Rising forest density offsets climate change: study

Originally posted by kro32
You will notice however that this study pertains to climate change and not global warming.

Most people agree that the terms are interchangeable and that "climate change" is a little more politically correct than AGW and "global warming," generally. The studies all pertain to CO2 mitigation and sequestration regardless of the semantic reference points.

Those same dates when this study was conducted also shows a steep rise in average global temps compared to previous periods as is noted through ice core samples.

Actually, recent studies have confirmed much steeper rises in global temperature than presently observed (i.e., the "Industrial Age").For example, one of the most famous global warming events in the geological record is the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM,) which caused the Earth's temperature to rise by about 6 degrees about 50 million years ago.
The Middle Miocene Climate Optimum (MMCO) was still 3°C higher than present about 15 million years ago.
Antarctica was warm enough for a lake and trees then.
And, the Pliocene warming event, about 4.5 million years ago had CO2 levels similar to todays, but there was no sea ice, and sea levels were higher.
cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com...

Starting around the 1920's through today the temp was supposed to rise as we are currently coming out of an ice age but compared to historical data our warming is significantly higher than what the trend has been in the past for the same conditions.

Not quite.

[A]t the moment, geologically speaking, we are still living in an ice age, by which we mean that there is permanent ice cover on the Earth at the poles. This is not a trivial distinction; the Earth behaves very differently when there is ice to reflect light back to space. At the time of the PETM, there is no such cover, and not only that, the Earth started much warmer as a whole before entering into the global warming event. Like or not, the Earth is actually almost as cold as it gets at this present moment in time; significantly colder than at the end of the Paleocene. Moreover, levels of CO2 were significantly higher before even entering into the PETM; before all that excess carbon was dumped.

www.science20.com...

All in all, we are in a cooler part of the Earth's overall history. and warming is to be expected. No one knows what the "normal" rate of warming is or should be or would be but for the presence of man. That is why there is such debate today about the causes, amount and reality of generalized "global" warming.

jw