http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/sc/story.html?s=v/nm/19990307/sc/greenland_5.html
: Shrinking Greenland Glacier Signals Global Warming
:
: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Large tracts of the Greenland ice sheet -- a giant
: ``ice cube'' that helps cool the Earth's atmosphere -- are disappearing
: faster than scientists expected in a sign that global warming is having
: dramatic effects, researchers said Thursday.
:
: ``It's probably slipping faster into the ocean than it has in the
: past. This isn't something we will have to worry about in our lifetime,
: but it will be a question for our children if this phenomena is
: accelerating,'' said William Krabill, project scientist on the NASA
: Goddard Space Flight Center study.
I hadn't heard the story about the glaciers growing. This was the only one I'd seen recently. How reliable was the study about growing glaciers? Was that from some group dedicated to debunking global warming? Can you give a URL for the group or the study?
: A study published Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters said the
: 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium, with 1998 the warmest
: year since 1860.
This corresponds to my experience. It seems to have been getting hotter and hotter. Every year for the past few years has seemed to set new records. Those who claim that global warming is a real phenomenon would presumably predict that we will continue to see increases.
For those skeptics, what are the odds that 1999 will turn out to be the warmest year this century? What are the odds that the first decade of the 2000s will be hotter than the 1990s? At what point would you start to agree that global warming is a real and ongoing phenomenon? (Note - I am not asking you to agree with a particular cause of global warming, or that everyone should be forced to return to a 17th century lifestyle as a result, rather the question is whether we should expect warming to continue to increase.)
Hal