Might be shrinking there but it's increasing (alledgedly) everywhere else because of "Man's influence".

Should really change "Man" to "human" to be fair as we are all responsible (alledgedly).

The climate is changing and has always been changing. We've had about twenty ice ages in the last two million years where the whole of the UK was covered in ice and uninhabitable. We are very lucky to be living in the short period between two ice ages.

Where does this idea that things didn't change until recently and now all changes are caused by man come from? Ignorance of history combined with hubris seems to dominate environmental journalism.

#6 its an easy excuse to raise taxes

people lived years ago, no heating, no windows, hardly any food, we are in a changing world , we adapt and improvise, whats to go on about, yes what we pass on to our children is not what we want.

You bring people from the past to today, they would be shocked, but once they got used to it they would just get on with it.

We as a breed will never change, we like to have more, waste more.

Speak for yourself jaw. Is your first name baw?

Can't believe I'm going to agree with a poster going by the hated epithet of eddylongshanks - but he got it right. It's a con to tax us further.

7

Perhaps you could expand on this observation? Perhaps even explain what it has to do with the subject under discussion.It may well have such a connection of course.
You may have a point,but its of little consequence if you are the only one who knows about it?

Governments do raise taxes often with the absolute mickey mouse of justification,but I think we require a bit more meat on the bone here, certainly in the connection sense.

It is however certainly the case that when North Sea oil revenues start to run down the UK will be in one sorry state (I assume that the New Labour Party will still be around convincing Scots that giving away billions to Westminster is good for Scotland),new taxes will have to be found to replace the billions spent or should that be squandered by Westminster.

Perhaps you refer to this ?

The disappearance and toxification of the Aral Sea has little to do with global warming. As it says in the article, the sea has shrunk as the result of a decision by the former Soviet Union to divert the Ama Dariya and the Syrdariya rivers, which fed the huge inland saltwater lake, to grow cotton in the desert.

It is a good example of the harm that central government can do.

Sounds like a case for ......... Jack McConnell!

Right, Bill1! Communism not only kills people - it kills even seas!

I logged -on to the Gov. website and used their
calculator to check my foot-print.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Environmentandgreenerliving/a...

I then checked other sites using the same data and
would you believe it?

The Gov. site gave me the highest result, telling me I used much more?

The question now is?

Why are their calculations so different from ALL the other sites?

pc

I think Mr Burns said it best:

"Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese"

Boy Wonder said in comment 4.
"As I've said before, global warming is not wholly the fault and folly of man's impact on the world, though we have certainly added to what is going on. I think the Earth is having one of its "wobbles" as it has done since it formed, where great changes are made ... and this time, we are part of it.

Perhaps the axis has shifted and poles are realigning."

Why make the answers up for yourself like that? Why not accept the consensus among those who've really worked at understanding it? And that consensus is, whatever other climate shifts are happening naturally at the moment they are dwarfed in scale and speed by the consequences of human Carbon gas emissions.

Why are so many people, especially in these columns, so resistant to simle truth on this matter? Are y'all also creationists? Does your experience day to day tell you for sure that the sun goes round the earth not the earth round the sun? Some guy typing into the cyber ether has devined that the earth is having one of its wobbles, nothing to do with human economic activities, and his opinion has as much right to be heard as the next man's - is that the way of it?

This is the real ultimate test of democracy - is this species able to think clearly enough to realise it must permit it's leaderships to impose limitations on lots of day to day activities? Or will it sail blythely on, expending, emitting, singing 'Apres moi le deluge', till the biosphere becomes so hostile to us that we suffer a huge collapse in numbers (eliminating most other lifeforms as we go)?

19# please provide the data that proves your theory.
What percentage of Co2 is impacting climate cycling?
What percentage of all gases (man made) affect climate cycling?
What percenatge of all gases (naturally occuring) affect climate cycling?

I await with interest.

Carel (19) makes the biggest but not surprising leap that concensus = fact. Just because many people belief something doesn't make it true!

It's the oldest trick the the book; repeat it enough and loud enough and enough will believe it to make it believable enough for enough people to believe it.

Same goes for creationists, christians, muslims, all religions, man-made climate catastrophe; if enough believe it then it must be true, musn't it?

It makes me uncomfortable when people talk about 'concensus' or 'everybody really knows' or the like and then proceed to state their current belief, without the slightest grain of verifiable proof. Much is trumpeted about Kyoto, for example, but do those who hold it up as the Sacred Cure-all actually know anything at all about it? I doubt it (though I freely admit I make this statement without a shred of evidence to back it up). I just wish that the information media was a bit less sensationalist in their rush to get headlines and instead actually did some checking of facts before simply printing or reading out what are not news items but press releases from self interested groups or individuals. But then, I also wish I could win the lottery, without the bother of buying a ticket.

Even the scientists why put forward the theory that Global Warming is destroying our planet have their doubts.
However, erring on the side of caution would not kill us, and if they are right and we take no heed, what then?
I say let's look after the Planet NOW, even if the scaremongers are wrong.
Who knows, they maybe right after all.
It'll be hard to say "sorry" after we've ruined the place for our children, and what's to lose really?
A massive loss of income for the "oil barons"?
I certainly won't lose out much, and neither will most of the rest of us.
To be honest, I for one am sick of the world being run for the profit of a few individuals, at the expense of the rest of us.

#8 Jaw
yip and in those times our ancestors never washed, dragged their knuckles along the ground and carried a club where ever they go.........still the same on lothian road on a saturday night.

#19 Carel, the denialists like to fill these threads with their blinkered views that refuse to accept scientific consensus, refuse to accept that the predictions for climate change are running pretty close to the models, (given the complexity of climate this is pretty good) and like you say are probably creationists one and all.

They assume that the world is above and beyond our ability to influence it.

UNfortunately many are paid to paste this rubbish, some attpemt to use pseudo-science to support their views and will get quite agressive when you confront them, but it is always good for a laugh.

The one thing they won't come back on is the linch pin of environmental performance is to do more with less. That's the last thing monsanto, exxon or any of the other large multinationals or US government groups would want you to do!

How can you have a consensus when the loudest voices are in the driving seat? No pun intended ;-)

The vast majority of us are waiting for a large asteroid to hit Earth, according to some scientists we are overdue another 'mass extinction'.

Don't you just love scientists, where would we be without them? Come to think of it, who invented all these carbon gas producing nasties?

Hmm, so the shrinking of the Aral sea shows the damage central gvts can do, yet it has continued to shrink long after the Soviet union imploded, and yet no enlightened capitalists seem to want to stop planting cotton and put the water back into the sea?

#27 wrote:
"#19 Carel, the denialists like to fill these threads with their blinkered views that refuse to accept scientific consensus, refuse to accept that the predictions for climate change are running pretty close to the models, (given the complexity of climate this is pretty good) and like you say are probably creationists one and all."

What a comment. Anyone who won't accept your opinion is 1) blinkered 2) a creationist.

Here is a hint - if you want anyone to take you seriously and not laugh derisively, try to actually make an objective point rather than try an ad hominen debacle, which really makes you look silly.

The problem with the viewpoint of 'the majority of scientists have opinion X' is that this isn't science. Consensus science is something of an oxymoron.

The history of science is littered with majority consensus being wrong. Hard evidence is the bedrock of real science - not anything else.

Google Ignaz Semmelweis. Consensus expert opinion rejected his repeatable hard data for several decades.

Science isn't about consensus.

Neither is the whole background to this debate in an impartial setting. There is strong political bias. When eminent scientists receive death threats for disagreeing with man made global warming, when funding is skewed towards those pro the man made global warming scenario, when politics interferes into the arena of science - then yes I'm skeptical.

See Chris Landsea's IPPC letter of resignation to recognise the skewing of science by pre-conceived agendas. http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/sci...

I'm certainly open to hard proof on this matter, but when I last looked failed to find it. Unfortunately when this matter tends to come up, it almost inspires religious devotion, and personal insults to

If when climate change produces global cooling as it inevitably will - will "we" be encouraged to burn more fosil fuels and buy gas guzzlers?

First, ask yourself, why would anyone want to deny the fact that industrial man burning coal, oil and gas has caused a small but serious rise in global temperatures, especially in the last 50 years.

It IS actually within our power to "do something to stop" Global Warming. We could insert pipes into the glaciers at the poles and on mountaintops, and extract heat from them by pumping coolants through these pipes, preventing them from melting, and extracting the heat, which we could then concentrate using "heat pumps" in order to generate electricity and provide for industries in the arctic and subarctic regions of the world (and the antarctic of course). This would halt the sea level rising, and since no fossil fuel would be burned, there would be no carbon dioxide emissions. The technology for doing this exists already. Many clever and concerned people are turning to heat pumps for warming their homes already. But by doing it on a more massive scale however, we could maintain the climates on the earth to those we find optimal, and in so doing we could delay, may be even prevent, the oecological catastrophe that we are currently heading for at an ever faster rate, like a load of lemmings!

We know how, but most likely we wont do it, because vested interests in fossil fuel burning businesses will discourage us, because the so called "leaders" in politics and industry are only concerned with short term goals, and it is easier to pretend it is not happening, and when it does, to waste energy in appealling to a non-existent deity to get us out of our mess. Other species have become extinct before, the human species will as well, since it is destroying its own environment.
80% of the human population of the earth lives at less than 10 metres above sea level. Those who express concerns at the levels of immigration now, are going to be very surprised when it really gets going - people are not going to stand up to their waists in the sea just to please the priveleged who live on higher ground.

"First, ask yourself, why would anyone want to deny the fact that industrial man burning coal, oil and gas has caused a small but serious rise in global temperatures, especially in the last 50 years"

Because 1934 was our warmest year since record began?????
Lets go back to the Cambrian age where the Poles were free of ice or to an age where the continents were all joined together.

#30 Cauchy Riemann

you said;
The problem with the viewpoint of 'the majority of scientists have opinion X' is that this isn't science. Consensus science is something of an oxymoron.

When the majority of scientists considered experts in thier field reach a common conclusion that a specific theory is confirmed by the evidence available then who are we, ie those of us who are not experts, to argue with the consensus of those that know better?

You will not get 100% endorsement of Darwinian based evolution theory as there are still those convinced by thier faith that creationism is the answer, as there are still a few Lamarkists out there. That not every one agrees with evolution theory does not deminish my belief that the theory has gained sufficient consensus to be accepted.

Your link to Landsea's resignation highlights that there are differences in opinion in details, ie human impact effecting Atlantic hurricanes, but Landsea does not question at any point that on a global scale there is a human impact on climate change.

Here is a hint - if you want anyone to take you seriously and not laugh derisively, try to actually make an objective point rather than try an ad hominen debacle, which really makes you look silly.

#33 Briar. I'm a big fan of heat pumps and when our gas boiler goes it is an Air source heat pump that will replace it. However on a grand scale, extracting heat from the artic and then transferring it to where it is needed may not be the most practical option. The transfer of that energy through, what effectively would be a giant community heat network amkes this idea a no-goer. But things might change.

#2, Hard Truth, says that "Northern Canada" will grow food once it warms up.

Have you tried growing food in the Canadian Shield, which forms the bulk of northern Canada (and some of the south)? It is all rock. I know. I lived in the Shield. Great for canoeing, but lousy for planting potatoes.

I don't know about the quality of the soil of the tundra, another portion of Canada's North, once the permafrost melts completely. But I would wonder.

And, then, what happens to wheat-growing and cattle-raising areas of southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, which are much too dry (and getting drier) already?

Human activity has had dramatic effects on the lakes and ponds of western Canada, beginning with the expansion of agriculture. There was much more, and much more widespread, water here in 1890 than there is today. Now, human-caused global warming is exacerbating the situation.

For several millennia, western civilization and its ruling aristocracy have enforced a belief system and lifeways based upon ever increasing economic growth. Adverse effects of that worldview now abound. Indeed, western civilization is akin to a cancer metastasizing throughout the biosphere. A change in western civilization's primary tenets is warranted.

The Elephant in the room - over population.

In my view nothing will (effectively) be done to control population levels to a sustainable level until we get forced too through a long series of related disasters.

Meantime we play at lowering carbon footprints whilst the drivers of globalization are ramping up consumerism to ever larger new markets.

#34- no, 1934 was merely the warmest year in the contiguous USA, ie the lower 48 or so states. 1998 and 1934 were effectively statistically tied anyway, and so the correction made no difference to Gloabl temperatures.

2. HardTruth

Everyone seems to believe the misconception that Siberia is cold. It makes up over 3/4s of the area of Russia or about 1.5 times the area of the USA, and while the northern areas are arctic, 40C is possible in the south which is in Asia and the Far East.

The temperature for much of summer in the main cities in generally higher than the UK.

The regional capital is Novosibirk whose temperature today is currently 27C

http://uk.weather.com/weather/local/RSXX0077?x=0&y=0

Its also worth mentioning this vast area has a lower population than England or about 2.5 times that of Moscow, so is probably the area of earth least changed by man, and some of the land structures are almost fractal-like.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl...

To those who feel we are causing global warming, what happened to drop the temperature on the land that is now the UK, that in the past had creatures now only found in Africa?

2. HardTruth

Everyone seems to believe the misconception that Siberia is cold. It makes up over 3/4s of the area of Russia or about 1.5 times the area of the USA, and while the northern areas are arctic, 40C is possible in the south which is in Asia and the Far East.

The temperature for much of summer in the main cities in generally higher than the UK.

The regional capital is Novosibirk whose temperature today is currently 27C

http://uk.weather.com/weather/local/RSXX0077?x=0&y=0

Its also worth mentioning this vast area has a lower population than England or about 2.5 times that of Moscow, so is probably the area of earth least changed by man, and some of the land structures are almost fractal-like.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl...

To those who feel we are causing global warming, what happened to drop the temperature on the land that is now the UK, that in the past had creatures now only found in Africa?

When I was studying limnology (the science of freshwater lakes and rivers) at college, my teacher stated that African lakes (Chad, Tanganika, Victoria etc) all had cycles of drying up every forty or fifty years or so.
I particularly remember him mentioning how excited that Lake Victoria had dried up within his lifetime as a scientist, allowing him to observe it first hand and not just from the text books.
Everytime the scientists and governments use bad examples (ones where I know from experience they are wrong and inaccurate) I suspect the examples I do not know about may also be 'spun'.
They do not help their message get through by doing this.

#39 Booster. Null argument, unless you are prepared to reduce the population by one to start with, or do you support ethnic cleansing?

#43
Don't be such an Ass.
I'm not advocating any genocidal policies or "ethnic cleansing" - Frankly I don't have any answers, nor does it seem any of our so called World Leaders or intellectual betters. Or at least they are not putting their heads above the parapet to say so.

I just stated a belief that future generations will have no choice in the matter of having a vastly reduced (sustainable) population level. And it is likely that we will need to have the lesson beaten in to us time and time again.

Meantime keep your blinkers on and your foot on the pedal - after all you and I and people from several generations to come won't be too badly off. We will be long dead, so why be concerned eh?

#42: Are you sure of your memory? Did you pass the course?

You say that your teacher said that Lake Victoria dried up within his lifetime. Wikipedia, which I take as reliable in this situation, says that Victoria has dried up three times in its history, the last time being 17,300 years ago.

The lake, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, is 84 m. deep at its deepest, with a mean depth of 40 m. Since the early 1950s, lake levels have been controlled.

I don't know much about lakes and rivers in Africa. But I study North American lakes and rivers as part of my professional responsibilities.

#45 Booster, it's yirsel that is moaning about over population.

There are a number of options to address that, which do you advocate, i am only asking.

If none of these are an option then you need to move on and find different ways to tackle the problems. Look for mitigations and implement.

My blinkers ain't on and my foot certainly isn't on the pedal, i am doing all in my power to reduce local, national and global impacts on a daily basis and making as much a difference as one individual can.

I blame Israel. It's bound to have a hand in this.

Bob Beal #42: Are you sure of your memory? Did you pass the course?
I did pass the course, my lecturer showed us pictures of him wading through the mud and trails of footprints leading off into the distance to a small lake in the middle - he stated that the fishermen had to walk further and further each week as the lakes dwindled. There were boats stranded miles from the water. Catfish & lungfish had adapted to survive in the thick mud that was all they had until the rains and floods came and refilled the lakes.
You may be right about Lake Victoria though, I know if was tanganika that he visited (I checked my notes).

By the way I am not an anti global warming/climate change person I believe that Climate Change is happening - I made my comment because if the authorities wish to convince people, they need to get their facts right, and then I make an error too, my mistake about Lake Victoria thanks for pointing it out Bob.

Hello Teresa Bin Stock,

My dear, tell me true: are you traveling by horse and buggy, or in a nice, plush, and comfortable modern motorized conveyance?

If the latter, I should suggest that you start modifying your own behaviour-spending all that fossil fuel unnecessarily on vacations, before requiring others to modify theirs.

Secondly, allow me to point out that the United Nations, a champion of blaming humans for GW, has finally admitted that its Computer Climate Modelling is inherently INACCURATE, and CANNOT reliable provide a real world, reliable, statistical model of weather patterns, weather outcomes, or anything else even remotely similar to what Al Gore, Robert Kennedy, or Leo DiCaprio, have been putting forth.

In short, those fine fellows cannot tell their behinds from a hole in the ground, when it comes to GW and issues relating to GW.

Please take a moment to enter reality, put your emotions on hold and engage the grey matter.

Start by checking on the toxic output of volcanic eruptions, into our atmosphere.

THEN do a comparative of above ground eruptions, with projected eruptions sub-surface oceanic, and pay particular attention to the AMOUNT of airborne toxic waste, produced by those sub-surface eruptions.

The planet is changing and it is the height of arrogant elitism, to think that the Climate we humans have enjoyed for the last 10,000 years, should remain STATIC.

Our world has always changed, sometimes slowly, but all too often, quite catastrophically.

To think that just because we humans are here, things MUST change to our liking, is the apex of hubris.

Oh yeah, just in passing: just ONE volcanic eruption puts an equivalent amount of toxins in the air, that ALL the cars in the USA put out for an ENTIRE YEAR!

I do believe that for either 2005 or 2006, there were at least 67 above ground eruptions.

No amount of environment laws passed by all the governments on planet Earth, w

Hotwired, #49: No problem. I just couldn't resist that one.

I am glad the new Times atlas is paying attention to the changing water. It is important in my part of the world, and is something that has been almost entirely ignored.

For example: If you can find a road map of Alberta on the Net, look due east from the city of Red Deer to almost the boundary of Saskatchewan. There, you will see the reasonably large "Sounding Lake." But, there has been no water in that "lake" since 1960. I don't understand why it still appears on maps, including in the National Geographic Atlas I have on my bookshelf.

Sounding Lake was one of the very shallow lakes on the prairies. Once they are gone, they are gone. There is nothing cyclical about it.

Don't you love it when the africans blame all their problems on the west ? They fail to note the massive , truly massive problems their overpopulated continent has created.

Do they think that burning trees makes no contribution to the air polllution ? Or that cutting down the trees in the first place does not affect oxygen regeneration ? and by breeding like rats they create more little picanninnies that breath our air.

No africa, you cannot blame your problems on the west, not even on the former colonial powers who took better care of you than your current dictator governments. The problems are soley and truly yours.

So grow up and stop blaming your troubles on the civilized world. Come out of the dark ages, forget your tribalistic mentality and change !!

It may really be true that the aids epidemic is part of gods plan to save africa from itself. UHURU

All you academics...The planet is in great shape, a change here, a change there. A species gone, a new arrival. BUT...the Human Virus, all umpteen billion of us, now thats a different story. If you are young, good luck sweet cheeks, you aint seen nothing yet!!
It is to late to turn around, regardless of what they tell you, It's a no brainer. Planning on having a family, I hope your kids sue you.....Remember you heard it here first.

This whole article is based on the statement that the Aral sea is still shrinking.
IT'S NOT!
The Northern Aral sea is rapidly returning to normal.
The building of the Kok-Aral damn completed in 2005 has transformed the Aral and it has completely proved that the Aral's shrinking was nothing whatsoever to do with Global warming.
Unfortunately the Global Warming fanatics have once again seized on a fallacy to help 'prove' what many people suspect is a massive scam!

#12 "It is a good example of the harm that central government can do."

Spot on. Note that communism has lead to several environmental disasters but also note that Greens are anti-capitalist and recommend communism as the solution to 'climate change'.

This shows their dishonesty.

#19 "Why are so many people, especially in these columns, so resistant to simle truth on this matter? Are y'all also creationists? "

Nice ad hominem. The fact is that you have no science to back you up and that the Aral sea is a failure of communism and state intervention.

"29. Guthrie / 1:38pm 3 Sep 2007 Hmm, so the shrinking of the Aral sea shows the damage central gvts can do, yet it has continued to shrink long after the Soviet union imploded, and yet no enlightened capitalists seem to want to stop planting cotton and put the water back into the sea?
"

You servile cretin. This is one of the most half-witted things I have ever read. You just love government regulations and never tire of repeating the big government party line.

What makes you think that the governemnets of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are capitalist?

The fact that the Soviet Union collapsed does not make the remaining countries capitalist.

It took some forty years to unmask the Piltdown Man hoax that began in 1912 alleging that the skull of an ancient ancestor of man had been found in England. Any number of British anthropologists unwittingly contributed to the hoax by confirming the authenticity of the skull until it was found that the jaw of an orangutan had been cunningly attached. There was a consensus. The unmasking of “global warming” has already started as more and more facts prove there is nothing new under the sun.

Strange that only last year, the Aral Sea was recovering:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/image...

In 2000, the Aral Sea was in grave condition. This inland sea, which was once Earth’s fourth-largest lake, had been steadily shrinking since the 1960s, when Soviet-era irrigation projects diverted the main rivers sustaining the sea. The lake shrunk to a quarter of its original size in a few decades, creating an environmental and public health disaster. As the lake dried up, winters became colder and harsher, and summers became hotter and more arid. Blowing dust, laden with pesticides and other chemicals, is routinely scoured from the dry lake bed and poses a severe public health hazard.

In 2007, however, the North Aral Sea was enjoying a renaissance, due the construction of a dam in 2005 that prevents water from flowing into the South Aral Sea. This pair of images acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows the recovery of the Aral Sea between April 15, 2005 (bottom), and April 14, 2007 (top). The recovery is most dramatic in the upper right part of the image, although a close look at the lake’s borders show a general rise in water level throughout the lake. Much of this recovery actually occurred in the first year after the dam was completed.

So much for global warming an

This article makes assertions without providing any evidence to back them up. Take the reference to Mount Kilimanjaro - a favourite of the global warming alarmists. Yes, the glaciers are receding but the principal mechanism is not 'global warming', it is local environmental changes, principally deforestation for agriculture and fires caused by honey hunters smoking out the bees. The loss of foliage means that there is less moisture evaporating, thus fewer clouds form and there is less precipitation. Less cloud cover also means increased solar radiation and, thus, the glaciers melt!

As for 'concesus' among scientists about global warming, well the the pet theory among social scientists, commentators and politicians in the early twentieth century was eugenics - a theory which led to mass murder in Nazi Germany - and was practised by countries such as Canada, Sweden and Australia well in to the 1970's before becoming totally discredited. Then there was a book published in the 1920's entitled '100 Scientists against Einstein'. He was right, they were wrong. Or take the case of Alfred Wegener who, in the early 1900's proposed the theory of Continental Drift. He was vilified by the geological establishment for forty years, until in the 1950's scientists began to realise that the evidence did indeed point to the continents moving around. Despite that, it took until the late 1970's until Plate Tectonics became accepted fact. So I'm afraid consensus can mean 'united in being wrong'. Global warming is a theory, not an indisputable fact - yet.

Joey Pica @ #34:

"...1934 was our warmest year since record began????? "

Whose warmest year? Scotland's?
Florida's??
Kiev's???
Ellesmere Island's???? Earth's?????

Give us the records, or give us a rest.

Back to the article, lets see, the US did not sign Kyoto, the EU mostly did, your taxes went up for carbon fixing, ours went down, the Ice Cap continues to melt...
The Sun's output is on a gradual rising curve. More solar, more heat, more melted ice, maybe you should raise your taxes again to stop the ice melting, or maybe, burn more oil, to make more smoke, to block the solar increase, to cool the ice, to stop the ice the melting.
As for group-think science, it has always failed when it tries to be political, belief and facts don't always agree, no matter how closely held. MRD

We'reall doomed!!!! Doomed!!!!

Looking at the google maps image, which from their schedule is likely to be three years old, and it seems the Aral is on the mend again.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl...

Surely, when we look at the vast salt and potash beds that exist all over the world, seas have been dried up many times under the heat of the searing sun at the peak of the earth's Ice Age Cycles?

I feel that the Aral sea is just demonstrating this fact(as is the disappearing DEAD SEA?).

It is the first time, perhaps, that humans have observed this phenomenon, but the human race has only existed for 'the blink of an eye' on the face of the earth.

I see nothing to worry about.

4, 19, agree with you both, is that possible or has global warming addled my brain?
(three digit temps for a week here : ( and an earthquake to boot)

The article does not blame global warming for the Aral Sea shrinking. Read the headline:
'Vanishing lakes prove impact of man'.
It then goes on to list many impacts, some of which are certainly due to man-induced climate change, which is real and ongoing at an ever faster rate. The deniers above are a sad bunch indeed.

66, Nuclear warheads have existed for much less than the blink of an eye on this eartly time scale, so let's let 'em off, we paid for 'em, I want value for money.

I see nothing to worry about.

What an isightful group.
After all, the worlds leaing scientists are ALL in consensus, after having reviewed sattelite imagery data, ice core samples showing levels of CO2 and methane stretching back over 600,000 years, computer analysis of weather patterens - past verified and foward projected.
And they all came up with the same consenus on global warming.

But you plumbers and doctors and secretaries and accuntants - you obviously know better than all of them

From the voice of America's Right Wing science rejection front itself:

PARIS — Scientists from 113 countries issued a landmark report Friday saying they have little doubt global warming is caused by man, and predicting that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level will "continue for centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution.

A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said "there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,249659,00.html

How is the rising rate of tuburculosis caused by polluted drinking water?
"Tuberculosis, cancers and infant mortality are 30 times higher than before because the remaining drinking water is badly polluted. "

A person can become infected with tuberculosis bacteria when he inhales minute particles of infected sputum from the air. The bacteria get into the air when someone who has a tuberculosis lung infection coughs, sneezes, shouts, or spits. People who are nearby can then possibly breathe the bacteria into their lungs. Tuberculosis is transmitted primarily from person to person by breathing infected air during close contact. There is a form of tuberculosis, however, that is transmitted by drinking unpasteurized milk. Related bacteria, called Mycobacterium bovis, cause this form of TB.

Does the Scotsman have a fact checker? Yes, global warming is a problem. Ascribing all the doom and gloom of the world to that issue is just bad journalism.

68. Dragonhead, China

Sorry, I missed out the S when typing here, but managed it on the weather site where it said 27C, but updates quite often and was 22C when I closed it later, so it has become colder for the rest of the week.

I don't believe in the concept of 'global warming' just as much as you disbelieve in using paragraphs.

Mr McCrunchie,

Is there any particular reason why you think that many hundreds of scientists with access to a great deal of data are not to be believed?

What could they gain from deliberately misleading us? What are your data points? Of course we can cite examples of consensuses being ill founded but most of them are not ill founded and remain respected theories for hundreds of years. Nobody believed the Earth was spherical at one time, I bet there was someone with a vested interest in not buying that one either.

Tave you a job in the oil industry that depends on your not believing in global warming?

Sorry for spelling error,

should be "Have you a job, just a typo...also should have said,

have remained respected theories...

I do know of other people who feel that the global warming is just a blip, I asked one of them,

"well why do you think that?"

"Gut reaction" was what he cited in evidence, he does weigh in at nineteen stone as is only 5 foot seven, so the gut sure is impressive, but I reckon that it will never write beethoven's ninth symphony.

Our actions are so far-reaching that the global warming is even heating up Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars!

74. Suck McThumb

Nice name. Its choice however would indicate your cynicism in anything I would say, which does not help given the restricted volume permitted here to post. Don't worry about your spelling mistake/typo. I have included a few here purely from a perspective of not making you feel bad.

I don't or never would work for an oil company and feel sufficiently strongly about this that I have addressed your belief in my reply.

Firstly, I think the claim of global warming although false may be a good thing as it encourages more people to recycle and become more efficient. Read the posts here to substantiate my research and practice in one practical aspect, which I feel shows I spent time looking into the overall concept.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1139302007

...and the article and posts here, my first is at no2...

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=634922007

I feel the following is common knowledge.

The temperature of the world is cyclic, going through many ice ages and warm spells. The remains of animals similar to those found in Africa have been found in the UK, and there are also land structures carved by glaciation here too.

Many scientists whose names were originally added to the fuel the global warming bandwagon were added without their knowledge or on green issues which were subsequently presented as being their concerns over global warming. One even had to threaten court action to prevent his name being tarred with this association.

As stated here a few days ago, each website offering to calculate your carbon footprint offers different answers, with our government one invariably stating the greatest.

The best summary discrediting the theory is probably explained here. It offers numerous links for you

#71"And they all came up with the same consenus on global warming.

But you plumbers and doctors and secretaries and accuntants - you obviously know better than all of them
"

Yes we do. We all recognize that it is a huge feat of scaremongering backed up with government-funded scientists who recommend that the government tax, spend and regulate the phenomenon away.

You are extremely servile and would have been well at home in the Soviet Union.