Buddy...

Don't let my "Ryan was right" comment go to your head.

We did argue about global warming... more than 10 years ago now, I'm sure. But before you paint me as some reformed wacko, let's make sure our memories are accurate.

There is no question that you never bought into the man-made global warming argument. Our arguments were because you continually insisted that nothing Man, as a species, could do would impact such a vast and varied dynamic as global weather. I, on the other hand, was more skeptical of the scope of the matter than I was the science of the matter.

I repeatedly said to you and anyone else we were talking to that I wasn't convinced the science was accurate... while you repeatedly said the very suggestion was impossible. You said (I'll never forget this!) that it was the "height of human hubris" to think we could do anything, as a species, that would even effect, let alone alter, the global weather patterns of the planet".

Now, I'm the first to admit that I felt the "global warmers" like Gore were spouting nothing more than a bunch of "Chicken Little" nonsense, with no historical perspective anywhere in their interpretation of recent weather facts. These arguments that Ryan alludes to arose because I felt his position was just as non-scientific as the "warmers"... just 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

He has even argued that Man, as a species, didn't have the ability to alter global weather given the fact that Man has produced and maintains a global nuclear weapons stockpile that numbers in the hundreds of thousands of megatons, and should these weapons all be used at roughly the same time in a global exchange, the dust, debris and particulate that would be thrown into the atmosphere would block out enough sunlight to drop global temps as much as 6 degrees for anywhere between 3 months and 3 years.

He has denied Man's "hand" in the creation of a 2,000-mile-wide "hole" in the earth's ozone layer over Antarctica through the production and use of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC), which attaches itself to free ozone molecules and persists in natural environments for more than 1500 years, thus lowering the effectiveness of earth's protective ozone layer, which is a natural filter for the sun's UV radiation.

I am very satisfied with the evidence that we are living now in the "warm-nominal" stage of an 800 to 1200 year cycle of moderately warm to moderately cold global temps... known now as the end of the "Little Ice Age", the "cold-nominal" stage of which ended around 1820 and began as long ago as 1250 AD. That was a 400-year long period marked more by varied weather patterns than by global temperature reductions, but which resulted in enough of a climate change to help usher in such massive effects as the Black Death, the "Year with no Summer" and the mass migration of peoples across the globe.

I'm simply very confident in the science behind the "probable" cause of the ozone hole, and I am satisfied with the science behind the "possible" effects of a massive nuclear exchange. Ryan is not. That was the reason for our arguments. Not that I was ever a "global warmer"...

None of this detracts from Ryan's post though... he never bought the Gore-mania associated with global warming. Tip your hat, 'cause he was right.