[Platt] > How come the world was hotter during the Middle Ages? [SA] Where did you source this from? I've been hearing that the hottest years on record have been within the last 10-15 years. I'm open to the actual facts, so, if you have a more accurate source I'd like to see for myself, thanks.
[Case] The period of warming Platt refers to was followed by the Little Ice Age in Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period The vital point Platt misses is that climate is a chaotic system. Disturbances in the system can have far reaching, unpredictable and long lasting effects. Since what we are talking about, climate, is basic to all life on the planet it would seem that knowingly mucking about it would be regarded as a bad thing. But the arguments Platt makes for shrugging this off are political not scientific. They are the same kind of arguments that led his hero Ronald Raygun to decry the influence of government living outside of its means while at the same time inflicting more debt on our grandchildren than all of his predecessors combined. It is this "me first", screw the kids attitude that led us to replace a nuclear physicist with a "B" movie actor in the first place. It is a culture of political distortion that makes people vote for an AWOL coke head over war heroes in both parties. Since the American people have knowingly voted in this way for the past 20 years it is hard to work up much shock that things are heading the way they are. Until we vote for elections reform. Until we remove the media from the hands of a few. Until we reduce the influence of multi-national corporate manipulation of public policy. I, for one, am having a hard time pretending to be shocked at what happens any more. So until folks start to wise up I plan to bury my head in the sand and "Party Like It's 1999", a tune title that looks like it will work much better as nostalgia than it ever did as futurism. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
