The days have just been slipping by lately without us getting much done on the homestead. It looks like there will be something scheduled every weekend for the entire summer, so I guess if I get anything done it will be by using vacation days. Of which I have none because I used them all up during our March through Hell last month.

Ah well. There is always next summer.

Jerry Pournelle was busy over the weekend. A good discussion about global warming and what we know vs. what we don't know. We don't know a lot; we know comparatively little, although there are some good people working on some of the questions, so we know more every day. Of course the Kyoto Crowd already knows and anyone that has doubts is evil and works for the oil companies.

The most important question is not, "Is the average temperature higher now than in recent history?" It undeniably is. It is also undeniable that average temperatures have been both higher and lower in historic times. There are dairy farms and vineyards buried under Greenland's glaciers. Glaciers also built most of the hills I see out of my office window here in Traverse City, Michigan.

The important questions are:

Is this is a bad thing? Is a longer growing season really that horrible? Just how much coastline actually goes under water?

How fast will this happen? Indications are that warming trends take centuries to play out. There is no evidence to support waking up one morning to find the entire eastern seaboard under water. In past warming periods, it's more like the gradual sinking of Venice; there is time for accommodation to be made. Is this time different? Why? Please show your work.

Are we sure we are even seeing long-term global warming? The same people who make up much of the Kyoto sky-is-falling crowd were just as convinced back when I was in high school that we were heading for an ice age. So which is it? Please show your work. Anyone can have an opinion; I do, you do, my coworkers do, the guy that makes my pizza does. I want to see real data, real models (that work), real theories (testable, falsifiable); not arm-waving and name-calling.

Jerry also dives back into the debate about IQ or "g" or whatever. Our "leaders" tell us we are all the same, that perceived differences in ability are just our imagination, or our bigotry, or defects in Western culture. Yea, and there might really be an Easter Bunny too, but excuse me if I don't structure my entire existence around that chance.

On a related note: here is a prioritized list of the world's problems. Notice that the most wide-spread and most serious problems are the easiest and cheapest to fix. The money wasted on the Kyoto conference alone could have made a huge dent in (if not fixed entirely) any one of the top four items on the list. I remember an analysis years ago in US News and World Report about the EPA forcing corporations to spend 10's of millions to reduce the risk of cancers that kill one or two people a year, while county road crews didn't have the few thousand dollars to put up guard rail along a section of Highway 1 that kills a dozen people a year.

Today's blog is brought to you by the word, "Priorities."

That's all I have for now.