In another thread ( Why are you crunching for the World Community Grid? ) I stated my reasons for leaving the WCG for another project, which is modelling climate change.

marysduby responded with:
" I really dont care at all about global warming as i feel it is a natural thing that just happens--there was global warming supposidly when man was not evolved yet--what do you think caused that? I am worried about oil consumption i think we need to develope some other source of energy--also the earth was completly frozen at one tjme or so they say how did it warm up again without evil women to warm it up again? I would rather concentrate on something that would benefit man and women than worrie about the weather"

Well and good, but this led me to question my own motives, and here I'd like to try and justify them. I'm not campaigning for the opposition, but from this (British) side of the Gulf Stream, the American attitude to the issue of Global Warming seems somewhat blinkered.

Those of you crunching in the fight against Aids are undoubtedly doing a 'good thing' and, as I stated earlier, I have only admiration for what is being done in that cause. However, I have been trying to get a perspective on the human condition at the start of the 21st century, and it is starting to reveal the 20th century as a severe aberration, distorted by our profligate consumption of fossil fuels from which springs all our current wealth.

As regards the prospects for oil production/consumption, it would re-pay anyone to simply spend a few minutes reading the history of oil at this url:
http://energybulletin.net/8295.html

As regards Climate Change, I have not yet been able to locate anything on the web which gives a dramatic attitude changing view, but the telling evidence for me was in a BBC TV documentary which showed the natural fluctuations in temperature over thousands of years that marysduby talks of, and follows up with demonstating a sudden and uncharacteristic surge in temperature over the last century, which is occurring during a period of general cooling - remember in the '70s we were supposed to be heading very slowly into a new ice age? The general cooling has not gone away, it's just been totally overwhelmed in the last 30 years by the greenhouse effect.

The science may be imprecise - after all, the thermometer was a relatively recent invention - but the combination of a 'sudden' (century) change of temperature direction coupled with the loss of really really huge areas of the Arctic and especially the Antarctic ice, - AND - the 'sudden' and escalating use of fossil fuels, really does merit my decision.

Perhaps others might wish to air some views regarding other deserving causes that the concept of distributed computing might be more usefully be focussed on?

Ian