Mike Young,
You probably know more about this stuff than 99.9% of the people here. What supts and plant "experts" have told me regarding this topic is that the length of the warming period, the amount of moisture, and the severity of the subsequent cold spell are intertwined. Several days of warm, dry weather followed by frigid temperatures and wind can cause great damage. Re: insects, without a few really hard freezes, they come back in the spring like gangbusters.
Dick and Tiger,
You guys are relentless. After participating in the six- year long "Bush is the Worst President Ever" campaign every chance you get, aren't you guys just getting a bit tired of it?
BTW, why didn't your boys Clinton and Gore at least try to get Kyoto ratified? For the same reason why Clinton waited unitl the last days of his administration to sign an executive order making the "safe" level of mercury in water drastically more stringent? If these policies were so beneficial, wouldn't getting them in the books in 1998 not been better than in 2000 or at a later time? Do you think perhaps that it was done to create havoc and embarrass the new administration?
Most of us agree that climate change is taking place and that it raises some serious concerns (though the upsides such as in plant and food production are seldom discussed) . Many of us believe that climate change has been taking place since the beginning of time for a variety of reasons. Some of us think that man has a relatively small impact on the problem, with solar activity and several other aforementioned natural factors beyond our control largely responsible for what we are experiencing.
I know our socialist friends do not like or perhaps understand cost/benefit analysis or any attempt to measure and quantify results apart from intentions. We've pretty much destroyed industries and people's lives in some regions in the name of environmentalism (talk to some of the townspeople in Bandon and the Pacific NW who are now making a living toting golf bags and in other low-paying service jobs).
As to scientific evidence, it really comes down to what we see with expert testimony in court proceedings or congressional hearings. It is readily bought, prone to manipulation and interpretation to suit political needs, and not black and white enough or easy to understand for the average person to grasp.
Mike V points to the warming in Mars. Perhaps there is an underground capitalist economy operating there. Closer to home, I am told that centuries ago, the Vikings found Greenland to be quite green and agricultural (dummy me, and I thought that someone with a sardonic sense of humor came up with that name). The horror: it is turning green again. Maybe it was due to excessive animal flatulence drifting from elsewhere or perhaps the Martians dumped a major load of their excess CO2 on Earth a few decades prior to the Vilkings' arrival.
Or could it be that today as then, we are going through a natural secular cycle and there is little that we can do to forestall these forces? Is so, what would Algore and so many others have to live for? What other scabs might they find in a classical liberal society organized around a market based economy that they could pick in their pursuit of cosmic justice and personal fullfilment?
By the way, based on what I was taught by these learned folks in college back in the 1970s, the world should have come to an end by now due to overpopulation, famine, and disease. We're living on borrowed time. I better schedule a week at the Lodge at Pebble Beach and get a few good rounds in before it's too late. Do they take Mastercharge? Can anyone here get me on at Cypress Point? I suppose that since I don't have to worry about the future, I can just hop the fence.