All of this talk of climate crisis is so true indeed!
There is no hope and it's so sad. When I look out the window and see this blue sky I think how toxic it really is. Soon we will all be wearing masks and carry air tanks and soon our water will be non drinkable from all of the human chemicals that are making our planet we created a complete garbage dump and with the bio engineered plants taking over and windmills interrupting the natural air flows our planet, we will spin out of orbit and be taken up by the sun to be eaten up by another galaxy at some point soon in the future, maybe, probably for sure. There is no hope. Why go on? All pollution stays in the air for ever and ever and ever.
Some day, our poor helpless 5 billion year old planet will be like it used to be, like the inside of an indoor shopping mall, all nice and perfect and controlled not at all like it used to be in the smoggy 70's when a river caught fire in Ohio USA. The reason we are living longer now than at any time in history is because the evil EXXON execs are setting us up for birth defects that will leave us as an extinct species on a dead planet. There is no hope.
Why did we do this to our poor little planet? If we give our trusted politicians more tax money they will do what they promised to do: to lower the temperature of the planet earth by reducing natures building block of life; CO2 (catalytic converter gas and plant food).
There is no hope.
But it sure is fun getting all worried about something with other people because it brings meaning to my failed and miserable life.
-Diary of a Glowbull Whiner's Insanity Log

Protag/Eclipse,

Sorry about my 'tired old' link re clouds - it was just the first link that I found that dealt with the issue. Am happy to consider other sources, whether they agree or not.. just as long as they deal with it in sensible way. Your link to the Nasa site was interesting, but since it didn't actually deal with the effects of clouds (beyond dealing with the effects that aerosols and particulates may have on their formation), I can't see how it discounts my assertion that the operation of clouds is not well understood. Indeed this recently identified and very significant effect of aerosols is really an example of how our understanding of the atmosphere is still evolving (i.e. incomplete).

Protag wrote: "Your allusion to “higher” CO2 levels in the past is also vacuous since scientists have estimated that current CO2 levels are the highest in at least 650,000 years. Humans were not around 650,000 years ago, however, seemingly you have no interest in past extinctions..."

Whilst homo sapiens have not been around for 650,000 years, our hominid ancesters have been around for considerably longer than that. In any event, that does not make my "allusion to higher CO2 levels vacuous. My point was that there was no runaway greenhouse gas effect despite higher CO2 levels. I am aware of no widely accepted theory that explains why increased CO2 levels today will cause a runaway effect, but did not during previous periods of high CO2. The question of past extinctions caused by climate change or CO2 concentrations is not relevant to the runaway greenhouse effect issue (though I will try to read up on Dewey McLean's hypothesis when I get a chance).

Eclipse wrote: "you’ve fallen for climate myth number 4, "But they predicted an ice age in the 70's.”"

Sorry, but you seem to be using the straw man argument against me. I accept that there was no consensus back in the 70s that global cooling was imminent in any immediate sense, however, the Vostok ice core indisputably shows a strong pattern of long glacial periods and short interglacials (just as it shows fluctuations in CO2 levels). Absent human activity there doesn't seem to be any reason that cyclical pattern would not continue. We are some 10 or so thousand years into an interglacial and that's about how long they last (give or take a few thousand years). QED - the end of the current interglacial is due 'about now.'

Yes, there are hypothesis that the current interglacial will last much longer, but these are mere hypothesis and not widely accepted. Far from being a myth, it cannot reasonably be denied that natural dramatic global warming and cooling occur periodically. Are you seriously suggesting that if all these man made greenhouse gas emissions did not occur or were reversed, that there would be no reason to expect dramatic cooling?

Could you give me a link for your statement "temperatures are increasing more during the winter and night, not summer and day" as I'd be interested to read about this.

As for now comparing venus and mercury, it is pointless. Mercury has virtually no atmosphere, and hardly rotates so the side away from the sun is inevitably frigid. No meaningful conclusions can be reached by comparing planets that are so different.

MeMeMine, Turn off the computer, there's a good boy. Now run outside and play.

Kalin,

"I am aware of no widely accepted theory that explains why increased CO2 levels today will cause a runaway effect, but did not during previous periods of high CO2."
it all depends on which "higher Co2 levels" you are talking about. Previous higher Co2 levels were catastrophic for life on earth!

1. It DID cause disasters... dead oceans, massive ecosystem dieoffs, all sorts of horrors! See studies footnoted at this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELE#Sustained_and_significant_global_warming

2. The human species was not around in a global agricultural civilisation of 6.5 billion back then. A few proto-humans wandering through Africa may have been stressed by these events, but we're talking about trying to prevent failed states, famine, and war in a time of resource depletion, overpopulation, and climate changing in unpredicable ways. Forget the term "global warming" and try and think of the extra energy in the system as causing "global weirding".

3. Watch Crude, the Incredible Story of Oil by the ABC Science unit.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

Part 3 deals with the true horrors of higher Co2 levels in the past, and some of the HORRIFIC things we can expect if climate runs away as it has in the past.

RE: ice ages. Do you know WHY they cycle?

Re mercury, BINGO! Yes it has no atmosphere, which is the point. The side that stays closer to the sun for longer periods of time AND receives 4 times the sunlight still doesn't get as hot as Venus. Why?

Re: sun heating at night.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1974497.htm

Bottom line, all those science organisations can test Co2, measure atmospheric concentrations, and study the other forcings (sun, particulates, volcanoes, water vapour) etc for themselves, and they ALL agree? Why?

Kalin1 – Why aren’t previous high CO2 emissions relevant? If you bring yourself up to date on palaeontology, you will find that the researchers’ hypotheses refer very strongly to runaway greenhouse effects – hence the extinctions.

And since man-made emissions of CO2 are a hundred and fifty times in excess of volcanic emissions, due to the burning of fossil fuels, which produce water vapour, carbon dioxide and a myriad of other lethal hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, which burn to CO2, let’s trust that we don’t incur any catastrophic volcanic eruptions to add to the environmental carnage we are committing.

In regard to our hominid ancestors – yes the oldest one (Old Man of Chad) is estimated to have been on earth some 7 million years ago.

So why did they vanish? The two major extinctions of hominids were the "robust australopithicenes" (Paranthropus) and the early members of the genus Homo, H. erectus and H. neanderthalis.

Since you appear obsessed with clouds, for reasons unknown, why not google NASA who has additional information? I really don’t have the time to be searching for articles from my very large catalogue when you can do it for yourself.

A three-day conference in Copenhagen, during March saw nearly 2,000 researchers gathered to discuss climate change. Excerpts from the report released soon after stated that:

“Temperatures, sea levels, acid levels in oceans and ice sheets were already moving "beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived.

“The world is facing an increasing risk of irreversible climate shifts because worst-case scenarios warned of two years ago are being realized.

"The current climate situation on the planet may be as severe as the worst-case scenarios predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which issued warnings in 2007 of a future beset by flooding, drought, storms and mass extinction of species.”

And to my knowledge not one objection to the report from the 2,000 researchers. So what exactly is your argument Kalin1?

Thanks for the links Eclipse. I shall endeavour to read them shortly.

Are you lot still at it?

Kalin1, your head is in the clouds (joke) ... this one's for you:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/vapor-lock/#more-1719

Plimer wouldn't have a clue what Andy Dessler is on about.