Y2k bug in NASA GISS data (global warming)

[mnealtx 0]

Looks like NASA had a bug that was skewing the results. Other analysis seems to show that NASA does not have effective algorithms for correct for heat island effects. One such adjustment shows that stations today should be .2C *cooler* than in the 1940s. The "Watts Up With That" blog has been doing surveys of reporting stations and found plenty of evidence to prove that adjustment false.

Result: 1934, not 1998 is now the warmest year on record (1998 slipped to #2). 1921 comes in at 3rd. In fact, 4 of the warmest 10 years on record now occur in the 1930s.

Interesting factoid: .5C of the .6C reported increase in temps since the 1940's is due to arbitrary 'adjustments' by NASA which now seem to be coming under question. It will be interesting to see how much the actual warming will end up being, once all the measurement factors are ACCURATELY taken into account.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[NCclimber 0]

snicker, snicker

[rushmc 23]

  Quote

Looks like NASA had a bug that was skewing the results. Other analysis seems to show that NASA does not have effective algorithms for correct for heat island effects. One such adjustment shows that stations today should be .2C *cooler* than in the 1940s. The "Watts Up With That" blog has been doing surveys of reporting stations and found plenty of evidence to prove that adjustment false.

Result: 1934, not 1998 is now the warmest year on record (1998 slipped to #2). 1921 comes in at 3rd. In fact, 4 of the warmest 10 years on record now occur in the 1930s.

Interesting factoid: .5C of the .6C reported increase in temps since the 1940's is due to arbitrary 'adjustments' by NASA which now seem to be coming under question. It will be interesting to see how much the actual warming will end up being, once all the measurement factors are ACCURATELY taken into account.

Like I posted before, they have to go crazy now because as the FACTS come to light getting any polically motivated GWing changes will get harder, so they are running out of time.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

More from Miloy posted on FOX
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292810,00.html

Junk Science: New Science Challenges Climate Alarmists?
Thursday , August 09, 2007

By Steven Milloy
ADVERTISEMENT
“People like to complain about the weather,” goes the old saw. This is especially true nowadays as bad weather becomes an excuse for the climate alarmist-friendly media to trot out its manmade global warming boogeyman.

The alarmists seem to need thinly-veiled headlines – such as the Washington Post’s “Across Globe, Extremes of Heat and Rain” (Aug. 8) and the New York Times’ “Warming Threatens Farms in India, U.N. Officials Says” (Aug. 8) – as two more studies published this week in the journal Science and the discovery of an embarrassing temperature error rained on their parade.

In the first study, UK researchers claim to have “improved the forecasting skill of a global climate model by incorporating information about the actual state of the ocean and the atmosphere, rather than the approximate ones most models use.” The new model predicts that warming will slow during the next few years but then speed up again, and that at least half of the years after 2009 will be warmer than 1998 – the warmest year on record according to global warming legend (more on that later).

“A common criticism of global climate models, particularly for predicting the coming decade, has been that they only include factors, such as solar radiation, atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases, which are affected by changes from outside the climate system [while neglecting] internal climate variability that arises from natural changes within the system, like El Niño, fluctuations in ocean circulation and anomalies in ocean heat content,” researchers said.

This internal variability could lead to short-term changes, especially regionally, that are quite different from the warming predicted to occur over the next century by global climate models, said researchers.

While the researchers want us to believe that climate modeling has advanced, it really has not.

First, and as an overarching comment, if existing climate models are so prone to error, then why would Congress want to rely on them as a basis for enacting energy price-hiking and economy-harming laws and regulations?

The new model predicts that, during the coming decade, average global temperature will be 0.3 degrees Centigrade (plus/minus 0.21 degrees Centigrade) higher than the 2004 average temperature.

But can mathematical models really estimate global temperature change within 0.3 degrees Centigrade when we don’t even know what the average global temperature is to within 0.7 degrees Centigrade?

As NASA’s alarmist-in-chief James Hansen admits, we have no definition of what we are trying to measure in the context of average global temperature. “For the global mean, the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 57.2 degrees Fahrenheit, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58 degrees Fahrenheit and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse,” says Hansen.

For a dimmer view of the concept of average global temperature, consider the thoughts of renowned theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson who says that average land temperature is “impossible to measure… is a fiction… nobody knows what it is… there’s no way you can measure it.”

The UK researchers (and most other climate alarmists) are even wrong on the matter of 1998 being the warmest year on record – at least for the U.S. According to a new analysis which discovered an error in a NASA dataset, 1934 is the new warmest year on record for the U.S. In fact, four of the warmest 10 years in the U.S. date from the 1930s while only three date from the last 10 years. This is an embarrassing setback for alarmists, especially since about 80 percent of manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions occurred after 1940.

In the second Science study, Desert Research Institute scientists report that increased levels of industrial pollution (soot) in Arctic snow during the late-19th and early-20th centuries may have caused the warming occurring in that region at that time. The researchers say the soot reduced the reflectivity of snow and ice, allowing the surface to absorb more energy from the sun.

If true, that line of reasoning may be relevant to the ongoing Arctic warming trend.

Though alarmists attribute that warming trend to increased atmospheric CO2, this argument seems easily batted aside by the observation that there is little correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature in the Arctic region.

Could ongoing Arctic deposition of soot be a possibility? You might not think so because U.S., Canadian and Western European industries now operate under strict soot control regulations. But what about China? After all, it burns more coal than the U.S., EU and Japan combined – typically without the emissions controls of developed nations

A 2006 New York Times article, entitled “Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow,” reported that soot emissions from the thousands of Chinese coal-burning factories and power plants waft across the Pacific Ocean and are easily detectable in the U.S. Northwest. The Desert Research Institute scientists note in their paper that, “Some models suggest that a large fraction of Arctic pollutants originate in south Asia.”

If you’re worried about polar bears floating on melting chunks of ice, clamping down on CO2 emissions from SUVs may do absolutely nothing to alleviate that concern.

Because of the many questions about the science used to inflate the climate-worry bubble – and as reported on the Fox News Channel show Special Report (Aug. 7) – my Web site JunkScience.com is offering quite a nice prize to the first person who can scientifically prove that humans are causing catastrophic global warming. But it’s going to take a lot more than ominous weather reports to win the “Ultimate Global Warming Challenge.”

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[NCclimber 0]

Here's another post (on this subject) that Billvon never responded to.
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2883995#2883995

[billvon 3,086]

>The "Watts Up With That" blog has been doing surveys of reporting
>stations and found plenty of evidence to prove that adjustment false.

I saw that site. Oddly, they think that a site that's near an air conditioner (which might increase temps in the summer) is inaccurate, but a desert site in the center of an irrigated field (which will decrease temps all year) is accurate.

Perhaps we need a "that's watt's up with that" to show the errors on that site as well.

>Result: 1934, not 1998 is now the warmest year on record (1998 slipped
>to #2). 1921 comes in at 3rd. In fact, 4 of the warmest 10 years on record
>now occur in the 1930s.

You do realize that's in the US, right? The US represents 6% of the area of the entire planet. I have yet to see any such recalculation applied to the rest of the planet.

I am also curious about this particular claim. The claim is that a Y2K bug skewed results after the year 2000, making them seem warmer than they were. And this affected the 1998 record - how? (1998 came before 2000.) It will be interesting to see what exactly they're talking about.

[mnealtx 0]

When NASA's 'adjustment' assumes that weather stations are COOLER now than in 1900, there's going to be false results.

Feel free to rebut Watt's studies - I'm sure he'd appreciate the debate.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[billvon 3,086]

>Feel free to rebut Watt's studies . . .

Without the original data and the algorithm used, I cannot effectively do so.

BTW here's the original data and the corrected data (attached.) Note that originally 1998 was .01C warmer than 1934. The new data compilation shows 1934 to be .02C warmer than 1998. (data for the US only of course.)

[mnealtx 0]

Yes, I saw that too.

Could this boo-boo be an "Inconvenient Truth"?

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[skinnyflyer 0]

Here's another article from the National Post titled 'Global warming? Look at the numbers';


http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=61b0590f-c5e6-4772-8cd1-2fefe0905363&p=1

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
A. Sachs

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

  Quote

When NASA's 'adjustment' assumes that weather stations are COOLER now than in 1900, there's going to be false results.

Feel free to rebut Watt's studies - I'm sure he'd appreciate the debate.

Just to mix this up a bit - didn't Several new staffers get placed from the White House into higher level positions at NASA? There has been a lot of noise about this on Slashdot the last month or so....and reading blogs from NASA workers point out that its not all for the good.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[billvon 3,086]

> When NASA's 'adjustment' assumes that weather stations are COOLER now than in 1900 . . .

Except both 1998 and 1934 took place before the year 2000.

[mnealtx 0]

  Quote

> When NASA's 'adjustment' assumes that weather stations are COOLER now than in 1900 . . .

Except both 1998 and 1934 took place before the year 2000.

Argue it with the data furnishers, Bill - I just reported that the error was found, that's all...

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[rushmc 23]

Did you see this today??

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070814/NATION02/108140063

Here is the money quote form the page (for me at least)

eacting yesterday to word that certain European governments and officials are suddenly trying to abandon their costly "global warming" policies, Royal Astronomical Society fellow Benny Peiser, of the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University in Great Britain, recalls the teachings of Marcus Aurelius: "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

Hmm

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

One more claim challenged

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,293510,00.html

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 3,086]

From Newsweek:
----------------------------
The Truth About Denial

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine

By Sharon Begley

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."

[NCclimber 0]

Anyone know who wrote this?

  Quote

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

[billvon 3,086]

Same guy who said this:

"One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."

"Everyone agrees that the increasing abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has two important consequences, first a change in the physics of radiation transport in the atmosphere, and second a change in the biology of plants on the ground and in the ocean."

Do you agree with the man whose words you posted, that there is indeed a consensus that increasing CO2 results in warming?

[billvon 3,086]

Also the same guy who said this:

"The United States has less than a century left of its turn as top nation. Since the modern nation-state was invented around the year 1500, a succession of countries have taken turns at being top nation, first Spain, then France, Britain, America. Each turn lasted about 150 years. Ours began in 1920, so it should end about 2070. The reason why each top nation’s turn comes to an end is that the top nation becomes over-extended, militarily, economically and politically. Greater and greater efforts are required to maintain the number one position. Finally the over-extension becomes so extreme that the structure collapses. Already we can see in the American posture today some clear symptoms of over-extension. Who will be the next top nation? China is the obvious candidate. After that it might be India or Brazil. We should be asking ourselves, not how to live in an America-dominated world, but how to prepare for a world that is not America-dominated. That may be the most important problem for the next generation of Americans to solve. How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two?"

So either stop overextending ourselves (and thus postponing our collapse) or start thinking of us as becoming #2 within our children's lifetimes. An interesting lesson.

[rushmc 23]

  Quote

Also the same guy who said this:

"The United States has less than a century left of its turn as top nation. Since the modern nation-state was invented around the year 1500, a succession of countries have taken turns at being top nation, first Spain, then France, Britain, America. Each turn lasted about 150 years. Ours began in 1920, so it should end about 2070. The reason why each top nation’s turn comes to an end is that the top nation becomes over-extended, militarily, economically and politically. Greater and greater efforts are required to maintain the number one position. Finally the over-extension becomes so extreme that the structure collapses. Already we can see in the American posture today some clear symptoms of over-extension. Who will be the next top nation? China is the obvious candidate. After that it might be India or Brazil. We should be asking ourselves, not how to live in an America-dominated world, but how to prepare for a world that is not America-dominated. That may be the most important problem for the next generation of Americans to solve. How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two?"

So either stop overextending ourselves (and thus postponing our collapse) or start thinking of us as becoming #2 within our children's lifetimes. An interesting lesson.

And now, to the newest claim. A group of "scientists" in GB claim the real warming will not start until 2009

Trying to by time


What a hoot

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

  Quote

From Newsweek:
----------------------------
The Truth About Denial

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine

By Sharon Begley

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."

Boxer, now there is a one I am likely to pay attention too

By the way, I see you chose (once again) to misdirect and not respond to the points made

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 3,086]

>And now, to the newest claim, A group of "scientists" in GB claim the
>real warming will not start until 2009

Followed immediately by:

>By the way, I see you chose (once again) to misdirect . . .

I will bet you can't even see the irony in what you just posted.

>and not respond to the points made

I don't think you understand the points in the materials you post. Can you explain - in your own words - what you think the point was in that article? And do you disagree with the claim - again, from the article you excerpted - that one of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal and natural gas?

[rushmc 23]

  Quote

>And now, to the newest claim, A group of "scientists" in GB claim the
>real warming will not start until 2009

Followed immediately by:

>By the way, I see you chose (once again) to misdirect . . .

I will bet you can't even see the irony in what you just posted.

>and not respond to the points made

I don't think you understand the points in the materials you post. Can you explain - in your own words - what you think the point was in that article? And do you disagree with the claim - again, from the article you excerpted - that one of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal and natural gas?

Oh you do find interesting ways to insult don't you.

In any event, the point is not anything more specific than to piont out one more scarey story used to move forward the GWing alarmists agenda.

Are you done?

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

  Quote

>And now, to the newest claim, A group of "scientists" in GB claim the
>real warming will not start until 2009

Followed immediately by:

>By the way, I see you chose (once again) to misdirect . . .

I will bet you can't even see the irony in what you just posted.

>and not respond to the points made

I don't think you understand the points in the materials you post. Can you explain - in your own words - what you think the point was in that article? And do you disagree with the claim - again, from the article you excerpted - that one of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal and natural gas?

.....and I do see the irony

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 3,086]

>In any event, the point is not anything more specific than to piont out
>one more scarey story used to move forward the GWing alarmists agenda.

Ah, OK. I agree there are a lot of scary stories out there. The Day after Tomorrow was one such story (fictional) as was the novel "State of Fear" (also fiction.) The possibility that pollution could kill thousands of people is also scary. That one came true. The possibility that Antarctica could lose entire ice shelves, that glaciers will recede and disappear, and that species will be threatened by the change in climate are also scary, and have come true as well.

However, predictions that the North Atlantic current will stall have not come true yet, and I doubt they will. Likewise, I doubt we will see superstorms that wipe out entire states. We will simply see more of what we're seeing now - rising average temperatures, changes in rain patterns, melting glaciers, stronger storms and rising sea levels. How much they will rise, how high the temperature will get etc are being debated now. The results of that may be scary and may not be. But whether you fear them or not, they will still happen - so we best prepare for them and leave the fearmongering for the extremists on both sides of the debate.

(BTW one of my favorite fearmongering tactics lately is the one that claims that the environmentalist movement is an evil plot to destroy the economy of the US! I think that was in Crichton's book as well - but some people find it hard to distinguish fact from fiction.)

BTW2 - do you agree with the author that "One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas"?