I disagree about oil. We have released a tremendous amount of carbon back into the environment, that took several billion years to bury.We dug up and released about 350 million years worth as of last year.We will be adding 10's of millions every year. We cannot remove this carbon from the atmosphere with current technology. Essentially , it's too late. So, I'm not going to worry about it. By releasing carbon back into the atmosphere, we are actually helping the planet back to it's normal state, and it's beneficial to plants. It's ironic that humans came during the last group of ice ages, and we will be responsible for ending them. Another reason it is pointless to inhibit CO2 release is because if we did, we would force the ice age. So, oil companies are only doing the will of the Earth right now. No need to worry, drive your SUV without guilt:)

I'm assuming you are using evolution in the non-technical sense of the term? So you think that without, say, the burning of fossil fuels--if we had stayed at, for sake of argument, a pre-17th century level of technology the temperature of the planet would *still* be rising at or around the same rate it is now? Because I'm just not sure how that would work given that *something* has to account for the change in temperature and if the burning of a lot of carbon that had been sequestered isn't it, then what would cause that temperature to happen? Or am I not understanding you when you say that you believe that the changes we are currently witnessing (as opposed to *any* change in climate) in climate are part of (organic?) evolution and that it would happen regardless of human action.

Cheers
Aj

Question for Aj
 

Do you have any suggestions for credible, non-partisan, scientific sources of information regarding enviormental issues pertaining to water, soil, climate (micro- & macro- indexes) that a person could access online? If so, I'd be very interested in broadening my reading repertoire of such things.

Thank you for any assistance you can provide, Aj

Quite honestly, I think that the best source is Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/.

They do a fantastic job of balancing articles that are accessible to a general readership while also having material written by working scientists whose work has been through the gauntlet of peer review. They are *not* a refereed (peer-reviewed) journal so they don't publish original research, rather they report on subjects that have already been published in journals.

Discover magazine also does a pretty good job: http://discovermagazine.com/

A lot of folks I know love New Scientist as well. I'm less fond of them but they still, on balance, do very solid science reportage for the general reader:

http://www.newscientist.com/

Slightly less approachable (because this is an actual refereed journal) is Nature magazine: http://www.nature.com/news/index.html. The thing is Nature is the gold-standard of science magazines. It is to science reporting what the Washington Post or the New York Times are to American news reporting, functioning as the 'paper of record' for the scientific community.

Cheers
Aj

Thanks Aj for providing those links, Aj

I just checked out Scientific American online
and I like it that a person can purchase a copy of
back issues or the current issue or subscribe in other
ways. What a great resource. Thank you!