Meanwhile soon to be vice president Sarah Palin thinks people are not contributing to global warming and that "more oil drilling" is our path to her future.

It is totally scary when political leaders are blind to the evidence of their own eyes.

Consider the advanced agedness of McCain I would say soon to be president Sarah Palin. But hey even Obama is not playing the issue of peak oil and global warming as seriously as I would wish a politician would.

@John & Ben:

Does the quality of the political candidates and leaders of todays democracies depend or is closely related to their inhabitants competence and ability to make to best choice?

Did the voter values and qualifications change that much?

Don't we have the political leaders we deserve?

Americans get the Government they deserve, unfortunately the rest of World suffers for it.

Ever seen the movie idiocracy?, that sort of sums up America as is right now in a nut shell.

I don't know about you guys but it's plain to me that permafrost melt is the result of Bush Administration negligence. I say impeach the ba*tard before he escapes office!

This is the ticking bomb that humanity will face, what could speed up the global warming through a treshold effect beyond which we totally loose control of the whole thing.

I guess the accepted narrative here is once all that frozen CO2 thaws (again) the earth will permanently warm up, never to cool again.

But once upon a time all that CO2 was formed and was stored sometime from before the Ice Ages. From a time when the earth was both warmer and had a lot of extra CO2 available.

The GW zealots never think of that.

@ Anonymous

I sure hope you Republican global warming denialists are correct...

I am a socialist and I refuse to admit any error - the earth is dying because man makes CO2 (and expels it regularly into atmosphere - though it's heavier than air.) Hmm.

That in those good old days (before environmentalists and socialists) the climate really was warmer despite the fact that solation was some 25 - 30% lower.
These balmy days were brought about courtesy of high CO2 atmosphere.
Over the next 3 billion years as the earth and biosphere has evolved, (I know that's all very contentious amongst some republican presidential candidates) a low CO2 *regulated * atmosphere with long stable periods at lower temperatures have been the normal condition of the planet.
It is in this context life has evolved to the present state.
We can expect that life will continue to evolve while Earth's orbit maintains a reasonable distance from expanding sun's increasing heat output.

A climate shift to a hotter state will not be conducive to supporting even the sorts of populations of people previously compatible with a healthy biosphere.

There is a body of opinion that believes that no matter how bad the prognosis - it's never better not to know.

Then there's the ignorant (no offense) Everyone qualifies at some point.

Then the "others" with a whole list of possible reasons for not being ready, willing or able to consider the possibility.

Of course the earth will warm and cool and what not over the next erons, and of course the earth will eventually die out as the sun roast it as it enters old age. All the really matters is the next few decades to centuries that humanity and technology managed to progress and we hit the singularity, after that who cares what happens to us, certainly not a robotic/cybernetic successors.

Is that guy trying to tell us that the Earth is warming due to a more radiant sun?? Niet. It must be due to human activity - get with the program!

I agree with the above poster....this is a time bomb ticking.Is there any politician in Washington that is aware of this?

Just me and Sarkozy...

@fakebreaker
'Is that guy trying to tell us that the Earth is warming due to a more radiant sun??'

Well it is actually what astronomy and nuclear physics tells us. And it is a basic part of the geological understanding of global warming. As the sun has warmed over 4.5 billion years, the natural sequestration of the main green house gasses (C02 and CH4) has kept the planet's biosphere habitable.

Artificially liberating large amounts of the (necessarily) sequestered carbon is not conducive for a stable climate.

In other words, increased solar insolation over geological time scales is central to the theory of man-made global warming.

So, fakebreaker, who needs to get with the programme (and do their homework)?

"the natural sequestration of the main green house gasses (C02 and CH4) "

Umm, what ever happened to the 75-85% majority greenhouse gas - water vapor?? Or does the hydrologic cycle not figure in your models?

@fakebreaker
'does the hydrologic cycle not figure in your models?'

Who mentioned models? I was referring to the geological record, astronomical observations and nuclear (fusion) physics.
With a residence time of a few days, water vapour levels can re-equilibrate. Water vapour can therefore generate a positive feedback as the global atmosphere warms (at the same relative humidity) but is not a long term driver of warming.

By contrast, the spike in methane levels last years to decades whilst that for CO2 is centuries to millennia. These are therefore principle gases driving medium to long term (human scale!) changes.

Nice, though predicable, attempt at a diversion. Now what were you saying about increased insolation not being a core aspect of global warming theory.

The sky is falling! .... er...um.....I mean..... The sky is CO2-ey!

The fact that the hydrological cycle and water vapor's positive and negative forcing is shorter lived than CO2 or methane does not negate its effects. Water vapor is constantly rising into atmosphere and alternately trapping and reflecting solar energy - it remains a major greenhouse gas not only by volume but by influence.

As to insolation - there is significant evidence that solar-forced millennial-scale oscillation of global climate has alternately brought the world the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and, most recently, the Modern Warm Period. Since industrial (anthropomorphic) emission of CO2 has only been around the last 60 or so years... It's fairly obvious that the "A" in AGW is political and incapable of explaining millennial scale climate change.

(not accepting grades while on strike)

oops "anthropogenic" - my bad.

Water vapour IS the strongest Greenhouse gas, contributing 36% - 66% to the overall effect for vapor alone, 66% to 85% when you include clouds. It is however, not considered as a global climate "forcing" because the amount of H2O in the air basically varies as a function of temperature, which varies regionally. Heating from water vapour is a local effect. Warm, moist air drives wind, the wind carries the water vapour to where it's cold enough to freeze out. If you artificially increase the level of H2O in the air, it rains out immediately (in terms of climate response times).

There is actually no good evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a globally warm period comparable to today. Regionally, there may have been places that did exhibit notable warmth, Europe for example, but all of the various global proxy reconstructions agree that it is warmer now and the temperature is rising faster than at any time in the last one or even two thousand years. Anecdotal evidence like wineries in England and Norse farmers in Greenland can never tell you a global story. Secondly, a quick reality check shows that Greenland's ice cap is hundreds of thousands of years old and covers over 80% of that island. The vast majority of land not under an ice sheet is rock and permafrost in the far north. Just how different could it have been only 1000 years ago?

Oh and, you're so sure the scientists warning us about AGW are politically motivated but have you not stopped to think about the political motivations of the otherside? A Whitehouse full of oil people and professional sceptics funded by Exxon-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=522784499045867811
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p72

Thanks for confirming my points. And isn't nature wonderful the way it manages to absorb and redistribute climate influences in order to maintain relative balance?

BTW, Greenland though much ballyhooed, no longer classified a continent, is simply an island. And it represents less than one half of one percent <0.5% of Earth's total land mass. It's reflection or lack thereof to the Medieval Warm is statistically insignificant.

(is the other guy on break?)

@ai_vin I think we are dealing with a 'spoiler' who has no interest in rational debate so I suggest we cut our losses.

Point out that increased output from the sun over geological time scales is key to understanding of AGW and fakebreaker will divert you with the hydrological cycle.
Knock the hydrological cycle distraction on the head and fakebreaker will dive off into spurious regional events at a completely different time scale.
Respond to the spurious localised events and fakebreaker will make bizarre comments about semantics (island vs. continent - Australia, Antarctica anyone?) and irrelevant comments about land surface area.

Sticking to the central, relevant point of discussion is not his game. As we say here, he's not worth the candle.

@fakebreaker both billion year scale radiance increase and 20-400kyr (Milankovitch) insolation variations are key to understanding (not slagging off) global warming.
Oh, and 'the other guy' has a life which includes sleep. Hasta la vista, I'm not playing your saddie games any more.