Duke:

There is, however, no empirical evidence for any level of mad-made global warming that I have found--and I have looked. Coincidence in time is not empirical evidence of anything beyond coincidence.

What an odd thing to write. Of course coincidence in time between the rise in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and the rise in Earth's average temperature is empirical evidence for the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. If the opposite were happening with temperature, you'd say it were disconfirmatory, right? We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that would exert an upward push of some magnitude, and here we have a rise. The main question is, how much of the rise can be attributed to greenhouse gases? There is no universally accepted number, but most climatologists believe it is a significant portion of the rise. I don't see why you are arbitrarily assuming it's at or near zero.

There is a great deal of paleontological evidence that Earth is normally much warmer than our present climate conditions.

We went over this. The temperature of the Earth a million or 90 million years ago is totally irrelevant unless it can be correlated with current conditions and trends. The problem, if there is any, is that human civilization has adapted to current temperatures. Anything that pushes them higher is a threat to millions of people. If we can ameliorate the threat, we ought to do it, if the cost is not prohibitive. And the cost of world action on GW is a lot lower than you guys make it out to be, and has other benefits too like saving energy and lessening pollution.

Man-made global warming (as I've previously noted) is perhaps the ultimate "liberal" dream...

Again, this is irrelevant. Either it is happening or it isn't. You insist, despite the evidence and the consensus of the great majority of the world's climatologists, that it is not. That strikes me as ideologically motivated foolishness.

Iowan:

I have not invoked Al Gore or his movie, which I have not seen and have no intention of seeing. Can you deal with the evidence presented to you, or would you rather argue with Al Gore? If it's the latter, please give him the benefit of your wisdom as to what he is saying. I'm not interested.

Kyoto is a 'concerted' response. How's that workin' out for you?

It's working better than if we didn't have it, but worse than if it were truly a concerted response of the world's biggest polluters, the biggest of which is the US. Maybe you aren't aware that the US is not a signatory.

Just like we muddled through the population bomb scare, the Alar scare, the acid rain scare, etc.

The results aren't all in on the population challenge, but thanks to some extremely aggressive action by many governments around the world, we're in a lot better position than we could have been. Alar was a minor scare that one network hyped, and doesn't belong in this category. It's not much more significant than the gay marriage scare that has you so terrified. Acid rain has done a lot of damage to forests and fish, but thanks to some government action to control sulfur and nitrogen emissions, it's a lot better than it would have been had it gone unchecked. Your examples aren't working very well for you, are they?

You're one fearless forecaster, char!

I've already made my forecasts; they're essentially the same as those made by the majority of the world's climate scientists. In my last post, I was drawing a comparison between the effects of you or me being wrong. It's just a fact that the consequences of doing nothing if we could ameliorate and plan for AGW are devastating, but the consequences of doing something when it wasn't necessary are in the category of annoyances. But I guess you'll be dead before the worst comes, so why should you care?