Look Fencer, your quote (I won't repeat it again) was very clear. I'm sorry if you didn't say what you intended to say. But you said it. I demonstrated how it was incorrect.

YOU are missing the point. Natural Selection doesn't work by leaving Critters half-formed. Each Adaptation along the way, including the so-called "interim" ones, is Fully Functional. If they aren't, they die. That's how Natural Selection works.

Vestigial appendages are not necessarily cast off, they are often adapted to another purpose, such as the gas sacks that helped the fish to swim being adapted to form a secondary respiratory system (i.e. lungs).

Most of your points against "Evolution" are NOT against Evolution, they are against your misunderstood notions of Evolution.

And there's really nothing Random about the process. There is always some Deeper Level of Order. Adaptations are Responses to Environmental Changes. To me this implies a level of Self Organization (as elucidated in Chaos Theory illustrated by Fractal Mathematics), which implies some kind of Overarching Sentience at the Root. I don't have a problem with calling it God.

GB

Of course the Saudi Arabians demands for investigations into Climategate is sheer self-interest. I doubt seriously they were morally outraged by people falsifying data. But the fact still remains the data was falsified, the scientists lied about their findings, and even deleted data that showed that global temperatures are declining. We know that they conspired to discredit and ruin scientists and scientific journals that questioned the validity of their climate change theories. If the people at East Anglia were hoaxing the world, why should we believe anything any of the climate change proponents say?

I'm not sure what was happening in East Anglia, let alone why, but I strongly doubt that the scientists were hoaxing the world. Whatever happened, you can be sure that a lot of people will use that accusation to wriggle out of doing anything at all to curb their own bad practices. And that is the big worry. Yes, according to this online article climate change may not be so straightforward, and there could be cooling over Antarctica, due to the hole in the Ozone layer. But there is still quite a bit of warming at the other end of the world. They said the Ozone hole will heal up entirely in 60 years' time, which won't be in my lifetime, though it may be in yours. Then what?

You have to realise that graded by population, the 10 largest countries in the world are 1. China, with 1.3 Billion people. 2. India 3. USA 4.Indonesia 5. Brazil, 6. Pakistan 7. Bangladesh 8. Nigeria 9. Russia and 10. Japan. Together these countries contribute more than half of total world population, and of them only Russia, Japan, USA, China or even India could be described as industrialised and developed. I've heard China is the largest generator of air-borne pollution, along with USA. But China, unlike several of the other countries in the Top Ten, has tried to rein in its population growth, to more sustainable levels.

Ethanol isn't that great an alternative. A lot of environmentalists are pointing out that the rainforests of South America are being clear-cutted even faster than they already were so farmers can grow more corn for ethanol. Then there's the fact that the more land devoted to growing corn for ethanol, the less land available to grow food for people. Thus comes the dilemma of letting people starve or cutting down more forests, which is never a good option.

Ethanol here is a byproduct of sugar cane farming or other crops. Once the molasses is extracted from the cane, the remainder of the plant can be used for ethanol extraction, and the same can be said of other plant material, including the trees grown for chipboard, in particular. What I am saying is that it shouldn't have to be an either/or choice between food crops or ethanol crops, if people manage their land properly.

But otherwise you are right, especially in Brazil and the Amazon basin. Even before ethanol became an option, farmers and loggers were tearing down forests at an alarming rate, to suit themselves. I suppose you are aware of the yearly Indonesian haze which may be as terrible this year as it was in 1997, due to drought and the current El Nino effect. Whether or not such polluting haze contributes to climate change, it still is a bad idea, which does nothing for anyone. In any case, whilst ethanol might be helpful, it surely isn't the only option available for fuel. Didn't I read about planes running on solar energy somewhere this week?

The unfortunate fact is that the majority of the world's oil is controlled by petty thugs and tyrants who saw a chance to make a buck by exploiting the world's need for oil. I'm sure many people in the oil industry would like to tell the various dictators in the Middle East to take a long walk off a short pier, but then they would be out of business. They could come drill here, but the caribou need protecting from those scary oil wells.

If I were you, I'd prefer the caribou. And the polar bears, if any are around still. Even though they are not sleepy, cuddly eucalypt munchers like koalas. Yes oil is like black gold, and the sooner we learn to use other means of energy production the better.

I'm not remembering what CFC was. Was that the theory that aerosols were ripping a hole in the ozone layer and we were all going to be killed by the sun or something? Anybody know what happened with that? I vaguely remember there being something of a panic over it when I was younger, but I haven't heard anyone mention it in a long time.

That is the data that is calling into question climate change. CFC was chlorofluorocarbons which were dangerous. But they don't get used any more here, unless you haven't bought a new fridge in 20 years. But what about in developing countries like Pakistan etc?

After reading the contents of the emails in so-called Climate-Gate, it seems clear to me that the so-called "Hoax" is a bunch of Hot Air .

A couple of poorly worded sentences are taken out of context, and blown all out of Proportion to the Melting Glaciers and Hurricane Proportions of Evidence for Climate Change. We don't have Super-Volcanoes and Super-Solar Flares to blame at the moment, that leaves Human Industrial Waste as the culprit.

Wagga seems to be doing a good job on this topic , so that's about it for me.

GB

That's good news about your ethanol, Wagga. Here they apparently can't be bothered to use plant waste for it, since all we ever hear about is corn.

I would like to say that despite my skepticism of climate change, I realize we can't keep going on with polluting the way we have. It's absolutely horrible that people have to live in the kind of polluted conditions that they do in China and other places. I even read that one of the few species of river dolphin went extinct a few years ago because of Chinese water pollution. I don't think that the solution is forced sterilizations and abortions, like China has opted to do to shrink their population. People aren't the problem, it's how they use the technology we have.

You've read all 1079 emails and 72 documents, GB? I haven't read them because I don't exactly have time to read all of that, but here are a few quotes from articles I've read:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

If the emails posted in their entirety here: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... ey_hacked/

are just poorly worded, then these people must be the most clueless people on the planet and shouldn't be in charge of research affecting world policy.

What about hurricanes? The last few years in the Atlantic have been fairly quiet. 2005 was the last truly bad hurricane year for us. The Pacific had a rough time of it, but they also had to deal with El Nino. What climate scientists fail to mention when they shriek hysterically about Katrina, etc., is that our data on hurricanes only goes back about 180 years. Whether you're a Young Earther, Old Earther, whatever Earther, you still have to admit that that is a tiny amount of data to be basing doomsday predictions of hurricanes leveling the Gulf Coast upon.

I only have a few minutes before my next Final so I will make this quick. I really have to laugh at the global warming attempts. Yes, the human population is larger now than in history. We have more people on this planet now than everyone who has lived and died in history. And yes, our industrialized nations are not doing a great job at being stewards of our resources. But we couldn't go enough damage if we wanted to in order to destroy our planet. I'll mention two things: the oil drilling in Alaska and Ozone holes.

There have been all sorts of efforts to stop the pumping of oil out of Alaska. They say it's going to destroy the region and all the wildlife around it. Have you even taken photos (satallite ones since you won't be going there first hand) of that area? It's not the lush mountainous regions that they show. It is barren winter wasteland. Not only that, it is such a tiny sliver of Alaska you have to magnify the state quite of few times just to locate the area on a map. And the wildlife already there (a few birds and some cariboo that wander that far) don't seem to be affected too much. Even if we did destroy that area intentionally, it would have very little affect on the rest of the state, let alone nature.

The ozone hole is my biggest laugh. It's claimed to have been created by American car exhausts and industries. But where is it? Over Antarctica. How is it that all of our industry byproducts travel all the way across the globe and somehow gather in one spot to create the hole? The big element in the effect is chlorine. But catch this: we get more of that stuff out of a single volcanic eruption than we ever have produced in our history. Did you know there is a 16,000 foot tall volcano located directly under the hole? I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. Be back in three hours (hopefully less).

Yes, the human population is larger now than in history. We have more people on this planet now than everyone who has lived and died in history.

Technically I have to point out that we don't really know this. From a YEC standpoint there were almost a good 1,500 years there before the Flood (rough estimate). Mankind was living unimaginably long lifespans, so when a human hit the age of 100 they must have still been hale and hearty as a 30 year old. We have very short lifespans at the moment with the average rounding out to roughly 75 years, and most families have several kids. I saw on TV this one family (the Duggars name sounds familiar) who have 17 or 18 kids now (my wife would literally shoot me if I gave her "come hither eyes" after the 10th ), and that's a pretty large number for even modern times.

But bear in mind that back then they didn't have birth control pills, TV's, or World of Warcraft (that we know of ). And with 900 year long lifespans that means pumping out a lot of babies with probably similar lifespans. I think the number of people on the Earth, pre-Flood, was probably mind-blowing. And it is speculated that these folks had probably as close to pure genetics as you can get and no diseases to contend with (human lifespans drop off dramatically after the Flood, and it's when diseases first appear). They were probably also a lot smarter than us given that they were closer to Edenic standards in body and in setting, meaning I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to invent stuff that we might still use today (although all traces of it are probably wiped away). This is one of the reasons I'm so excited to see the New Heavens and Earth. We'll have the brainpower of the ancients and will be impervious to harm.

Fencer, I have to agree with your assessment on evolutionary processes. They do change their positions a great deal, don't they? First these changes take place over these amazingly vast amounts of time, and then they happen quickly in the blink of an eye, and then vice versa. And then when you point this out they always say "No, you've got it all wrong". Sheesh.

And the ozone hole and El Nino are both sinister plots hatched by extraterrestrial forces to destroy the planet and prepare the inhabitants for consumption. I'm convinced...just check out the contents of this briefcase I'm carrying.

No, I've just read the one's critics were quoting .

I think I'll refrain from posting on this, until a clearer picture emerges .

Shadow, small changes occur all the time which add up over a long period of time, but rapid changes in the environment lead to quicker adaptations, but still over what we would consider a lengthy period of time. of course some species with shorter life-spans change much more rapidly.

The vociforous arguments between Gould (a proponent of Punctuated Equilibria, i.e. periods of rapid changes determined by rapid changes in the environment--but still over thousands of years) and Dawkins, cannot be characterized as in any way disproving Evolution.

GB

Even if we did destroy that area intentionally, it would have very little affect on the rest of the state, let alone nature.

I apologize in advance if I get a bit heated about this, but this statement is astoundingly ignorant of the natural world. Every thing we do to the world around us has an effect. It may not be the one we expect or as large or as small as we "predict", but it does happen. To say that destroying a section of nature has no effect on nature doesn't make any sense. The effect may not affect you directly in your personal everyday life, but does that make it any less valid of an effect? Has anyone seen what a logging site looks like? True, it's only a small part of the total forest, but factor in the noise, the smoke, the miles of road built to reach the site, and the area multiplies quickly, and results in habitat loss and potentially dangerous soil erosion (leading to landslides, which do directly effect humans in very, very bad ways). All of those things are effects of the logging, and they are present.

The wildlife of the contested area extends far beyond "a few birds" and some wayward caribou. The region is directly on the migratory path, not to mention there is plant life and water systems to consider. I would think by this point we in the US would have learned that willy-nilly expansion for economic gain is one of the worst ideas in history, and has brought about some truly shameful and greed-based actions.

Just because an area appears to be a wasteland from satellite pictures does not mean that it is void of life. The Sahara Desert, the Serenghetti plain, and Mongolia look pretty desolate from space, too, and they are diverse, abundant regions. Mongolian steppes in particular are still home to nomadic herdsmen, but you'd never know from space.

We can delude ourselves all we like, but we are still a part of the natural world, and that won't change until we can manufacture all our food, fuel resources, clothing, building materials, drinking water, and breathing air on our own ex nihlo. Until that day, we are dependent on the Earth God gave us, and what we do to it leaves a mark.

I understand your point Draugrín, and I support it too. I'm just saying we would have to intentionally destory it and even then we couldn't do the damage that the propagandaists are trying to say. One volcanic eruption, one tsunami, one earthquake will do far more damage than what we could do. But that being said, we still must be good stewards.

Here in El Paso, I've seen the results of people messing with Mother Nature. We are in the desert with only the city as anything worth of notice, and we have made the mistakes of messing with the arroyos. Unless you live or have lived in a desert area, you don't understand what an arroyo really means. Three years ago, we got two 100 year floods in a row. Our annual rain fall is less than 10 inches per year and in the span of a couple days we got two storms that dumped our annual rainfall in the span of 2 hours. Where does all that water go? Through the arroyos, and it gathers VERY quickly. And we have built our city on these arroyo's using the streets themselves as channels for the water. Well when this storm hit, roads washed out, canyons were formed in Juarez (because many of thier roads are made of dirt), cars floated away, and whole buildings were taken off thier foundations. And had an earthen dam in Juarez broken (it was at the brim and engineers were desperately draining it to keep it from breaching) we would have a Grand Canyon effect in the city. Where the damage was done was where people foolishly built where water goes when it rains. Respect the nature that God created, and it won't bite you.

So yes, what we do does affect nature around us, even if it doesn't affect us in our lifetimes. But when you compare what we do with Nature, we lose hands down. We could fire every single nuke we have on the planet (including Russia's and all the others nations that claim or don't claim to have them) in one spot and we still won't be able to compete with a single volcanic eruption. Should we go that route? By no means. I'm simply saying we aren't so significant in the terms of nature and this world.

And Shadowlander, I understand that point quite well too. It's been my understanding that in that case (which I believe to be true), the human population likely got close to 1 billion people by the time the Flood came about. But it's still hard to compare to our closing in on 7 billion on this planet (less than 10 years ago we were at 6 billion). I will say that the numbers are quite staggering. But God is a good God and he created our planet with more than enough resources to do what we are going to do. Proponents say earth can support about 10 billion people. If so, then I could say Jesus is coming sometime in my lifespan. But if not, we will still have the resources we need.

But here is an interesting thought. What if we really do start running out of the planet's resources? That will be just what the to be World Government will need to unify all the nations under one head and will be the exact tool God's going to use to user in the End Times. Interesting thought, even if it doesn't really mean anything.

Subject also running fairly recently in the church basement.

... I wanted to say something about something I heard on the radio a few days ago.

Somebody was talking about how climate change is a hoax, and not only that, but an UNGODLY one as well. Believing in it is A SIN -- said the caller -- since to believe in it, one must be so arrogant as to believe that WE humans could mess up God's work. I mean, she said, God made this world, and everything in it, and HE is God and WE'RE just puny little people, and HIS work is so amazing and flawless that there's no way WE could ever screw that up, and to believe that we're so high and mighty that we could goof up God's perfection is nothing more than the worst kind of pride.

And it seemed to me that it's that woman's thinking that is, rather, the worst kind of pride, as it assumes that we're so special and so great that God just gave us all this stuff and gave us a free hand to be as selfish as we want, to kill as many kinds of living things as we want, befoul it as much as we want, and we'll never have to think twice about it. We'll never have to change our ways or clean anything up or give any thought to not wasting water or making plants and creatures extinct or leaving our children a filthier place than we had for ourselves. And I thought THAT kind of arrogance is the sign of a badly spoiled child, but it sure isn't -- I hope -- what God wants of us or asks of us.

And I wonder why it seems to mean so much to a lot of professed Christians that we can just not care about what we're doing to the world, and that, indeed, to care about it, and to try to change how we live to better steward the world, and to ask others to do the same, well, somehow THAT'S what's ungodly. Why do they have so much invested in the right to loot the earth? What, exactly, is it that they do have invested in this? Is it only greed, since I can't see what they personally have to gain so much? Is it just that the people in political and/or religious authority whom they trust say it's no big deal and they should try to fight those who want to work on this, and because they trust these people so much it becomes part of their faith?

Sorry to blather on so long about this, but if you or anybody else has any thoughts on this, I'd like to know.

The retort was short and immediate:

"Ungodly?" Really? Romans 8:19-23 sure sounds like the creation is suffering because of sin. Not its own sin, or by God's smiting it. Our sin. Genesis 6:5-17 says man sinned so much that everyone and everything that wasn't in Noah's Ark perished. And didn't we humans introduce death into the cosmos just by eating some fruit? Surely all our sex sins alone could alter the climate a few degrees ...

My own thoughts:

We have proof that humans have poisoned the water. Over 1 billion people have no clean drinking water. It's not that they live in a place with no water, but that the water is polluted. We have proof that humans poison the soil: pesticides, landfills (including nuclear waste repositories, but even radio batteries are bad enough), and leaded gasoline -- we even put lead into our paint, our plumbing and the very seams of our food cans from the grocery store until it was finally banned in 1993. We have proof that humans have made species extinct. The dodo, the Carolina parakeet, the Kauaii o'o, and the passenger pigeon are four confirmed creatures from the bird family alone.

What's different here is that we're talking about damaging the air. People can't see air, and better still we can't use up all the air. But we can make it close to unbreathable in places, as any asthma patient in a big city can attest. I would suggest that because the air in invisible and the damage is invisible, it is really easy to ignore.

I think someone upthread joshed that the ozone hole is over Antarctica but the polluters are in the middle latitudes, so how silly that anyone could believe in a connection between them if this so-called ozone hole exists. The assumption is that air pollution stays where it's made, which is incorrect. Goes back to invisibility. Air has currents, like water, and like water any contaminants go "downstream." The ozone hole now is large enough to cover most of Antarctica -- but it's "only" the home of some penguins. And penguins got their 15 minutes of fame in "March of the Penguins," "Happy Feet" and "Surf's Up." Nowadays it's fashionable to mention the polar bears at the other end of the world: how the ice is melting to the point that they can't swim between the remaining ice floes and they drown. Fashion is fickle, and does not spare humans either. People cared about the tsunami until they cared about New Orleans until they cared about the earthquake until they cared about the drought.

It seems to me that the proposal that we have damaged the air is at least worth looking into, because we humans have demonstrated such a dreadful track record with everything else.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You...TOM .

I don't know why people want to deny the obvious. And conversely, I don't understand the need for some scientists to Finagle the Data. The Damage to our environment is clear and it is Deadly, and it has been since the Deadly Air of British Industrial Towns in the latter 1800s including London's Famous Peasoupers. Nowadays it's hard to see acroos Silicon Valley or LA and people have lung disease and asthma in ever increasing numbers.

Why some scientists felt the need to mess with data when it is obvious how we are destroying God's Green Earth is beyond me. We all have to live on this planet, and it's the only one we've got. Even if one thinks Armageddon starts tomorrow, it seems to me that those defending Polluters are going to have to answer for the Sin of defying God's command of stewardship (if one holds to literal Biblical interpretation).

He didn't put the planet here for us to trash.

GB

Science corrects itself. Nebraska Man was a clear Fraud repudiated by all Scientists when it was uncovered. It was Science that eventually exposed the Fraud. Using Nebraska Man to attack Evolution is a mite disingenuous .

Thank you for admitting that Nebraska man was a fraud. Unfortunatly the depictions of him as the hairy, half man are still used today.
As for science correcting itself, I am not the only person waiting for the embryo drawings, and horse series, and other "proofs" that have been disproven, to be removed from modern textbooks. These "proofs" of evolution were proven false long ago, yet remain.
I will always enjoy science. But I can never believe in a theory that relies on such shaky evedence as these, and other "proofs" like them.

Can you show me such a modern textbook using nebraska Man as a proof Puddleglum? I seriously doubt it. That trope has been circulated for years without evidence :

http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie020.html

GB

Sadly, the God-gave-it-to-us-so-lets-get-out-there-and-rape-it attitude is more common than you would think. How people can think the verses about God giving humanity dominion over the planet means they need to get out there and slash it all down and pave over it, I'll never understand. I firmly believe we can harvest the resources we need without going in and making everything look like a warzone.

Draugrin mentioned logging, which is something I see a lot of in this area. There's a field that I pass every time I go into town that was clearcut about a year ago. You'll never see a more devastated patch of land than the remnants of a clearcut forest. It's actually painful to look at. A year later, the field is still mostly muddy and rutted. There's hardly any grass even. It really does make me angry when I see it, because you can harvest trees without causing destruction like that. What's wrong with selectively logging an area and replanting? Trees aren't that expensive to plant.

Very good points about land and water pollution, ToM. I can't help but wonder what people are getting away with in those areas while the world obsesses over whether SUVs should be banned or whether we should let people build new power plants. There are even people who want to end the ban on DDT, never mind the fact that bird populations are only now recovering from the effects of DDT use.

It seems fairly obvious to me why those scientists were faking data, GB. They were getting millions of dollars in money from the government to research climate change. They admit that temps have started to decline, there goes the money and they're back to trying to find someone to fund them. To some extent I do feel kind of bad for them because it can be very difficult to get funding for scientific research if you aren't researching cute, fluffy animals or cures for diseases that are killing people or building new ways to slaughter our enemies. I can see why there would be temptation to give the world what they want to hear in exchange for more funding.

Yes, the human population is larger now than in history. We have more people on this planet now than everyone who has lived and died in history.

Technically I have to point out that we don't really know this....We have very short lifespans now with the average rounding out to roughly 75 years, and most families have several kids. I saw on TV this one family (the Duggars name sounds familiar) who have 17 or 18 kids now (my wife would literally shoot me if I gave her "come hither eyes" after the 10th ), and that's a pretty large number for even modern times.

But bear in mind that back then they didn't have birth control pills, TV's, or World of Warcraft (that we know of ). ... And it is speculated that these folks had probably as close to pure genetics as you can get and no diseases to contend with .

I don't really want to burst your bubble, but I'm not so sure that looking forward to a Rapture that will get you out of today's problems is such a good idea. Before doing so, I'd check out the Gospel parables of the talents and more particularly that one about the wise and the foolish virgins, the latter of whom ran out of oil before the festivities started.

In 1992 about November it was widely reported that the end of the world would happen on a particular date that month which coincided with the compulsory NSW HSC English examination for that year. I had the unenviable task of informing a hopeful daughter that the 'Rapture' and the 'End of the World' wasn't going to happen just to let her out of sitting for that examination, or to deliver her from the consequences of her inattention and lack of application to what was needed to pass it, during her school career. Sorry, them's the breaks.

But otherwise you are right about Early Man not having the diseases which might afflict us now. The bulk of the diseases which have decimated mankind since Ancient times have been due to urbanisation and overcrowding. Diseases like cholera, plague, typhoid, typhus have all had links with overcrowding and lack of proper sanitation. As has smallpox and even childhood diseases like measles, chickenpox, scarlet fever, mumps etcm which also affected native populations like Australian Aborigines, Inuit, and Celtic Britons once they came in contact with carriers. It wasn't until the medical advances of the 19th and 20th centuries that population increased exponentially.

Mumps, alone, and its effects on the human male, suggests possible answers to turns of history, whatever the claims at the time. Such as why didn't various kings produce the desired heirs, even when they actually spent time with their Queens as required. Even in the Bible problems with fertility occurred every now and then, despite polygamy and God's blessing. Though connections with the Hanta virus, suggest a steppe/sahel/pampas/prairie-like origin sweeping the Eurasian continent at various times, especially during the Roman Empire. Lead poisoning might account for some other irregularities, especially considering the weirdly immoral behaviour of the Caesars.

And if you like to believe in the Bible so literally, perhaps you might be interested in a tome calledThe peculiar life of Sundays, also reported in this month's ALR, unless Saturday observance is mandatory for you, plus swearing off eating meat, one of the human habits to which Global Warming is attributed. It may be, however, that the Seventh Day Adventists do have a point on this one, given the amount of animal flatulence which is let into the atmosphere, and the health warnings given over eating too much meat.

In days gone by, Governments across the world did not know how to stop such scourges as Scurvy, nor could they prevent themselves being shipwrecked due to a lack of navigational aids like Longitude. Thus UK, France and other European powers suffered a quite substantial drain on their manpower, as well as the casualties lost in war and revolution. On the other hand, there is such a thing as the Demographic Cycle. This model of how societies develop suggests that the greater prosperity a family enjoys, the longer lived its offspring will be, thus forcing the family to decide eventually how many children they can optimally support, without compromising family well-being.

Unlike the situation in Biblical times, when most patriarchs and other tribal figures practised polygamy, today frowned on by most developed societies. By the way, up until fairly recent times, we have no idea just how many people there really have been, due to tribal habits of not counting girls and women as part of the total population.

Down South, we don't have to rely on UK figures to understand about Global Warming. In today's Sydney Morning Herald Bob Geldof wrote about how Ethiopia is doing currently, and yes, this country, so stricken in the 1980's, has suffered erratic rainfall ever since then, in sharp contrast to previous centuries. Fortunately, it was the world's generosity which allowed these ancient peoples to survive for a bit longer.

However, Australia, who had droughts at the same time as Ethiopia, has endured a 10 year drought in some places, ever since 2000. As well, all other news sources report that Australia has had one of its hottest years to date this year, which is also one of the five hottest world years on record.

Northern Hemisphere scientists who want proof of Global Warming should visit these parts of the world, as should other Global warming doubters. I'd like to see how they cope with the heatwaves we had this year. And thank you, TOM, for your post. It just happens that I am one of those asthmatics.