TOO LATE? Why scientists say we should expect the worst

Originally posted by AceWombat04
Because we (most of us at least) are laypeople and not scientists, we are utterly at the mercy of the media and publishers of information with regard to what we know about the potential for man-made climate change.

Nonono! Don't you dare sell yourself short like that. It may have been true 100 years ago that scientists have more knowledge due to university study and global travels but in the information age there's no real need to put a scientist on a pedestal. Granted studying in college does give a lot of information and focus, but if you have the willingness and desire to read all you can and learn all you can, look at the data, and validate the truths, you're doing essentially what a scientist does anyway. Ecology only became a specific study about fifty years ago. We don't have a lot of data to fall back on so there's no way of knowing whether this is a cycle or a more permanent change. My ecology professor seemed to think this was a cycle given her review of it all. We won't know for another couple thousand years unless there's a way to recover all the information we're missing about the climate.

if it were to late,the only reason is that climate change is being allowed to happen as it will drasticly depopulate the planet.

explaining the inaction of our so called "leaders"

while I agree that man should take better care of his immediate environment, that doesn't mean that he can affect the entire global weather system.

You give people too much credit to say that we can alter natural forces that we have never been able to control. Ever.

Independent scientists have stationed scores of buoys in the oceans around the world. These are machines that sample water temperature and radio their data to ships that circle the globe gathering the findings. These buoys show a significant cooling of the oeans and seas.

Global warming is a hoax.

NBC recently fired most of its Weather Channel staff. Do you think they would reduce staff if there was an ongoing or developing crisis?

The founder of the Channel has taken a brave stand, backed by thousands of other climatologists and geophysicists, debunking the GW myth.

At present, CO2 is 380ppm of our atmosphere. That is 3.8 parts out of 10,000. We aren't going to change this concentration significantly even if we tried. The most prevalent greenhouse gas is water vapor! Are we going to sponge it out of the air as well?

Do some research, and you can easily find the facts proving GW is a grand fraud. Remember, it was only thirty years ago that the alarms were sounding over global cooling! When I was in high school, the scare stories were about the coming ice age! That was a fraud, too.

Bottom line, man is an insignificant biomass helpless to affect the atmosphere or weather. Therre are more insects, mass-wise, than there ever will be of people. Hell, we can just bareley keep our lakes and rivers clean, how can anyone argue respectably that we can affect the entire planet?

Gore and his lackies use fudged data or anecdotal samples to sway opinion. There are more polar bears today than ever in our history. It is very easy to find an isolated example of a bear swimming to an ice floe, but would spoil the game if they revealed the total population numbers. Same for Tibetan glaciers shrouded under polluted air. They are not representative of the truth.

Again, please spend a couple of hours researching facts and unbiased data before you fall for this crap. The real impetus is to conserve dwindling fossil fuels. What will you or your grandchildren do when there are no more fossil fuels to run cars, factories and generate power?

[edit on 9-12-2008 by jdub297]

buy your gas-masks people.. you'll use them at least once in your life.

We can't affect the enviroment? You gotta be kidding me. How long do we bury our heads in the sand? Until it's too late and we say "oh crap, I guess we CAN hose the natural environment!" Bees disappearing. Global warming. Nuclear waste and fallout. Disappearing rainforests. If you really don't think this has any effect on our planet, you are ignoring a growing and serious problem.

Just because we never in the past could have a last effect, doesn't mean we can't. Our ability to do massive amounts of natural damage to the planet has increased dramatically in the last 100 years.

And as far as I can recall, I don't ever remember looking over a pasture of cows, and seeing a brown layer in the sky. However, driving back to Denver last week, around 4 p.m., looking over the entire sky from probably 20 miles north of downtown (where more of the commerical buildings are), to 30 miles to the right of the city, a thick, very dark brown layer sat over the city. We don't have an ill-effect? Please.

There is something about global warming that has never sat right with me. It wasnt until I found out the real reason that it dawned on me what is really happening. You'll have to dig around on the net for this one as I havent got time at the moment to find all the info, but EVERY PLANET IN OUR SOLOR SYSTEM IS HEATING UP. Even our sun. You can find information on this even on the NASA website.

Its all a big scam. The government want everyone scared so they can screw everyone over for more tax.

Or course its always good to cut down on harmful gasses and do your bit to recycle, but its not the doom and gloom they're making it out to be.

Its a natural cycle. Its believed that its due to the fact we're passing through the galactic plain.

Originally posted by infolurker
Glaciers are growing around the world, including the United States
Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back
Usual Global Warming Alarmist BS. Glaciers are growing all over the world.

Actually, glaciers are only growing in isolated areas under specific circumstances had the author of the article checked.

* NORWAY - www.iceagenow.com... (The links in your post are malformed, and from the website, they no longer exist. However I do find this on there.

A detailed survey of the total glaciated area in Norway has not been performed since the glacier inventories were compiled in the mid 1980s for southern Norway and start of the 1970s for northern Norway. A new updated survey of the Norwegian ice masses is required in order to get an overview of the present state of the glaciers and the changes of them. Satellite sensors enable (near) global coverage of glaciers. As part of the Global Land-Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) project (www.glims.org) NVE has started work with a new remote-sensing-based inventory for Norway.

Link

That's pretty old information you're relying on.

The data on mass balance from the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) show a record-high retreat of Norwegian glaciers in 2006. Many of the glaciers saw the greatest decrease ever recorded. Read the paper 'Norway’s glaciers shrunk dramatically in 2006' published by NVE in Cicerone 2/2007.

Link

Results 2008 - Thirty-two glaciers were measured in 2008, eight glaciers in North-Norway, and twenty-four glaciers in South-Norway. Twenty-four glaciers retreated....Since 1999, the glacier has retreated rapidly, and by the end of 2006 the glacier terminus was at the upstream end of the lake again.

Results 2007 - Twenty-eight glaciers were measured in 2007, seven glaciers in North-Norway, and twenty-one glaciers in South-Norway. Twenty-four glaciers retreated.

Results 2006 - Twenty-eight glaciers were measured, four in North-Norway and 24 glaciers in South-Norway. Twenty-six glaciers retreated.

Results 2005 - Twenty-seven glaciers were measured, four in North-Norway, and 24 glaciers in South-Norway. Twenty-one glaciers retreated.

Results 2004 - Twenty-six glaciers were measured in 2004. Twenty-three glaciers retreated.

Trends 1982-2008 - Many outlet glaciers from coastal plateau glaciers started to advance in the late 1980-ies. At the end of the 1990-ies most of these advances had stopped. After 2000, these glaciers retreated fast due to several years of large summer balances. The continental valley glaciers in Jotunheimen, close to the Swedish border in Nordland, and in Lyngen and Finnmark are generally retreating. There are some exceptions like Storgjuvbreen in Jotunheimen.

Link

* CANADA -

ALPINE GLACIERS IN WESTERN CANADA APPROACH THEIR SMALLEST SIZE OF THE PAST 7000 YEARS

Link

2005 - A huge Canadian ice shelf 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the North Pole has disintegrated, leaving a large floating island of ice stranded 30 miles (48 kilometers) offshore, scientists reported yesterday....The Ayles ice shelf was believed to be 3,000 to 4,500 years old. Before the breakup the Canadian Arctic had six ice shelves. "Now there are five," Copland said. In the past hundred years, he added, Canada's ice shelves have shrunk by 90 percent.

Link

2008 - Canadian Arctic sheds ice chunk
It is thought to be the biggest piece of ice shed in the region since 60 sq km of the nearby Ayles Ice Shelf broke away in 2005....Ellesmere Island was once bounded by one giant ice shelf that covered almost 10,000 sq km (3,500 sq miles).
Now this expanse of ice has retreated into a string of five, much smaller, individual shelves, which together cover just under 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles).

Link and Link

* FRANCE - Mt. Blanc

The World Glacier Monitoring Service reports on changes in the terminus, or lower-elevation end, of glaciers from around the world every five years.(WGMS)....French glaciers experienced a sharp retreat in the years 1942–53 followed by advances up to 1980, and then further retreat beginning in 1982. As an example, since 1870 the Argentière Glacier and Mont Blanc Glacier have receded by 1,150 (3,800 ft) and 1,400 m (4,600 ft), respectively. The largest glacier in France, the Mer de Glace, which is 11 km (7 miles) long and 400 m (1,300 ft) thick, has lost 8.3% of its length, or 1 km (0.6 miles), in 130 years, and thinned by 27%, or 150 m (500 ft)...

Link and Link

* ECUADOR - Antizana 15 Alpha Glacier

Mass balance has been continuously monitored on Chacaltaya Glacier (16°S, Cordillera Real, Bolivia) since 1991, and on the Antizana Glacier 15 (0°, Ecuador) since 1995. In ablation areas, mass balance has been surveyed on a monthly scale, providing interesting details about the seasonal pattern in 2 contrasting tropical environments. Intermittent information about ice recession exists in both regions for the last 4 decades. The data point to a clear acceleration in glacier decline during this decade; ablation rates have been 3–5 times higher than during the former decades.

* SWITZERLAND - Silvretta Glacier
Link showing that the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network has Silvretta Glacier listed as Retreating.
Link showing figures for all of the Swiss glaciers are in decline within the past 80 years.

continued

[edit on 12/9/2008 by bloodcircle]

continued

* KIRGHIZTAN - Abramov & RUSSIA - Maali Glacier --- I cannot find any reliable sources for these glaciers.

* GREENLAND - Greenland glacier advancing 7.2 miles per year!

In Greenland, glacier retreat has been observed in outlet glaciers, resulting in an increase of the ice flow rate and destabilization of the mass balance of the ice sheet that is their source. The period since 2000 has brought retreat to several very large glaciers that had long been stable.....Satellite images and aerial photographs from the 1950s and 1970s show that the front of the glacier had remained in the same place for decades. In 2001 the glacier began retreating rapidly, and by 2005 the glacier had retreated a total of 7.2 km (4.5 miles), accelerating from 70 ft (20 m) per day to 110 ft (35 m) per day during that period.

Link

Retreated, NOT advanced 7.2 miles

* NEW ZEALAND - All 48 glaciers in the Southern Alps have grown during the past year - See Franz Josef Glacier

New Zealand’s glaciers are shrinking and twelve of the largest glaciers in the Southern Alps are unlikely to return to their earlier lengths without extraordinary cooling of the climate.

Link

In New Zealand the mountain glaciers have been in general retreat since 1890, with an acceleration of this retreat since 1920....The loss in volume from 1975-2005 is 11% of the tota

Link

Franz Josef Glacier Growth and retreat
Fed by a 20 sqm large snowfield[5] at high altitude, it exhibits a cyclic pattern of advance and retreat, driven by differences between the volume of meltwater at the foot of the glacier and volume of snowfall feeding the névé. Due to strong snowfall it is one of the few glaciers in New Zealand which is still growing as of 2007, while others, mostly on the eastern side of the Southern Alps, have been shrinking heavily, a process attributed to global warming.

Link

* SOUTH AMERICA - Argentina's Perito Moreno Glacier

Perito Moreno Glacier is presently in equilibrium, but has undergone frequent oscillations in the period 1947–96, with a net gain of 4.1 km (2.5 miles). This glacier has advanced since 1947, and has been essentially stable since 1992. Perito Moreno Glacier is one of three glaciers in Patagonia known to have advanced, compared to several hundred others in retreat.

Link

* CHILE - Pio XI Glacier

Many of the glaciers draining the South Patagonian Icefield have been retreating throughout this century. There are a few exceptions, notably Pio XI Glacier and Moreno Glacier which have been advancing....Many glaciers in this area have undergone rapid retreat during the second half of this century from an advanced unstable position and no longer show retreat since they have reached a stable position again at a new pinning point

Link

* UNITED STATES - Colorado

Colorado's largest glacier is vanishing and researchers at the University of Colorado believe that global warming may be playing a role.

Link

- Washington - Mount St. Helens, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Shuksan

Mount St. Helens is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.
Mount Rainier is an active[7] stratovolcano (also known as a composite volcano) in Pierce County, Washington, located 54 miles (87 km) southeast of Seattle, Washington, in the United States.

St.Helens Stratovolcano
Mount Rainer Stratovolcano

Four glaciers at Washington's Mount Rainier are staying about the same size. Those glaciers — shielded from the sun on the mountain's north and east sides — have received just enough snow to keep them from shrinking.

Link

- California - Mount Shasta

Although Mount Shasta's glaciers are growing, researchers say the 4.7 billion cubic feet of ice on its flanks could be gone by 2100. For the glaciers to remain their current size, Shasta would have to receive 20 percent more snowfall for every 1.8-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature, Tulaczyk said.

Link

- Montana

A dozen organizations last month filed a petition asking the United Nations to declare Glacier in Montana and the adjacent Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada endangered, because of glacial retreat and its effect on the environment of the parks.

Link

A USGS project to photograph the glaciers of Montana's Glacier National Park also showed significant retreat.

Link

- Alaska (Mt. McKinley and Hubbard).

Hubbard is Atypical.

Hubbard Glacier is the largest tidewater glacier on the North American continent. It has been thickening and advancing toward the Gulf of Alaska since it was first mapped by the International Boundary Commission in 1895 (Davidson, 1903). This is in stark contrast with most glaciers, which have thinned and retreated during the last century. This atypical behavior is an important example of the calving glacier cycle in which glacier advance and retreat is controlled more by the mechanics of terminus calving than by climate fluctuations.

Link

I could not find any references to Mt McKinley changing.

Do I attribute climate change to human in/action ? I don't know. Is there anything we can do about it? Absolutely not, nature will discard us in good time, that much is certain.

But ignoring valid information and posting 'spam' copy'paste generic 'forms' from the internet do nothing to help people who would like to be well informed and who are looking for facts.

reply to post by fleabit


If you could read and understand, you'd see my 1st sentence. We can affect our LOCAL environment, and we should do all we can, locally, to protect it.

Your ignorance is only too obvious.

reply to post by majestictwo


The Earth goes in cycles. We knew there were 2 Ice Ages. This is documented Scientific fact. We are heading for another one. It should be no suprise that glbal warming is happening.... We've enjoyed plenty of the nice climate... It's about time for the Earth to "right" itself and start anew.

I'm not happy about it. But I doubt that all the species that died last one were happy either.

What makes us pset/scared is that we (with all our technology and opposible thumbs) can do NOTHING to stop it.. We are in a cycle of the Earth... It's time for her to heat everything up then in a few hundred or million years... Cool it all back down.

Originally posted by Blaine91555
We all want a clean environment. I don't think there is any argument about that.

Personal i would rather be living in 'dirty' environment with a full stomach and technology advanced enough to give me a hundred year life span and a good quality of life. The environment were after all quite 'pristine a couple thousand years ago and what was the average life spans and qualify of life like? Don't make arguments based so entirely on the presumption that those with common sense , or empty stomachs, cant and wont see right trough such a trumped up scam as global warming.

Some are just Anarchists searching for a cause.

Anarchist are mostly far too confused by their conflicted nature ( humans love security) to be any danger to anyone but themselves. To dismiss anarchist as inconsequential is not only easy but also without consequence.

Others are criminal in my opinion like Mr. Gore. They need to make us into monsters and pretend we don't want a clean environment too.

And let it never be said that i don't like agreeing with people given even half a opportunity. For people like Mr Gore one would sometimes wish hell into existence.

Every time I look at satellite photos of the giant brown cloud over China and especially when it makes its way over Anchorage where I live, I see proof how little these people truly care. Can't upset China now by calling them to task can we

Yup. Blame the poor starving masses of the world for the environmental damage that the industrial world has so far done by not only stealing the wealth of the third world but in so doing forcing them to desperately play catch up. Until the west is willing to meet the Chinese half way in living standards or to pay for 'clean' energy infrastructure as well as sound business practices ( we must stop 'our' , western, industries from polluting those countries to produce cheap goods for western markets) i don't want to hear even one peep out of the likes of self serving you.

While we have been doing a better and better job of cleaning up our act, China has been given a pass it seems.

Obviously there is a very suspicious silence in how the Chinese, India and others are left out of some of these world wide agreements but i am fairly confident this has nothing to do with Chinese and Indian lobby groups and everything with the bankers slowly losing control of their western imperial 'shock troop' nations. If these highly developed nations can not be used to pacify the world in the interest of TPTB they must be disarmed by slowly making them energy dependent on nations they feel more confident in controlling.

It is time they stop with the guilt trip directed at us and go after the third world for not using available clean technology.

As if those 'Clean energy' were cheap enough for the west to implement during it's industrialization over the last century. Are you trying to set a new benchmark for hypocrisy or are you really this misinformed and selfish when it comes to the standards of living of anyone that doesn't have your state's number plates?

Now that China has built those plants, can anyone believe they will turn around and build them all over again?

The Chinese government ( i am confident that if the people exercised more power they would demand more powers NOW environmental consequences be damned) are doing more to develop and deploy environmentally friendly power generation capacity than the US is doing now and certainly more than the US did back in a similar state of development. There are developing nations that are FAR less responsible when it comes to reliance on fossil fuels but i suppose the fact that there are so many Chinese isn't helping a elitist such as yourself towards some empathy for the massive problems facing the Chinese people and government. They are after all just Chinese so who cares if their development are held up a few decades by building 'clean' energy power while American and the west in general just keeps polluting as much as their industries can get away with?

People like Gore never seem to mention that, do they? How sad.

Clearly not accusing the Chinese of being from the devil himself is mister Gore's worse offense against humanity. Those devious Asians must have bought his silence!

Stellar

[edit on 9-12-2008 by StellarX]

Did anyone consider the fact that if we lost 50 miles of ice and only gained 3 miles back thats its no reason to celebrate.... Were still in the negative, Global Warming as always will make money for those that know how to make money off everything. But on a serious note, We've seen more Ice lost in this century than any gains we have had.

en.wikipedia.org...:Glacier_Mass_Balance.png

If you want to compare number for the years glaciers retreated as a NFL Team we'd be the Cincinatti Bengals. Were on a losing streak. a bad losing streak

Just my 2 cents.

Fox

What gets me angry is the sheer number of people that get confrontational because of their obsession with 'global warming'.

In my diploma course just this year, every person but me was a GW fanatic. I mentioned one day I believed it was a natural phenomenon and bam... I get abused and yelled at from all sides as being 'anti-human', 'conspiracy nut' etc...

Why am I the crazy one? They are the ones all following a cause with no scientific backing only because an ex presidential candidate told them on their TV screens.

I asked them all to tell me some proof. "Can any of them give me the name of a respected scientist that believes in Global Warming, and further more, has that person found any concrete proof in their research? Or are you all sucked into that bandwagon where you tell yourself something so many times you start to believe it?"

The response was extremely interesting. It is the same response that anyone gives when their beliefs are challenged and they can't come up with an answer. "IT'S COMMON SENSE! LOOK AROUND YOU!".

So, in the minds of most global warming believers, they don't know any facts or figures, evidence one way or another. They simply believe it because they have been told repeatedly by the powers that be that it is 'common sense'.

The sheep mentality really amazes me sometimes...

reply to post by bloodcircle


I would be very impressed to find that you went to all that trouble while still being 'on the fence', so to speak. I am interested in knowing how you believe the planet will 'discard' us; last time i checked it wasn't sentient and we were not ticks to be shaken off? Either way i lack the time to check up on the glaciers and will have to rely on all the other facts that invalidates the basic premises of 'global climate change' as result of human industrial activity.

Stellar

reply to post by StellarX


While there are millions of impoverished Chinese and Indians, both countries are nuclear (nucular? (won't be able to say it that way anymore)) powers with huge industrial bases. The Chinese are currently raping Africa for raw materials and building dozens of coal-fired power plants as you write your drivel.

The impoverished in those countries are the result of government policies. Of course, since you're an expert on sino development, you know that they are destroying their own rivers and farmland with corrupt practices.

There is no reason they can't be made part of the gang that wants to clean up the environment.

But, you miss the point of this thread entirely: there is no Man-Made Global Warming.

If you are so concerned, go there and help.

[edit on 9-12-2008 by jdub297]

Climate change is far more complicated than our models suggest. In all truth no one knows what is going to happen to the planet. Dont just jump on the band wagon!
It was not that long ago that scientist stated that the earth was going to cool down due to pollution scattering the warmth from the sun back onto space. Then we had global warming the panet is going to warm up. Then climate change the panet is going to warm up in some palces but cool in others.
Recent research now suggests that we may be entering into a mini ice age. The earth is not warming at the moment. several countries have reported very hard snow fall, the heavist snowfall on record has just been recored in Tibet.
Sunspot activity is at all time low there is a relationship between sunspot activity and global temperature.
Several of the panets and moons in our solar system are heating up NASA is recordinf the icecaps on Mars metling.
What all this really shows is that we do not no and understand all the influences at play here.
Nature will take its due course and us being part of nature will go with it.
kx

Originally posted by saint4God

Originally posted by AceWombat04
Because we (most of us at least) are laypeople and not scientists, we are utterly at the mercy of the media and publishers of information with regard to what we know about the potential for man-made climate change.

Nonono! Don't you dare sell yourself short like that. It may have been true 100 years ago that scientists have more knowledge due to university study and global travels but in the information age there's no real need to put a scientist on a pedestal. Granted studying in college does give a lot of information and focus, but if you have the willingness and desire to read all you can and learn all you can, look at the data, and validate the truths, you're doing essentially what a scientist does anyway. Ecology only became a specific study about fifty years ago. We don't have a lot of data to fall back on so there's no way of knowing whether this is a cycle or a more permanent change. My ecology professor seemed to think this was a cycle given her review of it all. We won't know for another couple thousand years unless there's a way to recover all the information we're missing about the climate.

That's not what I meant. I believe in self-empowerment and independent learning, of course, but there is definitely only so much we can learn and verify for ourselves because the information we have access to (books, the internet, television, and yes, even school) and can verify is produced by others. Short of doing real scientific investigative studies ourselves (which, I don't know about you, but I don't have the resources or capabilities to undertake,) we are at the mercy of others when it comes to our information whether we like it or not. Everything we learn, everything we read, everything we hear, and everything we see, is produced by someone else, and we have no way to independently verify it. It's not that I place scientists on pedetals, but rather that I just recognize my position. There is no way, at this moment, I can go out and confirm or deny any particular theory or hypothesis re: man-made climate change. That's just a fact, much as I might dislike it. It may not be a fact for everyone, but I can only speak for myself.

[edit on 12/9/2008 by AceWombat04]

reply to post by infolurker


www.sciencedaily.com...

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — The combined global land and ocean surface average temperature for October 2008 was the second warmest since records began in 1880, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for October was 58.23 degrees F — 1.13 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 57.1 degrees F.

Separately, the global land surface temperature was 50.72 degrees F — 2.02 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 48.7 degrees F, ranking as the warmest October on record. Much of the unusual warmth occurred over Asia, Australia, and Eastern Europe.

The global ocean surface temperature of 61.41 degrees F tied October 2005 as sixth warmest on record and was 0.81 degree F above the 20th century mean of 60.6 degrees F.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for January-October was 58.25 degrees F – 0.85 degree above the 20th century mean of 57.4 degrees F and ranking as the 9th warmest January-October on record.

Global Highlights for October

Arctic sea ice coverage during October was at its third lowest extent since satellite records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Average ice extent during October was 3.24 million square miles, which is 9.5 percent below the 1979-2000 average. The record lowest extent for October, set in 2007, was 2.55 million square miles. Arctic sea ice extent has been declining by an average of 5.4 percent per decade over the past 30 years.

Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during October 2008 was 6.48 million square miles, which is below the 1967-2008 average and ranks as the ninth lowest October extent.

In early October, Hurricane Norbert became the most powerful 2008 hurricane in the eastern Pacific when it reached Category 4 strength. The storm weakened when it struck Mexico’s southern Baja California on October 11, but still brought heavy rain, strong winds, and widespread flooding to the islands of Santa Margarita and Magdelena. Norbert tracked across the Gulf of California and made a second landfall on October 12 on the Mexican mainland Sonora Coast.

Hurricane Omar developed in the Caribbean Sea on October 13. Omar reached Category 3 strength and was the first hurricane to strike the Leeward Islands from the west since Hurricane Lenny in 1999.
In the western Pacific, slow-moving Tropical Storm 22W brought torrential rains to parts of Southeast Asia. On October 11-14, the South China island province of Hainan suffered flash floods in low-lying areas that forced thousands of people to flee more than 150 villages. The storm’s rains affected northern Vietnam during October 15-20, triggering flash floods that damaged more than 11,000 hectares of crops. Daily rainfall amounts of 12 to18 inches were reported from the storm.

According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, October 2008 was an exceptionally dry month in central and southeastern Australia, ranking as the driest October on record for South Australia, second driest for Tasmania, and third driest for Victoria. This was the second successive very dry month in these areas. Parts of Australia have been experiencing drought conditions for over a decade.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adapted from materials provided by National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration.

Average ice extent during October 2008 was 8.4 million square kilometers, which is 9.5 percent below the 1979-2000 average. Sea ice extent for October has decreased at a rate of 5.4 percent per decade, since satellite records began in 1979. NCDC report.

Nah, we've screwed it. I remember a debate where 'US Senator Mel Matinez' 'declared himself,' I don't know if it was a hoax, but it is more important that the US has totally territory, even to the extent on not co operating on moving fish. They will say what they need to for your vote, but do not care about the environment because of the principle of 'cross sovereignty' our joint share in the planet. The latest is plane emmissions, and I'm sure Mr Martinez will be the first to exempt those fuel loads (or any oil he can dig) from the situation.

Yes, we are fuucked.

I read somewhere that the earth goes through these cycles it gets hot then cold and when it gets hot the cold comes within 10 years. I also read somewhere else that some scientist say we are due for another ice age. I looked at the site that had a list of glaciers that are growing. So the hot could of already came and now its cooling down. I'll post links to the sites that I got my info as soon as I find them.