John #6
I will take at face value your sincerity and attempt to address your
questions:
#1: What happened to global warming is that it continues merrily
along, despite the media turning its attention deficit focus
elsewhere. You said you were underwhelmed by the ncdc
website, but there are plenty of other sites that can help you get
an even more comprehensive grasp of the situation, if you have
an inquiring, open mind. You might try
http://www.skepticalscience.com/, where you can find many of
your questions answered, like the antarctic ice question (short
answer: sea ice is increasing, land ice is melting, which will impact
sea levels) or www.realclimate.org for a climatologist's
perspective on methodologies and in-depth answers to climate
denier positions.
2) 1 degree doesn't sound like much, but first of all it's celsius,
not fahrenheit, and secondly, the difference between stable ice
masses, stable methane sea beds and climatological patterns
and destabilized patterns of all of the above hinge on these small
ranges. Secondly, there is an increasing possibility that there
could be up to 4 degrees celsius changes this century,
depending on the levels of CO2 emissions and a host of
variables and an increasing realization that the IPCC reports may
have been overly conservative in their projections. See the Jan.
2011 Royal Society journal for details.
3) Ozone levels reached a minimum in 1993, when human
emissions were coupled with the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. If another
eruption of that scale occurs, it will drop to those levels once
again--it's still happening on an annual basis, just not at the
extreme levels of 1993. Note that the hole didn't exist before the
'70s. See
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/spo_oz/spototal.html for more details.
4) See the skepticalscience website noted above for details on
Antarctic ice levels
5) It was the early reports of potential cooling that prompted
NASA and NOAA to start collecting more data to refine our
understanding. Once they started filling in the holes in the data,
the true warming trends became obvious, and the certainty of
those conclusions have only increased with more time and data.
Science, unlike politics, follows the data. That's why it's so
important.
