A stunning year in climate science

Hysterical website brought to you by Center for American Progress.<p>From their website<p><i>Our mission is to transform progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world.</i><p>addendum: for those confused, this is political advocacy and its probably not a good idea to post this stuff here unless you want HN to become reddit. Oh, how can it be advocacy if everything is true? Sometimes its not what you say, but what you leave out.

I wasn't expecting much from this article but it links to recent research in high impact journals. The ones that caught my eye were:<p><i>Science</i>: Vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing and venting<p><i>Nature Geoscience study</i>: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred<p><i>Royal Society</i>: “There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record.”

I'm interested to hear what the HN community thinks about this article. Last time I said anything about the "environment" a bunch of people responded with "Whatever hippie, go back to the woods then!" I'm an entrepreneur and a lover of tech, but without our environment... we're sorta ya know... screwed!

The response in the comments here is perplexing to me.<p>The article is presenting well-cited scientific studies, with summaries and disclaimers where statistical issues have been correctly raised. Together, the article's point is that the "climategate" emails were a distraction that the media followed instead of all of the numerous studies coming out in the same year on the subject.<p>With that in mind, yes, it may be political advocacy, but no one here has raised any real reason why the research behind them shouldn't be taken seriously. If someone posted a list of articles coming out at the same time that rebutted their findings, I might think differently, but as it is I can't help thinking from observing the response here that the article's point may be truer than even its writers imagined. There's real science here! Discussion about the discussion is a distraction from it. If you think we shouldn't be discussing climate change, show me why you think the research is bogus instead of just telling me "political issues don't belong on HN". It's political because there's a lot of money at stake, not because the science is controversial; and please, if you think I'm wrong about that, show me why. I really, really, really want to be. Other scientific articles are fine on HN, so why not this?

<i>Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”</i><p>I look away from the glow of this noisy MacBook, and ponder how foolish I am to be typing this on a computer that in only a few distant years from now will no longer work. I know that global ocean temperatures have been rising steadily for the past 100 hundred years -- this is based on maps of world ocean temperatures displayed to the public in the lobby of an Ocean Sciences building that I was able to view years ago.<p>Yes, Number 1 <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean-phytoplankton-global-warming-boris-worm/" rel="nofollow">http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean-p...</a> is stunning. Don't stay stunned for too much longer.

<i>&#62; The last year or so has seen more scientific papers and presentations that raise the genuine prospect of catastrophe (if we stay on our current emissions path) that I can recall seeing in any other year.</i><p>Missed a great opportunity for a hockey-stick graph! :)

Sure maybe this like many other sources sensationalizes things but one of the problems with climate is that I just can't see worldwide action until either it is right in governments faces ie. to late, or they are drawn in my sensationalist tones on correct science.<p>Climate is one of those things that governments will be able to wash there hands of if everything turns bad, because no one can be 100% sure of causes and the whole climate gate thing the article was referring to.<p>I don't really expect any drastic action as unless every country acts those who don't will have a big trading advantage, at least in the short term.

There is absolutely no scientific evidence of man made climate change. <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647#" rel="nofollow">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647...</a>

Climate-science has become an oxymoron.