CD should consider limiting comments to 100 words. Might improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

Well done. Like you, I smell a rat. My fellow liberal intellectual Commondreams readers normally so on target in their deep thinking ought to take a 2nd look at the potential motives behind this issue and ask themselves: Why is the only solution offered a massive derivatives market for Wall Street at our collective expense with most all production of relevant technologies to fix the problem all aggregated overseas? If climate predictions are indeed correct, will the proposed solution (cap and trade) really do much about it?

Sioux Rose

NIKKI: Your post raises valid and interesting questions. I, too, would prefer to see tax liabilities placed on major polluters, a harm tax aimed at collecting money to be used in global ecological rehabilitation efforts.

You are correct about the limited scope of the discussion, that there are very significant missing links. However, to then use what's not being discussed as "grounds" for throwing the entire climate change debate out is disingenous. (That's not aimed at you, but the less informed posters who seem to be trying that line of fire.)

Sure the carbon tax is another ridiculous ruse brought to us by the same moneymakers who fouled the Wall St temple with their cancerous derivatives. Those bent on greed and destruction will turn every event into such an opportunity. We must remember that the twisted motives on the part of some in power are a separate issue from that of actual climate dissolution. To the extent one is conflated with the other is the extent to which the need for meaningful change is diluted or tragically delayed.

Jesus, ignoramus. Just read the literature.

Start at www.realclimate.org.

ubrew:
if co2 levels fell to 150 ppm we would all be dead. We wouldn't know if it cooled or warmed.

if co2 levels rose from 250ppm to 390ppm, would the earth undergo global warming?

Hard to say with any certainty, as historically, co2 levels have been over 150 times higher and the temp of the earth was 8C less than it is now. And vice versa.
So to answer that question with any certainty is impossible as climatic records show us that there are other forces that can completely overwhelm co2.

Sorry, but the RAW data has NOT been published.

GCM's are very very poor indicators of future climatic trends. The most important cycle is not well understood....the hydrological cycle. That cycle dwarfs any other green house gas.

When and if that cycle can be modeled out of the chaos that it currently exibits, the GCM's might be useful. Till then, they are a guess at best.

I love it!

Incorrect Assum: "Climate science, like economics, is an inexact science evidenced by how a full 98% of economists missed the crash"

With so many economists missing the crash, I can see why you distrust climatologists. Just the other day, I had to insult my grocer because of something the mailman said. (/sarcasm)

http://www.350.org/about/science

A sample of info:

For all of human history until about 200 years ago, our atmosphere contained 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Parts per million is simply a way of measuring the concentration of different gases, and means the ratio of the number of carbon dioxide molecules to all of the molecules in the atmosphere. 275 ppm CO2 is a useful amount—without some CO2 and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in our atmosphere, our planet would be too cold for humans to inhabit.

So we need some carbon in the atmosphere, but the question is how much?

Beginning in the 18th century, humans began to burn coal and gas and oil to produce energy and goods. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere began to rise, at first slowly and now more quickly. Many of the activities we do every day like turning the lights on, cooking food, or heating or cooling our homes rely on energy sources like coal and oil that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. We're taking millions of years worth of carbon, stored beneath the earth as fossil fuels, and releasing it into the atmosphere. By now—and this is the second number—the planet has 390 parts per million CO2 – and this number is rising by about 2 parts per million every year.

Scientists are now saying that's too much – that number is higher than any time seen in the recorded history of our planet – and we're already beginning to see disastrous impacts on people and places all over the world. Glaciers everywhere are melting and disappearing fast—and they are a source of drinking water for hundreds of millions of people. Mosquitoes, who like a warmer world, are spreading into lots of new places, and bringing malaria and dengue fever with them. Drought is becoming much more common, making food harder to grow in many places. Sea levels have begun to rise, and scientists warn that they could go up as much as several meters this century. If that happens, many of the world's cities, island nations, and farmland will be underwater. The oceans are growing more acidic because of the CO2 they are absorbing, which makes it harder for animals like corals and clams to build and maintain their shells and skeletons. Coral reefs could start dissolving at an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 450-500 ppm. These impacts are combining to exacerbate conflicts and security issues in already resource-strapped regions.

The Arctic is sending us perhaps the clearest message that climate change is occurring much more rapidly than scientists previously thought. In the summer of 2007, sea ice was roughly 39% below the summer average for 1979-2000, a loss of area equal to nearly five United Kingdoms. Many scientists now believe the Arctic will be completely ice free in the summertime between 2011 and 2015, some 80 years ahead of what scientists had predicted just a few years ago.

Sioux Rose

IA: Greed is why the economists missed the crash, it's a blinding force you know. And it is greed on the part of those who prefer to deny the obvious signs of the death of far too many interlocking ecosystems then bother to change their self-centered profligately wasteful lifestyles.

And the idiot above who impugned the reputation of scientists with lifelong dedication to these things as if CD has turned into some Fox "news" forum where fair and balanced means nothing of the sort, instead, what's constantly done are efforts to erode the reputations of persons who expose The Truth, a truth quite inconvenient to those who place greed highest on their ego's totem poles.

Since we are all human, dirt can be found on ANYONE and the right wing will spend millions, maybe billions to discover, uncover, and smear that dirt rather than expose the Light that might set us free from the contrivances on the part of overt militarism, reprobate government services, a failed economic system, and DYING nature everywhere... the same nature WE all depend upon for sustenance. It is to philosophy what M.A.D is to national defense.

*yawn*

And you are, to demand such things of these people...?

And if they presented a thorough argument, including all the advanced mathematics, physics and statistical analysis, you would read it an understand it?

Expertise is bad how??? people with knowledge, training and intelligence (unless it is used in complex money making schemes) are to be distruxted why???

What are you an expert at? Could anyone do what you do for a living? Would you be happy with someone building a 300 ft dam upstream of your home if it wasn't designed by trained and state-licensed as a civil engineers? Would you trust yourself or your loved ones to a hospital where there are no MD's, or RN's or LPN's?

Can you design the computer you are using now - from scratch?

Your CV, please?

Dayahka, you wrote that "The emails clearly show a pattern of systematic data manipulation and attempts to discredit and exclude any contrary views from climate publications ..."

If you are going to make such claims, you should at least quote a few emails that support your claims. I read some of the emails, and I didn't see any evidence of malicious data manipulation. Some of the emails also document debates among the researchers regarding various aspects of the data and its interpretation, but this is of course a natural and healthy feature of science.

I did come across a few emails that I found disturbing, however. One of the researchers mentioned that he got "a lot of static" from the IPCC regarding some caveats that he wanted to include in the report. He said that the IPCC ultimately relented and let him include the caveats. In my opinion, the very fact that the IPCC tried to suppress the inclusion of his caveats is worrisome. If the world is to rely on the IPCC's reports in making decisions of historical importance, the IPCC's scientific integrity must be above reproach. It could be that those at the IPCC who tried to suppress the caveats did so based on the honest conviction that the caveats weren't supported by the evidence; or it could be that they were attempting to tilt the conclusions in the direction that they thought they needed to go. I think this deserves investigation, and if it turns out that the latter explanation is correct, someone needs to be removed from the IPCC.

There were also some emails that relate to "attempts to discredit and exclude any contrary views from climate publications.", but it's not clear to me if was an attempt at suppressing legitimate scientific research because it contradicted CRU's conclusions, or if the contrary research was, as the CRU team seemed to believe, unworthy of publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and they were merely trying to preserve the scientific integrity of climate research. This also needs to be investigated (and it will be investigated), and once again, if it turns out that someone at CRU attempted to corrupt the scientific process, they should be fired (in my opinion).

It's an open letter, not a dissertation or scholarly article, you jerk.

You obviously haven't read the scientific literature in this area. You're just an ideological hack trolling here--probably a paid agent provocateur.

Read the links to the scholarly literature available at www.realclimate.org.

Then get back to us.

Thats closer to 150ppm, than 15ppm. But, whats a factor of 10 among friends?

This is very interesting and if your really open minded, should be considered.

In a paper recently published in the international peer-reviewed journal Energy & Fuels, Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh (2009), Professor of Energy Conversion at The Ohio State University, addresses the residence time (RT) of anthropogenic CO2 in the air. He finds that the RT for bulk atmospheric CO2, the molecule 12CO2, is ~5 years, in good agreement with other cited sources (Segalstad, 1998), while the RT for the trace molecule 14CO2 is ~16 years. Both of these residence times are much shorter than what is claimed by the IPCC. The rising concentration of atmospheric CO2 in the last century is not consistent with supply from anthropogenic sources. Such anthropogenic sources account for less than 5% of the present atmosphere, compared to the major input/output from natural sources (~95%). Hence, anthropogenic CO2 is too small to be a significant or relevant factor in the global warming process, particularly when comparing with the far more potent greenhouse gas water vapor. The rising atmospheric CO2 is the outcome of rising temperature rather than vice versa. Correspondingly, Dr. Essenhigh concludes that the politically driven target of capture and sequestration of carbon from combustion sources would be a major and pointless waste of physical and financial resources.