[BJEugene]

... and the latest report has even more evidence for some to ignore.

Panel Sees Centuries of Warming Due to Humans - NY Times, Feb 2, 2007:

The world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas from the atmospheric buildup of smokestack and tailpipe gases that trap heat, but warming can be substantially blunted with prompt action, an international network of climate experts said today.

In a report released here today, the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, in its fourth assessment since 1990 of the causes and consequences of climate change, for the first time expressed with near certainty – more than 90 percent confidence – that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases were the main drivers of warming since 1950.

In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, put the confidence level at between 66 and 90 percent. Both reports are online at Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Should the concentration of carbon dioxide reach twice the pre-industrial average of 280 parts per million, the report said, the climate will likely warm some 3.5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, and there would be more than a one in 10 chance of much greater warming – a situation many earth scientists say poses an unacceptable risk. “The new report powerfully underscores the need for a massive effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable,” said John P. Holdren, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an energy and climate expert at Harvard University. “Since 2001 there has been a torrent of new scientific evidence on the magnitude, human origins and growing impacts of the climatic changes that are underway. In overwhelming proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of fossil fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes that are being observed.” At some point, even those who - for reasons I won't pretend to understand - have previously flat-out refused to accept at least the possibility of global warming will have to acknowledge that their beliefs are contrary to huge and increasing amounts of scientific data. Why have experts if we don't listen to them?

But a broad array of scientists, including authors of the report and independent experts, said the latest analysis was the most sobering view yet of a century in which – after thousands of years of relatively stable climate conditions – the new normal is likely to be continual change.

Should greenhouse gases continue to build in the atmosphere at even a moderate pace, temperatures by the end of the century could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm spell between ice ages, the report said.

At that time, the panel said, sea levels were 12 to 20 feet higher than they are now due to the melting of great amounts of ice now stored – but eroding – on Greenland and in parts of Antarctica. But don't believe the NY Times' "spin", or my own. Read the report summary for yourself.

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. At continental, regional, and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.