


Global warming

The vanishing north


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Readers' comments



Why are we not seeing a similar situation in Antactica? As I understand it, there is some ice loss in one small part of the subcontinent, but ice is accumulating over most of it.
In general it pays to be skeptical about grand extrapolations whether in economics, politics or science. In this particular case the 'science' is little more than heroic correlation. Let's keep a sense of proportion - and continue the research on sustainable energy sources.

john4law in reply to reghall

Antarctica does not have a Gulf Stream. It is shielded from Global warming trends far more than the Arctic. Only if Global warming is very prolonged and pronounced will we see changes. When such changes reach Antarctica, they will be very profound and driven by huge heart reservoirs in the deep oceans and be beyond any conceivable amelioration by human civilization.

justanonymous in reply to reghall

The Artic and Antarctic are extremely bad barometers for global temperatures. Historically there has been tremendous variability of weather at the poles. Wind, jetstreams, currents, salinity all play huge roles in the weather variability up and down there.

There are tons of newspaper entries over the lack of icebergs in the north atlantic or too many icebergs. When Titanic sank, the captain and crew had chosen a route that should've been largely iceberg free yet there they were.

You are correct though, the Antarctic has been getting colder in recent decades and the arctic has been getting warmer but for all we know, it's all normal. We just don't have enough data to start to make informed decisions and certianly not enough for all out alarmism the like some idiots insist on here.

cyrpu5tXWk in reply to reghall

The main physical difference between the two poles, is the the Arctic is open water (ice) while the Antarctic is a large landmass. I remember reading this in one of the articles in the special report, stating that due to this major physical difference the average temperature in the antarctic is -60C while the arctic is -15C.

Also, losses in the northern ice sheets are many times greater than gains in the south.

justanonymous in reply to cyrpu5tXWk

So long as the Antarctica continent rests on he souh pole we will likely remain in an ice age.

Yes news flash, we're in he middle of a giant ice age called the quarternary. We are just barely getting a very minor reprieve before the ice advances again. No cause for alarm though we likely won't slip into the deep freeze for another 5,000 to 20,000 years.


"The impact of the melting Arctic may have a calamitous effect on the planet. "

No, the calamitous effect is on modern industrial civilization, which is built on a few fundamental food crops that can exist in a fairly narrow band of temperatures and moisture, life will figure out most everything else, just not the life we might be used to or depend upon.

At this point feel free to tax carbon all you want, but it is probably too late. A tipping point refers to a non linear response, just cutting human emissions won't matter so much because, the climate has crossed the proverbial Rubicon, there ain't no there, there etc.

justanonymous in reply to teacup775

Drowning in. Teacup huh.?

You have. Zero proof of tipping points. No forcing theory raises this. And if tippin points existed, natural forces would've triggered them in th past and we wouldn't be here.

No, linden is very likely right that the earths atmosphere is largely negatively feedbacked not positive as the alarmists insist on.

teacup775 in reply to justanonymous

Ah, you mean unlike when our atmosphere had tons of O2 liberated into it by bacterial life, killing off the anaerobic conditions situation predated their rise? Or the fact that as the methane that's locked up in various places is librated that the heating effects will be magnified enormously?
We are here because of tipping points.

terrestri in reply to teacup775

agreed, there have been many. but what caused them, and can we control the conditions that control the events that affect us the most?

the methane issue concerns me in the extreme, it would be like triggering venus on earth. but, is it within our actual ability (intentionally) to either force it, or prevent it? or will it come (or not) by natural forces beyond our influence?

i do not believe our science has progressed enough to answer this question.

teacup775 in reply to terrestri

I doubt the planet would end up like Venus, if only because all those gases where locked up over geologic time when life was present and a giant chunk of it by life itself in one manner or another.
Rgardless of one's views about what is causing warming, it is happening. The problem I see is the earth climate has a large system with a lot of intertia, the idea of changing its direction over 10 years is a bit blinkered.

justanonymous in reply to terrestri

methane comprises 0.00017% of our atmosphere. It only stays in the atmosphere for 10 years. Yes it's a potent gas but even if it all were released at once from the permafrost, you'd have a few warmer years (don't know how much) but not much else. It's not a cause for alarm. It's important to understand the details.

On Venus, planetary physics is extremely complex, Venus is much closer to the sun than the earth is. It doesn't have a notable magnetic field and it's atmosphere is being eroded to space by the solar wind. There are too many variables that do not apply.

Let's keep the moronic idiotic uninformed alarmism at bay shall we?

terrestri in reply to justanonymous

are you even reading the comments, or just latching on to particular phrases and words and then assuming the rest of the post?

"runaway methane release" sounds like it would be pretty bad for just about everything, if indeed it actually happened (which im not suggesting is imminent or even likely). all of your details you put out there about methane's life span and venus makes it obvious you had no idea we were talking about the clathrate gun.

the venus comment was hyperbole, which i expressed, and you did not read.

Let's keep the moronic idiotic uninformed instant-replies at bay shall we?






oh, and colonizing other planets & developing fusion power.

terrestri in reply to whenao

heh, i like the reference. however, i was not suggesting we'd all survive. clearly we've overstretched our planet's ability to hold us all, and as much as both of us would like to solve that problem through attrition, i don't think that will be possible.

Robert Del Rosso in reply to terrestri

Let me analyze your comment. “Not suggesting we’d all survive”, means some of us would die (from Global Warming). That sounds a lot like “solving the problem through attrition”. But you say you don’t think “attrition” will be possible. So what *is* your definition of “attrition”?

terrestri in reply to Robert Del Rosso

Allow me to clarify, by "attrition" I mean our specie's total population stabilizing to a sustainable number over the course of many generations via 'natural' deaths not caused by events directly related to climate change.


"In the end, the world is likely to get a grip on global warming. The survival instinct demands it." I heartily disagree. You speak of human nature. Here is what human nature will do:

The majority of people will generally;

1. act in their own self interest
2. choose short term benefits over long term benefits
3. game the system if they can
4. seek to externalize costs
5. only change when they think they have to
6. only change as much as they think they have to
7. only change as long as they think they have to

Don't agree? How's your diet going?

Due to these tendencies, human nature will always push systems beyond tipping points. It makes no difference what you as an individual do because the majority, acting according to the above rules, will only seek to exploit your behavior to their own benefit thus nullifying your efforts.

Because of human nature catastrophic global warming is inevitable. We will not “get a grip” on it.

Southern Lawyer in reply to NetCentric

I also question the assumption that we'll figure it out by necessity. Many times more cultures than exist today have gone extinct with far more obvious flaws than ours. For example, some island nations who hunted and gathered exclusively exhausted their supply of animals and edible fauna and perished even though there were other readily-discoverable foods and plants in their region. They must have known there would be none left. But they did it anyway. They failed in the face of obvious death with tangible evidence right in front of them. What makes us think that we'll be any better, with intangible evidence that seems far off and more than half our population not even admitting it's a problem?

justanonymous in reply to Southern Lawyer

We won't. Humanity has been around for a million years and the next million years will likely see our complete and utter extinction.

It would take something fundamental to change for us to inhabit this planet as long as bacteria or corals.

It would likely take faster than light capabilities and an overabundance of habitable planets in this galaxy.

Otherwise, we're likely done for. Fatalism I know but I've always been a realist.

umghhh in reply to justanonymous

that is nature of things. Bad things happen and tend to cause trouble. It is like infections and accidents that plague us all life - most of us survive some of us die prematurely. For society to collapse usually a mixture of ingredients is necessary or one big event. The problem here is that the change is huge and affects almost if not everybody. This would mean that possible effect may be a tipping point for us too. Even survivalists will have trouble in such times. This as said will happen eventually. The question can we do something about it and if so weather we will. My guess is we will do something when it will be too late. But as my life expectancy is around 35-40 more years I can imagine that I will see only part of the change. I hope at least.


The danger Global Warming represents is foolish to ignore. It's simple, our species needs a stable home to survive. When we discover a threat to our future we need to be able to effectivly respond. The danger global warming represents is very real. The danger really has very little to do with temperature, climate, or the effect humans have on them. The real danger is to our ability to deal with real danger as a species. The scientific climate data has been twisted back and forth around political agenda and public opinion that it no longer matters if the artic and antartic are so hot they have become engulfed in flames. Our ability to respond as a group has been melted away by bad science and worse reporting being manipulated by good politicians. In an attempt to bolster support for a "good cause" scientific research was embelished (an oxy moron no?), data convienently overlooked and conclusions prematurly made public. They were not neccesarily wrong, but they were not scientific either. At one point the slogan "scientists have all agreed", became commonly associated with gloabal warming. I heard it a dozen different ways "the scientific community agrees ....", "scientists no longer debating" it was at that same moment that global warming lost any chance of being accepted. The spin was too thick and the fear mongering too intense. The global warming danger we face now began to grow exponentially from that moment on.

This thought uses as little spellin and gramm'r possible to make room for content. Aynstein.

john4law in reply to aynstein

It is greater folly to arrogant ourselves to the belief that political programs can affect global climate! There is not a scintilla of evidence that we can model and therefor predict and perhaps influence global climate. Even if we could explain the changes which have already occurred over the past 40 years, there is not a scintilla of evidence that any program which could be politically approved and implemented by the world community would have any affect on climate patterns! Be honest. We don't know what is happening, why and have no ability to change it! This may upset many but such is life! My greatest fear is that political fads and half baked schemes with agendas not fully disclosed will make matters FAR WORSE!


Anyone who has been to LA, Bangkok, Bejing, Mumbai, Athens, Manilla. etc and can still deny that man is not polluting the planet is probably as capable of believing in creationism.

That’s the problem, you can’t debate ignorance. Man Made Global warming is a fact.

justanonymous in reply to RumbaClave

I'm glad I made your day.

See the thing that crucifies you is that you "believe in man made global warming." "Belief" is a statement of religion not science or logic.

But yes, since you're as blind to believing in AGW as creationists are to their beliefs then you're synonymous with them. Smile on.

kwpreston in reply to RumbaClave

Undoubtedly we are stressing our environment for sure, but that does not prove global warming. I am very skeptical about the whole science of climate change, which appears to be driven by opportunism, hysteria and ideology.

Comrade Obama in reply to RumbaClave

Those cities are without a doubt polluted but they only cover a small fraction of Earth - and those cities, especially Mumbai/Bangkok have also lifted millions out of poverty and generated huge economic/social growth. For all their pollution they provide jobs/housing/social-programs and provide cultural/scientific/economic growth. The benefits far outweigh the supposed consequences, dismantling growing economies in the middle of a global recession based on speculative science whose effects wouldn't cause harm anytime soon doesn't make sense.

justanonymous in reply to RumbaClave

Scientific and fact is one of the gravest of oxymorons.

Caution the sword of science will turn on you readily, cut your hands off and carve your tongue and eyes can can even slay gods.

Have you forgotten your Saberhagen or were you not classically trained??

1modaddy in reply to RumbaClave

Man is polluting the planet in those places, but. . . go to google earth, zoom all the way out and close your eyes, pin the tail on the earth donkey, then zoom all the way in. Chances are very remote that you hit a human inhabited spot at all. With the average population density of an American suburb the entire population of the earth fits neatly inside of Texas (actually that is using 1990's numbers, but you get the idea). Only .6% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is from human emissions. It is one thing to say that the earth has finite resources and quite another to say that we have nearly exhausted them.

Gullible. The propagandists of anthropogenic global warming have an agenda that would be much worse and much more immediate than climate change.

oops... in reply to justanonymous

Here are the undispiuted facts:
1. Human actions CANNOT have consequences for the earths climate.
2. Changes in the composition of the atmosphere CANNOT change the weather.
3. ALL climate scientisis are motivated solely by there own personal greed and their lack of integrity allows the EVIL UN to carry out this preposterous hoax and tax us to DEATH.

AGAnderson in reply to oops...

"2. Changes in the composition of the atmosphere CANNOT change the weather."

Technically, that is incorrect. If all the methane in Earth were released at once, though highly unlikely, the weather could indeed change quite a bit.


I never thought prominent global newspapers would still be explaining the risks of climate change in 2012. That's the really sad part-- articles like this haven't said anything new since probably the early 90s. I think at this point, mitigation is necessary but futile as a priority-- we've entered the time to focus on adaptation.


It is well known in published science articles that dinosaurs once roamed the arctic slope of Alaska. that could not have happened with an icy cold frozen type of arctic climate. So, how is it that the earth survived a much warmer arctic climate to support dinosaurs that far north ?? Continental glaciation only occurred recently in the last couple of million years and melting glaciers has been going on for over the last 10,000 years most of which did not involve the use of hummers and suv's? Now how did that happen?

justanonymous in reply to grizzld43

there is no need for alarmism. things that happen over tens of thousands or millions of years are being compressed by the media and a small group of profiteers to create the culture of fear that they want us to live under.
No thanks. The next ice age won't be here for 5,000 to 20,000 years but inbetween we're very unlikely to see Cambrian or Devonian like weather (barring supervolcanism, something going really haywire with the sun, something going off with our orbital characteristics, or a giant asteroid hitting us).
The alarmists are morons without a basic understanding of the geologic timescale.

Stuki in reply to grizzld43

You're looking at it from a different angle than the alarmists. Of course the earth will survive. The problem is, most cities in which banksters and other progressives live will be less comfortable. And since the banksters and progressives have largely succeeded in putting all meaningful resources under their control already, they by now constitute the only viable population segment to advertise to. Resulting in any publication having to pander to them. After all, how much Viagra could one possibly hope to sell to some T-Rex on the north slope?

Robert Del Rosso in reply to grizzld43

You realize, of course,that 65 to 200 million years ago, "when dinosaurs roamed the arctic" they were not sharing the planet with 7 billion humans?

The earth survived 65 million years ago since it was a completely different planet. Except for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, climate change was a gradual process. The earth's Average Global Temperature has increased only 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 to 2.7 degrees Celsius) since the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago.

The "Global Warmists" seem to think that nasty things could happen when you have the same temperature change that ocurred over 10,000 years and squeeze it into only the 100 years ending in the year 2100. The "Deniers" deny that having the climate change at a rate 100 times as fast as in the last 10,000 years in the next 88 years will cause anything that we cannot "adapt" to.

Count me amoung the "Global Warmists", who have been accused of blindly following the Warmist creed.

But I can quote the above to a Denier and tell him look, Venus (864*F) is hotter than Mercury (801*F), even though Mercury is much closer to the Sun, since Venus has a lot more CO2 than Mercury. And if we continue to add CO2 to our air, the earth will get hotter. If he or she is a true Denier then no amount of data will change the Denier's mind. It makes you wonder exactly who is impervious to facts.

oops... in reply to justanonymous

Dude, You've gotten yourself very confused over this issue, the whole point of the article were that changes are happening on a human timescale whereas changes on a geological timescale as you rightly point out happen over 10's of thousands or millions of years. It is the PACE of change that is causing alarm.
Anyway you seem to have made up your mind 100% on this issue, so there is little point in me writing this.....

Jim Spice in reply to grizzld43

Not only was AK further south due to continental drift, but the magnetic poles were not where they are today. Good Lord, it's amazing when completely clueless people think they have it all figured out. And these are the same people that are creating the policy that will ensure disaster in the not-too-distant future.


Oh god here we go again. Deniers and Warmers!!! Sharpen the swords and sticks.

Senseless? you out there? Where's Nirvanna Boundless? We need the opposing army! Everybody, lights! camera! action!!!

Once more into the breach!!



Leave it to "The Economist" to put a positive spin on this crisis situation. Repeatedly stated "some scientists" in the article like there is a "debate" in the science community concerning the outcome. Can not upset the clients that pay for your advertisments?
Keep delaying any action, captions of industry...enjoy your paper profits now..we'll pay from them dearly.

SomeDude in reply to JGiels


Puntmeister in reply to SomeDude

Opened my freezer just this mornin' - my ice was plenty cold.

Everybody stop yer whinin and pick yerselves up by yer bootstraps.

What these scientists need is a good swift kick in the butte.

Puntmeister in reply to JGiels

How soon? Guffaw Guffaw

Just ate a cup of ice cream - tasted plenty cold to me. All this global warmin nonsense - nothin wrong with a little smog, says me.

I'm gonna keep on drivin my SUV, thank you very much.

Robert Del Rosso in reply to Puntmeister

I am sure the proverbial frog sitting in the gradually warming water would say the same thing.
You realize that comparing your artifically cold ice cream and the warming arctic is like comparing apples and oranges? Apparently not.



Secondly, you imply in your article that the Greenland ice cap, currently losing 200 gigatonnes a year, is in danger of disintegration, raising sea levels 7 meters. At 200 GT a year, that collapse will take 15000 years, during which time I suspect power generation technology may well change. Let's try to keep the apocalyptic scare tactics to a minimum.

rocco1 in reply to Ohio

You should paraphrase the article a little more accurately.
First, the current figure of 200 gigatonnes per year is a 4-fold increase in a decade, which means the rate of loss is increasing and may continue to increase. So, your 200 GT/year presumptive loss rate is probably incorrect and may undershoot the rate substantially as we move into the future.
Second, I did not read the words "eventually disintegrate" to mean next year or next century. 15,000 years from now is still eventually.
Don't seem to me to be "apocalyptic scare tactics"...but we are both entitled to our opinions.
And, BTW, your point about China's coal use and its relationship to pollution is spot on. The question is...what part of climate change is directly related to pollution from China's coal consumption? Alas, we may never know.

justanonymous in reply to rocco1

The choice of words convicts these people.

If you want to alarm someone you use words like "may" and "eventually" and "accelerate" and "4-fold increase" etc.

If you want to be factual you'd say that the the Greenland ice sheet would disintegrate in 20,000 years if the factors that we've seen over the last 10 years continue for that long but that 10 years is too short a timescale to reliably predict the future.

No, the language used here is alarmist plain and simple designed to sell newspapers, get us to argue and fight about it, in short to precipitate motion and action that can be harnessed by those in power, no matter what side of the argument you fall on. The economist benefits from having 500 comments to an article like this - make no mistake about that and that's just the media.

The UN would love to use this to tax the citizens of the world to the tune of trillions of dollars. Oh they're salivating. Only the US and China didn't buy and now Japan, Germany, Brazil and others are waking up that it's a farce.

No thanks, they can keep their culture of fear and their hands out of my pocketbook!

Ohio in reply to rocco1

The point is that the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and the resulting 7 meter sea rise is not in fact a danger over the range of time where burning fossil fuels is at all likely to continue, while the article implies that it is. Whether the collapse is 15000 years away or 2000 years away is not the issue.

Sense Seeker in reply to Ohio

Is a collapse of the Greenland ice sheet only relevant if we are still burning fossil fuels at that point? I think not. Or do you think that when we stop burning, the CO2 levels will bounce back to 280ppm? That is not going to happen.

As rocco1 pointed out, in your 15,000-year-calculation you assumed the rate of melting will remain stable. That is an unrealistic assumption; we know melting lags warming, especially warming of ocean waters, and we know warming will continue. If we instead assume that the rate of acceleration (fourfold over the last decade) will remain stable, the entire Greenland ice sheet would be gone sometime in the 2060s.

The truth is likely to be somewhere in the middle, but my guess it is is likely to be much closer to 2060 than 17,000 AD. Expected sea level rises by 2100 are for 1 to 2 meters. And it would be madness to demand 100% certainty before concluding that we have to heed the scientists' warnings and rapidly reduce our use of fossil fuels.

Connect The Dots

Global climate of the Earth is a complex system that even confounds supercomputers. There is action, reaction, and feedback loops and attenuation effects that resemble the complexity of a living organism.

For simplification purposes there are Four Major Acute Factors that we can follow that influence the Weather in the upcoming year --and only one of them is Global Warming due to 'Green House Gasses'.

The Second is the Presence of El Nino or La Nina: temperature influenced currents in the Pacific Ocean. Temperature influences pressure gradients influences trade winds influences weather. It occurs on a 5 year cycle and we are currently in one of the strongest La Nina cycles in modern times. It has resulted in strange October and April blizzards in Washington, DC. Biblical Droughts in Australia and Texas. Record Tornadoes in Oklahoma and the American South. And high Cyclone frequency in SE Asia. And a paucity of Hurricanes in the Gulf.

The Third is the paucity or abundance of actively erupting Volcanoes. One large eruption can spill 10x the amount of carbon in to the atmosphere in one week as human industries do in a year. Eyjafjallajökull erupted last year in Iceland, disrupting weather for Europe. Grímsvötn erupted this year and we will see similar climate changes in 2012. Mt. Pinatubo and Mt St. Helens eruptions caused such changes in weather that it visibly changed tree growth rings around the world. In 1815 the eruption of Mt Tambora resulted in a 'Year without Summer', global cooling, snow in July, and widespread famine that disrupted crops for two years. Mankind and animal-kind were months away from starvation and extinction.

The Fourth is solar flare activity. Yes, the sun influences climate on earth. And it has a 11 year cycle that is as predictable as the 4 Seasons. January had the largest solar storm in decades.

How do you hide something? Answer: Put it in plain sight.
That flaming ball in the sky--the Sun--we have severe ignorance of its patterns despite its obvious major role in our lives.

Weather affects us all. I believe that GLOBAL WARMING IS A MAJOR FACTOR. But it is ONE of MANY factors, otherwise we would have predictions in the bag--which we don't. One major Solar Flare Storm, Mega Volcanic Eruption, or Ultra El-Nino can dwarf the effects of man.

Our current weather effects today are evidence of a Second Year of one of the most powerful La Nina Event in recent time. IT has resulted in the North American Snowmageddon, the Drought in Texas, the Heat Wave in the South, the Floods in the Midwest, the powerful Tornados in Oklahoma, and the surge in Hurricanes, and the Queensland Drought. Global warming protesters were mysteriously absent in the Snow Blizzards in December.

We live in a delicate balanced world. And disruptions can occur from all corners. The problem with Global Warming Believers, is that they have BLINDERS to any other causality. Atmospheric CO2 levels may play a role, but one volcano can up end all those data trends in one blow! See the effect of Eyjafjallajökull lst year and deny its effects. You probably still have residual pumice and ash deposits in your lungs.

Know the most recent Mega Disasters of the past decade--Indonesian Earth Quake and Tsunami, Haitian Earth Quake and Fukishima Earthquake and Tsunami--were all due not to global warming but Earth Seismic Events. And these are the big killers of humankind. reaching 250,000 in Indonesia and 200,000 in Haiti.

Global Warming is taking on the characteristics not of a science debate, but a Religious War. Both sides have cadres of highly motivated and rabid activists. And a central priesthood who read the signs for others and a brotherhood of friars who document everything on internet blogs. And colors, symbolization, logos, and slogans that signal their belief system. More soccer club than environmental activists.

(And I expect attacks from rabid Green House Gas Activists despite being a 'believer'. I welcome Cool Level Headed Debate. Not religious wars. This is not the New Green Inquisition.) ;)

And reality is far more complex. It is like saying the Stock Market is ONLY dependent on interest rates...and nothing else! And based on the Fed Rate, I can predict where the market will be in one year.

CO2 concentration alone will not predict global climate and catastrophes. Unfortunately the world is a lot more complex. Greens risk oversimplification of a complex phenomenon. MANY things affect global climate.

The Weather is Complex. Everybody complains about it but nobody ever DOES anything about it. But in truth, we do not have the tools. But we do have the power to kill disbelievers and opponents in intolerant debates and violent bloodbaths.

I believe in the effects of Global Warming, but I also believe that the weather is complex and subject to change by forces beyond the hand of man. The weather tomorrow in your city is what it will not change or affect it. But Man can Adapt.

Calm down. Breath. Peace.

DSL350 in reply to Connect The Dots

Connect the Dots, ENSO is almsot a zero-sum game on the scale of climate. Volcanic effects are short-term, and the plume for the volcano in Iceland, if I recall correctly, did not reach the stratosphere. CO2 has a very long residence time. Volcanoes do not in anyway 'reset' global warming, as you seem to imply. Solar was dropping down to it's 11-year minimum over the course of the 2000s, the hottest decade in recorded history.

True, the process is complex. The overwhelming mass of research tells us that CO2 is a critical element for climate--a "control knob," given the either very slow (solar), slight (solar/ENSO), brief (vulcanism), or far too rapid (water vapor) nature of the other possible forcings.

Oh, and weather is already changing. Do some research on polar amplification and what it means for the temp/pressure gradient between the polar cell and mid-lat cells (i.e. the jet stream). Hadley cell changes have also been observed.

Humans can adapt - no question. Can the current form of "civilization" adapt, with its seven billions, half of whom are city-dwellers reliant on a complex and fragile production cycle for their food, water, and energy? This is to say nothing of the "re-chaos" potential as those in the position to do so begin to take advantage of their relatively advantageous positions to generate capital from the slow train wreck's moments of folding metal and punctured seat cushions.

Bugs10 in reply to JGiels

That's the heart of the issue. Everyone knows the climate has warmed and cooled naturally since the beginning of time-- that is not under debate. However, never has the climate changed at the rate is has since the industrial revolution. It also cannot be denied that burning hydrocarbons creates a greenhouse effect-- it's undisputed. It's these facts put together that have led scientists to the very rational conclusion that humans have contributed to an unprecedented rate of climate change and that this could have potentially disasterous effects not only on the natural environment but also on the world economy as we know it.

Wanker33 in reply to Bugs10

I just want to know if anyone actually took the time to read Connect the Dots comment?

I mean really! What is the person thinking when they post a comment with almost 5000 characters?!?

Waste of time, methinks...

SomeDude in reply to DSL350


Short answer - No. US military planning and others strategical thinkers already realize this will present huge global challenges to security even by 2020 especially in areas that are subject to increasing desertification (large parts of Africa bordering the Sahara) and areas where fresh water sources are being depleted (e.g., Kashmir in India).

Indy Bob in reply to Connect The Dots

I certainly agree that climate is influenced by many factors. However, if there is a reason that climate scientists might have trouble calming down and breathing is that they have done a terrible job of explaining the science. There are many politically motivated groups trying to discredit the mainstream science, but the science itself is sound. The vast majority of the world's climate scientists have found similar results while working independently with different methods and data sets. That's why every major scientific organization in the world has been publicizing basically the same message. Our National Academies of Sciences, along with the official science organizations of every other country (hardly a bunch of extremists), have funded and published numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies showing that anthropomorphic climate change has been accelerating. There is disagreement about how much is man-made and how close we are to the tipping point, but the basic science is remarkably consistent. Included in that research have been peer-reviewed analyses of the role the sun has played in a warming climate. Although some talk-show hosts continue to play that card, the science indicates that the problem is not the sun--it is mankind. Even though many other factors can affect climate, we need to focus on the ones we can change. That's why it is irrelevant for some to argue that there are natural sources of pollution (like volcanoes). We cannot control volcanoes, but we can do something about our contribution to the problem. It's pretty clear that it is far less expensive to deal with the problem now rather than come up with far more difficult solutions when we reach a crisis stage. In short, this is not oversimplying a complex phenomenon. This is what economists refer to as making decisions at the margin, making incremental changes when the marginal benefit exceeds the marginal cost. Dealing with environmental problems now clearly falls into the category, at least in the eyes of everyone except polluters with a strong self-interest in preserving the status quo, regardless of the overall cost to society. As an aside, I'm usually like you, with a strong belief that we can and will adapt to various challenges. But not this time. The science is too clear to ignore.

kwpreston in reply to Indy Bob

Climate change hysteria has been an enormous boom to the budgets of climate scientists. They have every reason to keep the gravy train going if they can create enough fear to justify large research budgets. Yes science is often corrupt.

Indy Bob in reply to kwpreston

Kwpreston, that simply is not true. We can disagree about how we should interpret the numbers, and we can disagree about what public policy should be, but the numbers themselves are easy to check, and they are unambiguous. It is warming, and the warming rate has been accelerating. It's silly to argue about the facts, since they are easy to check. Just be careful not to fall for the misinformation spread by those who cherry pick the years, finding a year in which there was not warming and then generalizing from it.

Indy Bob in reply to kwpreston

Kwpreston, there has been a fantastic disinformation campaign funded by deep pockets polluters who have deflected attention from their support only for projects intended to show little or no effect of their actions by arguing that it is the other side that is biased. That's the ultimate in chutzpah! If I work for ExxonMobil and I do environmental research, it should be obvious that to keep my job, I'd better find that the effects of the petroleum industry on the environment are minimal. Working for an academic institution, however, I have the academic freedom to look for the truth no matter whose ox is gored. My employer won't fire me because they don't like my conclusions. In fact, I find it easier to get research grants that do not simply reaffirm earlier studies. There is every incentive in the academic world to disprove somebody's favorite theory. That's what gets you tenure, publications, research grants, and possible Nobel Prizes! Your unsubstantiated argument that "science is often corrupt" implies that every major scientific organization in the world, including our National Academies of Science, is corrupt. That makes no sense unless you believe in the mother of all conspiracies by people who are willing to waste their 20 years of education and decades of professional research just for the possibility of getting more research grants. It's especially ironic since NSF or other objective science organizations will fund academic researchers investigating both sides of an issue; deep pockets polluters obviously will not. Surely nobody believes that a big polluter will fund research to show how damaging they are to the environment!

JGiels in reply to kwpreston

Yep, it's all just a hoax, those melting waters are all just a put on...yep hysteria...nothing to be concerned about right now...we'll have to wait until we have to act, right?


The self-contradiction of this article is glorious:


In which case the warm tropical waters would no longer reach the pole. The arctic waters would cool down significantly and ice cover increase once more. No part of this story is in evidence.

DSL350 in reply to tp1024

tp, would you then say "problem solved"? If the Gulf Stream stops, what is the likely effect on European agriculture? If heat stops pumping from the tropics to the poles via ocean, what happens to the tropics? Circulation just moves the energy around. It doesn't get rid of it (not quite true, since convection does move energy higher in the atmosphere where it is radiated more easily to space, but this is an existing mechanism of climate).

tp1024 in reply to rocco1

When you "disrupt" something, you break or stop it. That's the very definition of the word and that's also what has been implied in disaster scenarios and movies.

tp1024 in reply to DSL350

I just say whoever wrote this didn't care about the meaning of what s/he was writing. Instead, the author engaged in the media's most favorite game of parroting whatever everybody else is saying.

Everything else is just you trying to put words into my mouth.

rocco1 in reply to tp1024

disrupt [dis-ruhpt]  
verb (used with object)
3. to break apart: to disrupt a connection.
4. broken apart; disrupted.
Seems to me that the word disrupt means more than just "break or stop it". That may be how you intended the word to be used, but that's not the whole definition. And, isn't the possibility that increased warm flow into (therefore, by ratio, decreased cold flow out of) the Arctic representative of "disorder or turmoil in" the normal flow? Seems to me that we are both correct in our statements.
What remains to be seen is if you, I, or neither of us is correct in our opinions.


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