The National Academy of Sciences has compiled a comprehensive report on the actual state of research and the state of the problem. Abrupt Climate Change is a verified problem that has occured in the past and will probably occur soon ... if it is not occurring now. The attached links are a little long in the reading but very interesting if you are curious as to the how and why of how we got into this mess. There is an obvious effort to leave the politics out and stick to the facts.

The following website gives the overview and the history of the problem.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm

Here is an excerpt from the above link.

A lesson about how science proceeds can be learned from this history. Asked about the discovery of abrupt climate change, many climate experts today would put their finger on one moment: the day they read the 1993 report of the analysis of Greenland ice cores. Before that, nobody confidently believed that the climate could change massively within a decade or two; after the report, nobody felt sure that it could not. So wasn't the preceding half-century of research a waste of effort? If only scientists had enough foresight, couldn't we have waited until we were able to get good ice cores, and settle the matter once and for all with a single unimpeachable study?

Most people don't want to think about global warming as they have other things to do. Some might ask the following question so the author gives the following response.

What do we know about the impacts of global warming?
A large body of scientific studies, exhaustively reviewed, has produced a long list of possibilities. Nobody can say that any of the items on the list are certain to happen. But the world's climate experts almost all agree that the impacts listed below are more likely than not to happen. For some items, the probabilities range up to almost certain.


The following are the likely consequences of warming by a few degrees Celsius — that is, what we may expect if humanity manages to begin restraining its emissions soon, so that greenhouse gases do not rise beyond twice the pre-industrial level. Without strong action the doubling will come well before the end of this century, bringing the planet to temperatures not seen since the spread of agriculture. By 2007, many of the predicted changes were observed to be actually happening. For details see reports referenced in this footnote: (22)


* Most places will continue to get warmer, especially at night and in winter. The temperature change will benefit some regions while harming others — for example, patterns of tourism will shift. The warmer winters will improve health and agriculture in some areas, but globally, mortality will rise and food supplies will be endangered due to more frequent and extreme summer heat waves and other effects. Regions not directly harmed will suffer indirectly from higher food prices and a press of refugees from afflicted regions.


* Sea levels will continue to rise for many centuries. The last time the planet was 3°C warmer than now, the sea level was at least 6 meters (20 feet) higher.(23) That submerged coastlines where many millions of people now live, including cities from New York to Shanghai. The rise will probably be so gradual that later generations can simply abandon their parents' homes, but a ruinously swift rise cannot be entirely ruled out. Meanwhile storm surges will cause emergencies.




<=Sea rise & ice

* Weather patterns will keep changing toward an intensified water cycle with stronger floods and droughts. Most regions now subject to droughts will probably get drier (because of warmth as well as less precipitation), and most wet regions will get wetter. Extreme weather events will become more frequent and worse. In particular, storms with more intense rainfall are liable to bring worse floods. Some places will get more snowstorms, but most mountain glaciers and winter snowpack will shrink, jeopardizing important water supply systems. Each of these things has already begun to happen in some regions.(24)


* Ecosystems will be stressed, although some managed agricultural and forestry systems will benefit, at least in the early decades of warming. Uncounted valuable species, especially in the Arctic, mountain areas, and tropical seas, must shift their ranges. Many that cannot will face extinction. A variety of pests and tropical diseases are expected to spread to warmed regions. These problems have already been observed in numerous places.


* Increased carbon dioxide levels will affect biological systems independent of climate change. Some crops will be fertilized, as will some invasive weeds (the balance of benefit vs. harm is uncertain). The oceans will continue to become markedly more acidic, gravely endangering coral reefs, and probably harming fisheries and other marine life.




<=Biosphere

* There will be significant unforeseen impacts. Most of these will probably be harmful, since human and natural systems are well adapted to the present climate.


The climate system and ecosystems are complex and only partly understood, so there is a chance that the impacts will not be as bad as predicted. There is a similar chance of impacts grievously worse than predicted. If the CO2 level keeps rising to well beyond twice the pre-industrial level along with a rise of other greenhouse gases, as must inevitably happen if we do not take strong action soon, the results will certainly be worse. Under a "business as usual" scenario, recent calculations give even odds that global temperature will rise 5°C or more by the end of the century — causing a radical reorganization and impoverishment of many of the ecosystems that sustain our civilization.(25)

All this is projected to happen to people who are now alive. What of the more distant future? If emissions continue to rise for a century — whether because we fail to rein them in, or because we set off an unstoppable feedback loop in which the warming itself causes ever more greenhouse gases to be evaporated into the air — then the gases will reach a level that the Earth has not seen since tens of millions of years ago. The consequences will take several centuries to be fully realized, as the Earth settles into its new state. It is probable that, as in the distant geological eras with high CO2, sea levels will be many tens of meters higher and the average global temperature will soar far above the present value: a planet grossly unlike the one to which the human species is adapted.

So what are we actually doing about it?

This is what the Pentagon did.

There was an even more sobering way to frame climate change — as a security threat. For half a century, forward-looking military officers had considered with increasing concern what global warming might mean in their area of responsibility. They would surely be called upon, for example, if weather disasters multiplied. In 2003, defense intellectuals in the Pentagon commissioned a report on "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security." As reported in a leak to the press, the authors warned of a risk that "mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.... abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies." The authors concluded that "the threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism." The report was strikingly similar to the CIA report prepared three decades before (see above). Again the specific "worst-case"scenario, an abrupt change in ocean circulation, was something scientists considered extremely unlikely. By now, however, impact studies had sketched out a range of more plausible scenarios that looked bad enough. If you thought like a military officer, the IPCC's approach — concentrating on what everyone could agree was likely, while ignoring less likely but still possible scenarios — was not "conservative" at all, but irresponsible. Many well-informed military officers and other national security experts, along with many political leaders and a majority of the world’s public, now believed that the possible impacts of global warming ranked among the most dangerous long-term risks that civilization faced.(21*)

What did the US politicians do? The liberals wanted to use it as a way to equalize world income by taking from the wealthy in the form of "carbon credits" and giving to the poor countries to not pollute. The trillions of dollars involved would bankrupt the US if not most western economies.

The conservatives pretended the problem did not exist and hired a few to produce "opposing opinions" to flood the world with false information to make it seem like facts were not facts ... but opinions, to delay any form of solution as long as possible.

Funny thing to me is that the earth has been changing weather and coastlines and altitudes and a host of other stuff that all of these educated people and experts seem to forget, in the last 10,000 years of the earth's history we have enjoyed the most stable weather ever. There were at least three or four times when the entire planet was a desert! Others the whole damn planet was a Popsicle. And at least three distinct ages of this planet it was carpeted in lush tropical rain forests from pole to pole. During at least one period of the Dinosaur era it went from 110+ degree Fahrenheit by day to below freezing over night. One example of a place this happens still is Death Valley! I have been there during the spring as in early April and still have 100+ degree days and suddenly it is 28 Degrees by 9PM.

And what is even more comic to me is the whole "Rising Sea Level" Idea. The last Tsunami that made headlines in Japan, the one that killed tens of thousands, was nothing like the Tsunami that killed hundreds of Thousands due to a huge sub oceanic upthrust of land movement. Their coastline DROPPED two feet within five minuets and the sea rushed in to fill the new area that was suddenly below sea level. the wave itself was only at best ten feet tall once it achieved full foreword surge.

On top of that there were at least two times where one life form more than dominated the planet, The Lystrasaurus Era and the Trododon Era. We are talking these animals WERE the most prevalent life form out there and the literally ate themselves to death. Lystrasaurus were herbivorous, Trododon were carnivorous. It was so bad for Trododon that many fossils show they were highly cannibalistic by the time their extinction came. And here us humans are dominating this planet so much we eventually will strip it of all other life to feed ourselves! Then we will have to turn on our own just to stay alive.

Instead of living with and adapting to changes in weather patterns we are trying to force an issue that will not be forced.

And with all the evidence our real researchers are doing is being mistaken for man made causation when most of it is natural phenomenon.

If you actually read the posted link you would know that these are the "real" researchers, not whoever to which you refer. You would also learn that the time periods you mentioned and many more were taken into consideration as well as more correlating data than you can imagine. Instead of researching the real science, you just spout the BS you have swallowed. That is to be expected and it certainly doesn't affect the credibility of the linked information. The attached conclusions represent the vast majority of the real people involved in real science.

Wanna bet? Look at how many people call Al Gore an expert. Even the Ice Core specialists have correlated things like the Extinction of Dinosaurs in Ice Cores. Then there is the hard geological evidence. once upon a time when Earth had ocean and one super continent suspicions are that the super continent was one HUGE desert. So are you going to try to convince me that Neanderthals died off becasue they caused Global Warming? I think not.

I agree humanity does have some impact BUT in the scope of the size of the planet and the natural phenomenon that likewise affect weather I am not buying into the concept based on speculative Data! THERE IS NO DEFINITIVE PROOF YET WE ARE EXCLUSIVELY THE CAUSE! What we need to fear more than global warming is Nuclear power as we use it today! We cannot effectively clean up after a disaster! Industrial pollution is another real problem. Over population and species depletion. That is another real problem we need more concern over.

Many people do not seem to get that all life forms are interdependent on one another. The waste cycle of this planet is biological and when we kill off specific links in the chain it all breaks. Now in Futurama they joke about Anchovies being wiped out by aliens greedy for the taste of them. Do you have any idea what kind of damage wiping out Anchovies would cause? The animals they feed on would bloom causing widespread damage to the ecosystem by wiping out their food supply. Predators dependent on them would die. The animals that feed off of their predators would likewise die off. But that example is way too simplistic. Try this, by some fluke we have a host of Volcanic activity that blacks out the sky overt the entire planet for two weeks. By that time ALL planktonic life dependent on photosynthesis would die off. Even 90% of all plant life above water would likewise die off. What do you think would happen if we had something like that occur?

Global Warming is part of the changes this planet naturally goes through. About 3/4 of the thinking in Global Warming is all speculation based on the 25% evidence we actually have. People tossed Methane and Cow Farts being a problem. Siberia thawing out is actually a real problem. Siberia farts out more methane each year with it thawing than all of us and all the cattle on planet earth! That is a natural phenomenon. All that frozen dead plant matter warming up and decaying... Now let us look underwater again. Ever hear of Hydrated Methane? Also known as Methane ice? There are HUGE untapped reserves of it underwater. Every once in a rare while there will be a huge eruption of gas to the surface, a phenomenon that might be attributable to the Bermuda Triangle disappearances.

We can't control weather. We sure can't control the planet either. I need more proof before I trust a propeller head.

I'm reading the article.

Hey those mammoths came from the inner hollow earth.

I could use a steak off one them right now!

So basically the whole "proof" of the possibility of abrupt global climate changes hinges on this one study in Greenland ice cores.
But that is certainly not proof that we are currently in the process of global warming.

The beginning sentence in the O.P. was:

>>The National Academy of Sciences has compiled a comprehensive report on the actual state of research and the state of the problem. Abrupt Climate Change is a verified problem that has occured in the past and will probably occur soon ... if it is not occurring now. <<

But your link did not confirm that an abrupt climate change "will probably occur soon." If it did, please post that part if I missed it.

we are at the of an ice age, of course the world is warming... it is a cycle the earth goes through... so lets just through some more money at something we cannot do anything about....

Geeze. The website does not say that. That is one point (albeit a big one) of a whole field of data that gradually gelled after a ton of work. I posted the summary.

What are you claiming the website did not say?
I quoted your opening statement and I quoted what the website did indeed say.

What I said is in Red above.

I read the website and I did not see any conclusive proof of global warming definitely happening NOW.

What do you think is so conclusive that indicate global warming or any proof of it happening now?

Take the above statement for example. "....and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming."


1. That does not translate to proof of global warming, its just an assumption.
2. Exactly HOW would those researchers connect that to a theory of global warming?

Its like chicken little who observes something falling from the sky and surmises that the sky is falling.

Everything they see that looks like it "might" be connected to global warming, they say ... "oh that's undoubtedly connected."

Consider the comment of Dr. Theodor Landscheidt of Schroeter Institue for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity in Nova Scotia, Canada.

"Precise forecasts that prove correct are a sharp criterion for the efficient science. The protagonists of global warming remain empty-handed in this respect in spite of great material and persona expense. In the eighties S. Schneider from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, predicted in his book Global Warming a huge jump in temperature, polar ice melting away, seas surging across the land, famine on an epidemic scale and ecosystem collapse. Today this is no longer taken seriously.

Yet other climatologists, too, made forecasts in the eighties they no longer maintain. C.D. Schonwiese, usually critical and cautious in his statements, still predicted in 1987 a 4.5% C rise in temperature until 2030, though only as an upper limit. He thought the sea level in the German Bay could rise by 1.5 m until 2040 and in the ocean around India even 2 to 3 m. A projection of his temperature forecasts yields 11.8 degrees for the year 2100. At the climate conference in Villach (Austria) in 1985 similar predictions were presented to the public. The IPCC still predicted in 1990 and 1992 that global temperature would rise 1.9 degrees - 5.2 degrees until 2100 and thought that a rise in sea level by 1.10 m was possible.

All of these predictions have turned out to be untenable."

Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have wagered a British climate expert, James Annan, ten thousand dollars that the earth would cool over the next decade. The Russion solar physicists believe that the earth's temperature is effected more by the sun than by burning hydrocarbon fuels. According to their research, changes in the number and size of sunspots have a measurable effect upon temperature changes.

Because they believe the sun is going into a less active phase in the next decade, the Russian solar physicists believe the earth will cool, experiencing a measurable drop in temperatures.

We will have to see who wins, since the bet will be determined by a series of agreed-upon temperature measurements to be made between 2012 and 2017.

The scientific evidence is still far from settled. Evidently credible scientists still believe it is reasonable to wager on one another over whether the earth is warming up or cooling down.

The scientific models for explaining and predicting climatic change are so notoriously inaccurate that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued warnings about even using the computer-generated results:

"Virtually all published estimates of how the climate could change in the United States are the results of computer models of the atmosphere known as "general circulation models." These complicated models are able to simulate many features of the climate, but they are still not accurate enough to produce reliable forecasts of how the climate may change; and the several models often yield contradictory results. For the time being, however, these models are about all we have to say how the climate may change in particular cases.

Given the unreliability of these models, researchers are trying to understand the future impacts of climate change and generally analyze different scenarios from several different climate models. The hope is that, by using a wide variety of different climate models, one's analysis can include the entire range of scientific uncertainty.

For all these reasons, EPA reiterates the warning provided by all climate modelers to people considering the impacts of future climate change: the projections of climate change in specific areas are not forecast but are reasonable examples of how the climate might change. "


Given that warning, I can see how a paid researcher could come up with just about any results he wanted to produce. <---me

The warning is about predicting the weather, which is far different from predicting the climate. The paragraphs are focused on the words "in specific areas" because climate models do not predict weather accurately in any "specific area". It doesn't work that way. For example a climate model can say Seattle will get 60 inches of rain a year because it almost always does, but it cannot tell you which days will rain. Likewise, a model can say the southern states will get hit with waves of severe thunderstorms but they cannot tell you when and where.

We (here) are in one of the worst droughts in history. We have also been experiencing all time heat records at a frequent rate (several in just the last month). The climate models predicted that it would happen but it didn't say who it would happen to.

Higher ocean temperatures mean more energy dumped back into the atmosphere in the form of warm moist air. There are freakish amounts of it zooming overhead right now (totally unlike our historic weather). If the warm moist winds happen to collide with another cold front coming down from Canada, you will see another wave of freakish tornadoes just like last week.

When it comes down to it, it goes something like this.


Stop being so ignorant the amount of nitrogen we release into the air "via over population and farms" is causing an issue no matter how we look at it. The life cycle of nitrogen is a LONG one, people still concerned with co2 need their heads examined for a lack of chemistry knowledge.

That being said, we can "estimate" changes in global weather patterns, we were not there, they were not documented! Ask someone with a PHD some time what their expected error range is when saying things about global changes over 10,000 years ago.

Do we know where this is headed? No... Can we speculate using cloud computing running quantum mechanic and physics antilogarithms, YES. Could these be wrong? Yes. Is that likely? No. Is there a certain room for error in these estimations? Yes. Do we know exactly what that is? No.

Any which way you put it, if we don't find a way to change a lot of things we will go down to our deaths on this big wet rock flying through our solar system.

Think of the planet as a giant chemical reaction which we humans are putting chemicals from one zone into another at fairly alarming rates compared to normal. Any chemist can easily tell you this is a bad idea because it can destabilize a stable environment. You don't go mixing random stuff in your sink until it blows up in your face right? Well how about we take a step back and take note to what we don't know and see if we have better solutions.

In reality the human race has come a long ways, in reality we are no smarter about the universe than a squirrel when it comes to running into traffic.

"......Extreme weather events will become more frequent and worse. In particular, storms with more intense rainfall are liable to bring worse floods....."



In light of our summer, with Cyclone Yasi and the flooding we are still experiencing here...

it ain't rocket science.

Succinctly put. Texas weather for the past few years has been crazy.

There is no discussion in the attached linked information specifically about "if" global warming will occur. It already happened. The big problem they are wrestling with is how fast it is accelerating (and it is accelerating very fast) and what to do about it.

There are several major points being made. Here are a few.

Changes of temperature of only a few degrees cause the weather over the parts of the world which grow our food to either flood or drought.
This action stops food production either way. One bad year is enough to make millions (perhaps a billion) people want to move someplace where there is more food. The move will not change the fact that the problem is there isn't enough food so conflict will result.

They have discovered "tipping points" which are events which make the whole situation much worse very quickly. An example would be methane gas release into the atmosphere. There are incredible amounts of methane trapped into frozen arctic tundra and hydrate deposits in shallow sea water that are starting to be released. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. At a certain point the acceleration increases even faster. The data from ice cores and other sources is gelling with just how fast the whole system can change and we are in a changing system. Record temperatures are being set daily.

The timeline of what is happening DOES NOT MATCH HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. What is going on is being accelerated by us. Period.

There are a very very few scientists who do not agree but the vast majority of real climate researchers, oceanographers, chemists, and anyone else capable of looking at the data and understanding it, agree that the climate is changing now and rapidly.

The really big confusion with everyone involved, including most governments, is what to do.

A global plan was put together to issue "carbon credits" which is a plan to charge money for producing CO2 and give the money to developing countries to "not" produce carbon. Theoretically, this would stop rich countries and poor countries from polluting. In reality is was just an exchange of money with perhaps limited impact.

The planet (other than the obvious severe weather patterns) is showing signs of stress. Deserts are forming adjacent to rainforests and could break the rain cycle (large rainforests produce their own weather. Small rainforests cannot.)

France, after the 1973 oil embargo built a large number of nuclear power plants that have safely produced more electricy than they can use without producing greenhouse gasses in the process.

Germany mandated a higher price for electricy and allows anyone to sell it back to the utility companies. A huge ecomomy rose where small farmers have enough solar panels to meet their electricity needs and sell some back to the utility for a profit. Other Germans make the panels, install the systems, and generally make money off the system. They now have a clean solar thriving economy.

China is building a dirty coal power plant a week.

Japan, by building nuclear power plants next to the worst earthquake fault in the world, may have ended new nuclear power for everyone else. The two new units scheduled to be built thirty miles from me are now canceled.

There do not appear to be any real solutions in the works due to the inability for governments to work together.

The website did not say "So basically the whole "proof" of the possibility of abrupt global climate changes hinges on this one study in Greenland ice cores." or anything like that. In fact it said the exact opposite. You are apparently reading into it what you want it to say instead of what it actually says. The proof is vast.

JB, the only possible way you could reach your conclusion is if you didn't read the attached post or you didn't understand what you are reading. The reason they say that "global warming is undoubtedly connected ... " is that THERE IS NO SIGNIFICANT SCIENTIFIC DOUBT" in the matter. The curves of global warming do not match anything in Earth's natural history. It is accelerating at a rate that is undeniable. They even make a big point of saying most of the scientists were wrong in their predictions back in the eighties and before. No one thought it could go as fast as it is going RIGHT NOW!