It's an open question which will bring civilization to grief first, if we fail to act on these looming realities.

Recently, the Saudi oil minister declared what he saw as the right price for crude -- $75/barrel. That's his Goldilocks price. If it falls below it, investment in new, hard-to-get, expensive to produce/refine drops like a rock, which accelerates the day when demand will collide with the falling ceiling of supply. If it goes much above that price, credit markets swoon and the world economy goes into the dumpster.

Well, dealing with climate change has the same rock-hard place quality. Putting the brake on carbon emissions too hard (via some sort of enforced price/tax mechanism) and the economy goes into the dumpster. Just let the status quo continue and we may let loose all sorts of catastrophic consequences -- and dumping the ice masses of Greenland and Antartica into the oceans will be the least of them. Try the destruction of many agricultural producing regions and the acidification of the oceans for starters.

Prudence (that old-fashioned Greek virtue) dictates that we must assume the worst and act now to prevent it. Our choice is bite the bullet now or get shot by it later.

I am befuddled by this issue.

Some authorities are finding Earth cooling. In NYC, 2009 is record cold summer.

I think the universities aren't all settled yet on the various measurements.

Coal seems worse than oil.

Anyway, population growth has been ignored. And I don't see why USA has to stand for other countries to raise their consumption levels.

Out of this mess sprouts the seeds for new global WAR. Not many bigshots tolerate that kind of thinking.

Basically, world is chasing its tail and isn't helped by religions or institutions.

It'll just all kerplop into WAR.

I have started reading "The Great Warming - Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations" by Brian Fagan. He reports on the global warming that affected the Earth from about 800 CE to about 1300 CE. Among his observations, early in the book, were that the effects were subtle rather than dramatic - no continents just washed away - and that some areas were warmer and some were colder; some were wetter and some were dryer. But, all in all, it was sufficient to have noticeably altered life worldwide.

It is difficult to pin down peak oil because it is influenced by the integral of consumption, with constrained consumption pushing it out to later years. Of course, it is also affected by technological developments - one can't reliably predict when there will be some new development that makes it possible to recover less accessible resources.

If you want something else to worry about - since you seem to somewhat enjoy that - I have been wondering lately whether the major Pacific earthquakes we have had recently are due to the Earth being reshaped (and consequently stressed) by the change in the distribution of ice and water over the surface.

No, not. We have not had enough ice/water redistribution to make a significant difference in earthquakes. That can happen, but it is typically associated with either large point loads (new reservoirs, especially because the deep water is forced into cracks in the rock) and thick ice sheets (apparently changes in topography in Vermont and New Hampshire over the last dozen thousand years can be tracked by comparing patterns of beach levels for ancient lakes). Any non-polar place tall enough to have a glacier, is only tall in the first place because of geological activity (earthquakes, volcanism). Or to put it another way, global warming did not cause the San Andreas fault.

I'm afraid that my comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, associated with Sovereign's propensity to worry about marginal events. Of course, he was an insurance executive, so maybe it is inborn. At any rate, I would agree that the effects may not yet be significant as they would be when coming out of an ice age. However, without knowing how close the strains in the mantle are to being critical, I can't really make a definitive judgement about what level would be critical.

I understand that the San Andreas Fault (which I live within 30 miles of, by the way) is the result of Tectonic Plate motion.

"Global cooling"? Refuted. Many times over, by professional climate scientists.

www.realclimate.org.

Please quit wasting my time and educate yourself.

By the way, it was the third warmest summer on record. Perhaps you New Yorkers might like to think to, but NYC is not the whole planet.

NYC shapes world opinion. Its recent cold summer weighs megatons in world opinions, which could be wrong.

I can't go by opinions. I want valid facts. Freeman Dyson wants them too.

I've seen reputable scientists testify before Congress that GW is false.

Others say it is true.

Facts are pushed around by interests in the money at stake.

Universities are obligated to weigh in -- but they haven't done so effectively.

GW could even be beneficial for all we really know -- but not for hot countries.

For me, it's a mess to come up with a firm conclusion. In NYC the weather really has been strange -- with no explanation.

I side with those pushing for less air and sea pollution. But I lament the apparent lack of solid info on things like Earth's orbital effects and Sun's variability.

You might want to look here for information on Earth's orbital variability. You will note that the periods of all the variables are very long, as you would expect. The Sun, on the other hand has a short 11-year cycle. There is a thorough discussion of this here.

As to your New York anomoly, you might want to read Brian Fagan's "The Great Warming" which discusses the 'Medieval Warm Period'. You will learn there that, during that 5 century long period, there were areas of the world that got warmer (principally Europe) and others that got colder. Also, there was periodic variability of the effects during that longer overall warming period. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the book so I won't try to report on it yet.