Jed: Don't blame me for your lack of clearly stating what's in your head! With as many scientific papers that you've read, I would have hoped that you'd be much more careful when trying to make a case in this kind of a technical forum. not everyone here is as up to speed on topics being discussed, so please try to be clear so as not to leave any room for misunderstanding.
And now that I know that you were referring to the likelihood of a 'super volcano' happening in our lifetime, as I said, I agree. However, the problems we are talking about here will likely take much longer to manifest than our lifetime. and I think we're about the same age. In fact, you state that the timeline which some experts claim all this devastation might happen is a few hundred years! I would agree with that, but then, it has nothing to do with our 'lifetime'; the timespan here that would need to be considered is much longer. and in that case, the likelihood of a moderate to large volcanic eruption is only increasing. Another point re: what you said here, Iverson wrote: "For all natural disasters, their size/destructiveness is inversely proportional to their frequency of occurrence; i.e., the more destructive they are, the less often they occur." Jed responded: "Perhaps that is true of disasters caused by single, discrete event such as a large earthquake, tsunami, or meteorite strike. It is less true of disasters that occur as a series of events, or that can be triggered at any one of thousands of different locations, rather than in one geological fault. A good example is a virus crossing the species barrier, such as the 1918 influenza pandemic, or AIDS. The chances of this have been increased by various factors such as increased human population density, invasion of wilderness areas by people (which probably caused AIDS to cross the barrier), and bad techniques in agriculture such as crowding chickens together and allowing them access to wild birds." Jed, I was specifically talking about disasters caused by the natural geologic forces which play out on a global scale - NOT about the spread of disease, overpopulation and crowded chickens. good grief! Sometimes too much knowledge just confuses the issue and leads to irrelevant statements. Something can be factually accurate but not relevant to a discussion. RE: the statement that, "In other words, human activity in the near term and on the time scale in question will greatly outweigh natural processes." I take issue with the 'will greatly outweigh' part of that sentence, but, we'll just have to agree to disagree since, in my reasonably informed opinion, there are too many unknowns when dealing with climate science. I'll elaborate further in response to a posting by Bruno Santos. Why do you feel it necessary to attack me by comparing me to the cold fusion Wikipedia editors? I actually worked for several years at a scientific organization that did atmospheric research, so although that was many years ago, I am at least somewhat knowledgeable about the *science*. And frankly, I think you exhibit some of the same characteristics as those editors. that you are so damn sure that you not only have read the professional literature, but that you fully understand it as well, and that anyone who even suggests a more *moderate view* must be uninformed. I expect better from you. -Mark
