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http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/451.htm

...from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest, international, consensus-based scientific body ever to review all the evidence on climate change. In the part of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report specifically about anthropogenic effects on radiative forcing:

Summary
Well-mixed greenhouse gases make the largest and best-known contribution to changes in radiative forcing over the last century or so.

The debate about climate change is over.

In any case, I'm not absolutely convinced that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming. I'm certainly not convinced of the exact predictive power of the climate modelling. But I am convinced that on the basis of a) the reasonable probability that humanity is contributing significantly to the changing climate , b) the potential downside of those changes, that it is worth taking serious action to reduce the rate and extent of change.

Note that we only have this guy's word for why he was rejected.

For what it's worth, in my experience hovering around the edge of this field, the consensus is in line with the IPCC report, which is not surprising, since the IPCC's task is to report the opinion of the relevant sciences.

This forcing is under consideration. Current evidence indicates it is small. By comparison the greenhouse gas forcing is currently about 2 W/m^2 .

These results were collated from approx. 60,000 separate climate model runs. Here's a link to the actual paper published in Nature (PDF). ClimatePrediction.net passed the 50,000 run mark only a month ago, so it looks like participation is on the up. Kudos to everyone running it! Personally I've switched from SETI@Home to this project. (Of course, you may feel that cancer research into protein folding is more important. One of the nice things about the BOINC framework is that you can contribute to multiple projects at the same time.)

The 'eleven degrees rise over the next century' is of course the worst-case scenario. Of course, climate disruptions of that magnitude really would be catastrophic to human civilisation - for one thing, massive loss of agricultural production, the loss of large areas of expensive real-estate (many of the world's great cities would certainly be under water. I don't know precisely what magnitude of sea level rise 11 degrees would produce but consider that the Greenland ice sheet, which is already showing signs of increased melting, would produce approx. 7m rise - that's goodbye to London and New York and Amsterdam for starters.) Here's a chart from the IPCC's 2001 report showing the various scenarios they based their predictions on. As you can see, the worst-case they foresaw was about 5 or 6 degrees C. The significant thing about these results is that the upper bound of the range of possible temperature rises is shown to be about twice as severe as previously thought. Not only is more and more solid evidence being produced to back the fundamental prediction that human CO2 emissions are causing significant changes in our climate, but the magnitude of those predicted changes is getting greater and greater as time goes on. Note as well that the charts don't suddenly flatline at the year 2100...

Finally I'm looking forward to a discussion on RealClimate.org on this. I've found it to be utterly addictive to see discussions amongst actual researchers in the field, not only showing the areas of legitimate disagreement, debate and uncertainty, but also the solidity of the scientific consensus, as well as busting various common myths - the Crichton garbage, the hockey-stick stuff etc etc. Strongly recommended.

Wrong. In one century atmospheric CO2 has increased by 25% as a result of human activity.

Your entire rant, which ignore this extraordinarily basic fact, not to mention hundred of others scientific facts, is hence to be dismissed. YES HUMANS CAN HAVE A DRAMATIC EFFECT. Period.

Yes. For there is no physical fact known to absolute certainty. None. Not one. Absolute truths are limited to geometry, mathamatics and logic. Gravity, speed of light, any idea based on measurements, all such ideas are are all subject to doubt. But I would not suggest jumping of any tall buildings. The odds are very very high that such a jumper would become a messy spot on the ground in just seconds.

Climate is a complex subject. Understanding it would be very unlikely to help you get an audition on the "O'Reilly" factor. It would be more likely to keep you off such shows. But if you did want to understand, here is the best overview I know of:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm

About 100 years ago, the "liberals" would have been the ones arguing that all changes are gradual in response to conservative nut cases talking great floods and cataclysmic events. Today, the conservatives seem to shut their eyes to the possibility of catastrophic changes, and the liberals are more likely to be talking about catastrophic change.

The world is a lot stranger than "liberal" vs "conservative". While climate change will probably look sudden on a geological time scale, on a human scale it probably will not look catastrophic until it is catastrophic. Which is exactly too late. Isn't preventing change what "conservatives" try to do?

Not so hard really. How about these guys?

Nobody writes papers of the sort "global warming, yes or no?" in scientific journals. They write papers like, um, these. (result of a search for papers with abstract including the words "climate change" in J. Clim. in 2003-2004)

Despite what you hear on Slashdot comments and in the press, very large and imminent anthropogenic climate change is not controversial within the relevant sciences. The question for the public to consider is only whether Michael Crichton and the Wall Street Journal editorial page know more about this subject than the membership of AGU and AMS and AAAS and NAS and pretty much every similar group worldwide.

Mostly not, I'm afraid.

Basically, while I can see how you got your ideas, they really aren't right. First of all, there is a range of scientific studies and approaches that support the global warming consensus, not just models. Secondly, the models are not developed to study global warming,. They are developed to study the earth as a system. Global warming prediction is an important output, but far from the only one.

In fact, we build the models from the physical principles, with the hope that realistic model behavior emerges. We have millions of data points, thousands of phenomena, and thousands of person-years of research into the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, ocean and ice systems that we attempt to capture in these models.

The curve-fitting exercise you describe is trivial compared to the actual efforts underway.

I don't know why you think you can't afford to read the full-fledged climate models by the way. They are open source. You may not be able to afford to run them, but that's reasonable; they require supercomputers to run. They just require patience to read. Here's one.. Let me warn you that you will have difficulty reading it. Unlike you, I actually do have to read this thing and so far I am not enjoying it.

While I see where you are coming from with your questions, it doesn't seem fruitful to take them all on at once. As in any science, the answers are not immediately accessible in the sense that an outsider can expect to follow all the arguments in detail in a reasonable amount of time. If you want to study the subject in detail, no one is stopping you. Start with, say, Wallace and Hobbs and see if you have a taste for this stuff.

If not (and to be honest I've never encountered anyone who learned this material outside a university classroom) another alternative is to skip trying to understand the material in detail and simply survey it.

Fortunately that is possible. Every few years the scientific community publishes a report that describes what is known and what is strongly suspected in this field. Even this isn't easy reading, but if you are diligent you can understand this with just the sort of basically sound scientifically influenced thinking you display. The most recent one (getting a bit stale now) is here

Your concluding paragraph, unfortunately, is insightful.This is ultimately the problem with democracy. None of us has the time and energy to know everything. If the network of trust between the public and the experts with relevant knowledge breaks down, we can only throw up our hands and punt. I find the fact that you are not coy about doing so refreshingly honest.

I appreciate your comments and while I doubt you'll find it as helpful as you wanted, I hope you'll take this reply in the constructive spirit in which it was intended.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of "all they can say". The best summary of all we can say is here. That's as of '01. The fourth IPCC assessment is expected next year.

You will find a great deal more there than just the instrumnental record, but of course when you have a direct measurement you use it.

Maybe you mean the "enhanced greenhouse effect", the radiative forcing effects due to human activities. Notice that of the 12 agents, 9 are marked as having a "low" (L) or "very low" (VL) level of scientific understanding (LOSU).

Or you're referring to more general climate science? That may be the climate processes and feedbacks where the "consensus" of the group which supports the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol science presently mentions:

• Water vapor: "..major improvements have occurred in the treatment of water vapour in models, although detrainment of moisture from clouds remains quite uncertain and discrepancies exist..."
• Clouds: "...probably the greatest uncertainty in future projections of climate arises from clouds..."
• Stratosphere: "...relatively poor representation of some stratospheric processes..."

Oh, and the link above is to the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR). The Kyoto Protocol is based on the Second one. Browse the TAR for references to "significant progress" for clues to things which were even less well understood when used as the basis for Kyoto.

Then there is the problem that much of the "measured" warming in the past century happened before the 1945-1975 cooling period. Before most of the oil was burned...ain't science wonderful?

Maybe you mean the "enhanced greenhouse effect", the radiative forcing effects due to human activities. Notice that of the 12 agents, 9 are marked as having a "low" (L) or "very low" (VL) level of scientific understanding (LOSU).

Or you're referring to more general climate science? That may be the climate processes and feedbacks where the "consensus" of the group which supports the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol science presently mentions:

• Water vapor: "..major improvements have occurred in the treatment of water vapour in models, although detrainment of moisture from clouds remains quite uncertain and discrepancies exist..."
• Clouds: "...probably the greatest uncertainty in future projections of climate arises from clouds..."
• Stratosphere: "...relatively poor representation of some stratospheric processes..."

Oh, and the link above is to the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR). The Kyoto Protocol is based on the Second one. Browse the TAR for references to "significant progress" for clues to things which were even less well understood when used as the basis for Kyoto.

Then there is the problem that much of the "measured" warming in the past century happened before the 1945-1975 cooling period. Before most of the oil was burned...ain't science wonderful?

"In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/022.htm

We have essentially bulletproof evidence that accumulating CO2 is caused by human activity. We understand the thermodynamic of atmospheres well enough to know that this is a significant perturbation. Paleonotological evidence indicates that this perturbation is occurring much more rapidly than any comparably large climate forcing event has occurred over at least the last fifty million years.

The first order prediction is that this will cause significant warming. Significant warming has been the consensus expectation of the scientific community starting in the early 80's, after a few years of debate as to whether human activity would cause cooling (through dust) or warming (through greenhouse gases). This prediction predates the observation of warming.

Since about 1990, computational models of sufficient fidelity to capture contemporary climate variations have been run with extrapolated greenhouse forcing.

Earliest and subsequent model results consistently predicted patterns of warming concentrated in the northern reaches of the continents. This is exactly the warming pattern that has emerged since then. These predictions show that the disruptions are expected to accelerate based on plausible emissions scenarios in the absence of policy constraints.

I encourage you to study the matter seriously rather than assert your hunches. The best place to start is the IPCC scientific working group report.

Michael Tobis

The balance of evidence suggests that the world is indeed warming up, but climatologists do consider the microwave sounding data to be a real anomaly that they can't easily explain away.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says, in their report Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis that "It is very likely that these significant differences in trends between the surface and lower troposphere are real and not solely an artifact of measurement bias," (p. 102)and that "uncertainties due to limited temporal sampling prevent confident extrapolation of these trends to other or longer time periods. ... [A] full explanation of the lower-troposphere lapse rate changes since 1958 requires further research." (p. 123)

The balance of evidence suggests that the world is indeed warming up, but climatologists do consider the microwave sounding data to be a real anomaly that they can't easily explain away.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says, in their report Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis that "It is very likely that these significant differences in trends between the surface and lower troposphere are real and not solely an artifact of measurement bias," (p. 102)and that "uncertainties due to limited temporal sampling prevent confident extrapolation of these trends to other or longer time periods. ... [A] full explanation of the lower-troposphere lapse rate changes since 1958 requires further research." (p. 123)

The balance of evidence suggests that the world is indeed warming up, but climatologists do consider the microwave sounding data to be a real anomaly that they can't easily explain away.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says, in their report Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis that "It is very likely that these significant differences in trends between the surface and lower troposphere are real and not solely an artifact of measurement bias," (p. 102)and that "uncertainties due to limited temporal sampling prevent confident extrapolation of these trends to other or longer time periods. ... [A] full explanation of the lower-troposphere lapse rate changes since 1958 requires further research." (p. 123)

wow, anecdotal evidence and blatant misinformation gets modded insightful, nice...

Thermometers around the world, satellite data, and much soft evidence like receding glaciers and retreating sea ice points quite clearly to global warming being real.

I find that in particular hard to believe. I don't know what kind of thermometer you have, but the last few years where I live (Pennsylvania, USA) have been much colder than usual.

A couple links from a google of "average global temperature":
one
two
Both of which quite clearly show that temperatures are in fact increasing and proving, once again, that anecdotal evidence means shit.

Second, the theory is quite sound. CO2 pushes the energy budget of Earth up. Less energy out means Earth has to heat up.

IANAS, but doesn't less energy mean that the Earth will cool down?

um....no, seriously, why would you even think that? If you are taking in the same amount of energy, but are losing less energy, you will have a net gain, simple.

The effects we will have on climate aren't fully known because the science has a lot of unknowns. Because the science has a lot of unknowns, the "predictions" of effects are very weak. This news item is just another example.

For other examples, look at the bible of Global Warming: the IPCC reports upon which the Kyoto Protocol is based. Kyoto is based on the 2nd IPCC report. Look at the 3rd IPCC report ("Third Assessment Report") and notice the mentions of "significant progress" since the second report. That means that a lot of stuff was unknown and they've learned a lot more -- but Kyoto is still based on the report before that stuff was known. Then move on to the mentions of existing "uncertainty". Advanced Understanding

Of course, then you see graphs like this and you wonder, do people pick data sets that conform to their bias?

Anyway, y'all have a look at the IPCC reports, ok?

That's here

Absolutely and demonstrably false.

and given that there's no conclusive evidence (measurements)that human activity is even a significant contribution to this as-yet unmeasured warming, much less causative,

We know conclusively that greenhouse gases cause warming, that humans have caused the abrupt spike in greenhouse gases, and that there has been recent warming of about the size predictable from the change in greenhouse gases. That doesn't leave much wiggle room, but people are still trying to wiggle just a little.

and given the amount of foul play there's been lately in the "scientific" community regarding the subject of warming (google up "Death Valley temperature sensor" for a giggle, or "urban heat island effect" or "hockey stick chart debunked" or "Bjorn Lomborg" maybe)

You can google up any damn thing you want, but that doesn't mean these allegations hold water.

Predictions of increased tropical storms are a new result, that had heretofore been suspected but not shown across a wide range of dynamical models. Neither the suspicion nor the result have anything other than coincidental relationship to the recent bad luck in Florida and the Caribbean one way or the other, which indeed has not been sufficiently extraordinary to count as evidence of climate change in itself.

The actual opinion of the leadership of the relevant scientific communities is explained in a serious but accessible way. People in certain less responsible corners of the fossil fuel industry are actively trying to lie to you about the nature of these documents, but if you take the time to read them you will see that they are not political at all but an evenhanded and responsible summary of the state of scientific evidence.

See here

As ice changes, so does the ecosystem. Polar bears cannot walk on water, for example.

There are also global consequence of Arctic change that worry climate scientists. For one thing, there is a nonlinear feedback loop since ice has a high albedo. Thus, ice reflects solar radiation back to space, which keeps the system cool. But water has a much lower albedo than ice. This yields a nonlinear feedback loop. Melting ice creates open water, which absorbs more heat, which melts more ice. There was a time when USSR scientists suggested we could open up a northwest passage through the Arctic simply by painting the ice black, setting this feedback loop into action. Of course, if the ice melts, navigation will be easier through the Arctic. Traffic may avoid Panama and go through a more direct route. Part of this traffic could be oil tankers, which can run aground, causing great damage to a system already damaged by the climate change.

The statements made in the Summary for Policymakers (which is as far as you've read) are not supported by the science provided in the papers by the Working Groups.

when more than $4 billion was poured into the laps of climate scientists to keep this particular gravy train going.

Don't you mean Czechs?

:)

You could have a look at the reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is a lot of information on various aspects of climate change research including energy production and use.

IPCC special reports

Take a look at one small section of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR). Note the uncertainties and many "improvements" since the previous report, the SAR upon which the Kyoto protocol is based. Browse the report further for more uncertainties and recent discoveries.

We simply don't know enough about climate yet. For example, water causes most of the planet's greenhouse effect. Increased temperatures will obviously put more water in the atmosphere. But how much will stay as water vapor, and how much will condense into clouds? And will greater cloud cover be as a thin horizontal layer (which might cool the planet if it reflects more sunlight, or might warm the planet as a blanket which traps heat), or will the increased water appear as vertical rain-producing clouds?

For your article from late 2001, I'll give you an article from the very same agency.

Then, how about looking at the various timescales?
Yes, earth has been warmer in the past, and over the 2-4billion years of its existance, there are longer periods warmer. Imagine the universe is only 3K warm. Great. What does that mean for our situation at hand?

Now have a look at the very same link you provided, which is probably more of our concern, the time of human civilisation. As you can see,
the climate has been actually colder in average (Hence the often cited "fear of the Ice Age" in the 70s). But not only that, judging from the previous curves, 2000 AD should be the peak of its curve.

But, a time-scale which has ticks every 10 millenia is also a bit out of scale. Strangely enough, most people are more concerned about the next decades up to a century, not millenia.

Have a look at the curve, which is probably more of our concern. Should that not be recent enough, here some more, including one from 2003.

> But how much, and is it even measurable compared to a massive volcanic eruption?

Let's start with the fact that vulcans contribute their CO2 regardless whether humans contribute or not. So anthrophogenic CO2 is added to their exhaust.

Now to the data. According to these geologists, anthropogenic CO2 emissions are roughly 150 times the estimated emissions of volcanos.

therefore does the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause Global Climate Change?

yes. we can even quantify how much energy the CO2 traps (radiative forcing): 1.46 W/m^2. (Current Greenhouse Gas Concentrations) A little more than the 1 W/m^2 difference between the max and min of the 11-year solar cycle. Total change in solar radiative solar forcing since the Maunder Minimum (associated with the "little ice age") is estimated at 0.7 W/m^2

The difficult part of this process is figuring out the feedbacks between CO2, water vapor, vegetation, and clouds. And then we have to include the other things humans do to the Earth that have implications for global climate--other greenhouse gasses, aerosol emissions, deforestation, reforestation, etc. Some of these may offset or intensify CO2 induced warming. Of course, the "cure" (stabiliazation mechanisms) could be worse than the disease (a change in monsoon patterns, for instance.)

If you look at the historical record, increases in temperature PRECEDED the increase in CO2 levels. This is due to CO2 being released into the atmosphere from the oceans as they are warmed. Most likely temperature fluctuations are related to increased solar activity.

So, what would you consider evidence of global warming?

I mean, I assume you don't dispute that the global average temperature has been increasing over the past few decades. So would you say that climatologists haven't proven that this is outside the bounds of normal climate variation? If so, what sort of evidence would satisfy you in this regard? Can you offer any data to show that this trend isn't significant?

If you'd really like to see such evidence, you really need to work on your Google skills. Meanwhile here's some.

I said that _if_ "you are sticking by your '1/10th of 1 percent' would make big changes" _then_ you would have to admit that we are making huge changes. Or are you saying that the sun changing by 1/10th of 1 percent is significant, but humans changing its effective radiation by 1 percent is small? Or are you saying that humans haven't effected the radiation budget of the earth?

It is quite likely that humans are responsible for much of the last several decades of warming. There have been plenty of attribution studies attribution studies that have shown this statistically. More to the point, if we maintain a business-as-usual path, we are very likely to radically warm the earth over the coming centuries. We can't stop change from happening, but we can take actions that would reduce the rate of the change that we are causing. And yes, we need to balance the costs of emissions controls against the expected value of the environmental benefits we will receive - I believe that economic growth is vital to improving the health, happiness, and well-being of humans, but not without regulation.

The yahoos who keep going on about not doing anything to reduce emissions until we are absolutely certain about its impact are ignoring the fact that decisions are made under uncertainty all the time. There is certainly enough evidence that we are impacting the earth's climate, and enough basic scientific understanding to know that we will continue to do so, and enough economics understanding to be able to make some guesses about what the right balance of controls are, that we should be at least implementing starter policies (not necessarily Kyoto - I'd prefer a carbon tax, and real scientific investments into fusion and zero-carbon technologies)

Or we can stick our fingers in our ears and chant mindlessly that "its not happening" and "its not our fault" because, after all, this is a long term problem and who cares if future generations curse us for our short sightedness?

There is a chance that you are right, maybe we'll luck out, maybe the climate sensitivity will be at the low end of the model results. Are you willing to take the greenhouse gamble for the next generation? I prefer to take the optimal path given our level of understanding rather than saying "maybe nothing will happen so let's do nothing".

-Marcus

Look, artificial global climate change is a real problem, and look, we don't know everything about it and look, we do know a great deal more than nothing about it. Look.

Here's my best recent posting on the subject, typos and all. I gotta go.

A similar picture is here .

The IPCC report explicitly shows volcanic input as less than 0.1 petagrams/year, or less than 2 % of human input. (See the figure on p. 188.

Another way of looking at it is that over long time scales limestone formation must essentially balance vulcanism. So the net of those two phenomena must have been near zero before the anthropogenic input.

Hope this helps you in your consideration of the matter.

A similar picture is here .

The IPCC report explicitly shows volcanic input as less than 0.1 petagrams/year, or less than 2 % of human input. (See the figure on p. 188.

Another way of looking at it is that over long time scales limestone formation must essentially balance vulcanism. So the net of those two phenomena must have been near zero before the anthropogenic input.

Hope this helps you in your consideration of the matter.

Aargh. Scientists are funded by government. In the US, both houses of congress and the executive branch are run by people, hmm, how to put this mildly, disinclined to regulating energy.

If climate researchers were purely concerned with funding, then American science would be contrary to the science of other countries with goernments more inclined to strong regulation. Fortunately for science, this isn't the case, and for the most part, US science is in the same ballpark as other countries'.

This particular dog has been hunting way too long by now. It's just incredibly irritating to see how it keeps getting sent out all the time.

If I knew where my bread was buttered I'd just shut up, frankly. That's bad enough.

What's worse is having to have such altruism as I can muster painted as opportunism. Bah! I may be wrong, but I'm not doing all this squawking for the money!

Of all the global-warming-is-bunk propaganda ploys out there, (and they're all getting wheeled out today, it seems) this is the one that most effectively and reliably makes me just furious. I can't believe people are still buying it. You can't imagine how obnoxious it is.

As usual, for the real scoop see the IPCC Scientific Working Group Report please and thank you.

You are ill-informed on every point you make. If you are genuinely interested see the IPCC reports .

If you'd like to convince people of your point of view, perhaps starting out defensively with "Maybe the fact I am not as big a linux nerd as you" is not such a good idea either.

After you've had a couple of years of college, which I venture is still in your future, you may want to check out the IPCC reports here.

In the meantime, you will be happier if you stop demeaning yourself and aggrandizing your opinons. Here's a suggested alternative:

I've heard a lot about climate variations. What makes people think today's changes are anything special? Is it true that 15,000 scientists signed a petition against the Kyoto accord? Doesn't that show that all of this is nonsense?

I suspect this is all overblown fearmongering, just like Cold War rhetoric.

If you had said something like that I'd respond:

Well, both the cold war and climate change are longer stories than I care to go over right now. To be sure, there was overblown rhetoric in both cases, but notice that in the cold war, a nuclear exchange was in fact very narrowly averted on at least one occasion we know about.

The infamous 15,000 signatories, though, is a story that needs retelling. See here and herefor the whole story. Essentially if you send out a big enough bulk mailing, you'll get a few signatures, especially if you pretend to have more authoritative evidence than you have. In fact very few actual scientists are known to have signed the petition.

In fact, though, while this is a big problem for the world, it's not your problem as I see it. If your lack of self-respect even shows up in your Slashdot postings, real life must be awfully hard for you, especially if my suspicion that you're still in high school is true.

Please stop it with the "kick me" signs and try lightening up a bit on your opinions. Try to remember that life is, if not a miracle, at least a highly improbable stroke of good luck, and cheer up, okay?

In other words, the answers from the simulations were shown to not be right, so the simulation was changed so it again resembled reality and still produced the desired temperature increase. Because climate science doesn't know how climate works so the models don't either. Oh, and note the above link is about improvements since the SAR -- the Kyoto Protocol is based on SAR science, so is based upon those uncertainties mentioned. The above link does not refer to areas where there has been no improvement.

Now, these climate models... How well are they handling the major greenhouse gas, water vapor? How is it known the water vapor feedback model is correct? Are the models handling clouds yet? Do you think not being able to model hurricanes implies anything about the results?

And about the aerosols, well... "the direct aerosol effect may previously have been overestimated." IPCC TAR - note the list of "evolving" (we don't know enough) and "speculative" (we don't know what it means) issues. And in "well established" items, note the problems and "significant uncertainty". Note that the definition of "well established" states that "nearly all models" or "many models" agree -- because there is not yet a good model, they are producing different results.

In other words, the answers from the simulations were shown to not be right, so the simulation was changed so it again resembled reality and still produced the desired temperature increase. Because climate science doesn't know how climate works so the models don't either. Oh, and note the above link is about improvements since the SAR -- the Kyoto Protocol is based on SAR science, so is based upon those uncertainties mentioned. The above link does not refer to areas where there has been no improvement.

Now, these climate models... How well are they handling the major greenhouse gas, water vapor? How is it known the water vapor feedback model is correct? Are the models handling clouds yet? Do you think not being able to model hurricanes implies anything about the results?

And about the aerosols, well... "the direct aerosol effect may previously have been overestimated." IPCC TAR - note the list of "evolving" (we don't know enough) and "speculative" (we don't know what it means) issues. And in "well established" items, note the problems and "significant uncertainty". Note that the definition of "well established" states that "nearly all models" or "many models" agree -- because there is not yet a good model, they are producing different results.

You might also like to read more about the science of climate change, you should check out the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports. Various aspects of the IPCC reports are accessible to readers with various technical backgrounds. This link might be a good starting point.

You're just looking at things and seeing what you want to see...

Do you know WHY the background radiation levels are higher in Norway than Chernobyl? It's actually very simple, really...

Because the prevailing winds dissipated the deadly cloud out into the direction of Norway and beyond...

Here's a few links for you to digest...

http://www.chernobyl.info/en/Facts/Contamination/A mountRadiation

This one's from an official Chernobyl information site. Click on figure 10 to get a feel for the radiation distribution. The first part of the time after the accident was where most of the radiation release occured. Note that it's blowing in the general direction of Norway...

http://www.grida.no/db/maps/prod/level3/id_1219.ht m

This one is a chart indicating the levels of Cesium-137 on the ground as a result of Chernobyl. To put this in perspective, Cesium is a VERY nasty element and all of it's isotopes are very unfriendly to all life on this planet. It's a beta emitter (meaning it's radiation is very damaging inside your body, but clothing, etc. will generally protect you from it's effects.)- however, having said this, it's decay product, Barium-137, which is a gamma ray emitter with a half-life of about 2.6 minutes. Cesium-137 produces the most energetic decay product with the longest half-life of approximately 30 years. Cesium-137 is a particularly NASTY substance for living organisims as it tends to replace the Potassium in your electrolyte balance. Think of all the rather unpleasant things that this stuff will do to you when it does that- it's a ticking timebomb, waiting to go off.

http://www.stoller-eser.com/FactSheet/Cesium.pdf

This is JUST touching on Cesium contamination, which will still be about for a little while yet- many years after the accident. It doesn't go into any of the other contaminants from the accident. Iodine-131 and other Iodine isotopes were also massively dumped into the environment. While short-lived, they won't kill you outright unless you're exposed to quite a bit all at once. However, they get into your system in minute quantities and dramatically increase your risk for Thyroid Cancer. Enough exposure and it's almost a certainty- and it won't show for years to come.

Then there's the one we all know about. The one that people worry about (and they should...). Plutonium. This one's rather tame compared to the others, really. It's an Alpha emitter. It's fairly radiotoxic, but only if you ingest or inhale it. Now, having said this, it was sprayed all over the place and covered everything with a dusting of this element wherever the radioactive cloud blew. If you stir it up, you can inhale or ingest it without knowing you did so. Inhalation of it will expose you to hightened risks of lung cancer. Ingestion at the levels in question is held to be relatively "okay"- only a slight increase in the risks at worst. It's going to be lingering around for some time- the half-life for the isotopes in question is some 87+ years.

Anyone that says that Chernobyl was just an industrial accident just doesn't understand what exactly happened and what all was contaminated by it. You obviously do not have a full grasp of the situation with the way you're going on about it.

It really bothers me that people wrap themselves in a flag and refer to Kyoto and how CO2 is destroying the environment when they know DICK ALL about it and have not even done the most basic research.

If you read chapter 7 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) The Scientific Basis you will find that water vapour is typically ignored in most models. Yet it is ove 100 times more significant than CO2 is.

I quote: These aspects have been explored only to a limited extent in climate models. No studies deal with true intensity of rainfall... ...Accordingly, it is important that much more attention should be devoted to precipitation rates and frequency, and the physical processes which govern these quantities.

In fact a change of about 1% (or less) in average water vapour on the planet will have more impact on global warming than all the CO2 put together. Meanwhile we have massive irrigation projects and aquifer mining projects going on all over the planet - and these UNDOUBTABLY have had a significant impact on increasing atmospheric H2O.

One of the arguments against H2O's impact is the idea that H2O is short lived in the atmosphere. That may well be the case but at the same time the introduction of additional H2O is very constant.

So this is like saying my humidifier won't work because its effect is short lived. That may be true but I can refill it often and personal experiance tells me it actually does work.

We have similar bad science going on in the nuclear industry. ITER is decades away. In the mean time mankind is going to have to re-vitalize Nuclear Energy. So we hear disinformation all over the place about how fusion will be so safe and fission is dirty.

Fusion is a neutron source and it is these neutrons we are looking for to burn Uranium and Plutonium. Clearly the ITER core will be irradiated and clearly it will create high level wastes. But the most important fact is that we cannot count on it being available any time soon.

We will need a new energy source about as fast as we can bloody well build it and that is even if we fast track it. North American Gas prices are at a high and Oil is also high; meanwhile it was only a few short months ago the USA petroleum stocks were reported at a 27 year low.

The BP Statistical Review of World Energy shows North American gas production peaked in 2001 and that the North Sea feilds peaked in 1999. In fact it shows Saudi Arabian output is down since 2001 as well - but this might not be supply side. Long before new power plants are built there will likely be very serious blackouts and industrial shutdowns. The North AMerican Nitrogen fertilizer industry is the first of many examples to follow.

So lets start doing some real research and start checking facts instead of parotting the disinformation and bad science that is constantly spewed around in the media.

Well, the real problems would be:
- accelerated desertification
- rising seas (lots of islands and low-lying countries are about to disappear, at least partially)
- plant life that dies off because it can't adapt fast enough (plants are sensitive to temperature changes, and if the weather moves faster than the plants, they die)
- the end of the gulf stream, resulting in a radical cooling down of western europe (again, leading to plant extinction, and it's cold enough in Belgium already thank you very much)
- the stored methane in oceans being released (which would result in accelerated climate heating)
- death of the rain forests (with matching disastrous consequences for biodiversity, since rain forests are the life stores of the planet)
- death of the reefs (in fact they're dying already, just look at the sorry state of the great barrier reef). Reefs are the oceanic equivalent of rain forests. Losing them would be disastrous, and not just because they look good.

and so on, and so on...

Now, did you actually try to find out about the consequences of global warming? Because I think that you didn't.

Anyway, for more information, read the IPCC or UNEP climate change documents. (Link to UNEP GEO3, which deals specifically with global climate change in the near future) They contain the current scientific view on what's happening and what the consequences will be.

Well, the real problems would be:
- accelerated desertification
- rising seas (lots of islands and low-lying countries are about to disappear, at least partially)
- plant life that dies off because it can't adapt fast enough (plants are sensitive to temperature changes, and if the weather moves faster than the plants, they die)
- the end of the gulf stream, resulting in a radical cooling down of western europe (again, leading to plant extinction, and it's cold enough in Belgium already thank you very much)
- the stored methane in oceans being released (which would result in accelerated climate heating)
- death of the rain forests (with matching disastrous consequences for biodiversity, since rain forests are the life stores of the planet)
- death of the reefs (in fact they're dying already, just look at the sorry state of the great barrier reef). Reefs are the oceanic equivalent of rain forests. Losing them would be disastrous, and not just because they look good.

and so on, and so on...

Now, did you actually try to find out about the consequences of global warming? Because I think that you didn't.

Anyway, for more information, read the IPCC or UNEP climate change documents. (Link to UNEP GEO3, which deals specifically with global climate change in the near future) They contain the current scientific view on what's happening and what the consequences will be.

More interesting may be that the concentration in the past century is much more than it has been anytime in the past 400,000 years.

More interesting may be that the concentration in the past century is much more than it has been anytime in the past 400,000 years.

How do you get rid of nasty infections? Autoclave! Heat things up enough to smoke out all those nasty hoomins and things can get back to normal around here.

As for volcanos, it looks like the production of CO/CO2 in eruptions can have an effect on global warming. It turns out, however, that the ash/SO2 released into the atmosphere has a cooling effect. It also helps scatter sunlight, allowing for more robust tree growth which leads to more carbon being taken out of the atmosphere.

So, all we need to happen is for the Yellowstone (NetBSD) volcano to erupt (supposed to be violent enough to wipe out hoomanity) and fill the skys with enough ash and SO2 to bring on Fimbulwinter to slow down global warming. Or have a big rock smack into the Indian Ocean.

Although that is a very interesting graph in some respects, 500 years is a very small amout of time to measure something as huge as the atmosphere. Compare these two graphs: The so called mauna loa curve over the past 50 years (here) or the graph of the co2 in the atmosphere taken from ice cores in the past 400,000 years. (here) As you can easily see, in the long term, the co2 has always fluctuated significantly and right now the co2 is increasing as it has been for sometime.