The United Nations conference on climate change, an annual follow-up to Kyoto, is right now taking place in Montreal, where it's 19 degrees and snowing. The delegate from Ghana can't be pleased. If climate change were put to a vote at the Montreal conference, I dare say that the "yeas" would win the day. It might be better from a message standpoint to hold next year's event in the Mojave Desert or downtown Calcutta.

The world climate is certainly changing. There is more than enough data to support that simple fact. I find it absurd that some on the right still ignore it and even ridicule it. However, what is more absurd is that the UN or any government thinks they can do anything about it. The latest news I heard was that we've reached some 'point of no return' so far as climate change is concerned. Accepting that or not, what really could the UN or any government do to change the basic fact that people will do what is in their economic interest, ie use oil, gas, and whatever, which is far cheaper and more readily available than the eco-friendly alternatives. The Kyoto agreement tacitly accepted this economic fact by placing no meaningful restrictions on India and China, because there is no chance in hell these two countries will take a slower, more costly, eco-friendly trip out of the economic gutter.

To be honest, I don't know enough about physics to know whether the world is changing, but I don't think most of the conservatives who say "global warming is science fiction" do either.

What I do know is that pumping a bunch of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere can't be a good thing eiher way.

I do agree that the Kyoto protocols are pretty worthless because India and China certainly won't follow them.

Apparently there was once an ice age here. Today there is one no longer. Apparently the climate changed, and I don't see any reason to believe it is not always in a gradual and permanent state of change.

What's your point other than "well the climate changed in the past, who cares?" That past climate change caused thousands, if not more, species to go extict, created huge geographical changes etc that, were they to occur now, could have catastrophic consequences. It also happened over thousands of years, not a few hundred.

Like I said, I don't know if its happening now, nor do I know if its just natural climate change or man made, or both. This means we should look into those possibilities and do what's best for the earth and mankind. Just brushing it off as "watermelon" propaganda could very well be suicidal.

Someone earlier had suggested that there are those on the right who do not believe the climate is changing. I was suggesting they are wrong.

I encourage anyone to study climate change. It would be useful to have some realistic expectations as to what sort of climate is coming. I doubt there is any stopping it, but who knows unless you study it.

Gentlemen, there is an important distinction that needs to be understood in any discussion of climate change: the actual source of the warming, i.e., NATURAL climate change versus HUMAN/INDUSTRY-INDUCED climate change.

Any number of climatologists agree the earth is warming, but the degree it has been impacted by human activity is highly debatable. The nature of global warming is not even understood, as while glaciers in certain portions of the world are melting, Antarctica grows colder. And the net effect of the Kyoto Accords are even more debatle. At the cost of trillions of dollars, Kyoto's impact on global warming would be an insignificant .2 degree reduction world temperatures AT BEST.

We also need to remember that today an entire industry exists that requires the human race to be constantly frightened of one impending environmental disaster or another. But fact SHOULD trump fear, and the concept that human activity is responsible for the earth's current warming trend simply isn't borne out by the facts.

P.S. If these global-warming alarmists were REALLY worried about the amount of CO2 in the air, one would think they'd turn to the incredibly clean, efficient and cheap alternative of nuclear power! But no; they already killed that particular golden goose with other irrational fear-mongering!

At issue is not whether climate change has occurred or is occurring, but whether it is caused by man or not. That the climate is changing is undeniable.

It is my view that it is not caused by man's activities during the last two hundred years, however, and this is due to the lack of conclusive evidence to the contrary. The environmentalists simply haven't made a convincing case for their viewpoint, which is more emotional and political than it is scientific.

It is just as likely - in fact, more likely (given the history of natural climate change) that the changes we are witnessing are merely the next phase in a natural series of climate changes that have been occurring at intervals over tens of thousands of years. Anyone who thinks the earth was a static environment until the industrial era is simply ignorant of the facts.

Gary, what's so emotional about ice core samples?

Nothing, Obi. It's the politicizing of what little evidence there is that I'm referring to. Yes, the ice core samples certainly are evidence of climate change in the past, but they can tell us nothing about the causes of climate change. The left wants to pin the blame for climate change exclusively on mankind because it furthers their case against capitalism. They are using science and scientists to further an anti-capitalist agenda. There is nothing in ice core samples that proves man is responsible for climate change. That is the left's intereptation. The change in climate could just as well be a natural, cyclical process that has been going on for tens of thousands of years.