Kudos to Leonardo DiCaprio for the film. The Stosselites only care about themselves and their cigarette boat weekends

The stupidity of the 'not global warming' line is when they come up with benefits for shifting climes, like "Hey, we can hold winter festivals on the frozen Thames! What fun!" and "Hey, we can run shipping routes through the Arctic!" (assuming major currents don't shift and leave you screwed).

But the prizewinner is, "We could gain access to MORE OIL!" Never mind that Arctic life might die off, it's MORE OIL! Wheeeeee!

Open up year round shipping? I wonder how many of our deep water ports would then be under water?

I dunno what video you guys saw but the one I clicked on talked about stalagmites and not global warming :(

Ditto here.
It apears to be a different video???

I especially like how the "up-side" to global warming is the possibility of greater access to one of its main causes (oil). Hair of the dog, perhaps?

"But the change would be a catastrophe for many Arctic species and risks disrupting the entire ecosystem."

errrr...... and did the writer think it might be catastrophic for all the worlds coastal areas? You know that place where something like 50% of the worlds population lives.

I'm gay, and I have no children, so I really don't care what the planet is like in 50 years, as I'll be dead for sure. It's just the cold, hard truth. I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way, but the lack the courage to admit it.

A quick word about the 'oceans produce more CO2 than human activity' (or volcanoes, or forests, or whatever) ...

Math is commutative, folks. If X (Ocean) & Y (Human Activity) = W (Global Warming / Point-of-no-Return), it is not because the oceans are a liberal plot. Given that the oceans and other natural features of the planet are just that, natural, if we subtract them from the theoretical danger zone that would be a significant environmental change ... we have the sum of human activity left.

That amount cannot be conveniently left out of the equation, even if it is argued that the earth was this warm in the past. That's a whole 'nother fallacy, that T (temperature at period n in earth's history) is the same as W (global warming / point-of-no-return), which has, to my knowledge, never been the assertion.

What we must consider is where that point-of-no-return is - we're reasonably certain it exists, as the atmosphere of Venus demonstrates a correlation between CO2 and the Greenhouse Effect - and minimizing the factor under our control, human activity.

To say our SUVs and barbecues don't matter is like saying eating a Big Mac as your three squares a day won't have an impact on your cholesterol.

Gotta love Big Oil for being the optimists they are, seeing an opportunity out of every calamity. Before the disappearing Arctic, there was Iraq.

Um, all ecosystems have been disrupted. How much is another matter.

The natural world on this planet exists outside of what genial idiots used to call a fragile balance. (Balance in a dynamic system is tenuous and fleeting in the long term).

A better way, perhaps not the best, to think of it is that nature here is a series of ecologies under invasion. Everything's changing, and changing way too fast.

[...] Belle over at Crooks and Liars has a brief but compelling write-up on a recent corporate-spinnerism at discovery.com regarding climate [...]

The link to video no longer works. It's now a story about stalagmites.

When a planet dies, and nobody cares, does it really matter? Who will miss us when we’re gone? You can bet the natural world won’t give a flying rat’s patooty.

how bout the antarctic? relatives in nz report ice floes bobbing by in numbers. but, hey, that's a long way away, right? nothing we need worry about, right?

Just how can this be? God only created the earth 6000 years ago.
Who likes ice cold places anyway?

why doesn't bush take his dog and pony show to yet another part of the planet, the melting arctic, for a photo op where he can learn nothing, and tell us that everything is going "just fine"?

[Deleted. Banned-Sitemonitor]

Private Freedom, sneaking around @ 34:

You know, when people (who think global warming is the result of mankind's actions) are confronted with the "pesky" scientific fact that shows CO2 is the RESULT of the Earth warming due to the Sun, there is usually one of two reactions:

Funny my reaction is care to site your source of this "fact"?

Arctic Dude @ 19:

You folks down south still don't get it. There was a mile thick layer of ice covering the north part of the planet like 10,000 years ago. Its melting away between glacial cycles therefore the treeline is moving north and the oceans are rising. You keep forgetting about that. Ya gotta think geologically or you won't get the big picture and make good choices about GW. You'll be lead by fear just like Bush did with selling the Iraq war. Same marketing.
I think GW is real but as a northerner I feel like we are being used as part of a sales pitch in this war against Big Oil. I'm on your side 110% but there's something kinda creepy about having super rich city folks rushing in and making grandiose claims then heading back to air conditioned mansions.
You have to understand the earth very well to make positive changes. Anyways it's -5C at this time where I'm at but maybe it would have been -7C a hundred years ago.

I hear what your saying, but, the fossil Ice record going back 6 or so ice ages shows no time in that period where CO2 has ever been this high, nor any period where its concentration has increased at the rate it is now increasing. If the temperature increase lags the CO2 increase as it did in the ice record, we're in deep shit. More, if you plot out the curve of the increase of both CO2 and temperature, it appears that we are already past the inflection point of an exponential function. Means we're in even deeper shit. I don't view this as a war against big oil, or big coal. It's more of a clarion call against apathy and ignorance-as-a-chosen-lifestyle.

roooth @ 11:

Right now in the Gulf of Mexico there is a tropical storm that turned into a Cat Five hurricane in less than 24 hrs., something I don't remember ever seeing before. Mexico is being hit by dueling tropical systems coming at it from both the Gulf and the Pacific.

But since both these storms and the melting Arctic are not affecting our ability to shop and watch tv, they might as well not exist for 90% of U.S. Americans, who apparently, (according to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww ), don't have maps anyway.

You perhaps have never have seen something like this happen before, but are you 100,000 years old? We are living through the tiniest slice of geological history, hardly enough time to speak authoritatively for the earth's entire history. Nevermind that only recently have we had airplanes and infrared satelites to estimate hurricane stats. The strength of the 2 recent cat 5 hurricanes has NOTHING to do with global warming. Instead, the hurricanes reached their power through direction, movement over some of the warmest waters on earth and favorable atmospheric patterns.

I bring this up because parallel is the same for global warming. We speak of temperature rises over the past year, decade, century as somehow encompasing a significant slice of the earth's history. It is not. Anytime some extreme weather occurs now, we have the obligatory references to Global Warming. Nicole is upset here becuase the Discovery Channel apparently forgot to do this. Global Warming is a PR machine and the MSM is constantly being fed a steady diet of climate stories always slanted to support GW. For example, much press is given to the melting of the western antarctic sheet, but I've never seen an MSM story on the Eastern antarctic (75% of the world's freshwater) actually gaining mass. It's like saying someone is getting thinner because there arm width is a bit less even though their wastline is expanding.

I am a conservationist and I believe we should do everything we can to protect endagered species when man is at fault (encroachment, pollution, etc.). However, if the earth's climate is simply changing (as it always is), then what in the world are we doing trying to press the pause button on natural selection? Furthermore, the arctic ocean was probably ice free in some summertime months during the medieval warm period (from nordic and chinese records). The species that are around now survived that warm period ok. Let's focus on the species that are in danger 100% due to man's negligence. I think that will keep us busy for the time being.

To Drama King [AKA Private Freedom, sneaking around-Sitemonitor]:

You say 'we should wait'! With all the evidence out there, you say 'we should wait'!

I suspect you are a paid troll working for the Discovery Institute - NOT connected with Discovery Channel, btw, who are biased enough as it is.

CO2 is NOT produced by the sun AND CO2 DOES NOT POSE THE GREATEST DANGER of the melting permafrost---that would be METHANE!

http://www.planetextinction.com/planet_extinction_permafrost.htm

The cycle of species demise has begun with global warming and shall end in another ice age. The earth will survive hundreds of millions of yrs. into the future, until our star explodes, but earth's current species populations will not, including humans...and that's a fact.

-spouse of a scientist who does know his a.f.a.h.i.t.g.

Oh. Oh! Great! In just a few years we almost certainly don't have we might be able to tell with more precision about climate history. "Infuriating" is such a mild way to put it! THE POLAR BEARS ARE DROWNING! There has to be a bigger word.... :-(

Well,
fortunately for me, my nation will survive a rise in sealevels, but be prepared for the hell of that billion or so of people who are living less than 7 metres above sealevel. Most of the huge river deltas in Asia as I recall.

Tricky bit might be if the engine running the gulf stream (Namely the arctic/greenland ice) decide to quit on us, making US east coast and Gulf of Mexico waters warmer, and the east Atlantic waters up to, and past north Norway colder.

More hurricanes for you, less heat for us. And Russia is ramping up their military presence over the arctic as we write this, demanding pretty much the entire arctic seabed.

Happycow @ 45:

You know the reason why there are significant reserves of oil and gas in the arctic? Because it used to be warm there--warm like the tropics. And just like the tropics that exist today, there were lots of trees and plants that since have died and become the oil and gas we love so much.

So, if it was that warm in the past--long before man ever showed up on the scene--what's to say it won't be that warm again someday, regardless of any human effects?

Amen. And you know what else? Scientist cannot explain the massive climate swings in our history. When is the next ice age going to occur? Nobody knows (its overdue based on the cycles). I find it unacceptable that I should believe scientific consensus on AGW, when they don't have a clue on whats been going on with the natural cycle. Afterall, any change due to AGW, happens within the backdrop of natural climate change. If you don't understand the mechanism for natural climate change, why should I listen to you when you propose an artificial mechanism for climate change?

here is the link to the tornado warning in OXNARD

You know, here's the same comment I always have for naysayers. Let's say that 90% of climatologists are full of crap and don't have any idea what they're talking about, even though that's what they study as a job. Let's further say that all the blatant physical evidence is probably wrong.

Since there's obviously SOMETHING going on, however, the questions are "Is it significant, is it our fault, how bad will it get, and can we do anything about it?"

So let's just say that there's only a 50% chance that there's actually major warming going on. And let's say that even if there IS major warming going on, there's only, say, a 20% chance that it's even our fault. And even THEN, let's say that there's only a 50% chance that it's going to get really bad.

Add all that up, and let's say, hypothetically, that there's only a 5% chance that there is major warming going on, it's our fault, and it's going to be really severe. That is to say that there's only 5% chance that the Pentagon is right (hey, they're wrong about almost everything else), only a 1 in 20 chance that all those climate scientists know what they're talking about, and so on. Pretty low.

If this were the case, that also means that there's a 1 in 20 chance of civilization as we know it coming to an end within my lifetime amidst global famine and massive ecological disaster. Cities flooded, millions dead of starvation, resource wars (hey, not my idea, that's what the Pentagon said might happen), and so on.

Now, if you told me there's a 1 in 20 chance of something really awful happening to my family, I would do whatever I could to prevent it. That's why I have health insurance, an earthquake kit (I live in CA), and lock my door at night. I admit, lots of people smoke, which is a whole lot higher than 1 in 20 chance of messing up your health, but still.

So the question is, is a 5% chance of civilization coming to an end worth adjusting our lifestyle over if it's preventable? If so, I think most people would probably want to. Considering the fact that we ARE going to run out of oil one way or another eventually, it seems absolutely daft to sit around trying to do "business as usual" in the hopes that it won't happen and some magical "they" will invent a convenient drop-in replacement for oil before it's gone.

Considering that I'd say 5% chance is WAY low, I'm trying to do something. And also planning for the worst, since I don't have that much faith in humanity. Oh, and remember, what we consider "business as usual" is entirely different from the way humans have used resources throughout history--we've never been this populous, powerful, or resource-hungry as in the last 100 years or so.

On an entirely different note: Screw polar bears. Half of the town I live in is approximately 3 feet above sea level, built on former mudflats from a bay. If some of that ice melts, half of my TOWN will be under water, and that would seriously suck. But hey, if you're in Colorado, no biggie.

Russ Schnell, director of Observatory and Global Network Operations for NOAA, notes that climate change is cyclical — that the planet's vegetation, over millions of years, sucks in and spits out carbon dioxide.

"All the carbon dioxide in the coal and oil was once in the air. The plants took it and it went into the oceans or into the ground — and now we're taking it back out," says Schnell.

"The cycle is the same today, only you're taking something that took 100,000 years and doing it in one hundred years," he said. "There's a point where animals can't change fast enough, there's a point where plants can't change fast enough, so they'll either compete it out or go extinct." -- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1127-07.htm (bolding mine)

The issue isn't about climate changing as much as it is the rate of change.

unfrozencaveman @ 55:
Sounds like you took that statement about National Academy of Sciences from this article:

WASHINGTON -- There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, boreholes, retreating glaciers, and other "proxies" of past surface temperatures to say with a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new report from the National Research Council. Less confidence can be placed in proxy-based reconstructions of surface temperatures for A.D. 900 to 1600, said the committee that wrote the report, although the available proxy evidence does indicate that many locations were warmer during the past 25 years than during any other 25-year period since 900. Very little confidence can be placed in statements about average global surface temperatures prior to A.D. 900 because the proxy data for that time frame are sparse, the committee added.

Less confident, not "highly suspect". And less confidence given sufficient evidence from other "proxies".

Seems to me you're misquoting the NAS to fit your opinions.

unfrozencaveman @ 55:

If you concede that natural temperature change (tropical to arctic and back) takes millenia, and you know that the global temp has risen in recent years, then we agree. I understand that you see no correlation between CO2 and temperature. Well, the National Academy of Sciences does not agree with you.

1) The fact that we only know for sure what has occured over the past few hundred years is not a cause for relaxation, but a cause for concern.
2) The reason why small, global increases in temperature are important is that they act upon the ocean as a whole--causing it to rise

After googling the net and their web page, I could find no evidence that they find proxy measurements suspect. I did find this though:
"A small forcing can cause a small [climate] change or a huge one." — National Academy of Sciences, 2002.

I agree totally that global warming is real. Where I question is whether it has anything at all to do with mankind. Should we adjust our lifestyles? Why not? If we know what we do is killing different species, yes. It's that simple regardless of whether it is influencing on a global scale or not. And another thing. Contrary to belief we are NOT running out of oil and won't. What we are running out of is cheap, easy oil that maintains huge profit margins for oil companies. That is what we are running out of. There is more oil in the Alberta tar sands in Canada, than in Iraq and Saudi Arabia combined, but you can't just pump it out of the ground and mark up the price 130000%. So oil industries is all a scared that their day of shining and lapping up dollars is almost over.

I just want to congratulate almost everyone here for a good debate. For the most part it shows that there are many smart people who are concerned and have the old thinking caps on. Give yourselves all a pat on the back you deserve it. It's what could make the world a realy good place.

BTW from where I sit - ~10k years ago there was a melting sheet of ice 1500m high only 4 kilometers to the east. 4 kilometers to the west there sits granite outcrop that has been rotting and weathering for 3/4 of a million years since it was last scraped off by the glaciers. In between, where I sit, are great layers of outwash sand and gravel plus a few 1 foot layers of volcanic ash from about 800 years ago. Just a exercise in perspective.

Paul @ 53:

I noticed how everytime any story related to global warming is posted, the same trolls show up to debunk it, the researchers, the science. Doing the tobacco industry trick of not denying cancer but casting as much doubt about cause as possible. It bought the tobacco industry maybe 30 more years to play around and make money. It looks like a repeat performance on global warming, only a different set of disinformers. Don't deny that it exists but cast as much doubt as possible about cause ,the quality of science and whatever.

Who do you guys think you are convincing other than your fellow trolls?

In the spirit of the tabacco analogy:

Imagine for a moment that you tried to prove smoking caused cancer with only one patient who ever smoked. Additionally, you had direct observations of the patient smoking for the past 5 minutes. For the past hour or two you had second hand observations from other observers who saw the patient smoke. For the rest of the 50 years of the patients life you had very sketchy information on his smoking habits.

Everytime someone questions Global warming people bring up Tabacco, Evolution, etc. as if they are on the same playing field as global warming. I comment regulary on this site. Only when the subject is global warming do people say I'm a troll.

Angelo @ 49:

We had a tornado warning in LA last week. A story which seems to have escaped everyone.

Southern California regularly gets waterspouts and tornados, which is not surprising given that the Gulf of California funnels monsoon weather systems into our region, and the coast is often the interface between cold ocean currents and heated desert air.

Q: How common are tornadoes in California? When they hit, people always say how unusual they are, but is that really the case?

A: Tornadoes are not as rare in the Golden State as most people seem to think. From 1950-2004, there were 303 documented tornadoes in California, and, since 1993, an additional 57 waterspouts in the state’s coastal waters — an average of almost six tornadoes and five waterspouts per year. But so far in 2005, California is more like Tornado Alley, with about 20 tornadoes in the state, including 12 in Sacramento County — more than in the Oklahoma City metro area!

Though 80% of California tornadoes are weak, with Fujita scale rankings of F-0 or F-1, there have been a number of significant storms in populated areas. With 41 tornadoes, Los Angeles County ranks as the tornado capital of the state, five of which were ranked as F-2. Nearby Orange County has had 28 tornadoes and at least as many waterspouts concentrated in its relatively small area of 798 square miles.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/watorhty.htm

unfrozencaveman @ 63:
The term "highly suspect" implies falsehood, lying. NAS isn't saying the data is a lie. Only insufficient to draw conclusions. That is misquoting the report.

unfrozencaveman @ 67:

Occums razor please.

Are you going to slit your wrists with it?

Occam has ZERO to do with the kind of crap you're trying to peddle. But it's clear that you've never read a basic science text. Why is it axiomatic that winger trolls don't know how to spell?

Must be all the CO brain damage from their battered swamp coolers.

Paul in LA @ 69:

unfrozencaveman @ 67:

2) A rise in temprature does not mean necessarily that ocean levels will rise. Here's one example. Most of the fresh water in the world is located in the Eastern Antarctic. Temperatures here are way below zero and it is a desert. If tempratures rise there, then precipitation will rise, increasing the ice mass, not decreasing its mass.

More lies. Precipitation replaces a percentage of lost ice sheet, but the effect of the melt is FAR larger than can be replaced by precip, because the melting effect DESTABILIZES the entire ice sheet. So the amount of replacement ice doesn't change the FACT that the ice sheet itself is failing. As melt holes form, water collects under the icesheet, lubricating its slide into the ocean. This effect is seen both in Greenland and Antarctica. Those processes are currently underway.

Furthermore, there is what is called crustal rebound. As the weight of ice is shifted, the crust of the earth RISES. That alone will account for a rise in ocean level (a few percentage points compared to the broad effect of ice shelf melting).

How much more HORSESHIT have you got?

First, you've left readers with the impression that Anarctic is just one ice sheet, it is many sheets. We're all aware with how an ice sheet melts, we've all seen Al Gore's movie afterall. The eastern ice sheet of the antarctic is very stable. No one will tell you otherwise. Yes the western sheet is melting, but it is more than offset by the gains on the eastern side. The following graph shows this (this is a common graph, this happen to be the fastest place I could find it when I googled it):
http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/drs/indicator/476/in...

Secondly, the IPCC report predicts only 2 feet of sea rise for the entire century, though perhaps they are not taking crustal rebound into account.

http://www.tornadoproject.com/alltorns/catorn.htm

(List of tornados in California, 1880-2000)

Shadowgm @ 72:

your lungs put out CO2 when you draw a breath.

When you exhale, of course.

Another factor left out is the VAST amounts of carbon that will be released by permafrost melt, and by release of CO2 captured in the ice itself, as well as the carbon that will be released by MILLIONS of human bodies floating face down all along the coastal rims of Asia and the other heavily-inhabited coastal regions. These are additive causes, which will join our mindless polluting (and the shrugs of the callous trolls).

Shadowgm @ 74:

So, let's sum up:

Hypothesis: Global warming is a direct consequence of increased CO2 levels, specifically from human activity.

I'd only add that I don't think climate change has to have to have a single cause. Increased CO2 is just one cause. In prior Earth history its happened before where one species drastically altered the environment. But in that case it was in creating an overabundance of 02.

Just saying other factors could be the cause for prior climate change. Not something as simple (and discounted) as Sun activity. It may not be cyclic but a series of unrelated catastrophes. With human activity just being the most recent.

Paul in LA @ 66:

Angelo @ 49:

We had a tornado warning in LA last week. A story which seems to have escaped everyone.

Southern California regularly gets waterspouts and tornados, which is not surprising given that the Gulf of California funnels monsoon weather systems into our region, and the coast is often the interface between cold ocean currents and heated desert air.

Q: How common are tornadoes in California? When they hit, people always say how unusual they are, but is that really the case?
But so far in 2005, California is more like Tornado Alley, with about 20 tornadoes in the state, including 12 in Sacramento County — more than in the Oklahoma City metro area!

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/watorhty.htm

So they were never uncommon in LA, but now they are more common than ever. that explains why last week was the first time I ever saw a tornado warning.

Sorry about the screw up with the link in the previous post. It works, though. Just don't have a hemorrhage reading that load of crap.

I love how we are reinventing the spear on this comment area of a political blog.

Is unfrozencaveman onto something that has escaped 90% of experts? Well, it would not be the first time ever. (the earth is not flat). Still, Unfrozencaveman, why not move into the next century using systems that are more than 13% efficient? If the experts are suspect to you, why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

unfrozencaveman,
if you know that humans have elevated CO2 off the charts,
and you agree that there is a natural global feedback loop between CO2 and temp,
then you cannot disregard plausible human impact upon global temperature.

'occum'-on, you know that makes sense : )

You do know about feedback right? I mean, you correctly pointed out that heat+biomas=CO2. You know that increasing the CO2 increases the heat as well right?

Angelo @ 85:

Thing Fish @ 83:

Angelo @ 80:

So they were never uncommon in LA, but now they are more common than ever. that explains why last week was the first time I ever saw a tornado warning.

Yes but that is anecdotal evidence. They're rare but not uncommon.

wait, what do yu mean? I thoght we had established that they were not rare or uncommon. One thing is for sure, tornados in LA are on the increase according to the article PaulinLA cited.

When you use a single personal experience as an example that's anecdotal. And if you run the numbers from Paul's post you get 5.6 tornados between 1950-2004 and 4.7 between 1993-2005. Actually a drop in number.

And none were reported above an F3, with only 2 at F3. By rare I meant something something at or above F3. Waterspouts and weaker ones aren't that uncommon.

I find it best to leave personal experience out of discussions about climate change and stick to quoting research papers for discussion. Otherwise you can get disparaged for ignoring "evidence" in favor of "observations." And then the discussion deteriorates into personal bickering rather than dealing with published statements from people who actually study such things.

Hopefully this explains my comment.

unfrozencaveman @ 77:

Seriously, what's with all the anger? I could respond thoughtfully to the points you made, but I will not since you insist on being as hostile an inconsiderate.

Grammar is not orthography. Learn to spell like an actual unfrozen human, and then you won't give yourself away as a troll scientist who can't spell.

HOSTILITY? H'yeah, I'm pretty goddamned hostile after all these years of watching LIARS trying to spread ignorance for corporate profit and a one-party state.

My contacts at JPL are FREAKING OUT about this data, froz. That you think it's no big deal isn't quite as pertinent to me as their INFORMED perspective, and it's not one they arrived at easily. A few years ago some of them would have scoffed at where we are now in the data. But they're scientists, and they can see what deep shit we have stumbled into. So naturally the spread of lies and the repression of science is something THEY have become quite hostile about too.

Arctic Dude @ 79:

Furthermore, there is what is called crustal rebound. As the weight of ice is shifted, the crust of the earth RISES.

Actually, I messed that part up. Currently the crustal rebound issue is mainly one of determining how much of it is affecting the space data on ice loss. The answer? It's not significant.

While Greenland is losing ice, it's also acquiring some new ice through precipitation. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., used Grace [a satellite] to determine that ice losses far surpass ice gains. A new way of analyzing the data allowed them to get a picture of regional changes. While snow added 60 cubic kilometers (14 cubic miles) of ice mass to Greenland's interior each year between 2003 and 2005, the low-lying coast areas of Greenland lost nearly three times as much ice - 172 cubic kilometers (41 cubic miles) - each year during the same period.

To confirm just how much of the mass Grace detects in Greenland and Antarctica is due to snow and ice, scientists also have to determine the contributions from another source, Earth's changing crust. "When Grace sees a change in polar gravity," says Watkins, "part of it is today's ice melt and part is what is called post-glacial rebound."

..."This tells us that the large mass changes Grace detects in the southeastern region of Greenland aren't due to post-glacial rebound,"

http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/newsroom/viewStory.php?id=757

Living in Norway, and knowing what horrible consequences sudden climate change could have in Northern Europe, due to increased temperatures creating a new course for the Gulf Stream, it's pretty obvious that we would get a taste of that new ice age first.

Talk about weapon of mass destruction. Advanced human civilization would cease to exist in the entire area of Ireland, UK and Nordic countries. I'm sure we will remember our great "freedomloving allies" to the west that accelerated the process more than anyone else.

King of Mean @ 15:

I'm gay, and I have no children, so I really don't care what the planet is like in 50 years, as I'll be dead for sure. It's just the cold, hard truth. I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way, but the lack the courage to admit it.

Not only are you gay, but you are also morally lacking.

What's lacking isn't courage.

Angelo @ 85:

I love how we are reinventing the spear on this comment area of a political blog.

Is unfrozencaveman onto something that has escaped 90% of experts? Well, it would not be the first time ever. (the earth is not flat). Still, Unfrozencaveman, why not move into the next century using systems that are more than 13% efficient? If the experts are suspect to you, why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

unfrozencaveman,
if you know that humans have elevated CO2 off the charts,
and you agree that there is a natural global feedback loop between CO2 and temp,
then you cannot disregard plausible human impact upon global temperature.

'occum'-on, you know that makes sense : )

You do know about feedback right? I mean, you correctly pointed out that heat+biomas=CO2. You know that increasing the CO2 increases the heat as well right?

Look, I don't deny certain facts - specifically - there earth's temperature has risen 1 degree F in the last century, CO2 levels are perhaps 75 ppm above what we have observed in the past 500,000 years, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas that lingers and creates a feedback loop. However, this does not mean that CO2 is driving (or is a significant driver of) the temperature change now. It all comes back to the rate of temperature change we are observing now - is it a statistically significant rate of change? This is where everything falls into the realm of opinion not hard science, because as I have explained before, the science is not there yet. Particulary since we don't have an acceptable baseline (non AGW world) explanation of what happens to temperature during this time. That is why it is curious that so much effort (and money) is spent shoving GW theory down our throats.

unfrozencaveman @ 97:

However, this does not mean that CO2 is driving (or is a significant driver of) the temperature change now.

If I may jump in, your suggestion that the OBVIOUS MASSIVE CO2 donations from human activity --and also the deforestation of the earth by relatively modern people --can be ignored as trivial is blatantly nonscientific.

Bushco has broken every environmental law on the books. Their restraint on the science is risking all our lives. Your attempt to 1) Ignore the most obvious added factor of human pollution, and 2) Argue a priori to your assumptions, is a failure in logic. More importantly, it is representative of a failure of imagination, no different than the sort that burned Galileo. You're trying to buy some more time for the people who want to dig us out of this hole.

Marc @ 53:

You know, here's the same comment I always have for naysayers. Let's say that 90% of climatologists are full of crap and don't have any idea what they're talking about, even though that's what they study as a job. Let's further say that all the blatant physical evidence is probably wrong.

Since there's obviously SOMETHING going on, however, the questions are "Is it significant, is it our fault, how bad will it get, and can we do anything about it?"

So let's just say that there's only a 50% chance that there's actually major warming going on. And let's say that even if there IS major warming going on, there's only, say, a 20% chance that it's even our fault. And even THEN, let's say that there's only a 50% chance that it's going to get really bad.

Add all that up, and let's say, hypothetically, that there's only a 5% chance that there is major warming going on, it's our fault, and it's going to be really severe. That is to say that there's only 5% chance that the Pentagon is right (hey, they're wrong about almost everything else), only a 1 in 20 chance that all those climate scientists know what they're talking about, and so on. Pretty low.

If this were the case, that also means that there's a 1 in 20 chance of civilization as we know it coming to an end within my lifetime amidst global famine and massive ecological disaster. Cities flooded, millions dead of starvation, resource wars (hey, not my idea, that's what the Pentagon said might happen), and so on.

Now, if you told me there's a 1 in 20 chance of something really awful happening to my family, I would do whatever I could to prevent it. That's why I have health insurance, an earthquake kit (I live in CA), and lock my door at night. I admit, lots of people smoke, which is a whole lot higher than 1 in 20 chance of messing up your health, but still.

So the question is, is a 5% chance of civilization coming to an end worth adjusting our lifestyle over if it's preventable? If so, I think most people would probably want to. Considering the fact that we ARE going to run out of oil one way or another eventually, it seems absolutely daft to sit around trying to do "business as usual" in the hopes that it won't happen and some magical "they" will invent a convenient drop-in replacement for oil before it's gone.

Considering that I'd say 5% chance is WAY low, I'm trying to do something. And also planning for the worst, since I don't have that much faith in humanity. Oh, and remember, what we consider "business as usual" is entirely different from the way humans have used resources throughout history--we've never been this populous, powerful, or resource-hungry as in the last 100 years or so.

On an entirely different note: Screw polar bears. Half of the town I live in is approximately 3 feet above sea level, built on former mudflats from a bay. If some of that ice melts, half of my TOWN will be under water, and that would seriously suck. But hey, if you're in Colorado, no biggie.

Fox News says "no."

Sorry, folks.

You can't spend a 100 years throwing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without it having an effect.

It's as simple as that.

unfrozencaveman @ 102:

You sound very much like a hack from an enviromental lobby group or something similar. You're interested in fearmongering first and foremost. Substitute "global warming" for "terrorism" and you sound like a neocon.

That's hilarious. YOU prefer to drive with the baby strapped to the roof. It's OK! You say, it hasn't been shown to be unsafe.

I'm not paid to participate in any of my activities online. I don't sound anything like a neocon, but you do seem to be in an awful rush to SHUT OFF THE ALARM CLOCK.

Either you're hooked on the few quibbles, or you're with the rest of us, watching a tsunami gather on the horizon. Kids should ride in carseats; scientists, not politicians, should direct scientific policy. Once the funding and the studies PROVE what is already abundantly evident, your stunt, were it successful, will only have wasted us some more of our response time. Congratulations.

There are a TON of paid and unpaid industrial boosters. You're just one more, and we really don't have time for the profit motive to dictate what science must not find out.

It's inconceivable that the earth goes around the sun! It cannot be that deforestation and massive pollution and CO2 loading is affecting the climate! If you are faithful to these truths, send your tithe to Unfrozen, Church of Spin, c/o Unocal Ministry, Box 07, Plano TX.

It should also be of concern that we are not talking about the local lake freezing over in winter and thawing in spring; we are talking about arctic ice shelfs, miles wide and miles thick. It is doubtful we will see their restoral during the winter, so the change to the environment is significant and of no small import.

Now, if we accept the 'heck, this all happened in the past, no big deal,' - we either have to believe it was to a lesser extent, that the warming trend didn't last so long that polar bears were not endangered, or that polar bears reappeared out of nowhere.

For those of you with a working brain....go to http://realclimate.org

There you can see intellectual conversations between 95% climate scientists that do believe in everything the IPCC stated, and then the 5% that believe ExxonMobil, scientists paid to lie...and have no empirical data to backup their claims...just BS stats cooked up by someone on the AEI, CEI (front companies for Big Oil, mainly Exxon 'never going to clean up the Valdez mess we made' Mobil)....

Here are a few links to debunk everything ((including unfrozencaveman...who obviously believes the earth is 6000 years old, made in 4 days (the universe & all the dimensions too), knows only what he reads in the NY Post or saw on Fox Noise, that betting against 90% certainty of 2,000 scientists world wide that have dedicated their lives to the study of climatology/climate science is a good thing ----PSST, never go to vegas with this jackass...but play him in poker every chance you get!!!, and basically any other stupid, moron, I believe anything a right wingnut or republican says that comes on this board to spew stupidity in the face of overwhelming evidence and is a denier of reality & consensus science:
One of the 'denier' scientists comes clean....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/opinion/27doran.html
In the meantime, I would like to remove my name from the list of
scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.
Peter Doran is an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences
at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

These next two links totally annihilate the stupidity that is the right wingnut nuttermentary "the great global warming swindle" smashes it to pieces with facts & data
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/chris

Links to keep for refuting/debunking denier's stupidity:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2004399,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html
When supreme court agreed with scientists: http://www.saratogian.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=1169&dept_id=6024...
http://www.heatisonline.org/main.cfm
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0706/feature2/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-... For when they pull that BS out....
Climate change: A guide for the perplexed: Debunking the 26 right wingnut myths on this issue - http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
A GREEN, ENERGY INDEPENDENT MILITARY Good enough for them, not the country eh?
Posts from a military blog that states the Pentagon has a solar farm, hummer hybrids being mass produced, air force aircraft being retro-fitted with green designed power sources....ask me for full posting (no link sorry...has links in posts)

And if the're still stupid after having thrown all of that at them...then try the cost of doing nothing approach (then watch them squirm as they try to come up with the cost of doing something....which is debunked with....well, you can't eat, sleep, breathe your money...can you?): The Cost of Doing Nothing
According to this report, acting now to avoid the negative consequences of global warming will require 1% of GDP, while waiting until later will cost between 5-20% of GDP:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/10/the_cost_of_doi...
Failure to Manage Global Warming Would Cripple World Economy
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-30-06.asp
Peak Oil Premonitions: Global warming's impact already costs plenty;
http://peaknik.blogspot.com/2007/06/global-warmings-impact-already-costs...
REPORT: The Cost of Ignoring Climate Change Is $20 Trillion A Year (Psst...that's a lot)
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/13/climate-change-cost/

Fox Noise Channel (Owner, mastermind Rupert Murdoch)....NewsCorp will be carbon neutral by 2010....(but his channel's hosts still dispute, even though their boss agrees with carbon offsets & idea of carbon taxes on polluters)....
http://mediamatters.org/items/200705140007