"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the report that it is “extremely likely” human beings are the main drivers for the rise in temperatures recorded around the world over the last 50 years — the strongest words the panel has used to describe the effect humans are having on the planet.

“Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further global warming and changes in all components of the climate system,” the IPCC report said. “Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”

"More rain could pour down over tropical areas, and monsoon seasons could expand to include larger areas, striking earlier and lasting longer, according to the report. It is “virtually certain” that sea levels will continue to rise through the end of this century and beyond, and they said it is likely that the heat waves have become more frequent across swaths of Europe, Asia, and Australia.

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” the researchers wrote in the report. “The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”

-- http://www.nbcnews.com/science/extremely......11274530

Extremely likely. Is that like almost could be true?

On Friday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivers its latest verdict on the state of man-made global warming. Though the details are a secret, one thing is clear: the version of events you will see and hear in much of the media, especially from partis pris organisations like the BBC, will be the opposite of what the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report actually says.

Already we have had a taste of the nonsense to come: a pre-announcement to the effect that “climate scientists” are now “95 per cent certain” that humans are to blame for climate change; an evidence-free declaration by the economist who wrote the discredited Stern Report that the computer models cited by the IPCC “substantially underestimate” the scale of the problem; a statement by the panel’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, that “the scientific evidence of… climate change has strengthened year after year”. As an exercise in bravura spin, these claims are up there with Churchill’s attempts to reinvent the British Expeditionary Force’s humiliating retreat from Dunkirk as a victory. In truth, though, the new report offers scant consolation to those many alarmists whose careers depend on talking up the threat. It says not that they are winning the war to persuade the world of the case for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change – but that the battle is all but lost.

At the heart of the problem lie the computer models which, for 25 years, have formed the basis for the IPCC’s scaremongering: they predicted runaway global warming, when the real rise in temperatures has been much more modest. So modest, indeed, that it has fallen outside the lowest parameters of the IPCC’s prediction range. The computer models, in short, are bunk.

To a few distinguished scientists, this will hardly come as news. For years they have insisted that “sensitivity” – the degree to which the climate responds to increases in atmospheric CO₂ – is far lower than the computer models imagined. In the past, their voices have been suppressed by the bluster and skulduggery we saw exposed in the Climategate emails. From grant-hungry science institutions and environmentalist pressure groups to carbon traders, EU commissars, and big businesses with their snouts in the subsidies trough, many vested interests have much to lose should the global warming gravy train be derailed.

This is why the latest Assessment Report is proving such a headache to the IPCC. It’s the first in its history to admit what its critics have said for years: global warming did “pause” unexpectedly in 1998 and shows no sign of resuming. And, other than an ad hoc new theory about the missing heat having been absorbed by the deep ocean, it cannot come up with a convincing explanation why. Coming from a sceptical blog none of this would be surprising. But from the IPCC, it’s dynamite: the equivalent of the Soviet politburo announcing that command economies may not after all be the most efficient way of allocating resources.

Which leaves the IPCC in a dilemma: does it ’fess up and effectively put itself out of business? Or does it brazen it out for a few more years, in the hope that a compliant media and an eco-brainwashed populace will be too stupid to notice? So far, it looks as if it prefers the second option – a high-risk strategy. Gone are the days when all anybody read of its Assessment Reports were the sexed-up “Summary for Policymakers”. Today, thanks to the internet, sceptical inquirers such as Donna Laframboise (who revealed that some 40 per cent of the IPCC’s papers came not from peer-reviewed journals but from Greenpeace and WWF propaganda) will be going through every chapter with a fine tooth comb.

Al Gore’s “consensus” is about to be holed below the water-line – and those still aboard the SS Global Warming are adjusting their positions. Some, such as scientist Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, have abandoned ship. She describes the IPCC’s stance as “incomprehensible”. Others, such as the EU’s Climate Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, steam on oblivious. Interviewed last week by the Telegraph’s Bruno Waterfield, she said: “Let’s say that science, some decades from now, said: 'We were wrong, it was not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of the things you have to do in order to combat climate change?” If she means needlessly driving up energy prices, carpeting the countryside with wind turbines and terrifying children about a problem that turns out to have been imaginary, then most of us would probably answer “No”.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesd......he-heat/

The social question has never been about climate change or the importance of energy efficiency to our future, but rather the extent to which a change in our activities can undo unhealthy climate instabilities and what the developing world will use instead of the carbon burning methods used in the prior two centuries. More to the point, if they want to burn oil and coal, what are we willing to do to them to prevent them from putting more carbon into the atmosphere?

AFAIK James Delingpole has never taken a single university-level course in mathematics or science. He does have a degree in English Literature.

Why in the world would his opinion on mathematical models be worth anything better than lining a birdcage?

Well with that degree he is the most qualified to write an interesting version of history! LOL.

Why do climate change deniers keep sounding more and more like wacky conspiracy theorists?

Seriously? Now name calling is what you have? Seriously? It has sunk that low? Name calling is now the way to go?

First attack the messenger, but Bob says that is bad unless you need to do it for your own argument. Then name calling? All in the first few posts of the page? Wow you guys are losing steam LOL.

Yeah, that's why I usually try and avoid these threads. No point in arguing, and there's no fun to be had.

NO it doesn't because with the economy being destroyed every passing day there is no room even to implement something even if anyone wanted to.

I figure he could write a sonnet to the polar ice.

OHHH THAT was funnier than my post. I am jealous. Nice!

He could call it..."An ode to an ever expanding mass"....Well, it is bigger this year than the last few.
Don't shoot the messenger John,you know I'm 97% behind the scientists. Bear in mind that they're 95% sure of MMGW..That
means I have more confidence in them than they do of themselves.
No wonder I'm shot to bits.

Ray. But you are wrong about the polar ice sheets. They are thin and diffuse--the total mass of water continues to decrease.

Perhaps when the in coming tide effects traffic patterns in Manhattan we will stop denying that climate change exists. The day that we visit Miami in glass bottom boats is coming and it will be here soon.

The ice may be "expanding," but is it as thick as it was?

No, they're considerably thinner as Magnus already pointed out.

The only "researchers" who deny global warning are those bought and paid for by Big Oil. The world-wide scientific consensus (by ACTUAL scientists) is virtually unanimous. Climate change is real and is significantly the result of human activity.

That's a simple fact.

It is also a simple fact that all the hyperbole of Miami under water is BS as well.

Or at least an "extremely (as of today) likely" possibility.

Hurricane season is very slow again. It must be that Global Warming. Not!