I can hear Palin now. Repeal the Clean Air Act! Dump more pollution into the atmosphere! And, of course, bombing Iran or Russia would put a lot of particulate matter into the air.

Global Warming began shortly after the Sixties.
Clearly it's cause is Marijuana Smoke released into the atmosphere on a Global Scale.

Sorry Soccer Sarah.....
That's Man Made!

"Their previous study depended on tree rings, and some critics said it was not a reliable way to reconstruct past climate over a long period. Mann said that while it's not always true that tree rings aren't reliable, his team decided to conduct a new study that didn't depend on them.

They took data from other natural sources of clues about past climate - corals, ice cores and lake and cave sediments."

In other words, as more science comes in (the information Bush told us to wait for) the global warming evidence solidifies and increases. Which means we've wasted years waiting for more evidence when we could have been acting on what we were told years ago. While the deniers continue to fret we are all dying for their ignorance and recalcatrism, both conservative traits.

We have global weirding.

It's not just one Texas-sized hurricane named Ike crushing State Farm Insurance and its competitors into the ground. It's 100 such hurricanes. It's not just 175 mph Katrina (which hit as a category 2 with a 38 foot storm surge), but 175 mph Rita and 175 mph Wilma.

As a matter of fact, 2009 is forecast to be a big hurricane season, not this year. I wish us all good luck with that. In particular I wish the State of Florida good luck in taking property insurance public, because no private insurer will touch coastal Florida now. Funny how Republicans love big government when they need it. Roll them dice!

After Houston, maybe Miami or Jville? Up the east coast with a monster?

Natural or man-made, who gives a fuck?

we're all dead no matter who or what is to blame.

would make sense to try to do something about it regardless of the origin.

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats

Let's look at the upside -- in southern Greenland a local farmer is getting ready to harvest 50 tons of potatoes. So he's happy!

True, if the glacial ice sheets keep sliding into the Atlantic, the sea level could rise a few feet, drowning some prime waterfront property -- but that would mean land further back would increase in value!
______________
There's a glory in the morning because the earth turns 'round and a promise in the evening when the sun goes down

As typical (and rightly so) of most such studies, this is not direct evidence that human actions are directly or wholly responsible for the measured changes.

BUT here is what is truly beyond all common sense -
would you, in the face of a hurricane, act to create more wind and rain?
would you during an earthquake set off underground explosions and cause more or larger tremors?
would you during a drought seek to scatter rain clouds away?
would you seek to weaken the levies and dams during a flood?
would you during a famine seek to diminish available food supplies?
for a plague, would you act to increase its spread throughout the population?
would you, in the face of any potential disaster, intentionally act to increase the possibilities of its harmful affect?

Or would you act to help prepare for and mitigate the dire consequences?

There are some wonderful sustainable green efforts being undertaken all over the world, but our government and economy and most our transnational corporations are plainly acting in defiance of all common sense, for the sake of a fistful of dollars.

And campaign advertisements and election polls clearly reflect the inability of most voters to relate candidate priorities and their related political agendas with real social responsibility and accountability, and the ultimate consequences of what we decide today and how it will affect us tomorrow.

What will the world be like for my children and grandchildren? Centuries from now, how will our time, our civilization, the once beautiful and pioneering America be perceived?

We did lead the world to a new and prosperous age, but must we now also go the way of all great civilizations before us? Must we inexplicably bring about our own demise just as they did? Or can we be that great society that finally learns to avoid the pitfalls, and overcome our self-absorption and lust, and do the right thing for posterity.

I am very much a believer in global warming but with an open mind. After all the scientists are only about 90% sure it is man made.
My understanding is that there has been no increase in temperature world wide since 2000 and yet I have not heard even an attempted explanation for this aspect of the global warming phenomenon. Does anyone care to comment?

So much for being the worse in 15 million years …

___ I'm so surprised !

Namaste

I lived in South Florida during Andrew, I watched as the Everglades was more and more drained and paved, and the Great Rain Machine turned into a fire hazard due to drought and the smoke was so thick in Fort Lauderdale I could not go outside.
You cannot tell me that we are not having an impact.
With cities being heat islands, the shear number of pollutants being release into what is essentially a closed ecosystem. It can only take so much.
After 911 we left South Florida because our jobs had be outsourced (sold to Malaysia and Sweden) and we lost our home and had to sell anything of value we could.
We moved to Asheville NC and were near a coal power plant, I got sick from the smoke I mean ER trips sick.
We moved to Greensboro NC when partner got a job there. It too is down wind from coal powered electric plants.
I got sick from the smoke again, on the worst days I could not leave the house or I would have a severe asthma attack requiring epinephrine inhaler.
We now live in the countryside. We found a place that the owners gave up on and abandoned and bought it.
It has 9 acres 2 yard and 7 woods. We are turning the yard into an edible landscape, you cannot get more local grown food than in your own yard.
We will be also replanting the woods with native trees , and orchard. We have also planted bamboo and Giant Sequoias in the yard, they both soak up enormous amounts of CO2, are fire and insect resistant, the Moso bamboo is edible and when mature it is a sustainable timber.
We got rid (junked for recycle) of the old minivan when it kicked the bucket and bought a Nissan that gets 37 mpg as my partner still works in Greensboro. We are also doing a lot of little things to the house to use less, Window film, gaskets in the switch and outlet covers, insulating curtain liners, CFLs and LEDs as the CFLs die and are recycled. We reuse, reduce, and recycle, we buy with an eye to sustainability. least packaging. We are doing what we can and keeping under a budget. eventually we plan on solar / wind and geo thermal and superinsulating the house, metal siding and roof too.
So to repubs that always holler about "Personal Responsibility" Take some, like this Librul Democrat has! We have reduced our carbon footprint by 50% over about 4 years and it is saving us $ and we are more comfortable in our house, and we are saving 100$ a month on power and using 30% of the gasoline we were using in the old van and pickup(still have but use sparingly).

Equality is for Everyone!

&YYY&

The rise in temperature is not the only indicator of our fossil fuel excesses. A large amount of the extra energy trapped by the greenhouse blanket doesn't actually register as increased temperature of atmosphere. Instead the heat goes into the great heat capacity storage of the oceans, and into melting the ice sheets. That does not immediately register in temperature indicators like tree rings, corals, sediments and sea level and ground temperature indicators used by studies to see the temperatures we experience.

So more energy is trapped and this energy spreads around and does things, like the quickening pace of rising sea levels above the predictions made by the standard climate models. The rising acidity of the oceans is another scary chemical effect of where some of the extra carbon dioxide has gone. All these natural buffers are doing the work of absorbing some of our excesses, and change is happening where we cannot immediately see and feel it. The billions of human beings are slowly cooking themselves in the pot.

Mann likes to cherry pick his data and exclude date that does nopt produce his hockey stick. Plus it does not include the recent years of global cooling.

More about it here.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3608#comments

But then, of course, the world has been warming since the last ice age, with some cycles of unusual cooling and warming, Little Ice Age (cooling), MWP (warming), and of course the warming of the 20th century (which had 30 years cycles of cooling and warming) over the last 700 years.

We have been in an interglacial for over 12,000 years and temperatures have increased 5-6 degrees C and sea levels have risen 120 meters since the last ice age, and will certainly warm some more before the next ice age which has come on average over the last 600,000, at about 12,000 years into every interglacial.

The climate in the past 600,000 years has shown us to be in an ice age 80% of the time. This warming is really a breath of fresh air for man and anything green, as a species we have flourished. Ice ages kill.

The idea that the planets climate does not change unless man is involved is a myth at best, a criminal and government backed con at worst.

mimiccs:
Yes history has told of warming and cooling but you step over the one point you use to make the warming and cooling argument. It is the short time that the warming has happened. When half of Florida is under water the WTC is under 20 feet of water what will be the economic impact be? Iraq will be a drop in the bucket on the costs. Do you feel America or even the world can survive that? War will break out over food water , oil like never before.