i heard this on the news the other day: when hurricane Katrina hit florida it was the anniversary of hurricane andrew in, i believe 1992. that was the FIRST named storm in the atlantic that year, in august. now in 2005 Katrina is the ELEVENTH named storm of the year!!!

something about the earth's climate has changed.

I believe you're right when you assert that something in the earth's climate has changed, but let's face it we've only got accurate weather records going back for about maybe 130 years.

As for the oddness with the 11s, no significane in this corner.  What about the the end of WWI, Armistice Day?  The fighting ended on 11AM on the 11th of November [the 11th month].

What about all the wierd numerology Rev Farrakhan educated us about on the day of the Million Man March?

What about...?  Ah, you get the picture.

Summer and Fall, but never Winter and Spring... the fuel is warm water, but no one can guarantee the direction and force of the winds and the surge of the water. NOLA couldn't cheat history forever and nor will any of the coastal regions ever cheat it completely and if you understand the money trail connected to these places, you'll know why we are unwilling to let nature reclaim the land.

-- Modified on 9/2/2005 11:08:35 PM

The climate will always be changing.

But the fear/question is dramatic change over a few short generations.  Scientsts tell us this isn't a real possibility, that climate change moves at a much slower pace.  But scientists have been wrong before, there are dissenting views, most people are scientifically undereducated, and everyone is capable of being frightened.

It will cause upheaval.  But some countries and regions will be much better off.  Siberia.  Canada perhaps.  

It will be all bad, however, if it doesn't stop.  A glance at our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, with it's runaway greenhouse effect will tell you that.  We'll know we've f*cked up when the midnight temperature is 800 degrees fahrenheit.    

I think we'd have gotten an inklng by at ;east 250 degrees?

First - and most important - when are you coming to the states?  and second, does this mean that I should check about that Canadian citizenship?

LOL!

What many folks seem to forget is the natural "cycles" found in our climate... Once in the past, our climate was WARMER than now!  then there were ice ages.... and not all that long ago I can remember dire warnings about the coming ice age - and what that would mean with respect to our fuel consumption - and what were some saying was the cause of that???   cutting down trees.... and increased urbanization - which in turn increase the reflective index of the daily planet....

In short - we just don't know.

The only data they had was knowing it had happened before, seemed to happen in a cycle, and thinking that we were due for another cycle. They didn't know why, but it would probably happen again.  

Now that there is data on ice cores and fossilized tree ring composition, they find consistently that-- low and behold, greenhouse gases were higher during the warmer periods and lower during the ice ages.  And that's confirmed by what we're doing today.

What have human beings been measurably increasing the the last 120 years?  Greenhouse gases.  And why wouldn't it be?  There has never in natural history been this level of combustion everywhere on the earth-- ever.  This wasn't in the environment before.  Now that data is coming in on the current atmosphere, they find that the correlation is holding again. Don't close your eyes-- increase in greenhouse gases is a major problem.  

Yes, the climate changes in cycles, but don't be humble.  We're demonstrating that seven billion human beings can strongly influence it.  

Now, if we could only learn to do it deliberately.

Sometimes global warming deniers make me wonder.  

Besides Venus, another thing a check of the stars will show is that intelligent life looks to be extremely rare (nothing can be unique in a universe this big).  Why?  One reason, probably is that it tends to self-destruct once it reaches the stage we have.  The hypothetical conclusion: despite how good things may look, our species is in a fight for its life.  

Not sure what that means.... overall - I would say that we just don't have enough data - should we reduce consumption, yes.  should we find alternative energy sources, yes.  but to jump to conclusions based on precious little data - that is absurd.

And to "predicting dire warnings of an ice age" - I am in my late 50's - so guess what - I 'member dem warnin's like it waz yesterdy...!

You want my fear?  that there will be a global pandemic that will wipe out 3/4 of the population.  Not due to terrorism but because some bug gets a bug up its ass and transmits a disease that has evolved and we have not previously encountered....   but than again there goes that silly comet that could hit the earth as well!   and us without a comet defense system.....!

You had a bizarro reading of that part of my post.  I didn't say scientists didn't make them.  I said that they made them with only one source of data: the fact that ice ages seemed to happen in cycles.  Methods of collecting other data about how the composition of the atmosphere effects atmospheric temperature hadn't even been thought of.  

Plus, a good way to make yourself remembered is to speculatively predict something big.  You'll usually be wrong, but if you're right, people will remember you forever.  You'll have hit the historical jackpot, no matter how slipshod your data was people won't even look at that.

But global warming is not the same kind of speculative predition as the ice age prediction. The data gathered by scientists has been remarkably consistent.  The skepticism by other scientists comes from those who either don't work in the field or who aren't gathering or studying the data.  

Otherwise, by eyes shut, I mean most of the political skepticism against global warming is really quasi-religious tripe manipulated by industry propaganda.  The main argument against it (via Rush Limbaugh, but repeated ad infinitum) comes down to this: it's too arrogant and proud to  say that human beings could effect the climate.  It works because we have a Christian society, and pride is the greatest sin, humbleness is a virtue, and global warming is another blasphemous challenge of pride against God.  Industry manipulates this, and low and behold, people with no inkling of curiosity about it repeat it as a truism.  

I do share your fear about a pandemic, but I don't fear it as much.  It likely can't wipe out 3/4 of the population, but it probably can wipe out fifteen percent.  Disease organisms aren't malicious, just ruthless about replicating themselves.  Because of this, it may look like it will kill everybody on earth at one point, but as the population thins out, it will have to switch to less virulent strains to maximize it's reproduction.  

Now, you can have waves of pandemics that do wipe out 3/4 of the population...

Much more dangerous in the long term are retroviruses like AIDS.  They've found damage in Chimp and Gorilla DNA from a retrovirus that struck them three million years ago.  This is absent in human beings.  Plus, there's evidence that schizophrenia might be caused by a retrovirus incorporated into human DNA 12 million years ago.            

Don't get your panties in a bunch, people. What is going to happen will happen, but honestly, we have very little to do with it.

I agree that the data seems to point to a climate warming period, and I also agree that evidence indicates it may be do to increases in CO2 levels - but the evidence is not conclusive, at least not yet.

What I tire of is the people who compare us to Venus.  For all we know, Venus has ALWAYS been like it is now.  You can't compare it to Earth.

"We have very little to do with it." Which "we"  are you talking about? We individually?
We, all of human civilization alive today?
Take a look at this graph. It illustrates the historical variations in concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere over the past 400k years.

seemed to think that it is a mostly insignificant one. Hard science isn't nearly as hard as they would like to think that it is...

on this that some would like to admit. But in the scheme of things, we have nothing to worry about because we will all be dead by the time an ice age comes. Temperate periods that preceed an ice age can last for a hundred years. Our decendants will have to figure out how to survive the next ice age.

the Sun but move in and out from it and in and out relative to their nearest planets. There is one theory that Ice Ages happen becuase the Earth moves to it's farthest point from the Sun and is shielded by another planet, as time goes forward the Earth come closer to the Sun and is not shielded, the ice masses receed and widespread green growth resumes.
The Sun is a big supernova furnance of burning gas. That burning intensity will someday reach a noticeable decline and ultimately peeter out. Life on Earth should end then since the planet will be one gigantic, frozen mass.

But this entire solar system and everything in it was never always like it is now.  

It didn't always have a median temperature of 800 degrees and an atmospere devoid of water.  I'm not saying that this ever destroyed all life on the planet, which probably never had the chance to start, but that what we see there currently is an example of a runaway greenhouse effect that made it inhospitable.  If it happened there, however it happened, it's possible to make it happen here.

You can compare the two planets in a limited way, because they are virtually same size and apparently have almost the same elemental composition, yet from there, we see two amazingly different results.

But answer this:  how do we KNOW that what happened there is an example of runaway greenhouse gas?  We don't.  Our technology can't prove anything about Venus...yet.  All we are doing is speculating.  For all we know, once Venus formed and settled down, it became the hell it is now.  You can't really compare it to our planet and say "that's what's going to happen here."

Thank you for saying in one quick phrase what I was trying to say...  Speaking as a scientist - one thing that amazed me in my scientific studies - was that our ability to actually predict events is not as keen as the public believes... which is why when students ask what seem to be "stupid" questions, I always listen - cuase somewhere in the answer to that question is something we missed!!!!  thanks.

I like smart men.

That part is easy to observe.  They look at the energy from the sunlight coming into it, and measure the infrared radiation coming out.  They know what that atmosphere is composed of, and know what wavelengths those gases absorb.

What they can't see and they could only speculate about is how it happened.  

To cum: a description of the composition of Venus's atmosphere.