Earth hottest it's been in 2,000 years

[tocqueville]

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 54 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."

Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities.

The academy had been asked to report to Congress on how researchers drew conclusions about the Earth's climate going back thousands of years, before data was available from modern scientific instruments. The academy convened a panel of 12 climate experts, chaired by Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, to look at the "proxy" evidence before then, such as tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediments, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers.

Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the panel wrote. It said the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia," though it was relatively warm around the year 1000 followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060623/ap_on_sc/global_warming_12

[TomInTib]

1. I trotted this out under Environment/Energy and got exactly..

zero replies.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=57875&mesg_id=57875

[pitohui]

4. there are a bunch of threads

i left a post to the new orleans newspaper link to the study and never saw it again, for some reason, there are zillions of competing threads so no one can get a discussion going and they ALL sink :-(

[TomInTib]

5. We are all too busy kicking the ball vis a vis..

and leave the truly worthwhile business to sink like stones.

[jerry611]

2. The weathermen still says it isn't real

Meteorologists still are not buying it. One on TV tonight said, "It's normal for the earth to go through periods of warming. In a decade or so, we will start to cool again. It has been going on for thousands of years. And all these people who are coming up with these doomsday scenarios are all going to look like fools."

[Yollam]

6. I kinda disagree with both sides of this "debate"

I don't think that data from ancient ice cores is persuasive enough evidence that a disaster is looking, and I sure as hell don't buy into doomsday scenarios of 50-foot rises in sea level. However, it may be that humanity needs doomsday scenarios to get off its butt and do something about it, because the more realistic scenarios - slightly warmer temps, glacier loss, melting permafrostshifting agricultural belts and crop failures, etc. are just not sexy enough for the average consumer.

And yes, there is a possibility that much of this warming comes from the fact that most weather stations are in population areas, which are experiencing increasing "heat island" effects, as well as natural fluctuation. It is possible that that the climate will revert to where it was or even get cooler. But even If I was 100% sure global warming wasn't happening, I'd still be 100% behind big reductions in fossil fuel emissions. We are using up a limited resource in a very wasteful way, and it is fouling our air and water, reducing our quality of life.

It's sad that so many people wouldn't want to conserve gas if there was no biblical flood threatening them. For me, reducing pollution and conserving fossil fuels (not to mention reducing demand, which would reduce the price) is good enough reason to ban many SUVs and gas-guzzler cars.

[Elwood P Dowd]

3. Bush's buddy controls the thermostat

He is just letting us sweat until we stop gay marriage, flag burning, and abortions. When we do that, Bush's buddy will turn it down.

:sarcasm: