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TechnoratiThe Arctic Will Be Ice-Free in Summer within 20 Years, Research Says
Ships will be able to sail in open water to the North Pole in the summer of 2020, according to a study that found a rapid acceleration in the loss of sea ice.
![[A map of the Arctic showing the shrinking of the summer sea ice since 1979. International piracy and the challenges of new Arctic Ocean corridors opening up as a result of global warming topped the agenda Wednesday at a gathering of world maritime powers. (AFP/Graphic)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/arctic_0.jpg "arctic.jpg")
The Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years, the study found, while
the Earth will lose the white cap that can be seen in photographs taken from
space.
The Polar Ocean Physics Group from Cambridge University compared measurements of ice thickness recorded by a Royal Navy nuclear submarine with those taken two years later in the same area by Pen Hadow, the explorer.
The two sets of measurements were consistent, revealing that the findings by HMS Tireless in 2007 were not an aberration caused by a particularly warm year.
Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge, said that cargo ships would no longer need to rely on special ice-breaking vessels to cross from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Northwest Passage. The route would be ice-free for several months every year, cutting more than 3,000 miles from the normal journey from the Far East to Europe via the Suez canal.
"The North Pole will be exposed in ten years. You would be able to sail a Japanese car carrier across the North Pole and out into the Atlantic," Professor Wadhams said.
"The ice will retreat to a zone north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island by 2020 and that area will be less than half the present summer area. The change in the Arctic summer sea ice is the biggest impact global warming is having on the physical appearance of the planet."
This month, the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, which is part of the University of Colorado, said that Arctic ice coverage was the third-lowest since satellite records began in 1979.
The coverage was greater than in 2007 and 2008 largely because of cloudy skies during late summer. Each of the past five years has been one of the five lowest years.
Professor Wadhams, who was on board the submarine supervising sonar measurements of the ice, said that Mr Hadow's findings confirmed that the underlying trend was towards increasingly thin and patchy ice cover.
Mr Hadow and his two team members spent 73 days between March 1 and May 7 this year walking 280 miles (450.6km) across the Arctic while taking measurements.
They drilled 1,500 holes and found that the average thickness of ice floes was 1.8m (5.9ft).
This was too thin to have survived the previous year's summer melting and indicated that the area of moving ice had been formed in open sea during the winter.
Mr Hadow said that future expeditions to the Arctic in summer would need to change their techniques and equipment to cope with more frequent stretches of open water.
"A hundred years ago explorers used dogs to haul sledges and then we went through the stage of people hauling sledges," he said. "Now we have people wearing immersion suits and needing to swim, with the sledge floating. I foresee a time when the sledge will become more of a canoe."
Mr Hadow said that he had decided to change the focus of his polar expeditions from exploration to collecting data that could help to predict changes in the climate.
Martin Summerkorn, climate change adviser to the WWF Arctic Programme, said that the loss of sea ice predicted by the Cambridge study would have profound consequences beyond the polar region.
Without ice to reflect sunlight, the Arctic Ocean would warm more quickly, resulting in the release of greenhouse gases stored in the Arctic permafrost soils. These soils contain twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere.
Mr Summerkorn said that the warming of the Arctic surface waters would accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, speeding up the sea level rise. "This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world's population and extreme global weather changes," he said.
41 Comments so far
Show AllI'm not a scientist but look at things the way they are and it can be seen that the ice and glaciers are melting in the Arctic and this is where the ocean currents get their water cooled when it comes up from the equator and from grammer school we learned that the currents off shore pretty much control weather on shore and off and if water is not cooled in the Arctic that means that the tropic sun is going to heat up the water more and more and there will be nothing to cool it,which logically,melts more ice and glaciers.The end result is,more water,flooding and some people say that the Antactic is growing ice and so what?The equilibrium of the planet will shift.That is just logic and our ass is done.Tony
Thanks David for your courtesy to debate, while GreenGoddess just claims me to be wrong without offering any evidence. Your bias towards the issue is in your handle. If your a GreenGoddess your already sold on being green. But thanks anyways.
Michel Rivero has a good article explaining global warming.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming.html
Just look what the BBC did to David Bellamy for not towing the line.
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/69623
The climate changes naturally. It was a lot hotter when dinosaurs were around, and a lot colder when we were in that period of time known as the Dark Ages (Maunder Minimum).
The sun has much more of an effect on the planets climate than human beings. Now, if you want to stop pollution of our oceans from industrial/nuclear waste thats something important and something that humans are guilty of. Stop cutting down the forests and tropical rainforests so the planet can do its job of regulating itself.
31,000 scientists do not agree with human caused global warming.
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/al_gore_global_warming/2008/05/19/97307.html
Just look at the weather recently, record cold temperatures, already snow falling in the mid-wes of america and flurries today in Upsate NY where I live. The planet is not heating up.
All these global warming enthusiasts were screaming about global cooling in the 1970's. They obviously cannot get their story straight and are only going in the direction of where the funding is. Follow the money, Al Gore owns the carbon credit trading companies ... but he wouldnt swindle you to make himself more wealhy would he? Thats not what American politicians do, right?
Gilgamesh October 16th, 2009 12:29 pm -- I agree with your general outlook. But one has to be careful. Here's a statement by David Bellamy from the article you cite:
"I’ve seen evidence, which I believe, that says there has not been a rise in global temperature since 1998, despite the increase in carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. This makes me think the global warmers are telling lies – carbon dioxide is not the driver."
The first part of this appears to reflect scientific consensus, if there is such a thing. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg. Right at the end you see the leveling off of global temperature rise.
The second part of Bellamy's statement is reckless. First, I don't think "warmers" -- usually called "warmists" -- are lying, at least not many of them. Second, they don't claim CO2 is THE driver. It's just one driver of warming they claim is operating, although they seem united in the belief that it's the main one.
I think the objective evidence such as what you and I have cited does strongly suggest GW is now in remission. We have a few years to monitor climate. We should get better at this as technology improves and knowledge increases.
The really important alarm of warmists concerns the tipping point. Reason tells me if we were on the cusp of a tipping point, the recent leveling of temperature wouldn't have occurred.
There are comments in this thread that volume of sea ice is the key, not just extent. That's a good point. This is another thing to be monitored.
Those of us like Bellamy who think resources should be directed toward other environmental problems should work toward that. I would add that more effort needs to go into adjusting to weather problems, such as floods, heat waves, droughts, and increased storms resulting from the warming in the 20th century, as well as taking advantage of opportunities the (currently stalled) warming in the northern latitudes have opened up.
You are a liar.
"All these global warming enthusiasts were screaming about global cooling in the 1970's."
Completely false red herring. No, in fact, in the 1970s there were a few, very few, rogue scientists warning that we were on the verge of a new Ice Age. And they were NOT saying that humans were CAUSING it, just that it was coming.
This is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from today, where the solid consensus among the vast majority of working scientists in the field of climatology is that humans are disrupting the climate, primarily through actions that raise the level of carbon-based molecules in the atmosphere.
"31,000 scientists do not agree with human caused global warming."
Another LIE. That petition was up on the internet, anyone could sign it, including non-scientists, including people with zero background in climatology or related subjects, there is no vetting of the credentials of the signers, the National Academy of Sciences has refuted and denounced it as ridiculous and purposely misleading.
Here's what i wrote to another poster who cited your petition:
"i'm very happy to see you expose yourself so openly.
Let's see, the OISM - whose petition sat on the internet where anyone can sign it, whose signatories can be anyone with any or no relationship to science or climate science, and whose work is refuted and denounced directly by the National Academy of Sciences, which actually does verify the credentials of its scientists unlike those on the OISM petition, etc etc etc.
Let's see, watchdog group Sourcewatch also analyzes the work of OISM and its founder Arthur Robinson, who cites his own "scientific" paper ("published" in the same format with the same typeface as NAS papers, leading to the direct denunciation by the NAS) to back his claims about climate change. Let's look at Robinson's "argument":
*******************
"Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing. "As atmospheric CO2 increases," it stated, "plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water as CO2 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life, which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally." As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet:
As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.
Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as [sic] that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."
*******************
Notice the extensive documentation and field research that supports Robinson's claims about the inevitable future positive impacts from climate change - NOT.
Oh look, he also sells a kit on home-schooling to return good Christian families to "the days before socialism in education." OISM published another wonderful book on the myths of nuclear war, asserting that if you just got ten feet of earth between you and the aftermath of the blast you would be fine.
Better and better, the OISM lists 8 "faculty" for their "school" that has no classrooms and offers no courses, and two of the faculty listed are deceased, and three of them are Robinson and two of his sons."
"Mr Summerkorn said that the warming of the Arctic surface waters would accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, speeding up the sea level rise. "This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world's population and extreme global weather changes," he said. "
The melting of G-lands ice sheet does another thing too. As landborne ice melts from polar and high altitude glaciers, water moves to the sea and is spun toward the equator. Water mass changes location on the planet, which changes the torque, rotational inertia, angular momentum forces on the tectonic plates. If and when they move we get undersea volcanism, tsunamis and some disturbed sea floor (where marine methane hydrates live...).
In most ways of looking at this we must admit that whatever tipped the planet into the last few ice ages is also in play now, although we have super-charged the game with GHG's.
Looks to me like seismic activity may be that trigger. It's mechanical, which goes along with the clockwork/heartbeat-like character of the chart of iceages, Temp/CO2 over the last 650ky.
Now that is taking the whole thing and "telling it like it is";el nino and la nina may stay for lunch far longer and may wear out their welcome,if there were one.What you write also affects the ocean currents which pretty much control the weather on shore and affect growing seasons which is where we live.Argue if you wish with deniers if you wish but for me it is not if but when and by the time anyone wants to use the northern passage for anything it will be to late.I think it is to late already.Tony
Well they are fewer and fewer as the years go by and the science piles up...
But still a few shill deniers trying to pollute public discourse about human impact on the atmosphere...
Used to seem worthwhile to refute and try to "debate" the polluters...
Everybody, take action! In your personal life, in your community, and politically!
What else better are we going to do in our time on Earth?
Exxon pays the ad agency, which hires a boiler room full of bloggers to make up phony baloney. They're not idiots, they're just people making a buck by incessantly calling you one. We do strange things for money in the hard times. Enough of them.
- - -
The direct links between ocean warming and permanent ocean rise are ice sheets which rest on rock below sea level. The westernmost part of the Greenland glacier, Pine Island Bay near the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and a certain part of the huge East Antarctic Ice Sheet are good examples. Warmed ocean water is lapping against ice in these places, eroding the ice underwater. The warmer water undermines these ice sheet sections until they are floating. Then they float off and allow most of the ice sheets to quickly crumble.
More dangerous in the short term are huge, unprecedented tidal surges from super-hurricanes. Katrina hit the Mississippi Delta with a 39 foot storm surge, and Katrina was already down to a Category 2 hurricane when it hit the Misissippi coast.
Gilgamesh - I followed your lead and looked at the National Climatic Data Center web site. I found a very comprehensive web site - that clearly takes the AGW argument very seriously. Let me give you a few snippets of information off this site. The url is
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/key-findings
1.Global warming is unequivocable, and primarily human induced.
2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow. etc. etc. etc. etc.
You could spend months studying all these reports - and they all seem to support the idea of AGW.
So you call people who try to understand the science 'lemmings'. And you of course know so much more than all the scientists who contribute to the reports published on the web site of the organization you reference. And how do you come by such amazing insight??? I guess it is fine that you have no regard for science, and prefer to depend on your own amazing ability to analyze these complex issues - I wish your ilk would stop trying to have an undue influence on the debate - the stakes are so high - and as a recent poster pointed out - it is our children who will pay for our reckless ignorance - we don't have the right to ask them to pay this price...
David.
Gilgamesh - I followed your lead and looked at the National Climatic Data Center web site. I found a very comprehensive web site - that clearly takes the AGW argument very seriously. Let me give you a few snippets of information off this site. The url is
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/key-findings
1.Global warming is unequivocable, and primarily human induced.
2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow. etc. etc. etc. etc.
You could spend months studying all these reports - and they all seem to support the idea of AGW.
So you call people who try to understand the science 'lemmings'. And you of course know so much more than all the scientists who contribute to the reports published on the web site of the organization you reference. And how do you come by such amazing insight??? I guess it is fine that you have no regard for science, and prefer to depend on your own amazing ability to analyze these complex issues - I wish your ilk would stop trying to have an undue influence on the debate - the stakes are so high - and as a recent poster pointed out - it is our children who will pay for our reckless ignorance - we don't have the right to ask them to pay this price...
David.
of course, one of the fundamental problems this entire line of discussion suffers is the continual use, even by those individuals and organizations wishing to impress urgency, of a two-dimensional argument, ice expanse, to describe a three-dimensional thing, frozen ice...the surface area is only relevant when multiplied by the thickness to get volume...
this practice of drawing hatched lines to show reducing area is not even accurate, logically...area shmarea...the ice is getting progressively thinner and thinner, which is critical, and invisible, using the 'area' strategy...
I know this area vs. volume issue is discussed in detail in the body of many articles...my point is they keep using the damn surface area pictures and dotted lines as the eye-catcher, as if it is the same as volume, which it isn't...
Yes, and to summarize your comments for the less itelligent, the actual situation is much worse, and the quantity of ice is actually getting smaller every year.
And as the ice on the water gets thinner and thinner, the glaciers on the islands of the North start to slip into the sea. It's the glacier melt from both the arctic and antarctic that will flood the coasts of the world, not enough water to cover all of the land so at least it's not going to be a Noah type of flood...
I doubt it'll be much consolation to the poor shore-dwellers, though, any more than the original "Noah's Flood" was that drowned the neolithic civilisation around the Black Sea 7-9000 years ago when the plug from the Med gave way. Those poor buggers must *really* have thought the end of the world was rising at their backs.
Mother Nature is coming, and BOY is she pissed!!!
Note that when, several years ago, Lovelock predicted an ice-free Arctic "by 2020-2025", everybody herniated themselves laughing at him. It was *impossible*, they said. He's an *irresponsible alarmist*, they said. He's a *loony*, they said.
They ain't laughing now.
To the deniers I say: If you are so sure of yourself, buy all the coastline in Florida that you can. If the scientists are wrong, as you believe they are, then you will have a nice investment for your grandchildren. However, if we are right, our grandchildren will be able to laugh at your spawn from their mountaintops.
To those who know a little (or a lot) of the ways in which the biosphere's systems are all intertwined: Don't waste your breath arguing with fools. They have three sets of hands: one set covering their ears so they cannot hear, one set covering there eyes so they cannot see, and one set busy trying to pick your pocket. They will inherit the world and will deserve exactly what they get.
2020 is not 20 years away, anymore.
We've wasted time that should have been spent pioneering a new, renewable energy future.
Gilgamesh:
You're flat out wrong. YOU should do more reading.
What this article fails to mention is that even in this calamity, there are those who would seek to take advantage of it. Primarily, it is the Russians, who foresee this as a chance to build what previously impossible on the now rapidly melting Arctic ice sheet, off-shore oil platforms. Not only would this prolong the disastrous fossil fuel usage that is driving global warming, but the Russians are not exactly the most diligent of operators when it comes to safety and tidiness. Vast tracts of Siberia where mineral and oil exploitation have occurred are ecological waste lands, and the mind boggles at the thought of them continuing in the open ocean.
To be fair, the oil operators of Alaska and Canada are not that tidy either.
Oh how I love the legions of lemmings in the global warming/dangerous climate change cult. Most of whom have no working knowledge of history.
The hottest year on record according to the National Climatic Data Center was 1998. It has got no warmer, the ice caps are not shrinking and polar bears are doing just fine. Considering they survived the Medieval Warm Period, I dont think theyll be going extinct from just warming of oceans.
Now, we have something called the Carbon Cycle which you should have learned about in 3rd grade people. It goes something like this.
People exhale carbon dioxide (2.2 lbs a day per person)which is absorbed by green plants and the ocean. The oceanic plant life and green plants then in turn with the help of photosynthesis produce oxygen. This is a carbon bases planet. The correlation between atmospheric carbon levels and global temperatures is minute at best.
Carbon control is about deindustrialization and more control. Its just the government taking more of your money and telling you what you can and cannot do. Please, start thinking for yourself and do some real research. Stop repeating what your corporate media tells you is the truth. I would assume that is why you come to sites like this to read the news in the first place.
I have to agree with you Gilgamesh!! I've done my research and yes global warming is happening, but not because of us humans. You very appropriatly explained how we exhale carbon dioxide, and naturaly the plants use it to produce more oxygen. (COMMON SENSE STUFF, NOT DREAMS)
***Any ways my question to all the people who do think that humans are the cause of the global warming, Answer me this.......
WHY ARE THE TEMPERATURES ON ALL OF THE PLANETS IN OURS SOLAR SYSTEM INCREASING???
We only live on one planet.
YET ALL 9 PLANETS ARE BEING EFFECTED BY GLOBAL WARMING, PLEASE EXPLAIN.......
Can you provide the scholarly sources of these supposed planetary temperature increases?
Except for on Mars over the past 5 years, no regular, accurate, direct temperature readings of any other planets' lower atmosphere are even possible!
And it would be "affected" not "effected".
The fluctuations over a merely decade don't make a trend.
And Yes, I hve a working knowlege of history - geologic history - and it goes far further back than a mere 11 years - if you can call such a recent time history at all!
Humans are a geological force on the earths atmospheric and ocean systems much greater than the causes of any medieval warm or cold periods a measily few hundreds years ago. Humans have already put atmospheric CO2 at the highest level since the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum and extinction event about 30 million years ago, and are likely to reach levels higher than the Great Permian Extinction 250 million years ago. The results will be similar -a planet unsuitable for most compex life is coming. It is still a few hundred years away, but the cause will not be in doubt - Homo sapiens maladaptive social behavior called "capitalism". Our ancestors will dig up our bones and shit on them in elaborate ceremonies of depair.
Hell yes - government should be telling the capitalists what they can and cannot do! And if they don't like it, they will be given the option of meeting the same fate as the Romanovs or Louis and Marie.
You might want to place the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum at 55 million years ago.
Nevertheless, point taken.
Thanks for the correction. As an eastern US geologist - we mostly just deal in the Paleozoic and early Mesozoic out here.
Henry8: And, it ain't kool-aid NC-8 is talking about, but fresh, cool water. I hope you listen. Thank you for such a great post NC-8.
OK GreenGoddess you spilled the beans. NC-8 is the love-child of a brief fling that Henry8 and I, NC-Tom once had. Being the proud father of this child I thought you should all know about it. If you want to know what the mom has to say about it you'll have to check with Henry8. ;-)
Henry8:
Dude:
The arctic is MELTING, not freezing. The ice-sheets are SHRINKING, not growing. The earth is WARMING, not cooling. What the hell is it going to take for you to understand this? The ocean at your front porch? For Christ sake do some READING. Educate yourself. What the hell are you thinking? That climate scientists worldwide are "in" on some some sort vast conspiracy to lie about global-warming? PLEASE, educate yourself beyond the sources you are already using. I've looked at both sides of this issue. The debate is OVER. Climate change, global warming is a FACT. And, it's MAN-MADE. We're going to off ourselves because people like you just won't EDUCATE yourselves!
Christ dude, get on it will you? And, what the hell do you mean by: "removing the hyperbole revels the purpose of this whole, continuing, constantly changing storyline?" Huh? WTF do you mean by that?
GreenGoddess,
One of the denier sites I visited offered irrefutable proof the temperatures in the upper troposphere are actually cooling at the 31,000-ft+ level. So any glaciers a half-mile or so higher than Mt. Everest may actually be expanding... ;-)
Meanwhile, on another brit news site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
The US-led race to dominate the world economically/militarily will spew enough fossil carbon to open up the entire Arctic Ocean to shipping much of the year, ehh? Let's name the new shipping crossroads the "American Way".
None of the models used predicted the cooling correctly, why would they be right now.
The more you look at this without any political purpose, the more it looks like the usual "There is no debate because we are right" syndrome.
Like Al's little movie with such glaring errors....Katrina was caused by Global Warming? Please. Not even a majority of scientists agree with this theory, and thats all it is a theory. Carefully removing the hyperbole reveals the real purpose of this whole, continuing, constantly changing storyline.
What theory? The average ice thickness was measured at 1.8 metres.
Gore's fairly obvious problems do not mean that that the global warming is not human-caused.
Katrina? Well, that's hard to say. But the seas are warmer on average, and if they were warmer on the critical day than they would have been under circumstances X, then the hurricane did hit harder and raise water higher than it would have under circumstances X.
The best attempts to refute Gore that I have seen open out the # of years analyzed a bit until the results favor the idea that global warming is not man-made. But if one opens the sampling out thousands of years further, the evidence again becomes difficult to deny. Warming happens in cycles, alright, but we are badly out of cycle.
Henry8 I realize that you most likely have an authoritarian personality so I won't be able to reason with you, but I'll try to logically lay out the argument for global climate change for other folks that are open to reason but just do not have the time to inform themselves on the issue.
First off I do not view the world through idiological or political lenses. I look at things using a variation of the scientific method. I form a theory of how things work, either through observation or reading up on an issue, then I observe how the world really works compared to my theory to determine if it was correct or not. I realize that performing an experiment would more thoroughly follow the scientific method but that is not practical for an average person like me, especially when dealing with huge issues like global climate change.
So several years ago I wondered if the climate was really changing due to human activity. First off you have to start to explore the evidence in an apolitical way. Make sure your sources are legitimate and don't have political axes to grind.
The first news source I realized I had to disregard was Fox news. They are an OK source for news as long as that news does not have any political fallout. If it does then those news articles will most likely have a conservative spin to them and so can not necessarily be trusted to be true. Remember you have to keep politics out of the discussion.
One supporting source for my decision to ignore Fox news on this issue is:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067
Now when deciding on legitimate sources we should try to cut out all the media filters so we move from the rear of the horse to its mouth. We are talking climate change so lets see what the climate scientists have to say about it by going directly to the source.
http://www.realclimate.org/
You should also beware references made to Meteorologists opinions on global climate change because they can not necessarily be trusted. These folks deal with short term weather patterns and are not necessarily knowledgeable in long term climate issues. You can confirm that with Google.
Now there seems to be some naysayers to what the climate scientists have to say on the subject. Could some or many have political reasons for stating these opinions? Supporting evidence for concluding that is shown on this link.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482
I do completely agree with Henry8's observation of the "continuing, constantly changing storyline."
Those of us that have been following the issue for a while remember that the argument used to be that there was no such thing as global climate change, period. It was all B/S. Then as the evidence became undeniable that things were changing, the argument itself changed to, "Well the climate is changing but it is due to natural causes".
I have no financial interest in this argument one way or the other. I will most likely be long dead and buried when the climate crap really hits the fan, so what happens will have little effect on me personally. I am just trying to wake people up for the sake of generations that come after me. You ignore this warning at their peril not mine.
I have spent several years researching the subject and I could go on and on with more supporting evidence. But I feel I have presented enough evidence to get reasonable people started in finding out the truth about global climate change.
Henry8 I have led you to water, now will you drink?
NC-Tom, Chris Mooney's "The Republican War on Science" and his "Unscientific America" make a similar observation of the deniers' arguments:
From
"There is no change"
to
"Well, there may be a slight but insignificant change"
to
"There may be some change, but human activity has nothing to do with it"
to
"We may be influencing the change, but there's nothing we can do about it..."
Stay tuned....
Thanks I forgot about that last one. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with the all the B/S.
Al Gore's movie was almost entirely correct.
And I am pretty certain that, if you had bothered to listen, you would see that he did NOT say Katrina was caused by Global warming. An increase in the number of hurricanes in a summer is what one of the predictions states....that is not relevant to any given one.
The 'politics' is certainly present, but not so much when it comes to what the scientists are saying. Do not conflate some of the crazy attempts at 'solving' this global problem with the problem itself.
Global warming (or climate change) is very real. It is certainly happening. It caused by mankind. These are as close to scientific realities as you can get and I have yet to see any weakening of this evidence.
SUV's cause the Ice Age? How did man cause that one?
Is that an actual serious rebutting argument? I don't want to sound rude, but if it is, it is about the most idiotic argument regarding anything I've ever heard!
But sadly this level of idiocy is quite common among our "entrepeneurs" and "busines leaders".
I am embarrassed to have to point this out to you, but pointing out that humans are causing the current disruption to climate and atmospheric and ocean chemistry does not imply in any way that humans caused other climatic atmospheric and ocean disruptions through geologic history. These include some rather catastrophic ones that we definitely don't want to be the cause of unless we adopt a sort of mass-nihilism.
So, you are either an idiot or a nihilist.