Congratulations to Robert for the well-deserved attention. I'd be
interested in hearing from him on the whole topic.

A peripheral point:

As a Carleton U. grad, (master's in Systems and Computer Engineering)
I really hate that Ottawa is shaping up as a hotbed of half-baked
"global warming skepticism". It is interesting to note that US
"skeptics" also cluster geographically near the capital. I wonder if
this is a coincidence.

see http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158798&cid=13301230

On the main point:

I have only been exposed to it briefly in a seminar, but Veizer's
evidence strikes me as quite thin. Unsurprisingly, evidence that is
hundreds of millions of years old is extremely scarce and coarse
compared to more recent evidence. Later quaternary (less than
1,000,000 year old) evidence is much more plentiful, precise, and
analagous to the present. In terms of using the evidence to constrain
the system, it is enormously more valuable as input than older
information.

As far as the deep past goes, plenty of CO2 sensitivity seems to be
required for the earth to escape the neoproterozoic snowball state.
Beyond this, arguing from the deep past, where all else is quite
emphatically not equal and the evidence is scarce and ambiguous, seems
interesting enough scientifically but not especially practical as a
guide to the policy question.

It's disappointing to see the Times, which is usually quite effective
in reporting climate science, miss the point here.

mt

On 11/9/06, Jim Torson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Here's an article that might be of interest:
>
> In Ancient Fossils, Seeds of a New Debate on Warming
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/earth/07co2.html
>
>
> This article mentions Robert Rohde and includes links to a
> couple of his Global Warming Art charts.
>
> Jim

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