More Scientific support for Human Induced Global Warming.

Are you implying that humans are not natural, and that therefore what we do is somehow artificial? How did we get here then? Also, the environment is improving across the board. Please elaborate.

 

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I'm no fan of the global warming gloom and doom rhetoric, but I beg to differ with the above statement. The fossil record is littered with speicies who could not adapt to changing environments (whether it be cooling or warming). We are much less adaptable than all those other species due to our current lifestyle. When is the last time you relied on hunting and gathering techniques for providing a meal? Can you build your own shelter out of trees and leaves? Most of us (myself included) wouldn't know how to survive without the comforts of modern society. There are literally millions of species who have failed to survive climate changes and they weren't nearly as pampered as humans.

In a species versus nature battle, nature always wins. If someone can name an advanced species that has fought the battle of a changing Earth and won, I'd like to hear about it.

 

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You have missed the point. Artificial means: Made by humans. It does not mean humans are unnatural.

It depends on your definition of improving. I prefer to say the environment is changing, as it has done, is doing, and will continue to do till there is no world.

We are social animals with (as far as we know) the most advanced culture in the history of the universe. Its true humans find it hard to survive on their own. No one would leave a baby alone in the wilderness, even for a few hours yet, that baby requires at least 7 years help to survive, even in the richest environments.
We developed our culture to counter our individual weakness. This collaborative power gives us the ability to live and thrive in about every environment the Earth has to offer.

Humans have. Ice ages, hot periods, massive environmental cataclysms that have destroyed uncounted species, we take it in our stride and continue to grow. We live in deserts were there was once rainforest. We live on land were there was once ocean.

As long as we have a source of power we will survive. Hands up any species that has learnt how to use fire. We are unlike anything that has ever lived and to use the past to predict the future is a mistake.

Human instinct. Elaborately polished with culture, to survive at all costs.

 

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yup, and last but not least the collaborative power to PREVENT disasters like global warming, maybe not bring it on, but leave it alone?

 

Sorry Vortexx, but "disasters" like global warming <b>cannot be prevented.</b> It is like preventing the Tambora or Krakatoa from erupting, or the El Niño from occurring every four to seven years.

Mankind is not powerful enough as to fight geological forces. We should focus on real everyday problems, more at reach as famines, and misery in developing countries -instead of losing time and resources in imaginary climatic dangers.

 

Yes the planet is getting warmer but when the earth has gone throught ice ages and catastrophies great enough to wipe out life of an entire era, it is hard to believe that humans are having any lasting effect on the earths natural cycle of cooling and warming. when a volcano errupts it spues more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than an entire industrialized does in a year.

 

Contrary to the global warmers' computer predictions, the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the most important among the man-made greenhouse gases, were out of phase with the changes of near-surface air temperature, both recently and in the distant past. This is clearly seen in Antarctic and Greenland ice cores, where high CO2 concentrations in air bubbles preserved in polar ice appear 1,000 to 13,000 years after a change in the isotopic composition of H2O, signaling the warming of the atmosphere. <font size=1> (Z. Jaworowski, T.V. Segalstad, and N. Ono, 1992. “Do Glaciers Tell a True Atmospheric CO2 Story?” The Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 114, pp. 227-284.)</font>
<p>
This simply means that CO2 increase lags the temperature increase by 600 to 800 years, according to some studies, <font size=1> (E. Monnin et al., CO2 Atmospheric Concentrations During the Last Glacial Termination, <i>Science</i> in http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5501/112#F1 )</font> and other say from 1000 to 13.000 years, depending of periods and eras. But one thing is for sure: <b>temperature increases causes the CO2 levels to go up, not the reverse</b>, as the IPCC and its cohorts of warmers claim. See graph by Monnin et al:
<p><center>
<img src=http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol291/issue5501/images/large/se4909065001.jpeg width=500>
</center><p>
In ancient times, the CO2 concentration in the air has been significantly higher than today, with no dramatic impact on the temperature. in the Eocene period (50 million years ago), this concentration was 6 times larger than now, but the temperature was only 1.5º C higher. In the Cretaceous period (90 million years ago), the CO2 concentration was 7 times higher than today, and in the Carboniferous period (340 million years ago), the CO2 concentration was nearly 12 times higher. <font size=1>(C.J. Yapp, and H. Poths, 1992. “Ancient Atmospheric CO2 Pressures Inferred from Natural Geothites,” Nature, Vol. 355, No. 23 (Jan.) pp. 342-344.)</font>
<p>
When the CO2 concentration was 18 times higher, 440 million years ago (during the Ordovician period), glaciers existed on the continents of both hemispheres. At the end of the 19th Century, the amount of CO2 discharged into the atmosphere by world industry was 13 times smaller than now. <font size=1>(T.A. Boden, P. Kanciruk, and M.P. Farrel, 1990. TRENDS '90: A Compendium of Data on Global Change (Oak Ridge, Tenn.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory), pp. 1-257)</font>
<p>
But the climate at that time had warmed up, as a result of natural causes, emerging from the 500-year-long Little Ice Age, which prevailed approximately from 1350 to 1880. This was not a regional European phenomenon, but extended throughout the whole Earth. <font size=1>(W. Soon, and S. Baliunas, 2003. “Proxy Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1,000 Years,” Climate Research, Vol. 23, pp. 89-110.)</font>
<p>

 

>> They have not explained the mechanism for these cold spells or why warm temps can bring cold temps.>>


Just in case people do not realise

Over 700 million gallons of oil is estimated to be released into the environment per year.
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html

Over 1 billion gallons of oil has been spilled over the last 10 years.
The amount of petroleum products ending up in the ocean is estimated at 0.25% of world production, about 6 million tons per year. Oil spills account for only about five percent of the oil entering the oceans. The Coast Guard estimates that for United States waters sewage treatment plants discharge twice as much oil each year as tanker spills.
http://alsocup.homestead.com/AlsocupAbsorbentsOilFaxTheNeed.html

The above works out to be something like 16,500 tons of oil a day spilled onto the surface of the oceans.

So what effect does oil on water have on the environment.

Oiled water causes two major environmental effects :-

Oilly water does not drag on the movement of air as much as clean water. The wave height at sea is reduced and therefore the wind speed can correspondingly increase.

Oil on water reduces evaporation of sea water, with the consequent reduction in cloud mass, and therefore rain fall... What will be seen re the temperature is a wider range from max to min... as the air get dryer, the temperature spread becomes more 'desert like'.

This layer of oil was first noted back in the 1930's, identified as pertoleum oil.. by the micro layer marine bilogists..... the oil layer is ubiquitous.

The oil is coming from sunken oil tankers, it is draining from cities into all the rivers, it is falling out of the sky from industry, cars....

What will come of it??? -----> ice age!!!!


>> In ancient times, the CO2 concentration in the air has been significantly higher than today, with no dramatic impact on the temperature

Quite right Edufer, in the beginning the Earth started as a hot bed of noxious gases, H2S, CH4, NH3, CO2, etc...... LIFE came, and it made water and detoxified the environment, and from then on there was temperature stability
Water is the moderator here, clouds, and humidity keep/have kept the average temperature of the surface of the Earth reasonably constant.

 

I wonder how much oil has been seeping into the ocean through thousands of cracks in the Earth's crust in seabeds, deep in the oceans. As there are submarine volcanoes, there are also natural oil seepings from the crust. Oil was surfacing the Earth since the beginnig of history, (Greeks and ancient peoples used it as fuel for their lamps, and more recently, oil ruined crops in Oklahoma back in the 1850s, when it surfaced by itself). It then started the whole thing.

I think the amount of oil spilled in the ocean is neglible - compared with the vast amounts of water in the oceans. And don't forget that oil, as any organic substance, is degraded naturally by bacteria or other processes in nature. It will take longer than a piece of paper or a banana piel, but it finally degrades.

Another observation: it was known among the sail ship sailors - back in the 1800s - that dumping oil (whale oil, then) in leeward (where the wind is not blowing) used to calm down waters and facilitate boarding the ship in rough waters. But I guess that for making the same efffect on huge tracts of oceans, we'd need an absurd amount of oil for achieving the same effect.

The same effect of spreading oily sustances on water was used to fight mosquitoes, back in history, until the greens found that wetlands were abnormally important and prohibited the sue of kerosene for fighting the pest. The oil on the water didn´t last very long, but was enough to stop the mosquito larvae from breathing. What cleared the oil, kerosene, etc, from the surface? I don`t know, but lakes and ponds were clean againg on the next day.

We must keep a sense of proportion and measures. The world is huge. Internet makes it look small, but nevertheless, internet will not make distances smaller if you are a survivor in a plane crash in the Sahara desert, and you must walk back home...

Compared with Earth, we are microscopic, just nothing. Just miserable fleas lost in the mattress of ignorance.

It is late in the night (or early in the morning?) down here, and I have to hit the sack. Bye now.

 

Check out this story.....

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate-04g.html

 

Well the oil spill released today is over and above natural seepage... consequences ???

 

The link to: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate-04g.html provided an article from which I have extracted the following:

<dir><font color=blue>Atmospheric Water Clusters Provide Evidence Of Global Warming

“The greenhouse effect is caused by molecules that absorb infrared radiation released from the Earth's surface, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Water acts as a greenhouse gas because it is one of the molecules that can absorb infrared radiation and cause warming.”

"The prediction that higher order water clusters (trimers, tetramers, and pentamers) are present in the atmosphere is significant because it shows that these entities must be considered as key players in atmospheric processes." </font></dir>
Something that has been known by scientists from long time ago, is that the most important among ”greenhouse gases” is <b>water vapor</b>, which is responsible for about <b><font color=red>96 to 99 percent of the greenhouse effect.</font></b> Among the other greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, CFCs, N2O, and O2), the most important is CO2, <b><font color=red>which contributes only 3 percent to the total greenhouse effect.</font></b> The man-made CO2 contribution to this effect may be <b><font color=red>about 0,05 to 0,25 percent.</font></b>

Water vapor makes clouds, which are perhaps the most important factor of climate control. Clouds act as climatic thermostats, and cloud formation is governed primarily by cosmic radiation. The quantity of cosmic radiation coming to the Earth from our galaxy and from deep space is controlled by changes in the so-called solar wind. It is created by hot plasma ejected from the solar corona to the distance of many solar diameters, carrying ionized particles and magnetic field lines. Solar wind, rushing toward the limits of the Solar System, drives galactic rays away from the Earth and makes them weaker. When the solar wind gets stronger, less cosmic radiation reaches us from space, not so many clouds are formed and it gets warmer. <b>When the solar wind abates, the Earth becomes cooler.</b>

Thus, the Sun opens and closes a climate-controlling umbrella of clouds over our heads. Only in recent years have astrophysicists and physicists specializing in atmosphere research studied these phenomena and their mechanisms, in the attempt to understand them better. Perhaps, same day, we will learn to govern the clouds.

The Hamilton team's findings were published in the March 3 issue of the <i>Journal of the American Chemical Society</i>, what should make us suspicious about why has this been “republished” in February 18, 2004, as an evidence of global warming. There is <b><font color=red>no need to insist on global warming</font></B> – we know and all scientists agree on that Earth’s temperature has increased due to a rebound from the Little Ice Age, <b><font color=red>an age that has not been left behind yet</font></b>. We are still to reach the level of 1,5º C higher than today, the same temperatures that existed on Earth for 300 years during the <b>Medieval Warm Period </b>or, as scientists used to call it, <b>The Small Climatic Optimum</b>. Because they deemed those temperatures to be the best for all living matter, as they produced the best conditions on Earth for species survival.

Warming is not in doubt – what’s in doubt are the amount of warming predicted, and the extent and quality of the envisioned consequences – catastrophic, or highly beneficial, or simply none.

But the sinking of the Kyoto Protocol last December in Milan, has caused an explosion of hysterical propaganda in order to put pressure on governments for ratifying the infamous treaty. We have seen that with the unbelievable clumsy story of the “Pentagon Report” published by the British <b>The Observer</b> and <b>The Guardian</b> – clear examples of yellow press. What came out of the story now is that:

(1) There is no such “pentagon Report”,
(2) The story was not kept hidden for 4 months – it was published by Fortune magazine almost a month before The Observer “got it”.
(3) The story was written by two “science fiction” writers (one of the Peter Schwartz wrote the script for the film “War games”, where a kid got inside the ballistic missile control computer.
(4) An aging (82 years-old) adviser in the Defense Dept., Andrew Marshall (he is still permitted to play around with phones, Xerox machines, and computers in his little office at the Pentagon) asked Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall for a scary story for himself. He later sent it to <b>The Observer</b> as if it <b>had been suppressed by the Pentagon</b>, giving the tip to Greenpeace and other lunatics of the kind.

And now people believe that the <b>whole Pentagon</b> has warned Bush about the impending disaster of climate change, and he better ratify the treaty or else. People really believe that the <b><font color=red>science fiction story has scientific validity</font></b>. People believe it can happen in 20 years, in spite that the authors clearly state in their disclaimers and caveats, that <b><font color=red>their report is a work of fantasy, and it has not a single possibility of becoming real.</font></b>

If this is not a dishonest manipulation of the press, <b><font color=red>in order to fool and cheat on people with false information</font></b>, then what is?

 

How have you (or someone) determined what natural oil seepages are? Is there a worldwide survey on this subject? We may know the amount of oil spilled by tankers, and other sources of oil contribution to oceans. But how can we determine nature`s contribution?

Consequences? Who knows? I think nobody can tell for sure - they can design any kind of scary scenarios, but when it comes to scientific basis, most beautiful theories fail to prove themselves right - as the case of catastrophic climate change, or ozone depletion.

 

Hi Edufer

>> How have you (or someone) determined what natural oil seepages are? >>>

Nobody does know, analytical records only go back so far (1930), so at best guess, we have to assume natural seepage is a background constant. We do know we are adding to this layer of oil. Half life for this oil is from 100 days to many years.

>> Is there a worldwide survey on this subject? >>>

There basically has been no investigation of this subject, as far as my researches have shown.
If it is significant ( as I am sure it is) then the politics of oil, will surely suppress any work in thiis area.

I suppose we will just have to wait for the consequences.... but "global warming" and the "greenhouse effect" are definite myths. I agree solar influences have a precipitating effect, but the serverity of what we feel is dependent upon the initial conditions. I expect this layer of oil is setting the initial conditions, and setting them definately not in the favour of evaporated water.

I expect such consequences such as El Nino to become more severe.

As for "ordinary weather", I expect it to become more extreme.

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It is a sad thing that the moderator chose to erase all offending posts by David Mayes. Tristan, you should remember that <b>"Stick and stones may break your bones, but words will never harm you..."</b> (or something like that).

I have never taken offense from personal attacks by David Mayes - sometimes I just lost my patience with his unbelievable distorted way of reasoning, and presenting non proved data as real accepted facts.

I'll surely miss David and his weird way of trying to make a point.

 

I have invited (challenged) a character by the name of Sore Throat, to keep discussing the issue of global warming in this thread and forum. I am doing it, because I have been banned/censored from that thread because his theory of global warming was falling in pieces, and his authority in that forum was jeopardized.

He is a believer of the "chemtrails" matter (planes spraying substances over the USA to control global warming). I don't think he will have the guts to come to a scientific forum to expose his arguments - but, who knows? I might be wrong, after all.

I suggest that people in this forum pay a short visit at the forum I was participating, and see the level of the science being presented there:

http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000094-10.html

 

What a load of rubbish. I don't think we'll see any of those fellows over here. I'm sure they'd rather stay in their little incestous world where their nonsense is rarely challenged. They would be restricted to the pseudoscsince forum anyway, and I don't waste my time there.

Mind you, while I don't unhesitatingly accept global warming theory, I'm certainly not a confident sceptic.

I feel that one issues like these, you need to view the opinions like a pontillist painting. When a consensus emerges from qualified scientists, it is probably correct. But climate is a very complicated issue, so there is always the possibility of error.

 

You are right, Repo man, but consensus is difficult to determine as real if you are counting people raising their hands in a “church.“ By “church” I mean that all Christians will reach a consensus that they are on the true religion, Muslims will reach a similar consensus in their mosques, Jews in their synagogues, and so on.

The consensus mentioned by the IPCC and the followers of the catastrophic global warming theory, is their own consensus – not the consensus of the scientific community. The disagreement among scientists in this issue is so big, that you could say there are about five or six “schools of thought” on Earth’s climate.

But the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is <b>“we don’t know enough about climatic science as to be able to make accurate predictions on climate change”. </b>

And when you don’t know enough about something, you cannot jump into conclusions as fast and as steadfastly – and arrogantly - as the IPCC and its cohort of scientists worried with their jobs making handsomely paid climatic research. Did you know that the US spends more than 4 Billion dollars a year in this kind of useless research? Don’t you think that kind of money would be better spent in education or opening jobs for the unemployed?

 

I too encourage readers to visit the thread "Anthropogenic Induced Climate Instability" at:

http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000094.html

A reasonable indicator of accelerating changes in global climate can easily be seen in the melting of the world's glaciers and permafrost.

I'd be interested in seeing if Edufer will again tak the position of "65% of glaciers advancing in the world."

http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000084.html


To that I would counter:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update32.htm
Glaciers and Sea Ice Endangered by Rising Temperatures

Janet Larsen

By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro may exist only in old photographs. The glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park could disappear by 2030. And by mid-century, the Arctic Sea may be completely ice-free during summertime. As the earth's temperature has risen in recent decades, the earth's ice cover has begun to melt. And that melting is accelerating.

In both 2002 and 2003, the Northern Hemisphere registered record-low sea ice cover. New satellite data show the Arctic region warming more during the 1990s than during the 1980s, with Arctic Sea ice now melting by up to 15 percent per decade. The long-sought Northwest Passage, a dream of early explorers, could become our nightmare. The loss of Arctic Sea ice could alter ocean circulation patterns and trigger changes in global climate patterns.

On the opposite end of the globe, Southern Ocean sea ice floating near Antarctica has shrunk by some 20 percent since 1950. This unprecedented melting of sea ice corroborates records showing that the regional air temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950.

Antarctic ice shelves that existed for thousands of years are crumbling. One of the world's largest icebergs, named B-15, that measured near 10,000 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) or half the size of New Jersey, calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. In May 2002, the shelf lost another section measuring 31 kilometers (19 miles) wide and 200 kilometers (124 miles) long.

Elsewhere on Antarctica, the Larsen Ice Shelf has largely disintegrated within the last decade, shrinking to 40 percent of its previously stable size. Following the break-off of the Larsen A section in 1995 and the collapse of Larsen B in early 2002, melting of the nearby land-based glaciers that the ice shelves once supported has more than doubled.

Unlike the melting of sea ice or the floating ice shelves along coasts, the melting of ice on land raises sea level. Recent studies showing the worldwide acceleration of glacier melting indicate that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimate for sea level rise this century—ranging from 0.1 meters to 0.9 meters—will need to be revised upwards. (See table of selected examples of ice melt from around the world.)
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update32_data.htm

On Greenland, an ice-covered island three times the size of Texas, once-stable glaciers are now melting at a quickening rate. The Jakobshavn Glacier on the island's southwest coast, which is one of the major drainage outlets from the interior ice sheet, is now thinning four times faster than during most of the twentieth century. Each year Greenland loses some 51 cubic kilometers of ice, enough to annually raise sea level 0.13 millimeters. Were Greenland's entire ice sheet to melt, global sea level could rise by a startling 7 meters (23 feet), inundating most of the world's coastal cities.

The Himalayas contain the world's third largest ice mass after Antarctica and Greenland. Most Himalayan glaciers have been thinning and retreating over the past 30 years, with losses accelerating to alarming levels in the past decade. On Mount Everest, the glacier that ended at the historic base camp of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first humans to reach the summit, has retreated 5 kilometers (3 miles) since their 1953 ascent. Glaciers in Bhutan are retreating at an average rate of 30—40 meters a year. A similar situation is found in Nepal.

As the glaciers melt they are rapidly filling glacial lakes, creating a flood risk. An international team of scientists has warned that with current melt rates, at least 44 glacial lakes in the Himalayas could burst their banks in as little as five years.

Glaciers themselves store vast quantities of water. More than half of the world's population relies on water that originates in mountains, coming from rainfall runoff or ice melt. In some areas glaciers help sustain a constant water supply; in others, meltwater from glaciers is a primary water source during the dry season. In the short term, accelerated melting means that more water feeds rivers. Yet as glaciers disappear, dry season river flow declines.

The Himalayan glaciers feed the seven major rivers of Asia—the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and Huang He (Yellow)—and thus contribute to the year-round water supply of a vast population. In India alone, some 500 million people, including those in New Delhi and Calcutta, depend on glacier meltwater that feeds into the Ganges River system. Glaciers in Central Asia's Tien Shan Mountains have shrunk by nearly 30 percent between 1955 and 1990. In arid western China, shrinking glaciers account for at least 10 percent of freshwater supplies.

The largest aggregation of tropical glaciers is in the northern Andes. The retreat of the Qori Kalis Glacier on the west side of the Quelccaya Ice Cap that stretches across Peru has accelerated to 155 meters a year between 1998 and 2000—three times faster than during the previous three-year period. The entire ice cap could vanish over the next two decades.

The Antizana Glacier, which provides Quito, Ecuador, with almost half its water, has retreated more than 90 meters over the last eight years. The Chacaltaya Glacier near La Paz, Bolivia, melted to 7 percent of its 1940s volume by 1998. It could disappear entirely by the end of this decade, depriving the 1.5 million people in La Paz and the nearby city of Alto of an important source of water and power.

Africa's glaciers are also disappearing. Across the continent, mountain glaciers have shrunk to one third their size over the twentieth century. On Tanzania's Kilimanjaro, ice cover has shrunk by more than 33 percent since 1989. By 2020 it could be completely gone.

In Western Europe, glacial area has shrunk by up to 40 percent and glacial volume by more than half since 1850. If temperatures continue to rise at recent rates, major sections of glaciers covering the Alps and the French and Spanish Pyrenees could be gone in the next few decades. During the record-high temperature summer of 2003, some Swiss glaciers retreated by an unprecedented 150 meters. The United Nations Environment Programme is warning that for this region long associated with ice and snow, warming temperatures signify the demise of a popular ski industry, not to mention a cultural identity.

Boundaries around Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies cannot stop the melting of the glaciers there. Glacier National Park in Montana has lost over two thirds of its glaciers since 1850. If temperatures continue to rise, it may lose the remainder by 2030.

In just the past 30 years, the average temperature in Alaska climbed more than 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit)—easily four times the global increase. Glaciers in all of Alaska's 11 glaciated mountain ranges are shrinking. Since the mid-1990s, Alaskan glaciers have been thinning by 1.8 meters a year, more than three times as fast as during the preceding 40 years.

The global average temperature has climbed by 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) in the past 25 years. Over this time period, melting of sea ice and mountain glaciers has increased dramatically. During this century, global temperature may rise between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius, and melting will accelerate further. Just how much will depend in part on the energy policy choices made today.


Be sure to look at the table,

SELECTED EXAMPLES OF ICE MELT AROUND THE WORLD
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update32_data.htm


********************************************

From Other Sources


Mark A.J. Curran, et al., "Ice Core Evidence for Antarctic Sea Ice Decline Since the 1950s," Science, vol. 302 (14 November 2003), pp. 1203-06.

De Angelis and Skvarca, "Glacier Surge After Ice Shelf Collapse," Science, vol. 299 (7 March 2003).

Mark B. Dyurgerov and Mark F. Meier, "Twentieth Century Climate Change: Evidence from Small Glaciers," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 4 (15 February 2000), 1406-11.

Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Sciences Directorate, "Global Temperature Anomalies in .01 C," http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data, updated January 2001.

IPCC, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis; Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability; and Mitigation. Contributions of Working Group I, II, and III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). Text and summaries of each report available at http://www.ipcc.ch.

W. Krabill et al., "Greenland Ice Sheet: High Elevation Balance and Peripheral Thinning," Science, vol. 289 (21 July 2000), pp. 428-30.

Thomas V. Lowell, "As Climate Changes, So Do Glaciers," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 4 (15 February 2000), 1351-54.

M.C. Serreze, et al., "A Record Minimum Arctic Sea Ice Extent and Area in 2002," Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 30, no. 3 (2003), pp. 1110-14.

Lars H. Smedsrud and Tore Furevik, "Towards an Ice-Free Arctic?" Cicerone 2/2000.

Lonnie G. Thompson, et al., "Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records: Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa," Science, vol. 298 (18 October 2002), pp. 589-93

WWF, "Going, Going, Gone!: Climate Change and Global Glacier Decline," news report, 27 November 2003.

LINKS

Global Land Ice Measurements from Space http://www.GLIMS.org

Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado http://instaar.colorado.edu

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch

National Snow and Ice Data Center http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change http://www.unfccc.de

World Glacier Inventory http://nsidc.org/data/glacier
_inventory/index.html

World Glacier Monitoring Service http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms

Worldwatch Institute Climate Resource Center http://www.worldwatch.org
/topics/energy/climate

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It should be noted that Edufer is a proud supporter of the infamous "Global Warming Petition", which states

I'll be quite interested in the caliber of discussion at this particular forum.

 

I think it would be fine for this discussion to continue. I just hope that the ad hominem attacks can be kept to a minimum, or avoided altogether.

Edufer, the IPCC may very well have an agenda. But as I stated a long time ago in this thread, many of the scientists who are on the other side of the issue are funded directly or indirectly by the fossil fuel corporations. Their objectivity is rather questionable as well.

At times it is like listening to the defense and the prosecution in a trial. They may both exaggerate their case in order to convince a jury. They will both present facts that help their client, and leave out ones that do not.

At this time, I think the evidence for a warming climate is convincing. What is less clear is whether it is caused by humans in any significant way, or at all.