Nothing like having an actual climate scientist discuss climate….

I also agree with Lou that a lot of stuff that “enviros” talk about is pretty useless on its own. But there are serious things that can, and should be done. Namely, we need a serious international agreement on limiting carbon emissions. In fact, I have absolutely no doubt this will happen. The question is whether we waste time trying to prevent it — on very dubious “economic grounds”, or whether we get with the program and (as Americans in particular) show some leadership on this.

Lou is right of course that we can’t “stop global warming”. But as he says, we can maybe slow it down. And that’s a non trivial thing. I’m a working scientist in this field, and I can assure you that the majority of scientists that work on this stuff actually aren’t “doom and gloomers”. But they do think it is serious. And what our increasing understanding of the situation shows is that taking some serious action now will make a big difference to our future — or more specifically that of our children.

Specifically, the most recent studies suggest we can stabilize things at a couple of degrees warmer than present by taking realistic international action now (not so different from the very successful Montreal protocol that has kept the Antarctic ozone hole from getting our of control). Business as usual (meaning everyone living like we do now in the U.S.) will probably mean significantly greater warming — more like 6 degrees or so.

And one thing that is pretty darn certain is that under either scenario — but especially the latter — we’ll have less snow in the Northwest, and in Europe. If that’s not enough for us ski types to take it all seriously, I don’t know what it is.

Wow, religion, science, politics, emotions, philosophy, where do I start?
Frankly, I for one am a “believer” in human caused global warming for a few reasons. Many of the hottest years on record have occured in the past ten years. Granted, no one blames global warming for anomolous cold events, but temperature is a measure of the energy in a system. The more energy present in any system, the more chaotic the system can become (think a group of third graders after a bunch of candy and coca-cola), and more erratic events will occur. Therefore, oddly cold weather events sould be an expected result of global warming.
Granted, other events like volcanic eruptions and forest fires add large amounts of “greenhouse gasses” into the air. However, volcanos erupt at fairly regular intervals, and our climate has remained fairly stable over the long term with those eruptions, so that seems unlikely to cause the warming. Forest fires only release carbon dioxide that was recently (within the last 50 to 100 years) atmospheric anyway, and thus don’t affect the aggregate level significantly.
What leads me to believe that GW is human caused is that we are burning fossil fuels that have kept huge quantities of carbon sequestered for hundreds of millions of years. This is carbon that was removed from the atmospheric cycle during the time of the dinosaurs. Putting that carbon back into the cycle does add significantly to the amound of carbon available for global warming.
That said, I don’t go door to door harrassing my neighbors, I don’t condescend to others who disagree, and I don’t lambast my friends over their choices, nor do I belong to any groups who do. I just drive a smaller truck, ride the bus as much as I can, and live in a small place. How my choices impact the environment factors into what I choose to do, what I buy, and what I throw away. If we all lived our lives according to our beliefs, I think we’d find that we could all get along just fine.

J