From the Associated Press link:
"That debate may be the central one as scientists and bureaucrats from around the world gather in Paris to finish the first of four major global warming reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel was created by the United Nations in 1988.

After four days of secret word-by-word editing, the final report will be issued Friday."

When bureaucrats do "secret word-by-word editing" of a scientific document, it is no longer a scientific document. It becomes a political document meant to push the agenda even farther away from the truth.

All these reports & predictions are vital. However, the single most important reason for the average person to pay attention is personal experience. After Katrina, many started to worry, many to the point of overestimating global warming's effect. Insurance companies raised their rates all the way up the coast to Maine. Without Katrina, the reports would have fallen on deaf ears.

After the mild winter in the Northeast(up to now)
the topic du jour on the bus became global warming. A few more mild winters & severe hurricanes and it will probably become an hysteria.

"In a way, it is one of the strengths of the IPCC to be very conservative and cautious and not overstate any climate change risk."

In other words they will vote on it. No politics involved here! The IPCC is an unfunny joke. Fortunately, at this time few ordinary citizens in this country take them seriously. They are still a threat to our way of life because they have no incentive to change their direction. We could begin a precipitous global temperature decline and these fools would find way to blame it on man-induced GW.

It is called consensus building. When you have this many agencies working on one documnet how do you suggest they come to an agreeable point? With you rhetoric about GW my guess would be Steele Cage Match to the death and whichever scientist is left standing, gets to write the final report.

What you should really take from the fact that this is conservative is that it means scientists who are not "the sky is falling" types participated in the process and negotiated a compromise from those that are 100% certain that the worst is for real. Meaning we probably are dealing with the closest thing to the truth that we could be, with such an incredibly complex system. It is so complex it makes predicting stocks look like child's play and we all know how well economists can predict the stock market.

Global warming didn't cause Katrina.
Hurricanes are naturally and normally occurring.

And why anyone would become hysterical about a mild winter is beyond fathom.

Talk about hysteria!

"When bureaucrats do "secret word-by-word editing" of a scientific document, it is no longer a scientific document. It becomes a political document meant to push the agenda even farther away from the truth."

Chris, you mean when the Bush administration edited recent reports which supported human-induced GW? I see.

Katrina was only a category 3 when it struck New Orleans, but the fact that most of the city is below sea level caused catastrophic damage. Add the fact that CNN had reporters right on the ground and it came right into everyone's livingroom.
The category 4 hurricane that struck Galveston in 1900 was much worse with over 6,000 dead.

Laura, help me out here. This comment in the AP story bothers me: "The melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are a fairly recent development that has taken scientists by surprise. They don't know how to predict its effects in their computer models. But many fear it will mean the world's coastlines are swamped much earlier than most predict."

Do you think the scientists mentioned in the AP and NZ articles believe that melting ice sheets (which float) will cause a sea level rise? Doesn't Archimedes Principal apply here, you know, like ice cubes melting in your tea glass doesn't cause it to overflow? In fact, I believe ice expands when it freezes and contracts when it melts, in which case the sea level would decrease. What am I missing?

The cause of Global Warming: THE SUN!! God made it that way. Guess what, at night, we have Global Cooling. You guys need to read your history books. There have always been fluctuations in the global temps, and I don't think there was an SUV around 1000 years ago to cause some of the supposed warming (or cooling) then.

I say, "Follow the Money". If you guys are screaming, "The sky is falling!" Who is paying you to say that? Soros? Clinton?

Face it, you are a bunch of anti-business, anti-growth, self-loathing, America-haters. Get real, people!! We live in the best country in the world, and you can't stand it.

Jordan - As I read it, the concerns are for the ice sheets on land in Greenland and Antarctica. There's not a very good understanding of what will happen with those sheets in the future. Changing precipitation patterns might cause ice mass to increase. If - a very big if - those sheets melted, there would be tremendous sea level rise.

Todd, listen up. Consensus does not belong in the same discussion with science. There was once a consensus that the world was flat, that the relativity theory was the last word, that the earth was only 6000 years old and on and on. Skeptics changed all those so-called known facts. They are essential to discovering the truth today.

If you are so sure of the facts why do you resent dissent? You could become more credible if you engaged critics with proven facts -- not theories but facts. Facts are not discoverable by consensus but by rigorous testing of theory against the real world. Perhaps you have limited your study of the facts to what you hear from Al Gore and the media. If so, you are abysmally ignorant of all the facts. There are many questions that have not been answered by the GW proponents. Until they are it would be a fool's errand to invest trillions of dollars based on the the advice of a consensus of bureaucrats.

The first comment to this post by Chris is accurate.

The coming IPCC report appears to be a work of fraud in progress. This is from IPCC procedures (section 4) say about Technical Report acceptance:

"Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter."

So the scientific reports will be changed to agree with what policy makers want in the Summary.

Dr. Lidzen, who participated in writing the first report, complained when this happened the first time: http://www.john-daly.com/TAR2000/lindzen.htm.

You can find my source for this fraud and a good discussion of the IPCC farce here: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1103#comments

Laura: There are mentions of "sea ice" in these articles and then there are these passages from the AP article:

"In the past, the climate change panel didn't figure there would be large melt of ice in west Antarctica and Greenland this century and didn't factor it into the predictions. Those forecasts were based only on the sea level rise from melting glaciers (which are different from ice sheets) and the physical expansion of water as it warms."

"But in 2002, Antarctica's 1,255-square-mile Larsen B ice shelf broke off and disappeared in just 35 days. And recent NASA data shows that Greenland is losing 53 cubic miles of ice each year -- twice the rate it was losing in 1996."

Notice that they differentiate between glacier ice and ice sheets. In addition there is the reference to the ice shelf that broke off. That is also sea ice. I don't believe reference to land ice as "ice sheets" is correct terminology. Furthermore recent evidence is that Greeenland's ice cap is getting thicker.

I believe the writers of these articles actally believe that melting sea ice will raise the sea level. Your comments please.

Global warming didn't cause Katrina.
Hurricanes are naturally and normally occurring.

And why anyone would become hysterical about a mild winter is beyond fathom.

Posted by JOEL

Jordan, Listen up! When you start a statement like that you sound like an arrogant #@$%^. That is just friendly advice I'm truly not trying to come down on you but I find it offensive when anyone acts as though their word is the final word as you clearly believe yours is.

The consensus that is reached is not science it is a scientific document that is being released. There is huge difference in the two. The first, scientific fact, is never achieved due to our rapid and daily expanding understanding of all sciences. We still learn more daily about the science of evolution but most still refer to it as fact even though there are skeptics and always will be. A scientific document is one that is written from numerous sources, all being sited mind you, to come to one conclusion reached by "consensus". That has no bearing on the FACTS within the report which again I reiterate anyone can cross reference at any time with the scientific report that was used to reach the conclusion that is being reported.

As to your charges, one, I have a problem with dissent, I do not. I have a problem with the dissent that is artificially created in an attempt to debunk factual conclusions based on the best science available. Secondly, Jordan, one can easily ascertain from your musings that you are not nearly as intelligent regarding this issue as you believe you are. You question a fact regarding (and I love how you try to use this big word) Archimedes principal and how it applies to the ice sheet in Greenland and Antarctica. See Jordan, and you should listen up here, the reason it is an ice sheet and not an ice berg is because it actually sits atop a land mass it DOES NOT float in the water and will NOT have the effect of melting ice in a glass. The ice sheet has no discernable effect on sea level unless it melts, that being the key factor here. When the ice sheet melts the landmass below it raises up from the weight being lifted from it and the water melts into the ocean causing sea levels to rise. When an iceberg melts it has no effect on sea level for the reason you wrongly attributed to the ice sheet.

Jordan and all you others out that are disbeliveers look more deeply into the Oregon science institute's claim of 19,000 "scientists" signing their platform that GW is not real. Google 1 person from each alphabetical group and look up their science background. I did this and found that one only needed a B.S. to qualify as a scientist to sign onto this document. Another reason I have a serious problem with the dissenters Jordan, they don�t peer review their findings and they often are severely lacking a real scientific resume, and the ones that are real scientists have been mostly bought by the fossil fuel companies. Maybe if you read more info then just the garbage the corporations are putting out you would have already known that. In addition to this flaw, the Oregon petition also has scientists of environmental sound and theory signing on. Now I'm sorry Jordan but I'll take the word of a real climatologist even if it is under compromise over a sound scientist any day.

Paul: Mild Winters in the NorthEast = no ski business at all = no employees working and tourism $'s coming in = mass job loss = major tax revenus decrease = tax increase to make up for the lost $ = we are screwed. Is that a good enough reason to be little hysterical about a mild winter, strike that, the third mild winter in a row. get a clue!

Laura: no big fans of the UN around these parts, so you don't have to dance around anything for me. I wish we could boot them out to a new headquarters, built somewhere like the Darfur region or Baghdad. Maybe Mogadishu. That would get rid of some rhetoric.

todd: if the economy of the northeast is dependent upon a recreational endeavor that is performed for less than half the year, you're all screwed anyway. Your lib buddies will find someway to tax everyone else with real jobs to make up for any lost monies, and I'm sure hard-working elected officials like Ted Kennedy and Barry Frank will take up the cause of the Spotted Ski Lift Worker.

Charlie: Question, how does it feel to live in a black and white world where you actually see one color, and that color, Conservitive or Replubican whichever you prefer, is black as in no light or for your case no enlightenment? You obviously come from the school of only one way to do things. Manufacture cheap crap and sell it, that is how an economy works. None of this tourism or ski crap. Oh and by the the other billion dollar revenue producer for us NE folks is farming which GW is also making nearly impossible. I would explain but I'm afraid it is a far too complex idea for you too grasp in your state of darkness. Doesn't really matter becasue you folks are proving year after year that you care less about farmers, people in general, and only care about money regardless of how its generated. They say ignorance is bliss you must be one happy guy charlie ;)

Todd. Like all good liberals you did not directly address a single point I made. Instead, you launched immediately into an ad hominem attack. Your convoluted effort to justify calling unproven theories facts is ample evidence that I hit the target and you are out of ammunition. You unwittingly made my point about dissent. I quote: "I have a problem with the dissent that is artificially created in an attempt to debunk factual conclusions based on the best science available." That is the biggest mouthful of horse puckey I have read since Bill Clinton said, "I feel your pain". I suppose it is possible that someone whose faith is being questioned would view dissent from their orthodoxy as being "artificially created" and "factual conclusions based on the best science available" as a coherent thought. You have the gall to accuse me of being arrogant then proceed to label dissent as artificially created. Are you so steeped in the propaganda of the left that you cannot see that research is going on all over the world that casts serious doubts on your "factual conclusions?"

You would have us join the geniuses at the U.N. in their effort to transfer trillions of dollars of our wealth to other countries based solely on scientific models that can predict the future no better than my stockbroker can predict the market.

You misrepresented or simply missed the point I was making about the ice sheets in the AP and NZ articles, namely that the reporters had land ice and sea ice confused. Any reasonable reading of the articles would lead one to suspect that to be case because they linked sea ice to a rising sea level. I was correctly pointing out that melting sea ice would not raise the sea level because of Archimedes Principle. But your sophomoric attempt to explain polar ice is nevertheless appreciated.

The gullibility of people like you are the reason the world is always in turmoil. You are no different than the people who see flying saucers and little green men or the fundamentalist Christians who wait expectantly for the Rapture or the fundamentalist Muslim who believes in jihad because some higher power says it is so. Your higher power is government and the environmentalist movement. You will believe anybody that places blame on this country for the world's ills or who predicts catastrophes if we don't stop enjoying our lives so much. Your beliefs must not be questioned because you have the revealed truth. You have exactly the same mindset as the church in the dark ages. They believed, as you do, that they had the truth and heretics were to be silenced. Fortunately and in spite of the church's best efforts we now have enough freedom (so far) to stand up and raise our arms in the air and yell -- STOP!! We will not be silenced!!"

Since you are so enamored with the consensus take a gander at this little bit of data from the vaunted UN. In the last 6 years there has been virtually no global warming (Source WMO). The weather we are having now is not going to help this year's average either. Do you reckon the arctic is melting now?

I leave you with these quotes from George Orwell:

"Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

" Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. "

"Your lib buddies will find someway to tax everyone else with real jobs to make up for any lost monies, and I'm sure hard-working elected officials like Ted Kennedy and Barry Frank will take up the cause of the Spotted Ski Lift Worker."

Like I've said time and time again, the 'skepticism' from the commenters on this blog is based on their political beliefs and nothing else. Quite a sad state of affairs...go back to reading the Drudge Report, Chuck.