Laura,

I am not a sientist I am just a plain county boy from Alabama.The answer isnt in one thing ,but rathr in a combination of things .

[1] The single most important is Tree's "hardwood tree's " to be exact .Industrialization didnt effect the world untill the vast harvesting of trees begain in the 60s .Greed it seems has no end .THink of this as a factor .The sun heat the earth by solar rays hitting the open ground .If you take away the open ground and use up that energy in the manner a hard wood tree does then you significantly reduce heating sorce.Hardwood tree's do four or more things for us .[1] they turn co2 into oxygen [2] they reduce the amountof solar rays from hitting the ground so they reduce heat sorce.[3]they produce more then what they use as far as firtilizer to the ground or nitrogen. [4]they clean the air present.
Now if you add 1 billion hardwood tre's to the present stock of hardwoods on the ground and stop the systematic distruction of hardwood tree's threw the paper goods industry that now manage whatis suppose to be protected land .Now you cant turn around and add 1 billion pines that want do it .one pine tree will only produce enough oxygen for 1 person for a mounth .one hardwood tree will produce enough oxygen for 10 people for a year to breath .so the answer is simple replace the natural placemnt of harwood stands to the extint that they cover 1/2 the global echo system and you have the biggest answer to the equation .Now the hardwods would produce enough oxygen that the atmosphere would start to recover and thus give us another protectant coat in our atmosphere from solar rays thus reducing the heat sorce.we have just plain harvested too many natural tree's like hardwoods and replace them with pines that serve as little if any support to the echosystem."bankhead forest alabama" no pine was ever in it untill man intruded ;yet now the forest is 90% pine and even the deer will not stay in the forest .hardwood trees will reduce the effect of acid rain the trees were put their for a reason .Not just to stand and be pretty .we as people ned to take farming more serious ! and start farming the hardwoods instead of clear cutting and use the wood repounsibly .i know they take along time to grow to maturaty but i believe it is the only way .Take note that people themselves produce a certain amount of co2 that might just exceed the amount by all indistry .so maybe the nuber of hardwood trees need to be 10 billion .You look around you and it appears that their is plentyof hardwoods to take care of us but when you go up into a plane you will find that nearly 90%of the globe is depleted of these tree's.if sientist are looking for a way to reduce the effect of green house gases this is the number one way to do it .Mother nature has her on way of doing things and we need to pay attention to it reather then try and come up with a man made way of doing it !!!!Just simply take note from nature itself .now as far as the co2 at the polar regions well they are their for a reason .think impact .when an extraterestrial object strikes earth their is enormous heat and distruction .hardwood stands become ever so little by the impact .the release of these c02 will help to restore the hardwoodstands and has done this over very slow and large amount of time .just simply reutn the hardwood to its granger and it will serve us well .Just as it has in many thousands of year before . another example of hardwoods is the smokey mountain chain .Now when i was a child traveling into the smokeys i seen a large amount of oxygen being produced to the point the oxygen made clouds and rain .Now if you go up into the smokeys you can see many more miles then you use to be able too .This in itself is evidence of hardwoods doing the job .if we plant now then thirty years from now they will talk of global cooling maybe even ice age ,lol.I realise that this isnt the only answer but i do believe it is the largest and most prudent to the answer .I know one thing for sure the wood industry cannot be aloud to continue replacing the hardwood trees with pines and think it is doing us a service.But i think no one has from what i have read ;seen this as being a large part of the equation.
Dont you or anyone else believe this comment is in amyway politically motivated; cause i have thought about it and have come to this conclusion .It certainly would reduce the amount that is rewuired ten times or more for the prize in question but i dont want it .I am not looking to get rich!!! C Stout
Lawrence co
Al

According to opinions of our climatologists in Slovakia, too, the phenomenon is obvious. The temperatures are said to grow even up to 10 degrees by the end of this century, perhaps even more.
It may be even too late to do anything, even if we moved back to caves as in the stone age, nothing would change and the warming would accelerate anyway - so that may be another argument for those who want to live and savour their life here and now at the moment.
Still, money controls politics and politicians, chiefly the oil lobby. Otherwise, hydrogen cell cars would have been affordable for more people.
Let us see.

good morning!!
I enjoyed reading C. Stouts' post on the use of Hardwood tree plantation/forests. I totally agree with his assessment of the relationship of trees to our planets atmospheric gases. I never stopped to consider the differences between the effects of hardwoods vs. softwoods. Mother nature, if left alone, will tend to cover our planets' surface with hardwood trees, not softwoods. The softwoods usually will grow where the hardwoods won't. Back when this country started making steel using the bessemer process, we needed charcoal, usually made from hardwoods. The hardwood forests were almost wiped out. However we did replant our forests-usually with some kind of fast growing softwood variety. I remember,as a kid, our ag class would go out to state lands and plant acre upon acre of pine trees which we recieved from the state tree nursery...we never planted hardwoods. It would be easy enough to change the tree planting programs of all 50 states. Spring and planting time is just around the corner. Our state foresters could start by changing the species of trees they plant. Although I am skeptical about the global warming hullabaloo, I would support common sense approaches to correcting our wasteful and polluting activities which are having a negative impact on our environment.
C. Bruckert

Climate change? Oh right, that is the new political correct way to discuss Global Warming The term became more fashionable by the Progressives after a study showed people weren't buying into the hyperbole.

Come on, most of the folks pushing Global Warming are the same who told us in the 70s we were heading for a new ice age. If the latest report was so accurate, why is the full report being withheld while the politicians at the U.N. make sure it matches the summary they published. Could that be because parts of it have been leaked and some of the extreme scenarios tossed around in the last report have been revised downward?

Man cannot control the weather, nor can man predict the weather more than a couple of days out with any real level of success. Yes, we should take care of our planet and new technology has allowed us to do so. One only need look at the the level of pollution in American cities to see we are much better off than we were even 30 years ago. I give the "Climate Change" crowd a few more years before they begin screaming GLOBAL COOLING!!!!!

Politics fuels both sides of the argument and big dollars from the left are fueling all too many studies, too.

There is too much doubt as to the cause of the greenhouse gases to go running about willy-nilly making changes in our lifestyle and our economy to produce miniscule drops in CO2, for instance, that could be negated by one volcanic eruption. Nor should we embrace alternative fuels schemes until we understand the implications. Ethanol and palm oil are examples. How many acres of rain forest and swamps are being felled and filled to grow palms and/or corn? These monocultures will need to be fertilized. Care to quess where that's coming from?

Has man even played a roll in Global Warming? Many of the temperature recording stations are at airports or in areas that once were suburban 50 years ago but that are now within the urban area. It's obvious that this change to a cityscape will alter the readings of the thermometer. So perhaps man has altered temperatures, but not in the way we have been told.

And what about the effect of the sun? Cyclical sunspot activity is known to cause changes in the earth's climate. We are currently riding the crest of one such sunspot activity cycle. Isn't it possible that this is what has caused the warmer temperatures?

Even if we in the North America and Europe were to agree that we had to cut back on CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the Kyoto agreement provided exceptions for China and India among several other developing nations. These two countries alone are inhabited by nearly a sixth of the worlds population. Their energy needs alone account for a huge amount of CO2 and other gases. If they are not on board, then there is no sense even discussing the rest of the world making cut backs.

As I said, there are too many questions yet unanswered to go jumping out of the frying pan. The fire may prove hotter still.

Laura wrote:

"How do researchers get more information? Through better data - closing the gaps and eliminating the errors in what is being collected now. That's the first and most important point. Improvements in the models will come as more computing power becomes available and our understanding of climate systems improves."

As long as the GWs keep working to silence the scientists that are calling into question certain aspects of the GWs claims, there will be no closing of gaps or eliminating errors. The proving process in science is being destroyed.

Also, the models (all 29 or so of them) don't necessarily need more computing power, what they need is light of day. The models' methods, algorithims, and data are being kept secret and closed to peer review which would eliminate errors in the models and improve them. You can follow a discussion on the models and the problems with them and their keepers on www.climateaudit.org. It is very contentious and illuminating.

Laura,
There is data out there that can aid in the prediction of sea level rises. The one's that come to mind the quickest are records from England and Holland. During the latter stages of the MWP, there were large areas in East Anglia as well as Holland that were uninhabited due to them either being under water or in swamps. Most geologists attributed the rise in sea levels to "Global Warming" of the later 9th through 12th Centuries. Warming across Europe took 4 to 5 hundred years, and the result was that large portions of the Greenland and Icelandic Ice Belt melted. Most of the areas concerned were swamps. The Dutuch built dykes, and the English diverted streams and rivers to lower swamp levels. The over all drop in the sea levels could be attributed to global cooling (1315-1850). Something similar had also been observed in Tasmania by the late John Daly.

Seal level increases from the last MWP were much less then the 20 foot that AL Gore promises for this century.