Scientists believe world is at its hottest for 2,000 years

THE SCOTSMAN (Scotland, UK) ^ | 23JUN06 | RUSSELL JACKSON

[familyop]

THE world is hotter than it has been for four centuries - and probably the hottest for 2,000 years - the United States' most prestigious scientific organisation said yesterday.

In a report to the US Congress, the National Academy of Sciences reported that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia".

A panel of top climate scientists told politicians that the Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming".

Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1F during the 20th century.

This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University who chaired the academy's panel. The report was requested in November by the chairman of the House science committee, Republican Sherwood Boehlert, to address those who question whether global warming is a major threat.

Mr Boehlert said the report shows the value of having scientists advise Congress: "There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change."

The Bush administration has maintained that the threat is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost five million Americans their jobs.

Climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes had concluded the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years.

The National Academy scientists concluded that the Mann-Bradley-Hughes research from the late 1990s was "likely" to be true, said John 'Mike' Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member. The conclusions from the Nineties research "are very close to being right", and are supported by even more recent data, Mr Wallace said.

Overall, the panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the past 1,000 years.

[A CA Guy]

The other planets have been supposedly warming as well (probably do to more solar activity), so how is man responsible for that?

What egos to think we are capable of changing temperatures on earth.

[SeaWolf]

I wonder what happened to all the scientist? They seem to have been serupticioulsy replaced by over emotional chicken little's and environmental jihadist Mullahs. The scientific method seems to have gone bye-bye.

[AmericaUnited]

The question is not whether it's hotter, its whether we had anything to do with it. The earth goes through many different cycles of varying lengths (11 years, 60 years, 400 years, 1000 years) of warmer+wetter, warmer+drier, colder+wetter, colder+drier, over and over, and over again. Of course, EVIL MEN try to take what is a very natural phenomena and use it for their own selfish purposes.

[AmericaUnited]

This global warming CRAP is nothing more than an excuse to impose SOCIALISM on the masses. PURE AND SIMPLE!!!

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

global warming ping.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Wasn't that 5,000 years ago?

[FreedomPoster]

A great resource for refutation of this nonsense follows, courtesy of finnman69.

GLOBAL WARMING PRIMER
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/climchng.html
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/historical_CO2.htm
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

These two figures show former temperatures with major periods of glaciation labeled. The dashed lines are the present global average temperature of about 15° C (59° F). Thus the solid curves show small changes from this average; note that the temperature drops only about 5° C during a glaciation. This has occurred about every 100,000 years, with smaller wiggles in between. That is, there has been a 100,000 year glaciation cycle for the past million years or so, and there may be shorter cycles as well.

The most recent glaciation, 20,000 years ago, is called the Laurentide, and Earth is still recovering from it. This map from the The Illinois State Museum exhibit on ice ages shows the extent of that ice.

The most recent small drop in average temperature caused the Little Ice Age of 1500-1700 AD, which history describes. Mountain glaciers advanced in Europe and rivers like the Thames in England froze solid, which doesn't happen now.

Click image for animation

The growth of the ice sheets began about 120,000 years ago as ice built up on the continents in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Canada and Europe. The largest extent of these ice sheets occurred 18,000 years ago. At that time the largest ice sheets were between 3.5 and 4 km thick. In North America the largest ice sheet was the Laurentide Ice Sheet centered on Hudson Bay with other sheets centered on Greenland and in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. As these ice sheets expanded they grew together, covering Baffin Bay and eventually the Great Lakes and New England. In northwestern Europe the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet began to grow and expand south to cover what is now Norway and Sweden and north to cover the exposed continental shelf. Over time the ice sheet grew to cover Finland and the United Kingdom. This ice sheet extended east to the Ural Mountains where it met the Siberian Ice Sheet. Before the last ice age ice sheets already existed on Antarctica and on Greenland.

Most people seem surprised when we say current levels are relatively low, at least from a long-term perspective - understandable considering the constant media/activist bleat about current levels being allegedly "catastrophically high." Even more express surprise that Earth is currently suffering one of its chilliest episodes in about six hundred million (600,000,000) years. Given that the late Ordovician suffered an ice age (with associated mass extinction) while atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 4,000ppm higher than those of today (yes, that's a full order of magnitude higher), levels at which current 'guesstimations' of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 suggest every last skerrick of ice should have been melted off the planet, we admit significant scepticism over simplistic claims of small increment in atmospheric CO2 equating to toasted planet. Granted, continental configuration now is nothing like it was then, Sol's irradiance differs, as do orbits, obliquity, etc., etc. but there is no obvious correlation between atmospheric CO2 and planetary temperature over the last 600 million years, so why would such relatively tiny amounts suddenly become a critical factor now?

GLOBAL WARMING PRIMER
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/climchng.html
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/historical_CO2.htm
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

[basalt]

year-round golf..YES!!

[moonman]

"year-round golf..YES!!"

I live in Melbourne, FL.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Delta 21]

Go to ANY OTHER country on the face of the planet, take a nice big deep breath, and then try to tell me that the United States is most responsible for global polution and global warming.

Go ahead.

I dare you.

[arthurus]

Scientists believe world is at its hottest for 2,000 years

Some scientists or perhaps "scientists" are hyping a whole lot of faulty computer modeling and some very real sun-warming in an effort to shut down the world's major economies and take over everything. Environmentalism and Global Warming is where all the Communists and intellectuals went after Utopia fell apart in 89.

[Gumlegs]

Do you have any idea how series this is??

Everyone on Earth 2,000 years ago is now dead!

[NavyCanDo]

It was 400 years yesterday. What happened? Did they change their mind? Or did 400 years not have enough shock value and fell kind of flat in the news when people had more important things on their minds, like graduation, preparing for that summer trip to Wallyworld, or their 4th of July BBQ.
If 2000 years don't work I suggest maybe trying 20 thousand years, or better 5 million years. These hand picked leftist Scientist won't be happy and will continue to provide doom and gloom quotes for the media until we all give up our cars and vote out any one who promotes our industrial society.

[Vectorian]

'There were some serious vineyards in England a few centuries ago. Now its too cold to grow good grapes there.'

Where did you hear that pile of crap?

There are more than 150 commercial vineyards in the UK - the one at the end of my garden has been producing wine continuously since the vines were first planted by the Romans some 1800 years ago!

Click on the map to learn:

http://www.englishwineproducers.com/vineyardregional.htm

There are some pretty good ones as well, Ridgeview Merret Bloomsbury 2002 beat wines from 55 countries to be awarded best sparkling wine.

http://www.decanter.com/news/65362.html

i do hate to let fact get in the way of peoples stereotypes though! :D

[Chances Are]

No, no, no!!!!!! You don't understand!!!

They want YOU to give up all that stuff. They can't possibly do it, as they are much too important, as self-appointed stewards of the planet, Solar System and Universe, and much too busy doing their most important work of oppressing the masses to bring them in line with their thought processes (which they won't apply to themselves), to actually engage in fantastic behavior like this.

What is wrong with you? Don't you know their stewardship is ordained, and you have no say about it?

Hmmm...you're an obvious candidate for the nearest reeducation center. Prepare to be picked up immediately!

And for all you other sinners out there - REPENT!!! - before the ire of Gaia, Fair Mother Earth, manifests itself and denies you any chance at redemption!

So there!

CA....

[alwaysontheright]

another bttt

[mugs99]

If the commies, liberals , anti-America crowd can't defeat the USA militarily, they will try to rot and destroy the USA from within socially, and economically.

I used to think guys like you wore tinfoil hats. Now I find myself thinking about getting one of those hats!
.

[wagglebee]

I guess the 400 years didn't panic enough people, so (at Algore's insistence) they inflated the time period.

Notice how they will never offer an explanation of what made the earth "warmer" 400 or 2000 years ago.

[PISANO]

And FOLKS, the Dims would have you believe that this is all the fault of GW, who in the MOST RECENT 6 years of environmental policies, has caused this 2000 year evolution of GLOBAL warming.

INSANITY + STUPIDITY = LEFTIST DEMOCRATS!