" Well stated! For the angry people out there defending a nice theory: Think More before crowning a theory as fact. Especially when warming and cooling are a nature occurance. "

" 1. CO2 is NOT a pollutant. 2. CO2 is needed by plants for Photosynthesys to produce food for animals, humans and also replenish O2 for them to breathe. 3. It is denser than air so it does not rise into the atmosphere like a hydrogen baloon.It stays low to feed plants on land and sea. 5. Yes CO2 absorb some longer wavelength wave (heat). So what? A few more degrees in winter is better for us. We just need to plant more trees and grow more food and CO2 will be converted back to organic food and Oxygen. 6. There is no evidence that Glaciers melting will raise sea water level. Ice is less dense than water. So when Ice melts the volume becomes less. Higher temperature also increases evaporation and so the clouds form will even shield off the sun heat etc. etc.. 7. 90% of "green house effect" is due to water vapour. 8. The sun's activity is not always constant. There are cold cycles and warm cycles. 9. Kyoto is no solution to the stated problem. China & India and developing countries need not have to sign. Yet Kyoto is being used to strongly persecute America and Australia. Australia is a net "CO2 sink" because of the oceans. But Australia are still attacked. "Global Warming" sounds just like the work of SATAN & the ANTICHRIST. "Take the mark of the beast or you will be dead" type of press reporting. (P.S. I am a Chemist/Biochemist.) "

" wrote on January 31, 2007 9:10 PM: Opps, a mistake. The ice is NOT growing at +/- 1mm per year from 1992 through 2003. It is growing at the rate of 5MM +/- 1MM per year from 1992 through 2003. "

" Mr Van de Walle's comments are entirely predictable from someone who has got used to all the short term benefits of living in a country that is the worlds largest polluter.. perhaps if instead of spending trillions of dollars on a poorly executed war in Iraq, some of that money had been invested in an alternative to oil, we wouldn't be spending the next 10 years losing all our civil liberties and a massive increase in melanomas.. What people like Mr Van de Walle don't seem to get is that even if they don't care about the planet (which he clearly doesn't) there are economic benefits to energy conservation - if you use less energy, your energy bills will be lower.. duh! Yes there are natural variances in global temperature, however in the middle ages we didn't have 6 billion people pumping billions of tonnes of carbon and other noxious chemicals into the atmosphere.. and of those 17,000 scientists, how many are on the payroll of big industry? some so called scientists have forgotten the principals of those guiding lights of the enlightenment who took the first steps in analytical science.. And to Dominick Odorizzi.. let me put this in terms that someone who spent 40 years creating technology designed to cause pain and suffering to mostly innocent people.. lets assume that the earth is a big ball of various chemicals and elements - lets refer to that as X and that the human populace is a system that processes various chemicals, we'll refer to that as Y. X is a finite resource, and Y is expanding exponentially.. at some stage, because of Y, X will become unstable and no longer viable - this is inevitable however environmentally friendly we are - however by a little prudence, X will be viable for a lot, lot longer.. you may say "but that doesn't matter.. I'm old, soon Y will be Y-1.." That is not the point "

" For Don Baird's edification, who posted a comment on January 28: The word you spell "Irac" is correctly spelled "Iraq." Also, The Screwtape Letters was written by C.S. Lewis, not Milne. Let's stay accurate! "

" Rocky, Scientists are not concerned with the Polar Ice cap melting adding to sea-level rise, but rather the ice caps on greenland and antartica. It is true that when ice that floats on the sea melts, it does not add to sea level rise. But your statistic that 90% of ice being at or below sea level is way way off base. The ice sheets on greenland and antartica are a mile thick and thicker than that in many cases, and cover an entire continent that is above sea-level. If greenland were to melt completely this would add 27 feet to sea level. Antartica has many times this amount of ice. For comparisons sake, the last ice ages were 6-8 degrees Centigrade colder than now and the sea level then was 120 meters lower than now. Obviously, this is not going to happen overnight, but if Climate Change is not dealt with in the span of 200 years many of our costal areas could be gone. The current IPCC document suggests a sea level change of 2-3feet the next hundred years, but historically, in periods when the climate was changing quickly, changes of 4-5 meteres per hundred years were common. Recent Satellite and ground monitoring of Greenlands southern glaciers indicate that they have tripled the rate with which they are moving to the sea in the last ten years. This is a non-debatable fact. Climate sceptics would have us sit on our hands and risk catastrophe "

" The words of warning about global warming from the top panel of international scientists Friday were purposely blunt: "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the cause is "very likely" man-made, and "would continue for centuries." Officially releasing a 21-page report in Paris on the how, what and why the planet is warming — though not telling the world what to do about it — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a bleak observation of what is happening now and an even more dire prediction for the future. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level," the report said. • Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center. The report said man-made emissions of greenhouse gases can already be blamed for fewer cold days, hotter nights, killer heat waves, floods and heavy rains, devastating droughts, and an increase in hurricane and tropical storm strength — particularly in the Atlantic Ocean. (Story continues below) Advertise Here Advertisements RelatedStories Panel: Global Warming 'Very Likely' Caused by Humans Present Global Warming Minor Compared to Past Climate Changes Scientists, Officials Race to Finish Global-Warming Report On Time Al Gore Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for Climate Change Efforts Experts Debate Whether 'Carbon Neutrality' Achieves Anything California Lawmaker Wants to Ban Traditional Light Bulbs U.N. Environment Chief Wants Emergency Global-Warming Summit Experts: Bleak Global-Warming Forecast May Be Too Optimistic "It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it," U.N. Environment Program executive director Achim Steiner said. "The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do'," Steiner said. "Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible." Another report by the panel later this year will address the most effective measures for slowing global warming. If it looks bad now, the harmful effects during the 21st century "would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century," the report said. The panel predicted temperature rises of 1.1 to 6.4 C (2-11.5 F) by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report. However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 1.8 to 4 C (3.2-7.1 F). On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches (18-58 centimeters) by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches (10-20 centimeters) are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues. "The situation is more dire than (at the time of the 2001 report) because we have real possibilities that the situation can be much greater than we have seen before," said co-author Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the U.S National Center for Atmospheric Research. A colleague from the center, Gerry Miehl, warned that continued global warming could eventually lead to an "ice-free Arctic." And the report said no matter how much civilization slows or reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea level rise will continue on for centuries. "This is just not something you can stop. We're just going to have to live with it," co-author Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said in an interview. "We're creating a different planet. If you were to come up back in 100 years time, we'll have a different climate." Scientists worry that world leaders will take that message in the wrong way and throw up their hands, Trenberth said. That would be wrong, he said. Instead, the scientists urged leaders to reduce emissions and also adapt to a warmer world with wilder weather. "The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something," co-author Jonathan Overpeck at University of Arizona said. "I can tell if you will decide not to do something the impacts will be much larger than if we do something." "You make a difference on hundred of years time frame, but this is the future of the planet," Trenberth told The Associated Press. "We have to adapt to it." Trenberth said the world is paying more attention to scientists now than in previous warnings in 1990, 1995 and 2001. "The tension is more now," he said. The head of the U.S. delegation, White House associate science adviser Sharon Hays, called the panel's summary "a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers." As the IPCC report was being released, environmental activists repelled off a Paris bridge and draped a banner over a statue used often as a popular gauge of whether the Seine River is running high. "Alarm bells are ringing. The world must wake up to the threat posed by climate change," said Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth. • Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science "

" Ther all consipiring to tell this lie? "

" I wish that we could get off this religious fervor by merely embrasing ethics. "a genuine ethical person can wittingly do no wrong". - Don Baird "

" If 90% OF the Ice is at or below Sea Level,why would the Sea Level rise,since Ice has more volume than Water? "

" too many People exhaling!!! "

" ... by Wingham et al, from the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A". This study "analyzed 1.2 x 10 to the 8th power satellite altimeter echoes to determine the changes in volume of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2003" Results? The Antarctic ice sheet is GROWING at the rate of + or - 1mm per year (1992 - 2003). Additionally, the study concludes that "contrary to all the horror stories one hears about global warming-induced mass wastage of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to rising sea levels...the most recent decade of pertinent real-world data suggest that forces leading to just the opposite effect are apparently prevailing even in the face of what alarmists typically describe as the greatest warming of the world in the past two millenia or more". "

" Why do global warming advocates get way over the word limit to express their opinion? "

" I saw it on TV so it MUST be true! Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Global warming is happening - it's called chemtrails and electro-magnetic weather warfare. Do a simple observation. When the sky is covered with white haze and jet trails the temperature is above normal. When the sky is clear (a rare occurrence) the temp is normal or below. Look at pictures of comet McNaught from all over the world. The atmosphere is MASSIVELY polluted with aerosols. This is the windowpane in the green house, and "scientists" have known this for several years. How stupid is that? "

" This editorial is garbage. The current public debate over what to do about climate change is fueled by SCIENTIFIC understanding, not the media. If anything, the media have under-reported the dangers. On February 2, the International Panel on Climate Change will release its latest report on this issue. This document is contributed to by over 2000 scientists, is peer-reviewed by scientific instutions, INDUSTRY, and by governments. This report will say that there is "vitual certainty" (what they say is 99% certainty) that the current warming trend is primarily a result of human caused emmissions. Carbon Dioxide is a known greenhouse gas; it's ability to absorb infrared radiation can be measured easily in a lab. This is a non-debatable scientific fact. Adding more of this gas to the atmosphere changes its heat-trapping characteristics. In the absence of a proven feedback loop that will prevent warming, we need to assume that changing the composition of our atmosphere could have disastrous effects. This is not to mention that quite aside from the warming effects of carbon, that it's increasing addition to our atmosphere is acidifying the oceans. Even small changes in acidity make it difficult or impossible for shell and reef forming animals to make their shells. This in turn will have disastrous effects on the rest of the ocean food chain. I often marvel at the simple-minded response of "skeptics" to this issue. Do they think its also a good thing that half of our emmense trade deficit goes for oil? That we (and all who purchase oil) are basically funding the other side (islamofacists) of the war on terror? That we are essentially paying for this deficit by borrowing the money from the Chinese? Are these same people willing to decimate all of the Appalacian Mountains and parts of Illinois and Montana digging up the Coal that generates our eletricity? Are they naive enough to think that when the oil and gas start to top-out (Peak-Oil) that Oil exporting countries are not going to keep the last of it for themselves? America's current energy policy will lead to disaster if we do not make major major changes to it. There is another way... and it will not be easy, but it is the only means that will offer our children and thier children a livable and sustainable planet. And that is for us to get very serious about conservation, mass transit, local food, and renewable energy. This is not the death of capitalism but its re-juvination, we have alot of infrastructure to replace with green alteratives! Those who deny this are just cowards, afraid to drop old ways of doing things. "

" i think global warming is a ploy to brain wash kids for political reasons "

" Actually, the global warming is not a hoax at all. Please, read the other comments... "

" To All; As far as global warming is concerned, If it were a hoax it wouldn't be happening, as for us helping it along it doesn't matter. The earth will soon cleanse itself, Our planet is just as alive as you and me. (just look around) Our earth will soon shift her skin and much of what lives on it will be gone. We aren't going to be dependent on foreign oil, because there isn't going to be any. The wars we are fighting are pointless because what the earth is about to do to mankind will be far worse than any terrorist organization is capable of. All the current comforts of civilization will be a thing of the past. If you are not already prepared to live the old ways and follow the true laws of the universe and you survive the shift, I think you will find it hard to survive without fast food, cell phones, cars, malls, and money. You will either starve or be murdered for your posessions by someone else who is even greedier than you. The oldest surviving civilizations have always known this would happen again.(yes they were here the last time!) They are ready to rise again and help those who will survive and want to flourish on our refreshed planet. "

" That is stupid don't you see that the Polar Bears are going extinct because the Polar Ice caps are melting? And the Oceans are also rising because the Polar Ice caps are melting. Look that up! "

" We should also allow for there to be equal media coverage of people who believe the world is flat and the holocaust never happened. Oh wait. We don't allow that because it's just not true. Just because something is covered in the media and it has a scary consequence doesn’t mean it isn't true. If I were to tell you that if an atom bomb was to be dropped on your city tomorrow and it would destroy everything, would you call me an alarmist? Would you want me to lie and say that it probably isn’t that big of a deal? There is over whelming evidence that human activity is responsible for the current global warming. Ignore the media and blogs from people who are just posting their opinions. If you actually go and look for the scientific studies on the current climate change, they are readily available and are not ridiculously twisted by the media. And there is also lots of evidence to suggest that oil companies have funded several small organizations to create confusion about the science of climate change. Yes, there have been climate changes on the planet before without our help. There have been ice ages and warm periods. But that doesn't mean that whatever caused past climate changes is happening now or that what we are doing now (releasing million year old carbon into the air, something that has never happened before in the planet's history) isn't causing the current change. Using examples of past climate changes just isn't a good enough reason to believe that we are not causing this one. The truth is that people just don't want to be told to change. Everyone seems to think that being told they should conserve energy and not be wasteful slobs is some how taking away the most precious of freedoms. Living free does not mean living free of responsibility. But that’s just the problem. No one wants to be responsible. And it might be a good idea to use something with a little more credibility than the Oregon petition to prove that global warming is a hoax. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine "

" The Republicans are probably rejoicing at the prospect of Hillary Clinton running for president. I am striken with terror at the very likelyhood of this paving the way for a Republican president in 2008. My wife refutes my contention that the "60 percenters" (those men who put both Bushes in) are still with us. She says that the recent repudiation of George W Bush policies for Irac means that enough has soaked through to them that their powerful bloc has dissolved and that they might even vote for Hillary. Call me paranoid, which I possibly am, but another related concern I have is that one aspect of technology might be against our getting a more lasting government that aids the populace more than just using it as a marketing pool to be manipulated for maximum profits - And that is, the advent of DVDs. I have early on been aware of the dumbing effect of media advertisments, thus I have developed measures to minimize exposure to the immense onslaught of them. Being able to pan (when using a vcr with vhs tape) through their constantly increasing duration has helped me preserve some intelligence. But now, the DVD allows panning only in increments which forces the dreaded exposure to ads. The IQ of our nation is not very high. Just witness the mess that our plebian populace has allowed. Of course it is only a theory, but the lowered IQ of voters might put in another set of legislators just as poor as the last. We sorely need a thinking populaton. The nation bought the Jack Kennedy admonition to "ask not what the government can do for you, but what you can do for your government". My wife and I were truly amazed that this was not recognized as communistic and therefore should have been the reverse. There was no public reaction which is scary. **** I applaud the generosity of this forum which doesn't require the usual full profile of the person making an entry. This, however can attract the undesirable R&Pers described later. I tend to suspect that full profiles are sold to marketeers. If this entry is accepted by the screener, I will be interested how the R&Pers "roamers and pouncers" will react. I describe R&Pers to be those found in ham radio, citizen band radio, and almost any forum, who roam all entries and then pounce to denigrate, vilify, or just pick on opinions that differ from their own. Common targets are: evolution, free choice, same sex marriages, equal rights for gays and minorities, global warming, peace seekers, getting troops home from Irac, among others. No amount of insults directed at them will work, but I wonder if just classifying them as being childish might have some effect. - or just ignoring them which isn't always easy when they become disruptive. They may inhibit well considered entries involving courage to present. Which brings to mind "Courage is the testing point of every virtue" - Screwtape letters - Milne. Also applicable, "the closest most come to thought is prejudice" - Eric Fromme Don Baird  "

" Before I retired in 1989, I was an electronics engineer for 40 years. I designed electronic test equipment for testing missiles and radar systems. I had to obey various scientific laws such as Ohm’s law, Kirchhoff's laws, and others. Sometimes, if I did not correctly apply one of these laws, my design would not work properly. I do not know of any scientific law involved with global warming that can show that our earth is in peril. Therefore, climate models and predictions are not based on solid scientific evidence. For that reason, I am one of the more than 17,000 who signed the petition stating that there is no convincing scientific evidence to support global warming. "

" It is ABOUT TIME that someone Put the TRUTH out there. Global Warming has happened RAPIDLY countless time BEFORE Humans roamed the Earth. Those who Believe that Global Warming is caused by mankind Obviously believe that Dinosaurs had a Thriving Civilization that caused Past Global Warming. "

" It's reported that Hitler attacked Russia to get at the permafrost which contains significant amounts of methane compounds. He planned to use tents to collect the gas. Instead of the pletoria squirming about matter, I have done something - wrote letters to all the permafrost countries suggesing that it is urgent to cover the permafrost regions with dark chemical resistent material, about an acre each with valves to close if lightning strikes a panel. The methane, which is released when the bacteria releases it from its compound, should be collected in elevated tanks and further connected to main elevated tanks. The gas can then drive gas/electric turbins to supply the world with limitless energy. If we do not do this soon, heat spikes will occur due to the vicious circle nature that Bush has triggered with his promotion of co2 emissions. So far, only Swartzenegger has replied to me and I fear that business and poletics as usual will be our death knell. The whole world should help do this task over the 10 million square miles of permafrost. Just refer people to this Google search - PERMAFROST METHANE if they nay nay the matter. They should be warned to wear set belts if they do the search. Don Baird "

" At some point, should we stop responding to people like this fellow, who through ignorance or brazen lying continue to perpetuate the lie that global warming, particularly, the impact of man in bringing about climate change, is a 'myth' and that scientists don't agree about it? I sometimes worry that be even responding to such ignorance/deceitfulness we are giving it more of a hearing than it deserves at all. We are getting to the point that it's only the crazies who blather on like this fellow and that mindless father in Seattle. You don't normally see people wasting time on responding to the crazies. The rest of us know it's a real and dangerous problem, and we know what we can do to start changing things. Maybe we should was less time on these 'Swift Boaters for Scientific Truth,' and spend more time saving the planet... ...still though, such ignorant audacity really makes one's blood boil. "

" Here is my thing with this whole debate. There are the 'Roberts' of the world that will fight till they are blue in the face about how Global Warming is just a red herring. Then there are the other people who will tell you if we do not cut our CO2 emmisions in half in two years we are all going to drown. Here is my point, can't we all agree its better to conserve? Can we agree that maybe its a better idea to use a little bit less. Can't we agree that its a better idea to recycle or use products that do not require fossil fules? There are hundreds of ways for us to save energy, if we each do a little bit to conserve then maybe the problem with just go away on its own. Examples 1. Car pool, mass transit 2. Use rain water to water your garden 3. Turn down the heat 4. Buy products not made of plastic 5. Recycle 6. Use a clothes line, not a dryer 7. Turn off lights, computers when not in use 8. Try a train instead of a plane 9. CAR POOL! 10. Plant a tree every year "

" Astonishing how biased the alarmists are! You can lead them to the truth to help relieve their pain and they can't integrate it because the media have already set the bandwagon rolling. Mars is losing it's icecaps. Global warming and cooling is inexorably slow and cyclical, having little to do with CO2 other than the well know inverse solubility of gas in liquid. CO2 increase is the effect not the cause. Don't shake up your beer. Argumentum ad hominem rules. Kill the messenger with the good news. Al Gore is not presenting scientific facts or even sientific observations; he's just another populist politician. The inconvenient truth is that The Inconvenient Truth is electioneering hype from an environmental alarmist. Things are not always what they seem. 300 uneducated unscientific cloned demagogues (Gore speakers) fanning out over the USA to preach anthropogenic global warming is sheer lunacy. That is a lot of hot air. That should turn off enough voters to assure failure. Mars is losing its ice caps too! It's the sun stupid. "

" It is yet more amazing that there are still people like Mr Van de Walle who are so unwilling to take in new information and understand that climate change is real and not a media thing. This even caused the British Royal Society to publish a Guide to facts and fictions about climate change (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=2986) Maybe Mr Van de Walle could read this before making his next attempt to discuss these issues? "

" Robert should probably read the information at http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine to get some balance. By the way, this petition was created nine years ago so it does not take into account the massive amount of research carried out into global warming since that time. Maybe a new petition should now be sought as that last one would have been based on a great deal of ignorance. Here's an extract "When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists." Hmm. "almost none were climate specialists". It would help if they knew what they were talking about. "

" It's even more amazing that over the past 10 years, 100% of scientific articles in peer reviewed journals have been telling us that global warming is real and is man-made, and yet politicians still try to argue against it! "

" What complete ignorance. The medieval warm period happened, but it does not in any way mean that human caused global warming is not happening. The scientist no doubt meant "we have to get the liars and deniers to stop using it as an argument", because it's a bogus one. And he is lying about the 17,000 scientists. They were fooled into signing a petition that they thought had a different meaning than it's now being used for (again, by the liars and deniers) Come on Robert, don't be a scared little fool. Have courage and accept the reality. Then you can start doing something about it instead of spreading nonsense. "

" I should've added - there is now a theory (see Ruddiman in Scientific American - http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000ED75C-D366-1212-8F3983414B7F0000 ) backed by ice core evidence of CO2 levels and residues of burnt forests that the "Medieval Warm Period" relates to human activity too. During those centuries there was an expansion of farming and deforestation. Previous warm periods coincided with rise of civilizations of the ancient world, the cool periods before and after the medieval warm period coincided with volcanic activity that cooled the globe and ushered in the dark ages with collapse of several civilizations including Rome, and afterward by the black death as the plague wiped out a third of the population and led to reduction in farming and reforestation occured sucking up CO2 and cooling the globe. For a history of CO2 as cause of global warming see http://www.engr-sci.org/history/climate/co2.htm So humanity has been influencing climate for thousands of years, the problem is with our gas guzzling SUVs and 1,000s of coal burning power stations and destruction of the Amazon and other rainforests at obscene levels a minute - our effect now is far greater than in the past. "

" Out of a population of millions of "scientists, meteorologists and other technical people" (the latter category opens the field to 100s millions of people) you can get 17,000 to sign online petitions to deny global warming. Also Sen Inhofe can invoke God as a reason for the world not warming and get away with it in a religiously zealous country like the USA - though any theology that seems to believe the Almighty will just get us out of any mess we make of creation like some sugar daddy god seems suspect to me. The IPCC report due in a week is really the best scientific consensus we can achieve, produced by committees of the best scientists in the field with every study double checked and every word debated. It's previewed findings confirm global warming is happening, its caused mainly by human activity (that includes deforestation as well as burning forest fuels). Al Gore's movie was pretty much in line with the last IPCC report - though he did point to theories like rapid ice sheet melt that have significant support if not enough to sway the IPCC. That is the nub, the IPCC report is from a conservative process and may under-estimate potential for catastrophic climate change through a series of "tipping points" such as plankton that process CO2 into Oxygen dying in warmer oceans and methane release from melting permafrost and huge undersea methane deposits - these were released at least twice many millions of years ago and caused runaway global warming to a world up to 15C hotter than today - causing massive extinctions apart from life at the poles. There is no conspiracy pushing global warming. There may be a few zealots overstating certain aspects, as there always is in human affairs. But overall there's a broad scientific consensus that global warming is real, human caused and dangerous to our common future. "