Slashdot Mirror

Here are some worst-case scenarios for you:

The current rapid melting of glaciers in the Peruvian Andes is projected to increase sea level by 40 cm.

Greenland's ice is melting 20% faster than predicted. Total melting of its ice would result in a 6-7m sealevel rise.

Total sealevel rise from Antarctic ice melting: 60-70m.

Worst-case, this is 77.5m so far.

Most of the world's population lives in large urban centres located in low-lying coastal regions.

Want to know what happens with a 60m rise (i.e., Antarctica)? Say good-bye to: Dublin, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Paris, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Barcelona, Marseille, Rome, Venice, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Leningrad, Helsinki, Boston, New York, coastal New England, Washington, Jacksonville, the state of Florida, New Orleans, most of Cuba, Houston, Mephis, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Porltand, Seattle, and Vancouver. And this partial listing, of course, is completely Eurocentric and North American-biased. Most of the world lives neither in Europe nor North America.

I'm not sure if this includes thermal expansion. If so, the rise would be >60m from Antarctica's melting.

This isn't going to happen overnight. But at the current rates of anthropogenic climate change, it's on its way.

My sources are respected peer-reviewed reports and articles (e.g., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Don't rely on what I'm saying to form your opinion - do your own research and see for yourself.

And then take a footprint and see how you can cut back your contribution to the problem. Anthropogenic climate change is everyone's fault (particularly First World nations) - hence everyone should be doing something about it.

it was clear that the oceans would die by the turn of the century, the ozone hole would be so large it would cover parts of Africa, people would be dieing of radiation poisoning from the sun... etc etc etc.

Weren't the ice caps supposed to be all gone soon?

Proof has been constantly cited since the 70s and yet all the dire predictions have come to naught.

A few good volcanoes provide visible effect that the public can see and in some cases experience.

• RealClimate.org
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
• International Panel on Climate Change

And the reason you think this, in spite of the evidence gathered by thousands of scientists and decades of research published in reputable peer-reviewed journals is... what, exactly?

> A volcano can dump more greenhouse gasses in an hour than man can
> produce in a year.
>

This is completely incorrect. It's just > WRONG. Human CO2 emissions are many, many times larger than the largest volcanic eruptions. I don't know where you think you're getting your information from...

> We can little affect the global climate fir good or bad.
>

You're so badly misinformed it hurts. Go get yourself a hot steaming cup of clue:

• RealClimate.org
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
• International Panel on Climate Change

Hey, fella, guess what? You're in luck!The consensus on human CO2 emissions causing climate change is about as solid as you can get - despite what the oil-lobby, uninformed trolls and assorted net.kooks would have you believe.

• RealClimate.org
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
• International Panel on Climate Change

Hey, fella, guess what? You're in luck!The consensus on human CO2 emissions causing climate change is about as solid as you can get - despite what the oil-lobby, uninformed trolls and assorted net.kooks would have you believe.

• RealClimate.org
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
• International Panel on Climate Change

It's best to look directly at the real, serious, climate change science. I recommend reading the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's third assessment report from 2001 (the most recent.) From the Preface to this substantial and authoritative work: A detailed study is made of human influence on climate and whether it can be identified with any more confidence than in 1996, concluding that there is new and stronger evidence that most of the observed warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities..

http://www.junkscience.com/

Of course I'd rather base my decisions on real science, as summarized in the IPCC reports and validated by the US National Assesment on Climate Change.

Read the IPCC reports on climate change, not just the books trying, and failing, to debunk them, take a look at the global warming early warning signs map, and read the debunkings of where ever you got your views on climate change from (a good way is to do a google search on '"information source" debunked', where you fill in your information source's title. Climate change is real, it is dangerous, and it must be stopped.

The Kyoto protocol was based on some dubious science. While it's pretty clear that human activity has boosted CO2 levels to record levels, and there's strong evidence that global warming is occuring, the two aren't properly linked. For example, it hasn't been shown that reducing CO2 levels will reverse global warming. Another possibility is that increasing solar output is responsible for global warming not human activity. There's some evidence that the IPCC study (I am unable to find the "first assessment" report on the web) that the Kyoto treaty is based on was presented in a misleading light (eg, the summary of the report doesn't agree with the body of the report).

Second, only reduction in CO2 production is considered for the Kyoto treaty. Some work has been done on carbon sequestration. While these methods may prove infeasible, it seems absurd to ignore them in the treaty.

Further, developed countries have to cut back, but underdeveloped ones do not. I wonder how long this disparity can continue before we see countries withdraw from the treaty. In particular, I suspect that Russia will withdraw once it has entered the WTO (apparently the carrot used to lure them into the treaty by the EU).

No cost/benefit analysis has been performed. Is it really better to restrain economic activity rather than to deal with the costs of global warming due to greenhouse gases? The apparent reduction in economic activity that would be experienced by the EU (the most likely ones to comply with the treaty) might mean a significant drop in global standards of living.

Oh please! If you check your primary sources you'd have found that it is not a study of four years worth of data, it is a study of over a hundred thousand years of climate data (from ice cores, tree rings, coral cores, historical records, actual measurements over the last few hundred years and satellite data) that took four years to compile. See the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report for the real thing.

This is a real problem, but people have been working hard on it for 15 to 20 years. Just last week, a paper was published in Science Express (the advance version of Science) that suggests that the uncertainties in measuring past climates are greater than what are commonly accepted by mainstream scientists. The article is available only by subscription, but the New York Times has a good balanced account of it.

I tend to agree with the global warming hypothesis but I am still going to monitor the other literature to see if it will change my opinion.

Don't waste your time doing so when a whole intergovernmental group of scientists has been appointed to the task by the United Nations' governments.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reviews all scientific litterature and publishes the current evidence for or against climate change.

You will find more information (including their extensive reports) here : http://www.ipcc.ch.

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)

I guess a good perk would be for the company to buy my plane ticket to India when they outsource my job there.
Language classes would be good too.

That's definitely something I'd consider.
But I'd opt for a boat ticket for several reasons :
- a small hollyday break never hurts
- lets you time to read books and learn about the foreign culture you are going to integrate
- you get the chance to have a nice tan so the locals will not mistake you with a fat red-burned tourist :)
- 40 times less greenhouse gases emitted than for a plane flight (and ghg emissions by planes are a real threat, see IPCC documents about this : IPCC)
- absolutely 0 chances that your boat will finish in the middle of a skyscraper because of a terrorist attack

It's easier than that to find examples of things we don't know about the Universe. Go to the IPCC web site (the UN climate science group), look at their online documents for the Third Assessment Report, Working Group 1, and browse for the many things which are "unknown" or "uncertain".

First, the IPCC itself acknowledged in 2001 that "some" (page 9) recent climate models provide "satisfactory" models without flux adjustments. The implication there being that most don't... The same document (page 13) suggests global warming of 1.4 to 5.8C from 1990 to 2000, so we're talking about 1.3-5.2C per century.

Refer you to the last 20 years of "JGR (Oceans)" and "JGR (Atmospheres)"?

If those models are applied to climate conditions from, say, 500 to 1000 years ago and are let run free, will they reproduce the current climate accurately?

How about the NCAR Climate System Model, which gives good results over 300 years without flux adjustment

Let's see. The NCAR Model projected that "surface temperature is expected to rise nearly 0.2 Kelvin (one-third degree Fahrenheit) per decade over the next four decades". So that's 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade or a projected 2 degrees Celsius change over a century. That's certainly on the low side of the IPCC alarmist figures. It has also been about 5-1/2 years since that model was announced so I would expect to see about 0.1C of warming since then. I am unaware of that having happened...? If it has, can you point to some data?

the Hadley Centre's HCM5, which generates a realistic for 1000 years stable climate (with non-greenhouse CO2) without flux adjustment?

I couldn't find information on HCM5, although I do see HCM2 and HCM3 on the Hadley website and I didn't see any claims to "1000 years stable climate" projections although I did find this page which says: "It is important to be aware that predictions from climate models are always subject to uncertainty because of limitations on our knowledge of how the climate system works and on the computing resources available. Different climate models can give different predictions."

I keep wondering... if some climate models are supposedly so accurate, why do we have so many different models that contradict each other? Further, it seems that at least one of the examples you provided reinforces my point that as the models get supposedly more accurate that the temperature increase they project becomes less--hence the 2C per century prediction of NCAR being on the LOW side of the IPCC estimates from just 3 years ago. I wonder how much lower the estimates will be in 3 years? Of course, in 3 years we'll probably no longer be talking about global warming and instead talking exclusively about salinity in the North Atlantic.

Personally, I have read quite a few scientific climate studies as well as quite a few unscientific ones. I am quite aware of CO2 measurements (off the top of my head I know there are several referenced in the TAR - IPCC.ch, and Mauna Loa is a major site), and my rhetorical question was about the major greenhouse gas, which is not CO2. Reliable temperature records are considered to have begun around 1850, which is not long enough in climate timescales, thus the numerous efforts to use temperature proxies.

since we started measuring (~100 years)

last thousand years (p.4)

On geological timescales

420,000 years BP
Particularly interesting is perhaps this bit:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Nature has published a lot of interesting reports on the subject over the years and they have an excellent search engine. Give it a shot.

Bonus info on the recession of the world's glaciers. Just because you asked nicely. :-)

And I leave you with this:

These ice cores show a 20th century isotopic enrichment that suggests a large scale warming is underway at low latitudes. The rate of this isotopically inferred warming is amplified at higher elevations over the Tibetan Plateau while amplification in the Andes is latitude dependent with enrichment (warming) increasing equatorward. In concert with this apparent warming, in situ observations reveal that tropical glaciers are currently disappearing.
Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales..

I've seen credible viewpoints that indicate that in the next decades we will either be swimming like "Water World" or freezing in a new ice age.

I'm sorry but this only means that your sources of informations are at best non-scientific and at worse ill-intentionned.

There is one unique source of official scientific information regarding global warming/climate change : it's the IPCC which is an intergovernmental scientific organization set up by all developed countries under the supervision of the WMO and the United Nations (and the USA have a huge number of scientists contributing to it).

This organization *sole* goal is to gather *all* (including weak theories such as sun activity increase) scientific evidence regarding climate change and come with the most up-to-date scientific conclusion available about it.

IPCC

An extract from their web site :
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is open to all Members of the UN and of WMO."

So, to be definitively informed of the latest evidence for or against climate change, head to their site and don't rely on propaganda issued by any of the protagonists here.

I have seen numerous theories on the climate subject.

The following viewpoints have been presented over the past 30 years:

- Global Cooling. We will freeze to death shortly.
- Global Warming. We will warm up the earth and either melt or be drowned.
- Climate Change. The earth will have rapidly chaging temperatures resulting in the destruction of humankind.
- "Run out of oxygen" theory. We'll ruin the atmosphere to the point we can't breathe it.
- Nothing. All of the above are bunk.

Which is true? All these viewpoints have been presented at one time or another, and, up to now, none of them (including the last one) have been true.

Is this just another Waaahhhhhmbulance to ignore, or does this article have revolutionary proof that is worth my effort to read?

I'm willing to understand that science changes over time. But to have various scientists publicizing all possible viewpoints as the truth over the past 30 years is too much for me to handle.

• We don't know enough about cells to simulate all effects upon them.
• It is difficult to learn the relevant info about a virus. That includes keeping it viable, making it grow, extracting enough genetic information, and knowing enough about the surface and internal elements of cells.
• Even knowing the molecular composition is not enough -- the molecules fit together in 3D and the virus components fit to the shapes of those structures. We're still studying pieces that that puzzle.
• "The same research" can not be done through computer models. We still can't do that, just as we couldn't do it in the 1980s when the same "computer simulation" argument was used as a replacement for testing compounds on animals.
• We also don't know how to simulate something much simpler: Earth's climate. Go look at the scientific summaries of climate models in the IPCC Third Assessment Report and notice both things which are not well understood and the things upon which "significant progress" has been made -- indicating we recently did not understand something, and that the job is not complete as "completion" is not being reported. Then look at the previous two IPCC ARs and see how much worse our knowledge recently was. We still have a long way to go even on such a simple thing.

He appears to have no knowledge of the foundations of the scientific consensus regarding physical climatology and the evidence which supports it, though. On the other hand, unlike you, Crichton does acknowledge that such a consensus does exist. He posits this as a problem in and of itself.

Of course, sometimes truth does emerge from science, and consensus tends to follow rather quickly. People proposing a non-heliocentric solar system model, for instance, haven't gotten much scientific attention since Copernicus worked out the basics.

As always, anyone with a genuine interest in climate change on policy-relevant time scales should actually bother to look at the IPCC reports. Recently the American Geophysical Union has weighed in with an official position, unanimously approved by its governing council, if you'd like to see a brief overview.

Claimer/Disclaimer: I build computer models of climate dynamics and statistics. I am funded by NSF to keep doing so.

Lomborg's book has 2 930 footnotes which allows you to fact check every single assertion that he makes. I've never seen that level of detail from the environmentalist movement and I speak as someone who has read more than just their pamphlets.

Clicky-clicky:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/techrep.htm

If you haven't read these, then you're just whacking off. Of course, if you had read these, you wouldn't be accusing 'the environmentalist movement' of not being detailed.

I'm curious - who exactly are you trying to impress with your post? DCSD have declared that Lomborg's book isn't scientifically honest (and with chapters titled 'Pollution, Does it Undercut Human Prosperity?' I'm tempted to agree) and you wish for...what? That a book primarily about cost-benefit analyses and socioeconomic impacts of environmental regulation parading as science be declared scientifically honest? Look, it's a fine book for policy wonks, but it ain't science, and it shouldn't be presented as such. So what do you want?

Why do you allege such a thing? Thermometers don't lie. There are well known ways to correct for human bias and scientists generally question each other pretty carefully about such things.

No one understands the natural variations in global temperatures.

The scientific community has many open questions, but no, to a first order cut we have quite a bit of confidence that we've figured out the main phenomena on the time scales that interest the policy sector.

You can't remove the other variables from the system (solar activity,

You can account for that one and measure it precisely.

global windfield changes, ocean current variations, etc.).

Um, those are what we are predicting (in an ensemble sense)... unless you mean something very different by climate than those of us in the business do

You can't establish a control (no second earth - darn!).

Fortunately the geological community has beenm working very hard on paleoclimate data and the modeling community has been working very hard to replicate paleoclimate from paleogeography, with quite good results.

We can't devise an experiment to perform any valid testing ("Let's release gigatons of CO2 this year, and then readsorb it all next, year, and study the results.").

Err, you can get a greenhouse effect in a lab, if you care to.

Even if you had these conditions covered, or cleverely circumvent the need for them, you can't get unbiased funding, and that taints the process unacceptably.

And which way do you suppose the funding is biased these days?

... Therefore, political statements like the Kyoto Accords are based on sketchy science at best, politics at worst, and shouldn't be considered to be solutions to a problem that may not even exist.

Just because you and your favorite political publications fail to understand it doesn't mean it's sketchy. Read this before you pretend to know what you are talking about.

On the other hand, it would be nice if, on questions of substance like this one, people got their information from scientists, rather than the political press.

In the present case, the place to go is not some loony newspaper reporting on some fringe journal. The place to go is to the relevant professional community .

But most environmentalists beg that question, and accept it as a given that "the weather is getting more extreme". I disagree with that premise and defy someone to show me figures showing drastic increases in precipitation, temperature, storm destruction, etc. over a 30+ year span (to leave out the 20-year sunspot/storm cycle).

Here you go, enjoy. I could find only ONE link that disagreed that weather was getting more extreme, from NASA:

Even with Needed Corrections, Data Still Don't Show the Expected Signature of Global Warming.

The rest say a definite YES that the weather is getting more extreme, most that it is caused by global warming, and some that this global warming is caused by humans:


NOVA and FRONTLINE join forces to investigate the science and politics of one of the most controversial issues of the 21st century: the truth about global warming.

I would especially like to draw your attention to

this graph.

2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change


TESTIMONY OF THOMAS R. KARL, DIRECTOR NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITE DATA AND INFORMATION SERVICES NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE.


WMO STATEMENT ON THE STATUS OF THE GLOBAL CLIMATE IN 2001


National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - Global Warming - Frequently Asked Questions

Cheers,
Lars

Wonder no more, read the scientific summary papers from the IPCC and you'll get the answer to that.

The fact that temperature changes coincide with increasing levels of a known greenhouse forcing gas, is actually fairly pursuasive. Or did you mean 'mere coincidence.' ;)

No serious scientist is arguing 'undeniability.' The large majority of scientists, however, are pursuaded that anthorpogenic carbon dioxide (and other gases) are making a major contribution to the observed climatic changes.

You are simply wrong about a lack of experimental data. The greenhous forcing potential of CO2 has been recognised since the time of Avernius. The mechanism by which heat is trapped (it's actually diffracted), is also well known. What is more the various indicies of heat forcing potential for CO2 and other 'greenhouse gasses,' has been quantified.

On the balance of probabilities, it seems to me that right about 10-20 years ago we should have stopped buring the planet's carbon sinks and moved over to nuclear.

If that is so, the best starting point would be the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change site. Providing, of course you prefer a scientific gloss on the issue rather than an ideological one.

Wake up and smell the coffee. There is climate change, and it is very, very likely to have been caused by human intervention. Check out for yourself what the IPCC has to say on this: 2001 climate change report summary for policy makers. The question now is: how big will the changes be, and what will the consequences be? Calculating this takes a lot of CPU cycles.

Oh please! First of all, there is no true solid evidence of global warming.

I'm afraid your sources are not trustworthy.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the official scientific commitee responsible for studying the reality of climate change. It does so by examining all scientific papers and facts regarding the subject, including all episodes you mention (ice ages, cycles, etc.).

Its conclusion is not exactly yours... though.

Perhaps you should have a look at its report :
Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (pdf)

And there's lot more stuff on the subject on the IPCC web site

Oh, btw, the IPCC includes the major international scientists (including US of course) in all fields touching the subject. Not quite an environmentalist lobby...

Oh please! First of all, there is no true solid evidence of global warming.

I'm afraid your sources are not trustworthy.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the official scientific commitee responsible for studying the reality of climate change. It does so by examining all scientific papers and facts regarding the subject, including all episodes you mention (ice ages, cycles, etc.).

Its conclusion is not exactly yours... though.

Perhaps you should have a look at its report :
Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (pdf)

And there's lot more stuff on the subject on the IPCC web site

Oh, btw, the IPCC includes the major international scientists (including US of course) in all fields touching the subject. Not quite an environmentalist lobby...

I wish people would stop looking at the last 50-100 years,

How about 1000 years? Seriously though, the climate has been hotter in the past, but we are definitely in one of the warmer periods. Also, climate models (which, granted, are not going to be terribly accurate) indicate that natural effects would not explain the current temperature, and we have been doing a lot of stuff that can.

and you might want to check out the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "The role of the IPCC is to assess [the] information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."

I wish people would stop looking at the last 50-100 years,

How about 1000 years? Seriously though, the climate has been hotter in the past, but we are definitely in one of the warmer periods. Also, climate models (which, granted, are not going to be terribly accurate) indicate that natural effects would not explain the current temperature, and we have been doing a lot of stuff that can.

and you might want to check out the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "The role of the IPCC is to assess [the] information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."

Is the Earth getting warmer? Yes. Is it because of pollution? Most likely not.

The scientific consensus is that you're wrong. See the world-wide IPCC and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Reason: around 635 (give or take a hundred years) Krakatoa exploded and put a significant amount of dust and gas into the atmosphere causing what is known as the "Little Ice Age."

Oh, and of course the world's climatologists forgot about this, except for a handful of Brave Rouges who Challenged the System...

Jeez.

Climatologists are smart enough to figure in volcanic dust, and solar radiation variability, and natural climatological variability. There's still a significant factor left over that seems to result from human activity.

This is not an extraordinary claim - indeed, it would be highly surprising if we could pump tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere without some effect.

(And Krakatoa was in the 1800s. And the "Little Ice Age" ended long ago.)

Err... never mind.

makes me wonder where they got the info for this graph tho...

> They claim explosive growth post 1980 -- when the BRUNT of the industrail growth was PRE-1980 ... and that just sounds fishy to me --

Ponder the marvels of the exponential curve:

$ gnuplot
gnuplot> plot [t = 20:25] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 25:30] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 30:35] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 35:40] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 40:45] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 45:50] exp(t)

> They claim explosive growth post 1980 -- when the BRUNT of the industrail growth was PRE-1980 ... and that just sounds fishy to me --

Ponder the marvels of the exponential curve:

$ gnuplot
gnuplot> plot [t = 20:25] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 25:30] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 30:35] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 35:40] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 40:45] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 45:50] exp(t)

> They claim explosive growth post 1980 -- when the BRUNT of the industrail growth was PRE-1980 ... and that just sounds fishy to me --

Ponder the marvels of the exponential curve:

$ gnuplot
gnuplot> plot [t = 20:25] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 25:30] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 30:35] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 35:40] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 40:45] exp(t)
gnuplot> plot [t = 45:50] exp(t)

It might be useful to have a link to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some of their pretty pictures (graphs, whatever) are hard to ignore.

It might be useful to have a link to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some of their pretty pictures (graphs, whatever) are hard to ignore.

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation." (see here ).

The atmosphere is very shallow compared to the size of the earth: It is less than one hundredth of the diameter of the earth. In proportion it is more akin to the skin of an apple than to the peel of an orange. The atmosphere thins with height and there is little atmosphere above 100 kilometres.

If all the atmosphere could all be kept at Standard Temperature and Pressure (ie at normal atmospheric pressure and at room temperature) it would be about 7700 metres in depth - little less than 8 kilometres. The main gasses would have depths of:

6012 metres - Nitrogen
1612 metres - Oxygen
__72 metres - Argon

In 2002, CO2 is the equivalent of a layer 2.85 metres thick. In 1790 this layer would have been 2.16 metres thick. It has thus risen 0.69 metres since then.

By the year 2100 the lowest increase predicted by the scientists of the IPCC would give a rise of 2.00 metres and the highest a rise of 5.32 metres. The average prediction is for more than a doubling of CO2 from 1790 to 2100.

This is not business as usual for the Earth's atmosphere. And we are making the difference.

Correlation is not causation, but there's a mechanism, a prediction, a verification of the prediction, and a complete lack of any alternative plausible hypotheses at this point.

Just because we understand the physiology of hangovers, and you drank like a fish last night, and you have a terrible headache just like the last six times you overdid it doesn't mean that your headache is a hangover. After all, correlation is not causation. Still, it might be a good idea to ease up on your drinking anyway.

Anyone who claims the evidence is weak at this point is willfully ignoring the evidence, or selecting *very* carefully from it, or listening to someone else who is doing so.

Things are pretty much on track with the earliest greenhouse predictions from 15 years ago. (Biggest and earliest changes were expected at high northern latitudes. What do you know...)

And it gets dramatically worse from here on. Fossil fuels, in addition to being responsible for a lot of otherwise dangerous global entanglements, are doing damage to the world not only increasingly but acceleratingly. Nothing but ideology and special interests prevent us from escaping our headlong dive toward widespread environmental disruption combined with getting messed up in medieval throwback geopolitics. Losing fossil fuel dependency fast is a big double win, but it's a little inconvenient to some corporations. Hmm.

It's really time people with any brain cells started to look at the evidence.

There's no way to summarize decades of detailed research in a short Slashdot post. Read the The summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment report. It should provide you with plenty of non-anecdotal evidence.

For starters, I would stay away from all commerically funded media. I prefer sources from within the scientific community and from non-profits with clearly stated goals of objectivity. Specifically, I've been impressed with the work of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their document "Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions" is available for download here. This is an excellent introduction to the current state of the climate change debate.

If only everyone were as motivated to seek out the truth for themselves as you are. sigh.

Basically, heat is aggressively non-linear. Just because you add a thousand gigajoules of heat to the planet does not mean the planet is a thousand gagijoules hotter. That's only true for an instantaneously fast heat addition (asteroid strike?) and then still only true instantaneously after the heat addition. Immediately, the planet begins radiating away any energy it has that brings its temperature above the local background temperature. Within hours, the heat of the planet with the addition of the heat and without the addition of the heat may vary by only a single-digit percentage of your added heat; within days, the effect is negligible.

This is a very interesting comment. I'm curious to learn more of this theory. Can you cite a source? In particular, I'm curious to see how much of this theory is based on fundamental thermodynamics, and how much of it is based on global chemistry.

And yes, this is very complicated subject. That's why I'm glad to see experts from the many fields studying climate change working together.

It's pretty weird to me that we have 700+ comments and no one has mentioned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This group of experts is about as close as you're going to get to a definitive source for answers on the likely sources, dimensions and costs of climate change. And what do they say? (Well read the reports for yourselves if you really want to know.) But in summary, a large collection of people who've dedicated their lives to understanding the climate via the physical sciences agree:

We're likely changing the climate, and such change may occur in a non-linear irreversible manner

The likely benefits to be gained from reducing the human causes of climate change are likely bigger than costs of those reductions.

Parroting the words of oil-company PR firms may make you feel better about being irresponsible. But most of the physical world doesn't really care what you believe.

Fluid dynamics and statistical mechanics and organic chemistry study systems that have a surprising resistance to TV commercials as well as those who do not :-)

Show it to me. Good hard facts. I have seen no evidence whatsoever--and believe me, I've looked. Beyond smoke and mirrors and very science-lacking news reports I have found little in the way of evidence that carbon is doing anything drastic to the eath. Please show me to that data.

Are you an climatologist expert? What kind of data is needed to convince you? I personally doubt that you've been seriously looking for it. Anyway, here are a few links you should investigate:

IPCC 2001 Report
(Note: these are links for "policy makers", so they're probably lighter in scientific data than the Technical Summaries also included on the site. Even then, the evidence is compelling.)

"Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis"
"Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability"
"Climate Change 2001: Mitigation"

There is also a HTML summary here. However, I suspect you really don't want to be convinced, so you'll probably dismiss these studies as "environmalist propaganda". Or perhaps you can point to the factual errors in the studies...Well, the encouraging thing is that policymakers are slowly getting up to speed and starting to do something about it.

I'm not talking about companies that can amortize. I'm talking about individuals that are going to see a $15k gas-based car or a $35k cell-based car and say, "Screw that."

Well, that's why we have a government, isn't it? If they can heavily subsidize american industry through the Pentagon system, surely they can help automakers in making such cars affordable to the general public? Well, at least we both agree that research into making such cars cheaper and more available is a priority.

As far as Venezuela is concerned, the links between the White House and the coup leaders are becoming clearer: see this article for more info...btw, Newsweek has never been known as being a pro-left, conspiracy theory-prone media source. Anyway, we're not bound to agree on everything, but at least we do on the importance of affordable fuel cell technology. So I'll leave it at that for now - you're welcome to add more comments if you want, though.

Show it to me. Good hard facts. I have seen no evidence whatsoever--and believe me, I've looked. Beyond smoke and mirrors and very science-lacking news reports I have found little in the way of evidence that carbon is doing anything drastic to the eath. Please show me to that data.

Are you an climatologist expert? What kind of data is needed to convince you? I personally doubt that you've been seriously looking for it. Anyway, here are a few links you should investigate:

IPCC 2001 Report
(Note: these are links for "policy makers", so they're probably lighter in scientific data than the Technical Summaries also included on the site. Even then, the evidence is compelling.)

"Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis"
"Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability"
"Climate Change 2001: Mitigation"

There is also a HTML summary here. However, I suspect you really don't want to be convinced, so you'll probably dismiss these studies as "environmalist propaganda". Or perhaps you can point to the factual errors in the studies...Well, the encouraging thing is that policymakers are slowly getting up to speed and starting to do something about it.

I'm not talking about companies that can amortize. I'm talking about individuals that are going to see a $15k gas-based car or a $35k cell-based car and say, "Screw that."

Well, that's why we have a government, isn't it? If they can heavily subsidize american industry through the Pentagon system, surely they can help automakers in making such cars affordable to the general public? Well, at least we both agree that research into making such cars cheaper and more available is a priority.

As far as Venezuela is concerned, the links between the White House and the coup leaders are becoming clearer: see this article for more info...btw, Newsweek has never been known as being a pro-left, conspiracy theory-prone media source. Anyway, we're not bound to agree on everything, but at least we do on the importance of affordable fuel cell technology. So I'll leave it at that for now - you're welcome to add more comments if you want, though.

Show it to me. Good hard facts. I have seen no evidence whatsoever--and believe me, I've looked. Beyond smoke and mirrors and very science-lacking news reports I have found little in the way of evidence that carbon is doing anything drastic to the eath. Please show me to that data.

Are you an climatologist expert? What kind of data is needed to convince you? I personally doubt that you've been seriously looking for it. Anyway, here are a few links you should investigate:

IPCC 2001 Report
(Note: these are links for "policy makers", so they're probably lighter in scientific data than the Technical Summaries also included on the site. Even then, the evidence is compelling.)

"Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis"
"Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability"
"Climate Change 2001: Mitigation"

There is also a HTML summary here. However, I suspect you really don't want to be convinced, so you'll probably dismiss these studies as "environmalist propaganda". Or perhaps you can point to the factual errors in the studies...Well, the encouraging thing is that policymakers are slowly getting up to speed and starting to do something about it.

I'm not talking about companies that can amortize. I'm talking about individuals that are going to see a $15k gas-based car or a $35k cell-based car and say, "Screw that."

Well, that's why we have a government, isn't it? If they can heavily subsidize american industry through the Pentagon system, surely they can help automakers in making such cars affordable to the general public? Well, at least we both agree that research into making such cars cheaper and more available is a priority.

As far as Venezuela is concerned, the links between the White House and the coup leaders are becoming clearer: see this article for more info...btw, Newsweek has never been known as being a pro-left, conspiracy theory-prone media source. Anyway, we're not bound to agree on everything, but at least we do on the importance of affordable fuel cell technology. So I'll leave it at that for now - you're welcome to add more comments if you want, though.