There was also another dump of climate scientists acting badly emails. Some of the experts were questioning Mike Mann etc on the poor quality of the work, how to evade FOIA acts and other shining examples of integrety in the scientific method.

Your understanding of history may be ok, but of logic is questionable. It is not generally supportable to assume that all droughts are cause by the exact same suite of climate influences.

Global warming cause by anthropogenic CO2 forcing is as real as gravity, sunshine, and taxes. The warming has been measured and demonstrated. The CO2 ppm concentration increases have been measured and demonstrated. The known properties of CO2 as a thermal blanket have been measured and demonstrated, and the reasons why CO2 acts as a thermal blanket (has to do with absorption spectra) have been measured and demonstrated.

These emails don't say that which the ranting reactionaries (who to a man have not read any of them) do not say what they think the emails say. There is no massively perfect secret conspiracy of tens of thousands of climate scientists trying to hide the truth from "skeptics."

The only open questions are how hot, how soon, and how bad will the effects be?

There's no point in hiding your head in the sand and pretending it's not happening. Likewise, for REAL conservatives, not the CINOs who want to make every pristine place into a sewage pond or tailings pile, there is no point in pretending that REAL ACTION will be taken to curb CO2 forcing. As long as China, Brazil, and India "opt out" of any regulatory scheme, you can't stop it.

All you can do is plan for the effects, and hope to mitigate the effects with respect to such concerns as food production, in your own country.

Well, Mike, I'm not going to do this with you again. The point of my previous post is simple. As you said yourself, " It is not generally supportable to assume that all droughts are cause by the exact same suite of climate influences." but this time, it simply MUST be Man-made climate change.

Whatever.

In regards to the first link in this article,

Did I miss something, or when did Harry Reid become a Republican?

Nate

"Regardless of where you fall on the global warming debate, the planet, our natural resources, our lands: they all deserve the benefit of the doubt on this one. It's in our best interests anyway to conserve and to live in a sustainable matter."

In my view, there's too many good reasons to "defect." CO2 forcing is a prisoner's dilemma game, and most nations are busy trying to rewrite the rules to allow them to defect without economic consequences. Since the rewards for defection are huge and the rewards for compliance not immediately of economic benefit, pretty much everyone is defecting. China. India. Brazil. Most of the EU nations can't meet the targets they agreed to in Kyoto.

Was I a native of some low lying Pacific or Asian island chain, I'd have a national relocation plan ready for the inevitable.

As a citizen of the USA, in my view we need a strategic resources policy that guarantees access to American citizens and American businesses to food and resources, so that when the s**t hits the fan, which it DEFINITLEY will, we can take the edge off of the blowback that reaches across the Atlantic and Pacific to our shores.

Anthropogenic CO2 forcing WILL cause massive food riots and social unrest, and likely some pretty big wars, over resources, in the next 200 years. As a nation, the US is privlieged to have such a beautifully defensible terrain that we can skirt the edge of all that, and be available to help pick up the pieces after the whole meshugga comes crashing down. IF WE PLAN for it that is.

If we embrace STUPID, as labroador and steward would have us do, we'll get crushed by the runaway express train that is definitely coming down the line.

I enjoy Mike myself. Its not often that you run into a man who's ability to think calcified in 1969. He read Erlich's Population Bomb and Lester Brown's famous predictons and he still wears the same glasses. Despite the predictions of global doom we now have more people, and less pollution than we did in 1969. Manhatten isn't underwater because of global warming even though CO2 continues to rise. Bald eagles and osprey are present in areas where they were formerly extinct and are reproducing at levels unseen for centuries. In 5 years the US may even be the largest producer of oil in the world. As Phil Jones says in email 4195 "Tim, Chris, I hope you're not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020", scientific concensus amoung the government funded fraudulently criminal class.

Whose thinking is "calcified" I wonder. I'm responsive to information. You've got a conspiracy theory, Labrador, and a propensity to stick your fingers in your ears and shout LALALALALA.

Sure there are people who go around pronouncing gloom. I read the Pop Bomb in 1983. Even by then it was clear that the assumptions posited in the book had changed --- you may have heard of "The Green Revolution."

Of course, that book has not one wisp of a logical connection to CO2 forcing, but staying on topic has never been your habit before so why would I expect it now?

Labrador- I think your confusing climate change arguments and evidence with the movie "The Day After Tomorrow." So Manhattan isn't submerged under water and the temperature was cold out this morning, therefore climate change doesn't exist?(See Definition: Fallacy).

What about the rising sea water and vanishing wetlands and other indications? Ok, lets say for argument's sake that it's not tied to man-made climate change- fine. So with those risks come flooding then water quality problems.

But no, that's not a problem at all of course. Why? Because you took a vacation to Oil City PA and you saw an osprey fly by. Not to worry everyone. False alarm. There's ospreys in Oil City, PA. The water and air will always be clean and ample! So lets just allow corporate polluters and industry to have their way with our natural resources. Deforestation, droughts, industrial pollution, diminishing ozone.. who cares? We're invincible because there's ospreys again. Say what? People in the southwest are drinking recycled greywater and wastewater due to a lack of fresh, clean water? Well, there's more bald eagles now than there were in 1950- so I think we'e ok.

Talk about a false sense of security, safety, reality etc.

Labrador 12: Do we think that population has increased since Malthus' time in 1834? Say what? Do you live on another planet? I like to consider other points of view, but only if they make sense.

Let's remember that it is global climate change, not just uniform global climate "warming" - some areas of the globe are most likely going to get colder (such as England) due to shifts in oceanic currents brought on by the warming of the artic.

I agree with Belmer that the changes are readily visible to anyone who has spent time outdoors over the last few decades. Like the skipper of an unwieldy oil tanker that has to make course corrections miles in advance of the rocky shoals, we need to take global action now and not wait any longer. Hopefully there is still time to act though I am doubtful given the world population growth and human nature.

And thanks Mike for the clear and concise explanation of a very complicated issue!

Generally, the climate is heating. One does not expect one to one correlations between global warming and local warming because the earth is a large object with atmospheric and oceanic currents. These currents attempt to redistribute heat towards the poles because generally temperatures are highest at the equator (because of the availability of lots of sunshine) and lowest at the poles (because of the general dearth of sunshine).

As anyone who knows anything at all about physics already knows, a large body with temperature differentials will attempt through convection to redistribute the heat evenly. Differences in temperature and pressure drive our atmospheric and oceanic currents, but ultimately it's convection, the transfer of heat from warm air and ocean masses to cool air and ocean masses, that drives the whole thing.

At the moment, the polar seas are acting as a heat sink. So at the moment, the effects of global warming are most noticeable at the poles. Less so as you move towards the equator.

Once the polar seas have absorbed enough heat, the rate of convection redistributing heat from the tropics to the poles is going to slow down. Alot. And then, people living in South Carolina etc are going to discover that their local precipitation and temperature regime has become like that of Guatemala. And HECK knows what's going to happen to equatorial nations whose temperatures climb.

The point is, the social and economic consequences, in many places around the world, are going to be severe. In the US and in Canada we are well positioned to retool our own domestic economies to continue to supply our own populations with food and other resources, and well positioned between two major oceans to avoid having ground wars fought on our land. But only if we have a plan to implement to deal with those contingencies.

The irony is India and China not wanting to sign on to any carbon emissions caps. Of all the places on the globe, they're the ones who are going to have the worst food production effects from warming.

Belmer: Your comment about birds and animals moving north is absolutely correct and is something that I have been harping on for years. I am now approaching 80 yrs. of age, so I know whereof I speak. This was beginning when I was still a kid, and the number of species I could mention is pretty impressive. One example is Turkey Vultures. They have expanded their range to the north quite recently to a huge extent,...way up into Canada. We now have a small breeding population of Black Vultures here in NY, which is even more impressive. I could go on and on.

Speaking of increasing populations, here come the ticks and mosquitoes as well (while we're losing priceless and irreplaceable bees and bats). I'll be putting up a few of these bad boys shortly: www.batconservation.org/drupal/bat_house

RealGoodMan: I started putting up bat shelters quite few years ago on a couple of wilderness cabins we own in the Adirondacks and Quebec. I cannot say that they have been much used. The bats still seem to prefer tighter places underneath eaves, in cracks between logs and such. Still worth a try. They like to roost under tree bark too, such as Shag Bark Hickory. One wonders if bats will develop a immunity to the fungus as they have apparently done in Europe where it seemingly originated. The ticks are well up into Canada already. Mike: Turkeys are now all the way up past the Ottawa River and into the SW Quebec bush country. Friends live just north of Algonquin Park in Ontario near Pettawawa and there are Turkeys all over the place! Turkey Vultures also. I have seen a couple of Black Vultures near my home east of Albany.

"my home east of Albany."

You live in a nice part of the NE/NY area.

Todd: I just read the Wall St. Journal piece, one that I had not seen. Your point is of course well taken, and one that I think that most of us types that have spent large portions of their lives out in nature rely on; evidence of their own eyes. One other point that is seldom made, even though it may sound rather simplistic: we now have over 7 BILLION human beings on Earth,..a truly mind numbing figure. All of them are burning fossil fuels in one way or another. How would it be possible for this NOT to have a huge effect on our atmosphere? Not possible in my opinion.

Real: I believe that permafrost melt has been talked about for some time now. Having spent a bit of time hunting in NWT and Alaska, I know that it is a huge issue. About 10 or so years ago, I ordered a house jack by phone from a dealer in the state of Washington. He told me that he was receiving more and more orders from Alaska due to house foundation problems caused by melting permafrost. I have also read that the reason more and more frozen Mammoths and their ivory turning up was due to this. The tree line has also been moving north each year too. As someone else has also pointed out on this thread, Whitetail Deer have been pushing north big-time. I have seen them on islands in Lake Athabaska, something that wouldn't have been believed not long ago!

I remeber reading some research a few years ago that due to global warming, some plants will eventually go extinct because their southern range limits are moving north faster than their northern range limits are moving north - when the two meet, its the end. If memory serves me correctly, Beech trees were used as one of the prime examples...