluting vehicles where as the Japanese manufactures did. The irony of this is one of the main reasons the Japanese automakers put so much effort into cleaner vehicles and new hybrid technologies is due to some of the strict laws that were passed in California. I would like to recommend watching a move called "Who killed the electric car".
"Just because the herd is following doesn't’t mean it is necessarily right. Back in the 1400’s most of the civilized world thought the earth was flat and if you went past the horizon you’d just fall off."
Once again I disagree. :) Back in the 1400's people didn't go to school, you were burned at the stake if you didn't believe in what the church said and the internet and other forms of modern communication did not exist. I think that we have progressed considerably in our views on sharing information and making informed decisions based on the most accurate information we have at our disposal.
"Lobbying to have your data recognized is no more biased than having a multi million dollar organized movement headed by a high profile politician(Al Gore ) that makes a movie supporting only 1 point of view and then try to proliferate that point of view in ways such as trying to deliver it into the hands of the public school system for mass consumption as completely factual and true."
I was waiting for this. :) Al Gore... Have you seen his movie? Do you know anything about his story? I think you should at least view his movie before making claims against his cause. The only other thing I will say about this is no matter what his motivation he seems to at least have some concern with what is happening on our planet and the gross over consumption that is going on in the US; which is more then can be said about most politicians. His movie isn't about spreading fear, if you've seen it you should know that. He is trying to educate people or at least bring up the subject of global warming to people who otherwise might think twice about it. Right or wrong at least he is making people aware and asking questions; the first step in solving any kind of problem. Even if he is set to make some money off this wouldn't it be nice to see some GREEN companies making some coin other then all the oil companies? Aren't we tired of throwing $20 bills out our window as we drive down the road?
"Even today its pretty common scientific knowledge that domesticated animals are one of the largest contributors to green house gasses on the planet. Did this planet become so overrun with giant animals that the earth shutdown in its ability to support them or did some humongous cosmic event occur that wiped them out and created this incredible energy supply in the ground?"
I am aware of the theory on animals being a contributor to green house gasses. A few interesting stats on cattle in the US:
Fifty percent of the wetlands, 90% of the northwestern old-growth forests, and 99% of the tall-grass prairie have been destroyed in the last 200 years.
Eighty percent of the corn grown and 95% of the oats are fed to livestock.
Fifty-six percent of available farmland is used for beef production.
Kind of scary isn't it? The forests and wetlands that act as C02 sinks and remove carbon from our atmosphere are being destroyed for more farting cattle.. Maybe we should be eating less fast food?
You are correct, a huge cosmic event did wipe the slate clean so to speak and create the vast amount carbon based resources we have in the ground. The big thing here is that these resources took millions of years to develop and we are now using them up as fast as we can find them. So lets just say it takes 3 million years to produce x amount of carbon resources through natural processes and we then release these same carbon resources back into the atmosphere in 1,000 years isn't pretty easy to conclude it might have some adverse effects?
Also I think you might be missing my point on population. Never before in the history of our planet have the inhabitants created pollution outside the natural processes with the exception of man. So if cattle can have an effect on our environment isn't it reasonable to then think that human waste and pollution will as well?
Its a radical point of view that after however many thousands or millions of years there has been life on this earth that we suddenly have a few hundred scientists who say we have 20 years to save the world. Its much more realistic to think they have a bigger political and economic agenda than a real concern to encourage the global community to be more thoughtful in its stewardship of the vast resources we have at our disposal on this planet we call home.
A few hundred scientist? 160 countries have ratified Kyoto, I would think that each of the governments in these countries have more then a few scientist studying climate change and have be providing their governments with information. We are talking about some of the smartest science institutes in the world! NASA? They put men on the moon and have developed the vast majority of the technology that has allowed us to even begin to understand the effects we have on our planet and what is happening around our solar system. How can we just simply disregard something as someone out to make a quick buck when so many different countries and people of all religions, ages and ethnic backgrounds seem to think something is so important. On top of all that the facts are there, cold hard data that show some very scary trends on how we are impacting the plant.
Isn't it better to error on the side of caution when it's our planets future that could be at stake?
I will leave you with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxpEqln5EdQ
Love,Kes

I sent Kes's opinions to Terry Ball

From: TIM BALL To: Glenn Allen Subject: Re: FW: RE: Climate ChangeDate: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 21:33:12 -0700This is such arrant nonsense I don't know where to begin. Maybe we can start with the obvious fact that the "thoughtful"young man didn't do his research anywhere near adequately. I would fail him if he submmitted this as a Grade X paper let alone a university one. If he listened to all the tapes, interviews, and documents on our web site he would see we provide answers and explanations with what is wrong with the 'official' position. If he read my complete research record starting with my PhD, which was written when the official and scientific consensus was the threat of global cooling he would have a better understanding of my knowledge of the subject. I defy him to show one single shred of evidence that human CO2 or CO2 at all is causing climate change. This would exclude computer model outputs. They are the only source of evidence for such claims, especially those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Worse, they can't even forecast the weather 10 days from now let alone 50 years. These computer models have been wrong on every single 'prediction' to date, which isn't surprising. They leave out two of the major solar factors that cause climate change. They do not include negative feedack, they do not cope with particulates in the atmosphere and they barely include clouds at all - this include the latest research by Svensmark et al. The thoughtful young man lists NASA as a source but we have just learned how they got the official temperature record wrong. This agency is uner the direction of James Hanse, ardent Gore supprter. Ironically, the error (I personally think it was more than an error) makes all the statments in Gore's movie about temperatures of the last few decades incorrect. Now we learn that four of the warmest four years in the record were in the 1930s before humans began producing much CO2. We learned 1998 was not the warmest year, it was 1934. These changes change the slope of the temperature curve so that the claim of 0.6°C increase over the last 130 years is wrong and well within natural variability contary to the claims it wasn't. It's gone, the hockey sitck is gone and these were the only pieces of evidence of a human signal. Part from anything else the ice core and other records show that temperature changes before CO2 not as is assumed and as built into the computer models.
He should also look at his comments on CO2 and plants, which show a complete lack of understanding of the science. He should visit CO2 science.com to get a better idea of what is actually happening. He could also learn that his beloved government agencies such as NASA are saying the increased CO2 in the atmosphere has caused an expansion of global vegetation.
Of course, this won't happen because he, like so many others, become instant experts in climate and climate change when they would fail even the most basic climate science quiz.
He talks about Desmogblog a web site paid for by a Canadian who pleaded guillty to massive fraud. It was set up by James Hoggan who is Chair of the David Suzuki Fooundation. Hoggan also has a publicity company and the Suzuki Foundation is one of his clients along with Ballard Fuel, wind turbine companies and others that stand to profit from the 'go green' philosophy. The Foundation also receives money from three oil companies but somehow that is acceptable because it doesn't have an agenda.
The claim in Dessmogblog that I am paid by the energy companies is false. When I helped set up Friends of Science (FOS) I warned them about the slur campaigns that would occur. They put the money they received in a blind trust run by the University of Calgary. When David Anderson said he had consulted Canadian climate experts on Kyoto, eight of us went to Ottawa and held a press conference saying we were not conuslted. My expenses of about $800 were paid by Friends of Science. It subsequently turnd out that a very small percent, I believe it was about 2%, of FOS money came from an oil company. From this Desmogblog argued that since a small percentage of the expenses I received had, unbeknown to me, a percentage of that money then I was paid by the oil companies to spout their line. It is a bloody insult. If I was paid by them I woudn't be living on a pension, living in a leaky apartment block or driving a 1992 car.
The "thoughtul young man"should also do his homework on Kyoto. True 160 countries signed the original agreement but most were not requird to meet any reductions including China and India. He should also check on how many met their commitment or came even close. The truth is if every country met its requirements the reduction would be so small no scientist in the world would be able to detect the difference. Why? Because CO2 is less than 4% of the Greenhouse Gases and the human portion a minute fraction of that. Indeed, the entire human production is within theerror of the estimates of three of the major natural contributors to atmospheric CO2.
Ironically, the US using George Bush's voluntary program (the author and his son seem to detest with a passion that colours their judgment), achieved a greater reduction in the growth of their CO2 production than any developed nation.
The entire issue is political and was made so by Maurice Strong and his formation of the IPCC wose reports are ludicrous. Their rules require the scientific report be written, then a Summary for Policmakers is produced by politicans. This is then released to the public but also goes back othe scientists to make sure the technical report fits with the political conclusions. China fought desperately against what was going on to the point here they reduced the exremes so much that it ws noticed immediately by the media. India showed its disdain for the entire process by sending a single delegate.
The political nature of the science fits well with the clear political biases of the father and son. Mybe they could get one of their political friends to give me clear proff that human CO2 is causing global warming or climate change. I doubt it will happen because their searches are selective and limited by political blinkers, which they don't seem to realize they are wearing.
I am sick and tired of people who know nothing about the sceince claiming I have the science wrong because people who attacke me personally say i have it wrong. what they don't even realize is that bcause of heir lack of knowlegde or nderstanding they end up with a personal attack - but it is somehow acceptable becaause they have the right political perspective. What arrogant rubbish - like father like son. I could point out many more errors of facts and conclusions as el s more politcal bis, but they are not worth my time. I am simply doing this for you.
Tim Ball

I replied to Kes

Hi Kes,
Obviously, there is more information out there than the one organization Terry Ball is associated with. Like you said we should look at information from both sides and draw our own opinion.
I am sending you some other information regarding solar warming of other planets etc.
I never got from Timothy Ball that there is no need for concern. He said and I agree that all of us need to be concerned about pollution and polluting and being proactive in reducing our consumption of hydro carbons. Nobody disputes that 15 percent of the worlds population controls and uses 85 percent of the worlds man produced wealth.
The difference in scientific opinion is that the main stream thinking follows the ‘people are to blame for global warming’ theory. A much smaller scientific community believes that there is a bigger universal picture that needs to be recognized in that regard.
These should be two different arguments. What is causing Climate Change? And how should all of the rich people of the world be proactive in reducing the levels of pollution and polluting activities?
Just because the herd is following doesn’t mean it is necessarily right. Back in the 1400’s most of the civilized world thought the earth was flat and if you went past the horizon you’d just fall off.
Lobbying to have your data recognized is no more biased than having a multi million dollar organized movement headed by a high profile politician(Al Gore ) that makes a movie supporting only 1 point of view and then try to proliferate that point of view in ways such as trying to deliver it into the hands of the public school system for mass consumption as completely factual and true.
These are your words Kes and I couldn’t agree more with them.
“The key to finding unbiased information is finding the facts and creating your own opinion. In this case real scientific data not some group scientist who's hands are in the back pocket of the industries at blame and over eager to start pointing fingers. Actually look at both sides of the story and decide from there.”

When you talk about the population levels and their effect on climate, I would use the vast amount of hydrocarbon reserves in the ground, oil, gas, coal etc.as pretty strong evidence that it took a pretty massive amount of population of some kind to produce it. Even today its pretty common scientific knowledge that domesticated animals are one of the largest contributors to green house gasses on the planet. Did this planet become so overrun with giant animals that the earth shutdown in its ability to support them or did some humongous cosmic event occur that wiped them out and created this incredible energy supply in the ground?

Personally I don’t have any problem with controlling our consumption. What each person does in their day to day lives can do a lot to reduce pollution and consumption. You’re right if you think that most people don’t give a rats butt or if they do its okay as long as it doesn’t affect the plans they have to buy this that and whatever so they can live the life they ‘deserve”.
The more people that buy into energy conservation, less consumption , less polluting the better it will be for all of us. But those emerging middle classes in India and China aren’t too worried. In our shrinking global village they are learning to be consumers and they’re not going to stop anytime soon.
There are historic examples that it is impossible to stop what and where humanity migrate to. Whether it’s the poor people of Europe coming by the millions to North America, Millions of Latin and South American migrating to the United States or the massive desire for a consumers society in India and China.
Its true these events cause radical changes.
Its a radical point of view that after however many thousands or millions of years there has been life on this earth that we suddenly have a few hundred scientists who say we have 20 years to save the world. Its much more realistic to think they have a bigger political and economic agenda than a real concern to encourage the global community to be more thoughtful in its stewardship of the vast resources we have at our disposal on this planet we call home.
I admit to not knowing too much about the specific goals of Kyoto and I probably should correct that. Typically broad political documents are hardly worth the paper they’re written on in terms of how closely the governments that sign them actually follow the directions that are outlined.
Lets compare our carbon footprints one of these days. Other than the fact our house is too big for us I think were not that different.
Thank you very much for the effort you made to respond. I really appreciated it. I always enjoy and respect the thoughtful opinions you have about the world around you.

Love,
Dad
Here is the research I came up with
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.
Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.


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Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.
Solar Cycles
Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.
Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.
"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.
By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.

All planets experience a few wobbles as they make their journey around the sun. Earth's wobbles are known as Milankovitch cycles and occur on time scales of between 20,000 and 100,000 years.
These fluctuations change the tilt of Earth's axis and its distance from the sun and are thought to be responsible for the waxing and waning of ice ages on Earth.
Mars and Earth wobble in different ways, and most scientists think it is pure coincidence that both planets are between ice ages right now.
"Mars has no [large] moon, which makes its wobbles much larger, and hence the swings in climate are greater too,"

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block in Abdussamatov's theory is his dismissal of the greenhouse effect, in which atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide help keep heat trapped near the planet's surface.
He claims that carbon dioxide has only a small influence on Earth's climate and virtually no influence on Mars.
But "without the greenhouse effect there would be very little, if any, life on Earth, since our planet would pretty much be a big ball of ice," said Evan, of the University of Wisconsin.
Most scientists now fear that the massive amount of carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the air will lead to a catastrophic rise in Earth's temperatures, dramatically raising sea levels as glaciers melt and leading to extreme weather worldwide.
Abdussamatov remains contrarian, however, suggesting that the sun holds something quite different in store.
"The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040," Abdussamatov said. "It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on Earth in 15 to 20 years."


Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:
“Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets ... Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”
Peiser included quotes from recent news articles that take up other aspects of the idea.
“I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system,” Peiser said in an email interview. “Perhaps this is just a fluke.”
In fact, scientists have alternative explanations for the anomalous warming on each of these other planetary bodies.
The warming on Triton, for example, could be the result of an extreme southern summer on the moon, a season that occurs every few hundred years, as well as possible changes in the makeup of surface ice that caused it to absorb more of the Sun’s heat.
Researchers credited Pluto’s warming to possible eruptive activity and a delayed thawing from its last close approach to the Sun in 1989.
And the recent storm activity on Jupiter is being blamed on a recurring climatic cycle that churns up material from the gas giant’s interior and lofts it to the surface, where it is heated by the Sun.
Sun does vary
The radiation output of the Sun does fluctuate over the course of its 11-year solar cycle. But the change is only about one-tenth of 1 percent—not substantial enough to affect Earth’s climate in dramatic ways, and certainly not enough to be the sole culprit of our planet’s current warming trend, scientists say.
“The small measured changes in solar output and variations from one decade to the next are only on the order of a fraction of a percent, and if you do the calculations not even large enough to really provide a detectable signal in the surface temperature record,” said Penn State meteorologist Michael Mann.
The link between solar activity and global warming is just another scapegoat for human-caused warming, Mann told LiveScience.
“Solar activity continues to be one of the last bastions of contrarians,” Mann said. “People who don’t accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change still try to point to solar activity.”
The Maunder Minimum
This is not to say that solar fluctuations never influence Earth’s climate in substantial ways. During a 75-year period beginning in 1645, astronomers detected almost no sunspot activity on the Sun. Called the “Maunder Minimum,” this event coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, a 350-year cold spell that gripped much of Europe and North America.
Recent studies have cast doubt on this relationship, however. New estimates of the total change in the brightness of the Sun during the Maunder Minimum suggest it was only fractions of a percent, and perhaps not enough to create the global cooling commonly attributed to it.
“The situation is pretty ambiguous,” said David Rind, a senior climate researcher at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has modeled the Maunder Minimum.
Based on current estimates, even if another Maunder Minimum were to occur, it might result in an average temperature decrease of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, Rind said.
This would still not be enough to counteract warming of between 2 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit from greenhouse gases by 2100, as predicted by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
LiveScience staff writer Andrea Thompson contributed to this article.



Neptune is the planet farthest from the Sun (Pluto is now considered only a dwarf planet), Neptune is the planet farthest from the Earth, and to our knowledge, there has been absolutely no industrialization out at Neptune in recent centuries. There has been no recent build-up of greenhouse gases there, no deforestation, no rapid urbanization, no increase in contrails from jet airplanes, and no increase in ozone in the low atmosphere; recent changes at Neptune could never be blamed on any human influence. Incredibly, an article has appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters showing a stunning relationship between the solar output, Neptune’s brightness, and heaven forbid, the temperature of the Earth. With its obvious implications to the greenhouse debate, we are certain you have never heard of the work and never will outside World Climate Report.
In case you have forgotten your basic science lessons on the planets, Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance 30 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun and Neptune revolves around the Sun once every 164.8 Earth years. Neptune has 17 times the mass of the Earth, its atmosphere is primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, with traces of methane that account for the planet’s distinctive blue appearance. It was the only planet discovered mathematically – scientists noted variations in the orbit of Uranus, they calculated the orbit and position of a yet undiscovered planet that could cause the variations noted for Uranus, they determined where the planet should be, and on the first night they searched for it (September 23, 1846), they discovered the large planet sitting within 1 degree of their predictions. The new planet was named for Neptune, Roman god of the sea, given its distinctive blue color. Observations from Earth and a 1989 Voyager 2 flyby have revealed that Neptune’s cloud tops are extremely cold (−346°F) being so far from the Sun while the center of the planet has a temperature of 13,000°F due to high pressure generating extremely hot gases.
In the recent article, Hammel and Lockwood, from the Space Science Institute in Colorado and the Lowell Observatory, note that measurements of visible light from Neptune have been taken at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona since 1950. Obviously, light from Neptune can be related to seasons on the planet, small variations in Neptune’s orbit, the apparent tilt of the axis as viewed from the Earth, the varying distance from Neptune to Earth, and of course, changes in the atmosphere near the Lowell Observatory. Astronomers are clever, they are fully aware of these complications, and they adjust the measurements accordingly.
As seen in Figure 1, Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980; furthermore, infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that the planet has been warming steadily from 1980 to 2004. As they say on Neptune, global warming has become an inconvenient truth. But with no one to blame, Hammel and Lockwood explored how variations in the output of the Sun might control variations in the brightness of Neptune.
Figure 1 (a) represents the corrected visible light from Neptune from 1950 to 2006; (b) shows the temperature anomalies of the Earth; (c) shows the total solar irradiance as a percent variation by year; (d) shows the ultraviolet emission from the Sun (Source: Hammel and Lockwood (2007)).
What would seem so simple statistically is complicated by the degrees of freedom in the various time series which is related to the serial correlation in the data (e.g., next year’s value is highly dependent on this year’s value). Nonetheless, they find that the correlation coefficient between solar irradiance and Neptune’s brightness is near 0.90 (1.00 is perfect). The same relationship is found between the Earth’s temperature anomalies and the solar output. Hammel and Lockwood note “In other words, the Earth temperature values are as well correlated with solar irradiance (r = 0.89) as they are with Neptune’s blue brightness (r > 0.90), assuming a 10-year lag of the Neptune values.” The temporal lag is needed to account for the large mass of Neptune that would require years to adjust to any changes in solar output.
Hammel and Lockwood conclude that “In summary, if Neptune’s atmosphere is indeed responding to some variation in solar activity in a manner similar to that of the Earth albeit with a temporal lag” then “Neptune may provide an independent (and extraterrestrial) locale for studies of solar effects on planetary atmospheres.”
World Climate Report has covered many articles in the scientific literature showing that variations in solar output, including variations within specific wavelengths (e.g., cosmic, ultraviolet, visible, infrared) are highly correlated with temperature variations near the Earth’s surface. Believe it or not, when the Sun is more energetic and putting out more energy, the Earth tends to warm up, and when the Sun cools down, so does the Earth. The Hammel and Lockwood article reveals that the same is true out at Neptune; when the Sun’s energy increases, Neptune seems to warm up and get brighter given a decade lag.
If for some reason you do not believe that the Sun is a significant player in determining the temperature of the Earth (after all, we are told repeatedly that humans are causing most of the observed warming on the Earth), then asked yourself if you believe that Neptune’s temperature is controlled by the Sun. How is it possible that the Earth’s temperature is so highly correlated with brightness variations from Neptune? The news from Neptune comes to us just weeks after an article was published showing that Mars has warmed recently as well.
If nothing else, we have certainly learned recently that planets undergo changes in their mean temperature, and while we can easily blame human activity here on the Earth, blaming humans for the recent warming on Mars and Neptune would be an astronomical stretch, to say the least.
Reference:
Hammel, H. B., and G. W. Lockwood, 2007. Suggestive correlations between the brightness of Neptune, solar variability, and Earth’s temperature, Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L08203, doi:10.1029/2006GL028764.














Other planets are warming up too.Well, the thing is that it is not only "Mars" and "Pluto" that are warming, but pretty much every planet, and moon with an atmosphere in the solar system is warming/undergoing climate change, and in most cases what is happening to every planet in the solar system, is worse than what is happening on Earth.
Global Warming on Pluto.http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_02100...
Climate change/warming on Jupiter.http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-05-04-jup...
Global warming on Triton. (Neptune's largest moon)http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980526052143data_trunc...
Global warming on Enceladus. (A moon of Saturn)http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20060419/Featu...
Climate change on Saturn.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6135450.stm...

The Great(Grate) Climate Change Debate

The debate is raging world wide. A spark of it ignited at our house Sept 30 when family got together to celebrate the first 40 year old sibling. The day after I sent a link to Kes. The information there goes against the common theme getting all the publicity these days that the production of CO2 by human activity is the major cause of temperature change on the planet and we are running out of time to change catastophic consequences.
The link to Terry Ball is at the bottom of the page. I had heard him recently on a T.V. show. His common sense talk made a lot of sense to me and I located his website and wrote him an e-mail in support.

The preceeding comments are Kes's reply.

Thanks for the link. I read through the website and was unimpressed, they don't present any information on what they think is happening with climate change. There whole view seems to be that it's a natural process and there is no need for concern, but fail to present any solid data supporting there claims.
I dug a ittle deeper and read some of Timothy Balls articles not posted on his website; once again he just points fingers at people trying to cause a so called "fear" and fails to present any real data on what he feels is happening. For someone who has a doctorate in climatology it would be nice if he spent a little less time writing about how all the other scientist are wrong and would start doing some of his own research. On top of all that he was on Fox news, definitely the worlds most reliable source of unbiased and accurate information...
Also it looks like the founder of NRSP (Timothy Egan) coincidentally a lobbyist who happens to have clients of the likes of the Canadian Electricity Association and the Canadian Gas Association. Both of these organizations represent the industries that do most of our polluting and generate the vast majority of C02 in Canada. I found it hilarious there claim that the more C02 the better!?! What?!? Sure maybe plants in very controlled environments have benefited from increased levels of C02 but they failed to mention that plant growth is also linked to a few other more important elements - sunlight, water, temperature etc.. not strictly C02. Smoking is good for us too right? Come on this defies common sense!
Read this: http://www.desmogblog.com/nrsp-controlled-by-energy-lobbyists
The key to finding unbiased information is finding the facts and creating your own opinion. In this case real scientific data not some group scientist who's hands are in the back pocket of the industries at blame and over eager to start pointing fingers. Actually look at both sides of the story and decide from there.
For me it boils down to this. When you think the population of our planet has gone from around 3 billion people in the 1960's to over 6.5 billion present day how can you not think we've had some kind of drastic effect on our planet. Parts of the world (India & China) with some of the highest population density have an increased growing middle class and are starting to modernize at increased rates. If everyone lived like we do in North America we would need 6 planet earths to sustain our current rate of consumption.. Ill let you draw your own conclusions from that.
How can anyone sit down look at the data on C02 emissions into our atmosphere and say that we haven't had anything to do with it? It's completely insane to think that if you cut down the planets forests and start using up all the fossil fuel reserves (stored sources of carbon from dead animal and plant life) that you are not having an impact on C02 emissions. Sure maybe we account for only 20% (now) but what happens in 20 years?? what happens if it only takes 5% to tip the balance? Is it better to be ignorant about it and say it's ok it's ok and not really know? Or is it better to think that even if there is the slightest possibility we have an impact that maybe we should change our ways? There is a lot of information out there that shows earth temperature is directly tied to C02 levels in our atmosphere. C02 emissions are a the highest levels in possibly 26 million years, and as crazy as it may seem the increase started somewhere around the start of industrialization. Coincidence? Maybe. Cause for concern I should think so.
I could go on and on but I won't, the information is out there. I find if funny that people get all bent out of shape at the idea of a carbon tax or a tax to those who choose to abuse the environment when America spends over a billion dollars a day to fight a war over oil. Maybe George will yet find those WMD's and we can all pat him on the back. Isn't it odd that 160 counties in the world have ratified Kyoto realizing there is a problem and are trying figure out what is exactly happening? They are working together to find ways to solve it and once again it's the finger pointing we are right you are wrong style attitude coming from the US and for now our own government it seems. When will people learn.I will leave you with a few links that are more factual in nature:
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html
http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/GlobalWarmingUpdate/global_warming_update.html
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/Resources/pointers/glob_warm.html
http://biophile.co.za/climate-change/global-warming-fact-and-fiction/
Kes

From: "Glenn Allen" To: keswicka@hotmail.com, y2kdragon@hotmail.com, cathy@tvfacts.org, hjranch@telus.netSubject: Climate ChangeDate: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 17:56:11 -0700

Hi,
Great conversation aways happens when we have a little get together. Like the climate change topic which Kes, Scott, Dave, Howard and I had a lively time tossing around for awhile
This is the website for Timothy Ball, the guy I heard on T.V. a while ago and was referring to.
Thought I'd pass it along fyi.
Great seeing everybody and thanks so much for coming over. We really appreciate it.

http://www.nrsp.com/strategy.html