Is Palin the only person left on the planet that believes....

[Leoloopydoo]

.....(quoted from FT online 'that climate change is not man-made...' and '...said she did not want to get into an argument over the causes of global warming and referred to cyclical variations in climate.'

[Megglevache]

I think she is the only woman I know who believes in three cans of Elnett per day.

[JodieG1]

She also said that man does have his part to play, just saw her speach on the news. I agree with her actually, I think it's a mixture of both.

[slayerette]

She scares me.

It scares me even more that she could be president if John McCain is voted in and then drops off his perch while in office.

[Brangelina]

She doesn't belive polar bears are in danger of extinction either. Just so she can drill for oil in their habitat.

I find her really quite unsavoury, crazily naive about anything beyond her immediate backyard and a little nuts.

[Brangelina]

What I find scary is that they've put up a hick and redneck and are having to give her a crash course in foreign policy, economics etc. It would be madness enough if it was in a tinpot country but alas this is no tinpot country.

[Leoloopydoo]

Jodie, how much do you think is manmade and how much natural cycle?

At first I thought he made a clever PR choice as she is such a contrast to him but....

[SaintRiven]

I've watched some of her interviews. She seems rather dim with no large world view that a vice-president would need.
She's barely travelled and trys to answer questions in ways that show how ignorant she is.
(rather than clever avoidance)

[Leoloopydoo]

Apparently he only met her once very briefly before he announced her as his v.p.

[Megglevache]

Kill Kill Kill Kill Kill the trolls, hunt them down there will be no clemency.

[Megglevache]

ooops wrong thread.

I always thought people who did that were really dim

[SuperSillyus]

I thought it was a perfectly relevant post.

[ClosedForCleaning]

Riven: "She seems rather dim with no large world view that a vice-president would need.
She's barely travelled and trys to answer questions in ways that show how ignorant she is
(rather than clever avoidance) "

That formula got elected twice (one of the times with enough votes too!). So, the only question is really why she is only running for Vice President.

Or do you think she is somehow smarter than she is letting on.

[TheFallenMadonna]

Micael Crichton has written a book with that as its premise.

[MadreInglese]

there was a fella from the simpsons on graham norton last night, he said Palin learnt all her speeches in beauty pageant practise, very funny I thought

[mabanana]

I have often wondered why we accept cyclical variations (huge ones) happened in history but cannot possibly happen now. Greenland is called Greenland because it was....green! Does anyone know what the reasons were supposed to be for huge climate shifts in the past (including fairly recently) and why these cannot apply, at least in part, today?

[SoupDragon]

I thought this was about Michael Palin.

[policywonk]

Well of course she's not the only one who thinks that (although it's curious how so many of the people who do think that are dependent on petro-chemicals for their salary in one way or another).

But the media has to take some of the blame here. 99 per cent of climate scientists believe in mand-made climate change; 1 per cent (almost all funded by the oil industry) don't. The media treat it as though it were a matter of 'fairness' and the non-believers have to be 'given their right of reply', and in doing so they grossly distort the picture, leading the public to believe that there's some sort of heated debate going on in scientific circles, which there really isn't. They'll be doing it with evolution/intelligent design next.

[snowleopard]

I thought Greenland was called that to encourage people to settle there from overcrowded scandinavia.

There are natural variations, but they don't tend to happen so fast. Coupled with other things you really can measure like pollution levels and emissions, it's reasonable to conclude human actions are affecting the climate - even as naural cycles continue in the background.

The risks to polar bears are pretty obvious though, whatever the reason for the changing climate. She's a bit dim if she hasn't realised that even if Arctic sea ice is disappearing as part of natural cycles, it's still shite for polar bears and they are at risk.

I think Palin is under-educated, ignorant and has had her rational thinking capacity addled by fundamentalist religion. But I think she is smart and extremely quick off the mark and a very, very good orator. She knows exactly how to work a crowd and roll off a slick response, even if when you pick it apart it makes no sense. That pitbull line, comparing hockey moms to pitbulls in lipstick. Whoohoo! You go Sarah! She had all the hockey moms behind her, cheering to the rafters. But hang on. What the feck is so great about calling yourself a pitbull? Mindlessly aggressive. Not noted for intelligence. Slavish devotion to owner, zero initiative, drooling, stinking beast. The oration did it all - what she actually has to say sinks without trace and is a load of tripe. But the skills she has go a very long way in making her look impressive.

[snowleopard]

I'll just get in here with an apology to adoring pitbull owners btw. i'm sure yours is charming.

[Leoloopydoo]

Agree PW the experts are in agreement that its man-made climate change. for example the retreat of glaciers has a linear relationship with the increase in greenhouse gases and man HAS created that increase in greenhouse gases.

That pitbull comment really made my skin crawl. ... what the hell does 'hockey mum' mean anyway? how can you define yourself on the sport that your son plays.

[ronshar]

Any person who believes in Intelligent Design, in the face of evolution and the hundreds of thousands of examples of real evidence rather than what a couple of men wrote a few thousand years ago really and truely has no place in any national debate.

It terrifies me that a person such as her and those like her are in charge, potentially in charge, of a huge powerful nation like the USA.

Has she never seen the Grand Canyon? Did she ignore the Ice core testing that has been carried out for 30 years?

Maybe she has been too busy not teaching her children the facts of life while out shooting poor defenceless animals in the woods. Which may well have been there longer than Sarah Palin believes could be possible.

Sorry long rant at stupid American/Alaskan people.

[mabanana]

But the world has been warmer than this, and colder than this iin a cycle for thousands of years. I thought this graph was interesting scroll down

Temperatures are never constant over time. I would like to know why it has been ruled out completely that we are not going through another natural warm cycle at least in part.