You may be in for more heat waves if you would believe this study:

http://www.livescience.com/42704-extreme-el-ninos-may-double.html

In the article they concluded that El Ninos will occur more often sometime soon. But they couldn't conclude that from surface ocean temperatures, the models weren't conclusive about those. So they changed their definition of what constitutes an El Nino into episodes of intense precipitation over the ocean. In that way they could reach this conclusion.

Imho, such a study isn't even worth mentioning, yet it is presented like it's some huge result.

This one is pretty outrageous as well.

http://www.livescience.com/42622-pine-island-glacier-retreating.html

You know they actually write about some domino effect, starting with the biggest glacier and then leading to the collapse of the whole Antarctic ice sheet...

And they write it will happen "over time", which is really several thousand years or so. But they don't mention that, so you're led to think that such a thing might happen in your life time.

Why would they write such stuff? Is it to attract attention in order to get more page hits and earn more money?

Works, doesn't it....;p

....and all you are doing is propagating the issue.

It's just a discussion on a game forum that's all. I'm not some global activist or anything, I just think it's interesting.

Do you realize how much things have changed in the last 15 years.

Until then, almost nobody was interested in the Arctic or Antarctic.

It was a place where some obscure under-ice submarine cold war was waged, and that was it.

Nowadays it's in the news all the time.

Either for discoveries of mineral riches or for the climate change that's going on there.

This provides some evidence for the little ice age.

http://www.livescience.com/42765-scotland-had-glacier-400-years-ago.html

It's interesting to note that a mere 1.5 degrees drop in temperature would've been enough for permanent snow-cover to occur on the (highest) mountains of Scotland.

Not nearly as much as things have changed in the last 15 pages of this thread....

Ok... I just thought it was a funny little article. About a little glacier during the Litlle Ice age. It grew, moved a few rocks around, then disappeared. Kinda charming.

What 'r you grinning about?  You should probably have killed it off before 15 pages evolved.

There are some things best left untouched... like... some of the presents the Wooly Mammoths left for us in the ice, which are starting to thaw now...

And WOW... like those 'presents the wooly mammoths left in the ice, well they're on the nose and starting to stink up the great outdoors now they have a thinner layer of ice covering them.

And phewwwww!!!! 6 million year old poo is as pungent as.. . well there is NO comparison. 

I wish it would thaw here... Grrrrr.....

Yeah, it has thawed here... the tray of ice sitting behind the fan so's it ain't blowing hot air..

But I know what you mean about Wintery weather.... takes longer to pee cos yer gotta take off yer peter heater... er, cock sock before you can get started.

Only one thing to reply to this sort of conspiracy theories: http://xkcd.com/1081/

I mean, if you believe in the whole "scientists are paid to lie to US", stop driving a car, using electricity, and using anything that's more or less the consequence of the scientific revolution. It works on principles that have been formalized by people who were "paid to agree upon".

We don't, actually. Don't get me wrong: I am very much a nuclear energy and 4th gen' proponent (with some reasonable reservations, but still). But electricity isn't exactly good at fueling transportation, aside from some forms of public transportation. Add to that the fact that 4th generation nuclear reactors are at least 4 decades away...

Nice site.

I think this one is also funny in the context of this topic: http://xkcd.com/688/

Not yet, but there are some promising developments:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/fuel-economy/8-potential-ev-and-hybrid-battery-breakthroughs#slide-2

Yeah, except how toxic are those batteries.... 

Yin and Yang my friend.

(edited) A new battery can last for a very long time and provide the power of 8 lead-acid batteries. A lead-acid battery lasts only a few years. I want a new one even if it turns out they are toxic. As long as they're packaged well and don't leak.

Since most of those appear to use some variant of carbon or silicon as electron storage, hopefully not very considering we're made out of carbon and silicon is most commonly found on Earth as... sand.

I hear the US has a really cold winter. Also quite cold here in Sweden (though only snow for 2 days and it's gone now) but it's NOTHING compared to the winters of the 60'ies.

I think that will make americans laugh at the mention of global warming.

GeomanNL (and everybody else), what do you think about Greenpeace report 'Point of No Return'?

It's a 60 page report about the 2 C that's needed for diaster to happen.

I think they exaggerate. It won't be the end of the world. It will just be a different world and people will still be around, nobody needs to die.

I think the real catastrophy will start at around 10 degrees of warming, but there's not enough carbon in the ground that we can burn to get to that point.

So I'm not going to worry about it anymore, it's not my problem and humanity will still be around.

Don't give up now, Geo - we're nearly at 2k!

Oi, don't start with this milestone crap... otherwise 3000 is the next stop. 

You wanna be responsible for that?

Then it's 4000!.

Nah, I don't think so.

Indeed. I've accepted the idea that my country will be under the sea in a few centuries from now. I think it's inevitable because the rest of the world doesn't care about it. Countries like China, USA, India are not going to reduce their carbon emissions to save a few cheese-eaters that aren't even born yet. Even the Dutch government doesn't care.

As far as extinction is concerned: the population explosion that's ultimately responsible for the global warming, is a bigger threat than the actual global warming itself. In 1 century from now, there won't be any forests left, everything is chopped down for food production of over 10 billion people (probably many more, maybe as many as 20 billion). Over-fishing will push many species of fish into extinction. Compared to that, a global warming of even 4 degrees is peanuts.

So I'm not going to worry about that either, I've accepted that as something inevitable too. Humanity is just too big and out-of-control, there's no stopping it.

Two polar bears are taking a bath...the first polar bear says to the second, "Can you pass the soap?"  The second polar bear says, "Soap?  No radio!"

I would think soap doesn't work in freezing temperatures.

On the bright side, global warming of the Arctic water will make it easier for those polar bears to keep their fur clean and shiny.

Nah, humanity is to LAZY to do anything.  They will wait until the problems actually occur, then find solutions.

Besides, the next war will thin the population plenty... or the next epidemic, whichever comes first.

So no need to worry