On the Universal Clock, the Earth has been and is moving towards another Ice Age, which has nothing to do with any man made climate change, though how it can be said that humans can change the climate...
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The next Ice Age is some millions of years away yet, but as the planet moves towards it, there will be periods of warming (again nothing to do with any human influence). All this demonstrates is that change is rarely (if ever) linear when it comes to the environment.
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I have some sympathy with the sceptics, but only very limited. Whilst 50 years ago a lot more of us might have been somewhat sceptical about the issue of climate change and our (humans) influence (if any) on it, information and evidence has been growing continuously, and cogent and compelling argument against it seem to be conspicuously absent, though some have tried. The problem lies in causality. Humans have such narrow vision often. If a Nuclear Power Plant should fail (Chernobyl), then then there is an immediate and dramatic cause and effect which is easily related to. When a million acres of Rain Forest is chopped down, where is the obvious cause and effect? The simple answer is that it is not as simple as that, but our intelligence is improving by the day as we monitor and study the forces at work, and we do have some clues from an examination of the history of the Planet on the Geological timescale which is sufficient for serious concern. To deny any consequence of our (ab)use of the Planet and it's resources is foolish, and dangerously so, certainly for successive generations.
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While the evidence mounts, the power players of the world play power games. Whilst they may accept the issues of climate change, implementing strategies to deal with it are inconvenient at best, and obstructive to their objectives and agendas, which are not always based on logic. For example there is plenty of 'freely' available energy should we choose to exploit it (Solar, Wind, Wave, Geo-dynamics, possibly others), but pathetically little effort is put into those. Nuclear energy is almost an ideal solution, but has a terrible property which we are not yet capable of dealing with well enough, so it is not 'safe'. However, it may be the only way to move to better sources because of the immense demand for energy which the alternative 'green' sources could not satisfy right away.
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Our insistence on handling everything by way of 'financial' methods could be our undoing. The challange could be overwhelming, and shows how defective the human being still is. I fear it may be too late by the time the species really does wake up to what really matters, and realise that everyone is in the same boat, regardless of who and where. Even a unified global effort might not be enough, but to operate in any other way is perverse. Perhaps the Planet is trying to get rid of the pestilence that is Homo Sapiens so it can repair the damage. If that is the case, then the species is doomed, as we are nowhere near having the capability to deal with the forces that can be unleashed. We have already had some tasters of that....

timothy_cronshaw. To answer Q1. From writings in Icelandic history. Eric The Red was exiled for 3 years for killing a man. He went sailing, found a landmass. Went back home, wanted people to go back to this landmass, so to make it sound like a great place to live. He called it Greenland (very short version).
Answer to Q2: From all of the melting ice around the north and south poles (there is a great deal of ice!)

Less than 1% of all environmental scientist believe that global warming is not a direct result of humans. Starting from the hight of the industrial revolution. So apart from a few, we rely on finding, understanding and processing all of the info we have to come to the conclusion that we are to blame. It's hard to accept at first, but it is science fact. Governments complain about the cost of sorting out this mess, but they never see further than their political term so the cost of not doing anything could mean that are race comes close to been wiped out in the future. Which until the 1970's was not really on the list of disasters that could be are dinosaur moment.
With the speed of which are community is finding new ways to combat a global disaster so we all can carry on as normal is amazing. There are several different gases contributing to the problem, but C0'2 is one of the biggest. One of my favourite ways to get ride of it is by using an air scrubber. You take a liquid, a pulling fan, a large tube. Suck in air using the fan and let the liquid combine to the C0'2 particles. In tests, it as been shown to clean up more than 150% more C0'2 than the motor puts out to drive the machine. There are many ways to help to slow down global warming and even to reverse it without taking use back to the pre technological age.

Have any of you read James Lovelock. He says that the damage is already done and that there is nothing we can do about making right any damage we have done to the planet. He is a very eminent scientist. Have a read of his stuff.

Chris_bean gets near to the heart of the matter in his last paragraph. Human nature is the inbuilt self destruct mechanism to protect the planet. 'Financial' methods are a fraudulent con. allowing a number of fraudsters to make money. Carbon trading is a useless scheme (as is milk quotas) designed to allow parasites to make money. There is one solution that will never be discussed, that is population control, we have even passed laws (human rights etc) to outlaw any such solution. One day some world leader will decide that their country will survive, and the next global population destruction will start. Such a person is likely to be a good family man, as quite sound arguments can be put forward to support this.

Mr_browns_mail has got it wrong in relation to Q2. The ice around the poles melting will make vitually no difference to sea level since it is floating. When an ice berg with 500 feet above the water melts, it only has the same volume as what was previously below the water, so there is NO rise in sea level from sea ice melting. The great volume of ice which is on a land mass, primarily on Antarctica, is where the sea level rise will come from.

"Journalists often struggle to assess the competing claims."
Now THERE'S an understatement...
"Official statistics are often mistrusted, and the technical details are hard to grasp and explain clearly."
Only when you are trying to explain the statistics and technical details (How hard is it to explain that we have dumped trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere simply for profits and stuff that ends up in landfills?) to morons and do it without losing advertising money from the car and oil companies. Even National Geographic would have articles about the rising oceans and melting glaciers sandwiched between Hummer and Cadillac SUV ads. Pretty tough to convince people of your seriousness about scientific data on climate when you have a small news column next to ads for central air conditioners and opposite the full page color ad by auto dealers. People think about the things they see most often. That's why advertisers saturate the airwaves with soda pop, beer and fear.

phill_arcade - your attitude to climate change is almost as shocking as your spelling.

I'd like to start this off by mentioning that I know nothing of climatology. I feel this is important as I am about to rip most peoples arguments apart with nothing more than what I learned at school.

Firstly, the laughable idea that melting of the north polar ice cap will cause flooding anywhere is just plain stupid. If you beleive this at all punch yourself in the face now, and then do this experiment. put an ice cube in a glass. Fill the glass with water to the brim. Let the ice cube melt. Notice that no water has overflowed... at all... now punch yourself in the face again. I learnt that in physics.

What about the ice cap in the South? Ahh, Geography. You will read many reports that this ice is melting. Well it is. You may also read reports that the ice shelf is increasing in size. Well it is, How can both of those statements be true you ask, well it works like this. The ice is receding on the edges but growing in the centre. Why are these two peices of information rarely put togetther in the same article? Tha's because people have agendas.

The main point is that even if all the glaciers and ice caps melted sea levels would rise less than 12 inches (see latest IPCC report for exact estimation) and do you know what we would find on the antarctic land mass after that melt? Defrosting trees. That's right, there wasn't always ice there. That's because there is no such thing as a stable climate, and anyone who would try to impose an ideal climate is more deluded than King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

Here's a little religious education for you. If a belief system collapses it causes a va@#$% where lots of ideas flood into take their place. One will usually win out to become the new order. If we were to apply that here I can see that in modern times people have moved away from the idea of an omnipitent being who controls eveything. With no one to credit scary change to people have almost uniformally decided, "well, if it's not god, it's got to be us". Has anyone stopped to think "Are we really that important?
Are we so awe inspiringly wasteful that we have managed to cause global warming on every planet in the solar system?" (That one's for all you retards who think third world countries should be denied basic right while we have to organise our rubbish into 13 different bins. Look it up)

I know nothing about climatology, but I have read enough to know that both sides of the argument are spouting bull@#$%. That leads me to believe that, as with most sensational doomsday stories, it won't be that bad and it won't be that good, it'll just be somewhere in the middle.

I just wanted to make a quick note on Nuclear power. If the only real argument against nuclear is the waste why don't we take all the money wasted on solar and wind power, and start a space junk program. Put it all in a rocket and fire it into the sun. It's okay the sun can take it.

Ref.comments by Richardrandomk: I also live in Beijing and concur with what he has stated about the last 12 months in Beijing.It is important to note however, that while BJ's weather is becoming extremely close to desert climate conditions, cities like Xi'an have a very serious airborne pollution problem. I also agree that Western Governments dictating to the Central Committee is ridiculous and offensive.China while suffering from huge pollution problems has a far more ambitious programme for sorting out the problem than most Western nations.They should recieve credit for what they are attemting to do in the Western media and not suffer continual criticism by theose who have little knowledge of the country.The Government should also be encouraged to become more transparent about national climatic figures.