A good artcle...where did it play the man? Sounds like the deniers are a bit desperate again. The first thing they do, as usual, is pick individual statements out of an article rather than addressing the message as a whole. Why? Because it doesn't require signficant work and takes things out of context.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a skeptic, people are entitled to beleive what they wish. But, to deny the science and denigrate scientists without addressing what they are saying in any meaningful way, is a sure sign of insecurity and a lack of knowledge of what they are talking about. The only people who are playing the man so far are alzo, hadz, col rouge and DaisyM.

As for where the water comes from JF - it comes from melting ice that lies over land (Greenland ice-cap for instance)and also from the expansion of water as it warms up.

Roger - There are quite a few "facts" I would like to counter in your article but I'll pick on only the rather curious temperature figures you quote. My guess is the three records you cite are NOAA, GISS and Hadley. No-one seems to use NOAA despite what you say, although it seems to agree with GISS which is widely cited by greenhousers. The other three used are Hadley - argually the most authorative of the instrument sites - and the two satellite sites RSS and UAH. Hadley, RSS and UAH agree that the Earth has been cooling in the last few years, abeit marginally, and disagree strongly with GISS and NOAA on that trend - a point that is beginning to cause some comment, as the satellite sites are reguarded as the last word.
But let us leave all that aside. A per decade warming for the past three decades may be 0.1 degrees or less for the most recent decade (going negative on some sites), 0.2 for the one before that and 0.3 before that, despite carbon dioxide increasing all the time.
Scientists have hastily cited climate cycles to explain this trend but there are signs of desperation in those explanations. Questions are also being asked about the results of the Goddard site, which is under the control of Prof Hansen.. leave it with you.

alzo, hadz, col rouge and DaisyM do not watch Four Corners tonight!
do not read http://www.theage.com.au/environment/our-melting-planet-ominous-warning-signs-in-the-arctic-20080803-3pc9.html

These are articles and programs about the Artic ice melt but a business consultant like Col_Rouge knows far more than a person with university level statistics or any body who works in atmospheric or climate research.

The thing that disturbs me most about the global warming protagonists is their insistence that global warming is a moral question.

Science has nothing to do with morality.

For some reason the guilt merchants seem obsessed with the idea that because most of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere was put there by us, we must allow the third world to continue its policy of massive population expansion and emission increase, while we do all the cutting back.

The only effective policy is to look to the future. China already emits more CO2 than the US, and its emission is increasing very rapidly. This is what has to stop.

The other thing that worries me is the attempts to silence anyone who disagrees with the currently fashionable theory of global warming. This is crazy. Science is built on scepticism. All scientific theories are just that, theories, and all good scientists should be constantly trying to disprove them. A theory can never be proved, but it can be disproved. When I remember the forecasts made over the past decades warning of new ice ages etc., I remain very dubious about the current theory. Not that the climate is changing, it always does, but that human activity is the principal cause. The other cause for doubt is that when the weather bureau has trouble forecasting the weather in a month's time, what hope do they have forecasting 50 years ahead?

"Who has measured the mass of rock hidden beneath arctic and antarctic snow and ice?"
Rock under the arctic, what a notion! And here I thought that the arctic was an ice-sheet over water. Well I must be wrong and I'll have to change my mind. Bugger the science, we'll just make it up as we go. Just like those who oppose the theory of global warming, make sure you have a scientific backing, alas, there's very,very,very little evidence to support any alternate theory. Oh! you could give Fred Singer or David Evans another run or even reruns of "GGWS", but then we're gone far past that sort of Neanderthal thinking, I think!

Ball of Wax - Part 1

You know, I reckon we have the brains between us to understand a lot of climate fundamentals - to free ourselves from the tyranny of the ad-men, no matter on WHOSE side they pop up on.

- because I don't think this particular ball of wax will be unravelled by the Gruen Transfer, reds under the bed, or the magic of the free market, so let's make it our goal to get along without them before we all go blind.

We need to memorise a few rules of nature in order to fashion a basic analytical tool kit. JF Aus points out that 11 parts of ice yields 10 parts of water (by volume). That's a very good fact. Here's my contribution:

Temperature is a measurement of energy INTENSITY - something like voltage. The old measurement for a QUANTITY of heat energy is the CALORIE - which is roughly similar to amperes.

It takes 1 calorie of heat energy to warm 1 gram of water by 1 degree (celsius).

It takes 1 calorie of heat energy to warm 1 gram of ice by 1 degree (celsius).

But to turn 1 gram of ice into 1 gram of water takes 80 calories of heat energy. This huge demand is due to the LATENT HEAT of water. Google it.