To: steve harris who wrote (356106 ) 10/25/2007 7:45:18 PM From: RetiredNow Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 1577864 Steve. The scientific community has measured the quantity of greenhouse gases in the air (CO2 being the largest amount). They have also measured how much CO2 is emitted naturally and by human industry. Lastly, they have measured all the sinks, or CO2 consumers that reduce CO2 levels like plants and plankton in oceans. From there it is a simple equation: Current CO2 levels = Last year's CO2 levels + this years CO2 increases from natural causes + this year's CO2 increases from manmade causes - this year's CO2 reduction from sinks What they found is the following: 1) that manmade causes of CO2 have consistently increased to the point that total emissions (manmade + natural increases) can no longer be fully absorbed by natural sinks 2) that the increase in CO2 levels in the last 50 years has accelerated faster than at any time in the last 800,000 years, based on ice core samples, representing a clear systemic trend outside the normal cyclical ranges within that time span 3) that mass extinction events have a statistically significant correlation with global warming events, based on data going back 520 million of years 4) they also ran computer models that estimated the global warming effects from long range cyclical solar activity as well as that of volcanic activity and they found that these provided some of the warming effects, but that by far, the most significant contributor to today's global warming is man made greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The IPCC, which consisted of 2,000 of the world's prominent scientists concluded with 90% certainty that man was the most significant cause of global warming trends today. The statistics are there to prove it. This is no longer a matter of opinion. The facts speak for themselves. Only a fool would deny the probabilities. You can deny the facts, but that doesn't make the problem go away. In the words of Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, "The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people."