I am not a religious person, but I think one day soon, the oceans will get a massive toxic bloom from our pollution killing everything, then we will all die.

I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied. Learn to swim. Mom's gonna fix it all soon. Mom's comin' round to put it back the way it ought to be. Learn to swim!

I can't wait for the deniers to begin posting their ignorant rants about this article. After all, they're convinced that 97% of climatologists around the world don't know anything about global warming.

I, for one, welcome our new planktonic overlords!

I accept the science of humans changing the atmospheric chemical composition through globalized industrialization. Much to my frustration and concern for future generations, the political reality is that there are so many ignorant Americans (some by choice, some by circumstance) it will take many years of violent and powerful weather, unusually hot summers, drought, and increasingly acidic oceans before today's ignorant are dead and more informed voters decide to take action. The problem is that so much more pollution will have been added to the atmosphere by then that the train of climate change will have already left the station and the seas will inevitably rise. What I don't understand is that we buy insurance for our lives, homes, autos, and other valuables but we don't place a value on our planet by paying for insurance just in case the science is correct.

For those of us who don’t like to be ignorant about the science of altering the atmosphere's chemistry, I suggest the following books with a brief quote from each:

1. A Green History of the World, Clive Ponting, 1991 – “The net result of these human activities is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by a third in the last two hundred years – from about 270 parts per million in 1750 to 350 parts per million in the late 1980s. About half of this increase has occurred since the 1950s – carbon dioxide emissions rose from 1.6 billion tons a year in 1950 to 5.4 billion tons in the mid-1980s. Global use of fossil fuels is rising at about 4 per cent a year (which means a doubling every sixteen years) and carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere at about .5 per cent a year. Carbon dioxide has provided by far the greatest volume of greenhouse gas emissions and contributed about two-thirds of the total warming effect so far.” [page 388]
2. The Little Ice Age, Brian Fagan, 2000 – “The Little Ice Age reminds us that climate change is inevitable, unpredictable, and sometimes vicious. The future promises exactly the same kinds of violent change on a local and global scale. If the present, unusually prolonged high mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation is indeed due to anthropogenic forcing, then we must also assume that global warming will accentuate the natural cycles of global climate on the largest and smallest scales. Some of these potential cycles of change are frightening to contemplate in an overpopulated and heavily industrialized world.” [page 214] “Over a century ago, Victorian biologist Thomas Huxley urged us to be ‘humble before the facts’. The facts stare us in the face, yet we do not display sufficient humility. The vicissitudes of the Little Ice Age remind us of our vulnerability again and again. In a new climatic era, we would be wise to learn from the climatic lessons of history.” [page 217]
3. The Long Summer, Brian Fagan, 2004 – “Short-term climatic events like droughts do not often leave a clear footprint. But the droughts of the Medieval Warm Period (or Medieval Climatic Anomaly, as it is often called) left giant tracks across the American west, wrought in deep-sea cores, pollen samples, tree rings, and ice cores from high in the Andes. From the California coast to the Maya lowlands to Lake Titicaca, five centuries of sudden aridity wrought havoc on human societies already living close to the environmental edge.” [pages 214-215]
4. The Weather Makers, Timothy Flannery, 2005 – “The concentration of C02 in the atmosphere in times past can be measured from bubbles of air preserved in ice. By drilling about two miles into the Antarctic ice cap, scientists have drawn out an ice core that spans almost a million years of Earth history. This unique record demonstrates that during cold times CO2 levels have dropped to around 160 parts per million, and until recently they never exceeded 280 parts per million. The Industrial Revolution changed that, albeit slowly, for even by 1958, when Keeling began his measurements of CO2 atop Mauna Loa, it was up to only 315 parts per million.” [page 29] “Today the figures are 380 parts per million….” [page 28]
5. Collapse, Jared Diamond, 2005 – “…the atmosphere really has been undergoing an unusually rapid rise in temperature recently and that human activities are the or a major cause. The remaining uncertainties mainly concern the future expected magnitude of the effect: e.g., whether average global temperatures will increase by ‘just’ 1.5 degrees Centigrade or by 5 degrees Centigrade over the next century. Those numbers may not sound like a big deal, until one reflects that average global temperatures were ‘only’ 5 degrees cooler at the height of the last Ice Age.” [page 493]
6. The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock, 2006 – “Predictions of climate change do not depend only on theoretical models in the form of computer simulations of the Earth. There is now a vast array of monitoring activities sustained globally. Air and sea temperatures are continuously measured, as are the gases of the atmosphere, the cloud cover, the floating ice and the glaciers and the health of the ecosystems in the ocean and on the land. The truth of the models is therefore continuously tested against the observations coming in from the real world.” [page 57]
7. Dead Pool, James Lawrence Powell, 2008 – “The question is not whether the earth has warmed, but why? The scientific consensus is that the cause is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which absorb heat and trap it near the earth. In one of the most prescient predictions in science, in 1896 … Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius predicted the very rise that we now observe. Based on the knowledge that carbon dioxide molecules trap heat, Arrhenius calculated that if atmospheric carbon dioxide level were to double, global temperatures would rise between 7 and 11 degrees F. More than a century later with vastly more information, IPCC forecasts that by 2100, temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.5 degrees F, overlapping the range the Swedish chemist forecast long ago. Arrhenius thought it might take three thousand years for carbon dioxide levels to double, but sadly that is one forecast that he got wrong.” [pages 171-2]
8. The Flooded Earth, Peter Ward, 2010 – “Our planet did not break out of the 180-280 ppm range until about 1800, when carbon dioxide levels began to rise well beyond the old upper limit. By 1900, the level was 295 ppm…. From 1900 to 2000, CO2 levels went from 295 all the way up the current level of about 385 – a 90 ppm rise in just a hundred years. The rate at which carbon dioxide is increasing…is accelerating. Models using the latest values of the measured rise for the past decade, and projecting forward, lead to an estimate that CO2 levels will nearly double in the next two centuries. That is the level of the Mesozoic Period and will cause the ice sheets to rapidly melt – all of them.” [pages 56-7]

I make these suggestions to help frame the science behind the issues associated with human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Many people seem ignorant of the science behind climate analysis and content to put their heads deeply into the sand. The defining characteristic of humanity, complex intelligence, is enhanced by a broad liberal education. Thomas Jefferson had this to say about higher education including science: “the university [of Virginia] would be ‘now qualified to raise its youth to an order of science unequalled in any other state; and this superiority will be greater from the free range of mind encouraged there, and the restraint imposed at other seminaries by the shackles of a domineering hierarchy and a bigoted adhesion to ancient habits.’” [from Thomas Jefferson, Willard Sterne Randall, 1993, page 588]

Here we go to put their false B.S. about man made Global Warming. It's a natural environmental happening. Mother Nature knows how to keep herself clean. So all you globalist can take your tax want to be and stick it

There goes those evil,lying liberal,socialist,marxist,communist scientists with their global warming lies! My pastor told me the earth is 6000 years old and we are eagerly waiting for the Rapture! Science is all lies and all scientists are followers of satan!

My pastor knows so much more then any scientist! He also talks to Jesus one on one! Science is evil! The work of the devil!

Global warming is actually the residual fires of Hell where all Liberals go! That's what my pastor told me! I believe everything he says!

TONYWARVET: Cite passage in the Bible that says the EARTH is only 6000 years old..

Unfortunately most people do not realize that heat is a catalyst for accelerating chemical and biological reactions. I fear that as the planet warms concentrations of toxins and the events they affect will progress at an ever increasing rate and we will start to see it causing extinction level events among many of the earths species. The trickle down effect will impact the food chain of the organisms dependent on them and cause a further reduction in plant and animal life on a global scale that can not turn to an alternate food supply. We are already beginning to see a shift in where particular foods can be grown as some regions become to hot while other regions become more environmentally friendly to food production. The problem with this is while weather conditions improve to support crop growth in some areas the soil may not contain the correct bio matter to produce the nutrients necessary to sustain crop growth in necessary quantities. This could lead to more expensive food costs due to the necessity to recondition the soil. If this trend continues we may areas of agriculture as well as seafood stocks shrinking at alarming rates impacting the over all availability of our food supply around the world with in the next 50 to 100 years. These conditions are already happening in areas such as Ethiopia, India, and Africa.

You need to get an education, you idiots !

Of course global warming is man made ! Who are you to claim that it is not ?? Are you scientists ? I would guess not, with such low intellects !

Try going into a room and blow up smoke until you no longer see the light bulb..let me know how it feels. Pollution block the sun light, and earth warms up.. what about that is so difficult to understand ?? You people are truely stupid !

Also, the sun used to be yellow, it is now white ! WE humans are responsable for global warming and no one or nothing else ! What don't you understand ?? Every day millions of tons of CO2 are rejected into our atmosphere, and you do not question the effects of all this pollution? and you think humans are not responsable for the consequences ?? You are truely idiots !

The best you can do is shut it up !

I am from the state of not so sky blue waters and I know what green crap does to the ecosystem and all life that depends on it. Do we want whales coming down with Swimmers Itch? I think not. Woe is us.

Methane is 10 times the greenhouse gas that CO2 is...The permafrost is melting and scientists just recently are shocked at the amount of methane that is escaping as this happens. It blows huge holes in all the predictive models. Methane that has been trapped under frozen ground since the dinosaurs roamed the land is billowing out into the air people. I agree with the learn to swim theory, just not sure how I will survive the 1000 foot tsunami when the WAIC breaks lose all at once, which will probably sweep all the ice off of Greenland in a single day (or the other way around, take you pick). Yes mother nature has a way of cleansing herself in ways that reverse the problems (us being the problem that will be gone in an instant of geologic time).

I've got an idea!!!!!

Let's use 100 years of flawed climate data that we manipulate to suit our political agenda to raise a panic about "climate change" on a planet that is 3,000,000,000 years old as a minimum.

It will be brilliant! We can claim every year is , "THE WORST YEAR EVER!!!!!" AND GET THIS!! We can do it every year because we have no idea how bad the weather was 10,000 years ago, hell we don't know for sure how cold it got 400 years ago.

Best of all, we can demand everyone on earth subjugate themselves to us,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,we can call ourselves, "The Climate Lords" and make them beg us for permission to feed themselves or heat their homes. Wouldn't that be awesome?

We can claim we know everything beyond a shadow of a doubt and with no proof otherwise we can attack people who claim we are wrong.

We just have to remember to NEVER tell anyone, that the climate always changes! Heck, the earth was covered with a mile thick sheet of ice just 10,000 years ago, global warming probably ruined that as well.

Arctic sea ice has been shrinking and thinning in summer since 1979, the result of warming temperatures over the region.

Which was at the end of a natural 30 year cooling cycle. As Earth went into the warming half of this natural 60 year cycle it only makes sense that ice would decrease. I happen to remember well the hype in the 1970s about the "next ice age" and 'global cooling" because the media and many scientists went bonkers toward the end of the 30 years cooling period. Then as the 30 years of warming started the media and many scientists again went bonkers over "global warming".

Arctic sea ice has been recovering since 2007. Last Fall Arctic sea ice refroze 40% faster than normal. This year Bering Sea ice was up 25-35%. This summer Arctic deep sea drilling will be delayed 2 at least 2 weeks because there is more ice than normal.

All of this points to the fact that the Earth is again entering the natural cooling cycle.

People worried over warming but this Spring (regardless of what NOAA says) it has been cold weather that has hurt crops like apples in Ontario, blueberries in Maine and bananas in the tropics.

And during the cooling decades of the 50s, 60s and 70s there were more violent tornadoes than in the last 30 warming years. And tropical cyclone numbers also trended downward during the last 30 warming years.

Natural warming is nothing compared to natural cooling. Of course I'm sure the media and the grant sucking scientists will switch gears again and this time blame the cooling on man just like they blamed the warming.

Does Al Gore eat plankton?

And may as well give him another Nobel.

A couple of Blue Whales passing through or a nice school of Cod could clean all this up, and probably enjoy it while they do.

Mark

You need to quit watching FOX. Global warming is real and it is in part man made. If you doubt that, try reading and learning. Not listening to FOX propaganda. I have actually talked to the scientists and know them personally, my late husband was a scientist and so I have the privelege of knowing these very good people. The only controversy is the one created by FOX and other idiot news (I use the term jokingly) people.

It's not global warming. It is global weirding. It is more than likely caused by something some scientists did. I know it wasn't caused by politicians, on account we've got lots of proof that they don't do anything.

Regardless of who or what did it- how far inland and how high do we have to be for say the next 100 years to be safe?

Scientists had thought Arctic phytoplankton blooms only happened after sea ice melted in summer, so the discovery is "like finding the Amazon rainforest in the middle of the Mojave Desert," added Paula Bontempi, who manages the ocean biology program at NASA, which funded the research.

Scientist's, who think they know so much, yet know so little. God bless them

Climate changes, species changes and life style changes will continue to the end of time. As a species on this great planet we still do not have a clue what is going on, we do have a lot of documentation on what has been going on the last 150 years, but that's not even a blink compare to the age of this planet. If we are making the changes or the earth makes its own changes. Is the human race making changes now, for sure we are. We evolving at a very fast pace in technology. Is this making us better or the planet better? I would say No. When my grandmother passed away in 2001 at age 91 she was concerned what would people do if they had to revert to living off the land and we lost all of these nice conveniences we have now. Rural areas would probably survive, but a lot of people in Metro areas would be chaos. Just take note of what is happening is it us or just the planet earth making its own changes. I would say us and planet earth will make her own changes to compensate for what we are doing.