Curiously, Jim Puplava (a voice I greatly respect) doesn't put much stock in global warming, in fact he's had several credible guests on his show who point to global cooling as the central issue, and not something we can change either, since it's being driven by the sun's effect on ocean temperatures - essentially the underlying cause of ice ages.

for jim puplava global warming is an economic issue, not a scientific issue. additional government regulation costs money, and reducing carbon emissions will make energy more expensive, so he's against it. if global warming were somehow profitable, puplava would be a champion of it.

I'm not so sure that's the whole story. You might be doing Jim a disservice here. I've followed him for a decade now, and I've never known him to present just one side of the story, in fact he's tried to get global warming speakers on his show, but they somehow always seem to have other commitments. He does speak out on "climate change" which I feel is a better rubric since it encompasses both possibilities, rather than restricting the debate to a single thesis.

Personally, I'm more in favor of the solar cycle thesis, and we have plenty of evidence for cyclical ice-ages, and within them, extremes of climate in both directions. I won't deny the impact we're having, but as I mentioned in the previous post, we may be looking at the wrong set of data. If the PH issue of continental shelves is as critical as it appears, perhaps our efforts should be directed there, rather than to a cap and trade carbon system that's bound to break down in the face of a global energy shortage.

That's my short answer (heh) to global warming. I have a longer one that's based on a crash program of fission energy to replace coal, smart grids to reduce power consumption, and coal to liquids for transportation fuel to get us across the peak oil gap to whatever comes next. The ultimate goal is to reduce human impact across the board, regardless of the validity of either thesis.

ebear