Oh all you sillies out there,

Anybody who wants to place blame on our haplessly caricatured professor, I would point you all to "Free Range Kids" at http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ -- there is an interesting look at the dangers of over-supervision there. Also, I suspect that many here impugning dad are not in fact parents themselves, and misunderstand the difference between fanatical fear, due diligence, and realistic parenting.

I agree fully with #21 and #23 (SYNCHROTIC and PFFFT). We've become too litigious and too authoritarian in response. So what's the solution? How do we re-emphasize personal responsibility, and reaping one's own punishment from personally-sown seeds? That would be far more interesting a conversation, but unfortunately I haven't a clue.

Mike C.,

Actually, it's exactly the publications cited by the IPCC that I've taken the time to personally peruse. And while for quite some time I was content to take the IPCC's word for it, I've ultimately found that in reality, the data just doesn't stack up so well as I had imagined.

For example, in the pdf you supplied, the much-maligned "hockey-stick" shaped graph of global temperatures on the millennium scale is used. Note that it does not, in fact, include a definitive Medieval Warm Period, which is more or less an undisputed phenomenon. Wikipedia has a good article on the "Hockey Stick Controversy," and provides a much more conclusive figure. Regardless, the IPCC is not necessarily to be completely trusted, nor taken as infallible. Compare the predictions for rising ocean levels from their previous reports to that of 2007, for instance.

I think the biggest problem is that the time it would take to point out the exaggerations and bad science in these reports is far beyond the scope of any one individual, to say nothing of the other obligations of life. I can page through http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch03.pdf
and find all kinds of distortions. Page 253 just happened to flash up showing a frightening accelerating rate of temperature increase. But note that each of these regression lines was chosen to conveniently match a down-turn in the graph? One beginning in 1935 or in 1875 would produce a regression that goes against the paper's thesis.

Science is written with an objective, of course. It's not meant to be unbiased. It's meant to assert a hypothesis and support it relentlessly, in order to convince the rest of the world. The problem is, there is not a large and credible enough opposing camp to help straighten this out. The IPCC's funding is absolutely tremendous, and the amount of alarmist research going on enormous. Skeptics are labeled as irresponsible deniers.

And unfortunately, the knowledge that's prerequisite to actually understand these data is unattainable to the layperson. And unfortunately, sending back and forth links to articles about research none of us has actually read amounts to ZERO intellectual discussion.

(As a caveat: I think we probably do have some degree of anthropogenic global warming, and need to put some serious money into bringing the technologies that allowed Amsterdam to exist to the rest of the world)

I'm with waugsqueke on this one. The problem remains that the scientific evidence is not nearly as conclusive as Mr. Supergore would have you believe, though the prospects are indeed just as frightening. Then again, if the greenhouse theory IS wholly correct (and we haven't overlooked any ameliorating feedback mechanisms), then it seems prudent to link the indisputable CO2 increase above historical levels with this newfound warming trend.

But just remember back to the early 70s when Global Cooling was TIME magazine's favorite doomsday prospect. That one didn't quite pan out.

And yet, ironically, we are STILL ultimately headed for another ice age. Are we not, in fact, saving ourselves from future woes by warming the planet up a bit?

By freak coincidence, I just went on a Geology Walk through a local state park here in Michigan. These are not man- or machine-made, nor are they water-tumbled. Mitch and Anonymous above were correct: they're concretions. If they formed within a sedimentary rock from some type of (typically organic) deposit, they would take on the sedimentary layers as they slowly grew outward, building increased crystal structure within. This also explains why growth across the grain was slower than with the grain - it's less hindered by alternating layers of different substances. Over time, the less-secure rock around them is worn away by wind or water, leaving behind these gems! It looks like it might have some feldspar, quartz, and mica in there, but I'm not quite as sure of that.