Just hours before Al GoreBs speech on global warming, the IPCC draft summary on climate change was leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post. Very convenient.

About as convenient as taking 24 years to uncover a minor drink-drive offence by a youthful George Bush just days from the big election.

For the latest scientific perspective on global Warming have a read of this paper currently being peer reviewed.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), November 05, 2000

Answers

"GLOBAL WARMING ONLY HAPPENS CLOSE TO HUMANS"

Of course, because we are the ones who are causing it. As far as I know, the polar bears have not yet started driving SUV's to work every day.

-- (not@rocket.science), November 05, 2000.

WRONG! It's cow farts, doncha know?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), November 05, 2000.

Lars,

Yep that is part of it, some say that is what caused the climate changes that killed of the dinosours.

Who would have guessed I would come back here with such strong opinions in a particular direction? *grin*

Just remember, I was right about Y2K too.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), November 05, 2000.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/full_coverage/world/global_warming/

-- (all@the.latest), November 05, 2000.

Global warming 'worse than feared'

Experts say flooding will get worse as warming takes hold By environment correspondent Alex Kirby

A draft report prepared for the world's governments says that the Earth may heat up much more than current forecasts suggest.

The report, by scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says average global temperatures could rise twice as much as they thought earlier.

It foresees a possible rise of 6C above 1990 levels. Five years ago, the IPCC was predicting a probable maximum increase of 3C.

Scientists believe the level of carbon dioxide emissions being forecast in the report could trigger the mass death of forests and significant rises in sea levels, as well as crop failures and extreme weather.

Fossil fuels

The report is only a draft, and it is liable to be altered before publication next May.

But it is bound to loom large at next month's meeting in the Netherlands of the countries which have signed the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement on tackling climate change.

That commits signatories to collective cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 5.2% below their 1990 levels by some time between 2008 and 2012.

Many scientists say Kyoto is only a modest start, and that cuts in emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), will have to reach 60% or more in the next half-century to keep climate change within tolerable bounds.

Climate science

The draft IPCC report concludes that the burning of fossil fuels and other forms of pollution caused by human activities have "contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years".

Dr Mike Hulme, a climate researcher at the University of East Anglia in the UK, told BBC News Online: "This draft is consistent with what the IPCC has been saying all along - there's been no massive breakthrough in climate science in the last five years."

He says forecasting techniques have been refined, allowing for a wider range of scenarios to be predicted.

"The IPCC thinks the minimum amount of warming likely over the next century is just over 1C," he said.

Deadly consequences

"But the upper temperature range is significantly higher, because we now think we could be emitting 35 to 40 gigatonnes of CO2 a year by 2100" (a gigatonne is 1bn tonnes).

At present CO2 emissions are about 6.8 gigatonnes (Gt) annually.

In 1999, another IPCC draft suggested a probable upper limit of 29 Gt by the end of the century, about 75% of the maximum mentioned in this latest draft.

An annual emission level of 29 Gt of CO2 would probably mean the mass death of forests, with the trees releasing the CO2 they had stored up, adding to global warming instead of restraining it.

It would be likely to make the eventual collapse of the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica inevitable.

That, in turn, could trigger a significant global sea-level rise, and the loss of huge and densely-populated coastal areas.

Other probable consequences of climate change on the scale suggested include crop failures, and much more extreme weather.

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-- (The.End@is.near), November 05, 2000.

Perhaps one of you environmental eggheads could answer me this simple question;

Was the last ice age caused by the LACK of human industry? Or was it maybe caused by Mastodons?

I seem to recall that we have had several ice ages, what caused the "global warming" between the ice ages? It surely wasn't me driving around in my SUV, I didn't own one then.

Anyone?

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), November 05, 2000.

All@the.latest..

Thank you so much for the link you provided. It carried a number of further links, including this one to a an article by NCPA Senior Policy Analyst H. Sterling Burnett.

I'm not going to post the entire article here as it is quite long, but here are a few of the pertinent points.

Global warming theory rests on three cornerstones: climate models, scientific analyses of past and present climate data and trends, and the assertion that increases in greenhouse gases drive up global temperatures. However, recent scientific discoveries are chipping away at these cornerstones.

As the models improve they show less and less warming - which is in line withactual temperature data - and a reduced likelihood of harmful environmental events. Yet even the improved climate models are flawed. When the models' past and present temperature estimates are compared to actual past and present temperature measurements, the models are off by more than a degree. If the models cannot describe past or present temperatures correctly, why should we base public policy decisions on their predictions of future temperatures?

It is interesting to see that in general proponents of Global Warming seem to base their conclusions on media statements about scientific reports, while debunkers of Global Warming base their conclusions on the actual scientific data. Isn't this exactly the same as happened with Y2K?

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), November 05, 2000.

off

-- (reading@t.learning), November 05, 2000.

Cherri--

I'm not sure I follow you--are you saying that cow farts killed off the dinosurs or dynosaur farts killed off the dynosaurs? Actually, I wouldn't want to be standing behind a brontosaurus when he cut one.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), November 06, 2000.