I presume you mean ice free in summers by 2020? (It helps to be precise when making bets. Indeed, you might want to define ice free.)

Ms Palin hardly looks manly but she carries out the BP/Exxon agenda admirably, doesn’t she?

McCain is looking worried already (also if you look past them, so is his wife)!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7588435.stm

She is first in line for a gaging order from big oil I think.

Palin will argue that we should be drilling for oil in ANWAR and offshore. She has said so in video I have seen and will say so in the campaign and in the Vice President debate with Sen. Biden.

The blame for the high oil prices will be on Sen. Biden and Democrats.
Those who think that offshore drilling can be used as a bargaining chip for concessions in other areas are wrong. Offshore and ANWR drilling has no value because Republican want Democrats to be against offshore drilling and ANWR. So Republicans will bargain so that Democrats keep the offshore oil drilling ban and keep bashing Democrats over the head with it.

Lift the ban on offshore and ANWR drilling. That is the only thing to do. Democrats have to get rid of the ban or it will always hurt them. Democrats will always be blamed for the high oil prices. Democrats will have to take away this issue from Republicans or it will always hurt them.

It doesn’t matter that the rate of oil from these places will be to slow to have a price effect. Most people won’t follow along with the logic. Most people will say lets at least have whatever oil we can from there. Some Republicans have said on TV interviews that if we keep the ban in place it will be 6 and 7 dollar gasoline and if we lift the ban we can get it down to 2 dollars. No matter how ridiculous that is, that’s what the majority of people will remember.

This is politics, not Science, not engineering. Politics is closer to Religion than Science and Engineering, many and sometimes most people come to it with irrational needs and thinking.

You can’t come to people with what people think is a very stupid idea, this ban on offshore and ANWR drilling and then convince them with your very smart ideas. Most people think the ban is stupid.

For myself, I have always thought that the ban is stupid. It doesn’t actually get you anything. The only way that a ban on offshore and ANWR drilling could last indefinitely is if worldwide oil usage would drop so much that the world would never need the oil. And that’s the only thing that we can work for.

I’m for all the energy avoidance, energy efficiency and energy renewables (nondepleatables and nonexhaustables) that we can implement, but in a political world we have to smarter than we are stupid.

The only thing to do is lift the ANWR and offshore oil drilling bans.

In one sense a good thing, because with her on the ticket the Republicans cannot deny their policies.

Instead of sending money this time, here is an idea for an ad on Palin: Photoshop an image of the Sarah in her living room, with a polar bear head mounted on her mantle, rifle leaning against the hearth. There could also be a framed picture on the wall of a “nature shot” of oil rigs dotting the Alaska landscape. She could be in a rocking chair, presumably after putting several of her five children to bed, reading (just for grins and some hilarious irony) Pat Buchanan’s new book Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War.” No narrative; the photo tells it all. Just a pan of the still shot and maybe some music …. banjo picking maybe?

Rash Limbag added anothere feature Palin brings to the R ticket.

Yesterday he crowed that the Repbulicans now have:

“…..a babe on the ticket.”

It don’t get no better and, if voters fall for this, it will not.

John McCormick

Hurricane Gustav will supply more ammunition for the gun totin, bible thumpin, oily loving, war profiteers.

Prices of gasoline will go up and the sad bunch of pimped Americans will cry out loud for drilling. We cannot live without our daily fix.

In the interim Obama will keep trying to tell the public its not in their long term interest. Who’s going to care?

ANWR is the solution. Republicans have the upper hand. No one realized how tightly they control the masses. I’ll trade my present for our kids future. They are simply not ready to give up the very white house for a black man but a woman who was appointed to our oil and gas commission…….a winner!

Try selling your house to leave. I’ve been trying for two years. I am watching the complete meltdown of a country that one time I thought was the best. Now I now better As many other countries as we have exploited for their energy and minerals while I was sleeping and didn’t know better I am apalled. And republicans want to continue the charade. How despicable.

read about it here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/260/story/51169.html

Sarah Palin doesn’t really have an opinion about whether or not the globe is warming, she just isn’t arrogant enough to think humans have something to do with it.

As far as Polar Bears, Alaska has ample protections for Polar Bears…Sarah Palin just doesn’t believe you should claim the species is endangered for the purposes of legislation that would harm commerce.

Oh…and John Podesta? You’ve been schooled:

http://thisgoesto11.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 08/ john-podestafull-of-crap.html

I take you have authority to speak on her behalf?

Nigel wrote, “she just isn’t arrogant enough to think humans have something to do with it.”

I would call disagreeing with the IPCC without a excellent reason to be extremely arrogant.

That is reason enough to vote against her and McCain. She just proved she doesn’t have the knowledge to even be considered for VP. It boggles the mind that she would be chosen, except that it appears McCain has abandoned any principles he once held in order to try to win the election. If the voters are stupid enough to go for this gimmick, they will have no one to blame but themselves after we get 4 more years of Bush policies.

The evidence that the earth is warming is unequivocal, and the likelihood that it is due to human activity is over 90%.

That is reason enough to vote against her and McCain. She just proved she doesn’t have the knowledge to even be considered for VP. It boggles the mind that she would be chosen, except that it appears McCain has abandoned any principles he once held in order to try to win the election. If the voters are stupid enough to go for this gimmick, they will have no one to blame but themselves after we get 4 more years of Bush policies.

The evidence that the earth is warming is unequivocal, and the likelihood that it is due to human activity is over 90%.

Let me help you out here. Sarah Palin HAS expressed concern about “climate change”:

“For Alaska, that means recognizing that although climate change is a serious concern for everyone on the planet, it is not the only issue surrounding polar bears.

Climate change is a serious issue and I urge all Americans to get involved by offering comments and suggestions to their state governments for action. But listing the polar bear as threatened is the wrong way to get to the right answer…”

Here is the source:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/346563_bears09.html

I’m still looking to source it for you kool-aid drinkers, but she has questioned previously whether any climate change is due to man’s affect on the planet, or influences such as solar activity. In other words, the reason she doesn’t have a firm opinion is that she is unwilling to simply take the word of global warming chicken littles when there are equally reputable (yeah I know, not to YOU) scientists who are still looking at the data.

And I know you all are insulated here from any dissenting information…believe it or not, there are still REAL scientists not named Algore (PBUH) or not on some UN panel who are still researching climate change.

Nigel, scientists are researching climate to work out the details, just as scientists are still testing relativity 92 years later. I subscribe to Science, Nature, EOS, Geophysical Research Letters, and other journals. If dissenting information is being published in peer-reviewed journals, I doubt that I am insulated from it. The truth is that scientists are not debating whether anthropogenic global warming is real because there is no evidence to suggest it isn’t. They are constantly looking into the details, as they do in all fields.

If she did this, then she would move past what she believed to what was the best way forward based on the advice of knowledgeable professionals and experts.

Which I believe she has. What she DOES know is that global warming legislation will hamper Alaska’s economy. She also knows that the debate is still out on whether man is causing the globe to warm (yes, I know…a view that isn’t popular here despite my sourcing)…

So what she does is make decisions in the best interests of her constituents. She’s not kow-towing to some fractured world-wide panel on climate change. She’s making decisions that keep food on the table for the citizens of Alaska.

You might look at these “probabilities” differently based on your view of climate change…I understand that.

But if you read the PI column, you’ll see that her difference of opinion is not “polar-bear dissing”, it is a simply well-thought-out disagreement with your position.

I’ve seen it loads of times. Is there some reason for it that I’ve missed?

I don’t think Obama’s perfect, but the ignoramus of the Republicans is so scary I just can’t vote for them anymore.

No, the debate is NOT still out, Nigel, and you know it. The IPCC, AAAS, NAS, and countless other scientific organizations have gathered together, reviewed all the science, and repeatedly reached the conclusion that global climate change is being caused by human activity. Perhaps you’re a better scientists than all of them? Show us your analysis of how all these scientists are just plain wrong.

Alaska neither has a state sales tax nor an income tax, and gives a dividend check to each citizen every year (~$1000). According to this, 50% of state revenues come from oil payments.

In addition, at least as of 2001, according to balance of payments, AK gets more from the Federal government than it contributes, i.e., some of the rest of us subsidize AK. it’s not completely obvious why we do that…

It must be fun to run a state where the government sends checks to the people…

Al Gore is still fat.

Especially if you are going to be vice president.

Arrogant about man causing Global Warming?

Man (humans) has never learned how to Fly. Humans have learned how to build machines that can fly, man just rides along to operate the controls and ride along.

Man (humans) does not cause Global Warming. Humans machines do. Humans redusing of earths carbon sinks does.

Human machines changes the content of the earths atmosphere by extracting carbon and carbon fuels from inside the earth and burning it in powerful machines that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Doing this burning for decades after decades, the atmosphere changes enough to change the insulating factor of the atmosphere. Other human factors changes the earths ability to capture this carbon dioxide in biomass and other changes.

Man at 1/10 horsepower is to powerless to affect the atmosphere. It’s our great and powerful machines that is doing it.

How we talk about something matters about how we think about it.

That’s why I think this Global Warming thing should be called Human Machine and Activity Global Warming.

Human, because why should be be gender discrimanating and let the women take some of the blame.

Machine, because it’s true, Humans are very weak, especially compared to our machines. Humans can’t fly, we can’t travel 60 mph (except mostly straight down) except in our machines.

Activity, because we are changing the surface of the earth that is unrelated to machines that has affect on our atmosphere and warming.

Scientists tell use that a human DNA strand is 6 feet long and extremely thin that when in our cells doesn’t bunch up and get entangled, but our cells are still able to replicate themselves. Science has shown us so much of how things that are in existance really are. The truth about Human Machine and Activity Global Warming is one of those.

Learning about Global Warming is not the same as so many of our political discussions. The description of that process is much longer than I would want to describe here. Don’t put Science knowledge and political discussions as the same things.

Theres going to be fireworks. Watch this space.

I believe science deniers like Fred Singer and Pat Michaels watching Al Gore present his evidence and warning about sea level rise and increasing temperatures then telling us how they can be avoided, say say:

‘ look, more of his alarmist algorithms.’

John McCormick

Academic issues are not informed opinion. Human direct vs indirect (machines) is an academic issue, because it’s all human caused one way or the other, and we have the means to mitigate it.