What happens when the level of CO2 exceeds the amounts the vegetation can handle? CO2 is on the increase, and yet vast areas of vegetation are continually being decimated.

Does anyone have a sense of Déjà vu? The opponents of the results from the research into global warming seem to be the proponents of the CO2 generators. Not long ago, the opponents of the results from research into causes of lung cancer were the proponents of cigarettes.

Well, if you consider strictly the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, there's less CO2 there now than is ideal for vegetation, so I guess there could be plenty more CO2 before it would be worse than the situation now. However, the effects of the CO2 on the climate would probably have a negative effect on the vegetation.

Well, effects like killing off the Golf stream would definitely screw vegetation up pretty much permanently (albeit not globally).

Evert, I know you're a very intelligent fellow, but a graph that goes back to 1850 really doesn's say much about long term climate patterns.

As if the temparature of a day or even a year are statistically relavent. Just like the number of hurricanes in 2005 was a harbinger of the number of hurricanes in 2006.

So the instead of total crap, they're just crap.

Christopher made alot of good points and no one challenged any of them in a meaningful way.

Strawmen indeed.

The thing about global warming is that it is potentially catastrophic. ie. it could be very very very bad for the whole world.
I'm using words like potentially, and could be, because it is difficult to be certain about anything much.
Anyway, maybe not everyone agrees that global warming is currently a problem; but I think that we can agree that it might be a problem. That should be enough. When I put on a seatbelt in a car, it's not because I expect to crash the car and be saved by the seatbelt, it's because I might crash the car and be saved by the seatbelt.
The threat of global warming is much greater than a car crash. Billions of lives are at stake. Many specices could face extinction. Maybe nothing bad will happen if we just continue as we are doing, but maybe it will. We shouldn't risk it. There's a good chance that these 'climate experts' might be right. There's a lot of modern evidence which suggests that global warming is a problem, and there is a damn lot to lose if we get this wrong.

I saw a funny thing on CNN the other day. They were doing a story about how the ski industry was bending over and taking it over the temperature this week. No snow, pitiful skiing, making crap money.

Funny thing was they interviewed both people that worked there as well as tourists for their perspective. The people running hotels there for thirty years shrugged it off; said there were at least a few times over the last three decades the temperature got that high and ruined business. Temperature rises, temperature falls, no worries. They've seen it before, it's always done that, be fine next year like it always is, nothing special. And then you had skiers, none of which looked like they'd even been alive thirty years, talking about how oh no, it was big bad global warming, it's terrible how the world is being destroyed by evil us, etc. Laughed pretty hard, personally.

So, actually .... yeah, it just might be kinda normal. The graphs are another story, but just because it's kinda warm where you are this year doesn't mean you should start stocking canned goods for the coming post-apocalyptic war after civilization ends.

Yes, but did they interview anyone who had been running hotels for five hundred years?

Yes, but I've never met anyone running a hotel for over 500 years.

A lot of people are going to deny that global warming is real and is a result of anything we're doing. It is more comfortable to believe we can do anything we want and not have a significant impact on our environment. It's not comforting to think of the world around us as a fragile thing; but it is.

Even if the warming is just a part of a natural climate cycle, the pollution we're putting out is going to have a negative effect on every living thing in one way or another. That's enough reason right there to try to make changes. But it does surprise me that people can watch the polar ice caps melting and say "oh, that's nothing... happens all the time!".

Its actually been a little colder here this winter so far I think. Though I'm no source of good information

Though, its getting pretty cold this week, -20c to -30c, and we were just hit with a blizzard.

We had a warm spell here, but it was mostly from a warm draft from the west, which also conveniently blocked cold from the north for a week. Overall it was probably warmer last year though.

I'm still iffy on the whole melting ice caps thing. If most of the ice is underwater anyway and ice takes more space than water, wouldn't that mean the water level ... drops?

No. The iceberg itself becomes water. This should be fairly easy to test though: take a full cup of water (at room temperature) with an icecube in it and watch the icecube melt. Will the cup overflow or not?
[EDIT: actually, no, it won't overflow: the iceberg moves its own mass in water, just as the water it becomes does. A melting ice berg by itself doesn't change sea level. Mixed up my Archimedes when I wrote the above originally. No is still correct though. ]
The problem is melting icecaps on land. The glacier on Greenland is shifting and melting as well. A melting glacier will raise sea level.

In all honesty guys, doesn't it ever occur to you that when people who actually work on weather patterns, climate or glacier formation say there's a problem, they may actually know what they're talking about?

EDIT: Careful Rich: the melting ice on the Antarctic is actually icebergs; it's not clear that the land-ice is sliding there too, or at least it wasn't clear last I heard.