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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.

... or at least the best science has come up with so far, are downloadable from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

I'd start with the Summaries for Policy Makers, as a way of becoming very well infomrmed in just ~20pp.

Here's better background.

Which scientists? The IPCC? That was mostly signed by environmentalists and politicians. There was a whopping 1 climate scientist that signed it. On the other hand, this petition [oism.org], signed by over 15,000 scientists suggests otherwise.

Whoosh! That's the sound of your credibility flying out the window.

Plenty of other posters have indicated the flaw of listing oism.org as anything other than extremist propaganda. I'll work on your IPCC claim.

Here is a list of the people who compiled the report. Looks like scientists to me. Nobody from Greenpeace, but plenty from NASA.

The agendas exist everywhere, and while this data may be published on sites who have an agenda, or are hired for a public image, the facts presented there dont change. The link contains references to where the data is from. Can you find any links debunking the actual data?

The actual data isn't a problem. But rather the data which is collected is one-sided, ignores research which doesn't support their case, and misintrepretes the orginal researchers conclusions (without stating this). For the best overall review of the science, you should check out the IPCC and the National Academy of Sciences, rather than a industry funded lobbey group.

Actually, that's pretty far from the truth. Check out the IPCC report and the NAS report. Both say that global warming is happening, and that it is likely to be partially caused by human activities.

Some selections from the NAS report:

Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last few decades are most likely due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability

At the end of the day, the only people qualified to describe what's happening and where it's going over the next few decades have spent many, many years in the field. (I'm an interested lay observer, with a reasonable science educational background, & been following the debate, new findeings etc., for the last 10 - 15 years.) I'm sure the majority of the posts here (apart from the trolls and the jokes) are going to be arguing the case one way or the other. Well frankly I think none of us (those of us who aren't in the field) are qualified to say "this study's right, that model's wrong"; thus we can only make a judgement about the credibility of the people advanccing the various cases. And the the IPCC have the most credible findings - if anything, they err on the conservative side so as not to freak out certain wobbly 'Western' nations with shakey commitment to doing anything. (The IPCC was set up to establish the global consensus amongst eveyone working in the field.)

Who are you going to believe - fat cats with strong financial interest in doing nothing to halt CO2 production, or imkpartial scientists whose career and reputation rests on the validity of their findings, models, and predictions?

A UN study : http://www.unep.ch/iucc/fs108.htm
some recent studies about the temperature rise itself :
BY IPCC : (PDF,long article) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf
by ipcc : (PDF,Very long, very technical) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/wg1TARtechsum.pdf
EPA : http://www.lter.uaf.edu/~davev/nrm304/glbxnews.htm
by NCAR :http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/0107 20093052.htm
There are already some effects : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/01072 6101653.htm
overview of effects by region : http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sr97.htm
We already missed some heating by sheer luck : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/01042 4072410.htm

Of course, most of these documents are just models, but ARE YOU WILLING TO TAKE A CHANCE ???

A UN study : http://www.unep.ch/iucc/fs108.htm
some recent studies about the temperature rise itself :
BY IPCC : (PDF,long article) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf
by ipcc : (PDF,Very long, very technical) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/wg1TARtechsum.pdf
EPA : http://www.lter.uaf.edu/~davev/nrm304/glbxnews.htm
by NCAR :http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/0107 20093052.htm
There are already some effects : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/01072 6101653.htm
overview of effects by region : http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sr97.htm
We already missed some heating by sheer luck : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/01042 4072410.htm

Of course, most of these documents are just models, but ARE YOU WILLING TO TAKE A CHANCE ???

A UN study : http://www.unep.ch/iucc/fs108.htm
some recent studies about the temperature rise itself :
BY IPCC : (PDF,long article) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf
by ipcc : (PDF,Very long, very technical) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/wg1TARtechsum.pdf
EPA : http://www.lter.uaf.edu/~davev/nrm304/glbxnews.htm
by NCAR :http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/0107 20093052.htm
There are already some effects : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/01072 6101653.htm
overview of effects by region : http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sr97.htm
We already missed some heating by sheer luck : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/01042 4072410.htm

Of course, most of these documents are just models, but ARE YOU WILLING TO TAKE A CHANCE ???

There are perhaps two climatologists with tenure at top universities who like to get quoted in the business press about the limitations of scientific knowledge and the supercomputer models used to track and predict climate. They may be sincere; they may be whores. Some of the rest of the field may be whores too. But not the whole field, about 98% of which, by conventional measures of who gets called a 'scientist,' agree we have a tremendously serious threat.

Just curious, where do you "science is whatever it's convenient for me to believe, I burn a lot of gas, I want to believe I'm innocent" folks get your misinformation? And are you all regular /.ers - who seem generally aligned to rational, even deep discussions of science and technology premised on the truth of natural law and the reality of evidence - or is there some IRC channel where the 'global warming: myth' crowd gets their latest action alert to go to /. or wherever and moderate each other's nonsense up?

Sorry about the trolling, but jeeze y'all are doing way too much of it too.

There are perhaps two climatologists with tenure at top universities who like to get quoted in the business press about the limitations of scientific knowledge and the supercomputer models used to track and predict climate. They may be sincere; they may be whores. Some of the rest of the field may be whores too. But not the whole field, about 98% of which, by conventional measures of who gets called a 'scientist,' agree we have a tremendously serious threat.

Just curious, where do you "science is whatever it's convenient for me to believe, I burn a lot of gas, I want to believe I'm innocent" folks get your misinformation? And are you all regular /.ers - who seem generally aligned to rational, even deep discussions of science and technology premised on the truth of natural law and the reality of evidence - or is there some IRC channel where the 'global warming: myth' crowd gets their latest action alert to go to /. or wherever and moderate each other's nonsense up?

Sorry about the trolling, but jeeze y'all are doing way too much of it too.

Frankly, they might be right, in the long term, more heat means more water evaporation from the oceans, which means more snow in places like antarctica and the arctic, where temperature could rise 30 degrees in the winter and not get above freezing. Increased snowfall leads to increased glaciation, i.e. ice age. The problem is, this may take a thousand years to happen, or only 100, we just dont know. In the meantime, all the other stuff will happen, rising sea levels, floods, increased hurricanes, etc.

The temperature of the earth and the surface climate have radically changed many times in the past, and without any any artificial greenhouse emmissions from humans.

Youre absolutely right, these things have happened in the past, through natural causes, but this doesnt mean that humanity, in its current form, would have survived and prospered in these times. The earth will go on if manhattan is underwater, but it will make it much harder to catch a cab.

The effect of the sun's radition, volcanos, etc have long had an effect on the earth.

Also correct, again, this doesnt mean that human induced warming is not occuring. Humans put out more CO2 each year than all the volcanoes on earth (~3 billion tons, net) If volcanoes have an effect, then humans will too.

There is some evidence for the earth's warming, but the evidence is far from clean and many observations (such as (corrected) satellite data and weather balloons) show no warming.

try here here here here here And as for your satellite data argument, I suggest you read Nature, v394, August 13 1998, p661-4 Stating that corrected satellite data actually shows .13 degF increase per decade, consistent with ground based obs.

WHen the New York Times famously said "Blame global warming for the blizzard"

Yes, the NY times did exagerate. It should have said "Blame Global Warming for the SEVERITY of the blizzard" The blizzard probably would have happened anyways, but the point is that GW makes weather events worse, because energy is pumped into the system.

But the use of hysteria and scaremongering to sell a political agenda is wrong IMO.

Is it scaremongering if its the truth?

A recent letter in Science provides 13 citations for reports of such exciting phenomena as reduction in alpine glaciers, increase in permafrost thawing, later freeze-ups & earlier thaws of lakes, etc. etc. etc. occuring over the past 60 years.

These 13 citations are A VERY SMALL FRACTION of the total evidence supporting a warming trend over the recent past. A quick search through the web of science over just the past 2 years turns up 595 articles. Do they all provide evidence of a warming trend? No. Do many of them? Yes.

Heck, even a quick search on CNN turns up evidence of ocean warming caused by humans.

A more complete review of the evidence is presented here.

There is very little doubt that the earth is getting warmer. The debates over the past few years settle on "is it caused by humans" and "how much will it affect climate". The evidence seems pretty clear that humans are responsible for a good portion of the warming. The overall affect of this warming, however, is still very much in doubt. THAT'S where the main scientific debate is.

And, on a slightly unrelated rant . . .

Comments like this really piss me off. It's clear you haven't done any poking through the scientific literature about global warming, and your "as i understand it" comes from mouthpieces of our good friends in the oil industry, rush limbaugh, and others.

Plus, EVERYTHING in science is a theory. It's an explanation of how the world works, based on experimental data. A good theory explains the current data and makes predictions about the results of future experiments (ie, warming the earth will cause an increase in the rate of polar ice cap melting). Theories are NEVER PROVEN - there's always the chance that some experiment in the future will provide data that can't be explained by the current theory - which leads to its modification or, in very rare and exciting cases, a completely new theoriy. This is why we have a "theory of gravity" or "theory of evolution" - they can't be proven, but they explain very nicely all the data we've picked up to this point.

Sheesh.

Thanks to those nutty museli-munching sandal wearing communist tree-huggers, the general public and *even world governments* (well, ones that aren't lead by an animated glove puppet, at any rate) are already well aware of the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels...
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"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

quite suprisingly to me that slashdot readers seem much less enthusiastic to studies about simulations than other computer topics.

fact is: climate simulations can only reproduce the last 50 years when human produced greenhouse gases are taken into account. they fail, without them.

further readings are given at www.ipcc.ch

beside some very few, all scientists, including Americans, are standing behind these results.

I know what site the link was on. Quit attacking the messenger and deal with the message. What is wrong with their analysis of the IPCC sea level studies (chapter 11 of "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis")?

Is PGR being used to change lowering levels to rising levels? Were the simulated ice levels tinkered with to produce the desired result, and if not then how were the ice levels determined? Does the glacial melting simulation match the geological 120 to 130 meter rise? Is the IPCC indeed predicting that southern oceans will rise less than other oceans, and why?

However several rather frightening changes have been seen in the temperature and saltiness (haline) of various important currents off the northern coast of Scandanavia . One apocalyptic scenario is indeed for the Gulf Stream to shutdown, which would ****up western Europe nicely.

However this is a *local* effect in the context of the global climate. The whole system is *extremely* complex (chaotic, even) and hard to model or predict. Broad, long-period predictions are easier to make than short term ones - we can model nice equilibrium states, but it's highly likely that in the short term (a few hundred years) that the entire planet will see wild fluctuations in precipitation, temperature, sea levels, yadda yadda.

Ob links:

• UN IPCC Third Assessment Report: Summary (PDF) This is especially sobering reading; contributed to by ~1000 leading world authorities on the science)
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change main site
• GEO-2000 report
• Worldwatch
• EPA Global warming site
• New Scientist special report

Note to the inevitable sceptics: if you accept (say) evolution, Relativity, Quantum mechanics (random eexamples) as being very very very likely to be true, then at least read the damn docs, look at the scientists who are putting their reps on the line on this, and consider whether it's more likely that we *are* affecting the global climate in unpredictable ways, or that vested interests are funding astroturf movements to try to convince American voters that it's all a commie plot...

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If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

You do not know what you are talking about. Climate change due to human activities absolutely HAS been proven, for any reasonable standard of 'proof'.

Some random links. Yes I know these aren't authoratitive primary sources but you can't deep link into the `Nature' site :(
BBC News
BBC News
paper in `Science'
Crowley in `Science'
(UN) IPCC
more U.N.
NASA
NASA
NASA
Nature
BBC News
New Scientist's excellent overview, ideal for clueless know-nothing^W^W getting a basic grounding in the major issues

Next time, try to avoid talking nonsense on a subject you know nothing about.
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If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

Sometimes humanity makes me sick. We Europeans aren't much better than you Americans (we use half as much energy per head, which of course is still 10-100 times more than the 3rd World.) And the third world of course can't be held back: China and India and the Pacific Rim are /developing/ countries.

Sorry for the pessimistic rant. But seeing the jokey responses to this story fills me with despair.

In the matter of shoes I deffer to the cobbler. These guys are the cobblers.

Why climate change ? Woo, big question; there's lots of evidence, and various contrarian theories (eg: observed temperature change is due to solar oputput variations) have been knocked down one by ne. Latest doom-watch for us Euro-weenies : tghe Gulf Stream (well the upstream end of it, off Greenland) is being severely disrupted. Shut down the gulf stream and suddenly central/southern Europe regains the climate of other areas on our latitude: Siberia, northern Canada ....

There's too much to give precise URLs, but for starters search these for 'climate change' :

• BBC
• New Scientist
• Nature,
• Science,
• IPCC
• UN Environmental Program
• hell, even CNN ...