Yes, of course it is “UNETHICAL, irresponsible, selfish and plain stupid to pollute our world like we do!” However, knowing the role that humans, solar cycles, etc play (and to what degree) in the current global warming is important for many environmental reasons, eg it allows limited resources to be allocated more efficiently between local and global environmental issues (such as whether to spend limited funds on fitting vehicle filters to reduce particulate pollution in large cities or buying carbon offsetting derivatives that may be spent on retooling an inefficient factory in China). Also, remember that the potential consequences of man-made global warming are being used (or abused, depending on your perspective) to, for example, promote the building of more (or increase capacity of existing) nuclear power plants.

I guess, blogs are going to be the sole reliable source of information, should the rumors become reality, that Davið Oddsson will be hired as chief editor of Morgunblaðið. I expect this would provide this paper with the kiss of death, concerning journalistic integrity.

The Samsø-story sounds pretty impressive, even though, I wouldn’t like to live close to some wind turbine. In many parts of Germany they are plastering the landscape with wind turbines. Apart from this becoming pretty ugly, many people complain about the high pitched whistling noise and the ever moving silhouettes, which drives them crazy. I guess, every means of producing energy has its ugly downside and the best approach should be saving energy.

Hotel Wi-Fis are a frequent cause for discontent. Often it helps to have them just reboot their system. But 92 bloggers trying to connect might just as well be overkill for every Wi-Fi.

I’m going to write a guestpost there and just wanted a bunch of info. on Iceland. You are an excellent resource!! Thanks for sharing all that you do!

Cheers

Holli in Ghana

This discussion is constantly going on within the IPCC, and in the peer-reviewed journals, rest assured. I would be surprised if in fact the sceptics get far too much “airtime” also in Copenhagen. That the stratosphere ( high atmosphere) is cooling is in fact as expected when the troposphere (the weather part below roughly 10 000 m altitude) captures more of the heat radiation from the surface.

It is a pity however that very tainted climate sceptics, clearly supported by big oil, or clearly not knowing what they are talking about, has heightened the inbuilt emotional defence against climate-sceptics amongst IPCC members, those others that have really studied the issues, and government officials , etc .

As counter arguments to yours, one could bring up loads of issues, like the acidification of the oceans, melting ice caps, etc, but unfortunately for us humans and our fellow species, we might be put to a test the next few years, if natural variability masks part of global warming for that interim period.

See here : http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/featured/sceptics_seize_on_climate_cooling_model/

Also see the recent posts at http://www.monbiot.com about the attempt of George Monbiot to get into a meaningful dialogue with a “featured” climate sceptic.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/14/answers-come-there-none/

But even if the warming should be exaggerated, there are so many things we can do to reduce emissions that have strong co-benefits.
That will improve health, and save us money on fuel etc. There is also the slight issue of cheap oil running out in the next decades, that also prompts action compatible with greenhouse action.

Not least : We can afford to take slight chances with the economy of the OECD and even of the world, but we can not afford to take chances on perturbing our life-support system, the biosphere.

I am not planning to debate the issue further here. please go to realclimate.org for instance with your discussion. They can answer your particular questions if you are really interested, and not a troll

If you were really only interested in whether the sceptic voices are heard in the TH!NK initiative for bloggers, you could have confined your question to just that

Best Regards,
Morten Lange

Great reading – enjoy yourself!