I was going to respond to this earlier tonym5, but I wanted to get something more authoritative to back up my position.

Depsite a really cool movie, I don't think an ice age is a very likely outcome. Much more likely is that a series of positive feedback mechanisms will cause accelerated warming and the release of methane, both from (currently) frozen arctic tundra and from frozen methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean, all of which is more likely to turn our atmosphere into something like that found on the planet Venus--highly acidic and hot all the time.

The effect described in some accounts--the global superstorm that results from loss of the thermohaline incline in the North Atlantic--isn't likely to trigger a glacial period (science-speak for Ice Age) for the simple reason that the planet itself is too warm and will continue to be as long as there's a blanket of greenhouse gases.

That of course is just my take on it, but you might be interested in reading James Hansen's new book Storms of My Grandchildren. He addresses the ice age question and points out that human activity--specifically producing chloroflourocarbons--makes conditions leading to a glacial period extremely unlikely (science-speak for "it ain't gonna happen"). We would have to go extinct first.

To the first part of your statement however, I think the numbers are very important, but only if we make an effort to understand them without bias. Climate contrarians often accuse the scientific community as a whole of just such bias, but those accusations are analogous to a defense attorney trying to sow seeds of reasonable doubt. But what is true in the legal system is also true in the real world. Reasonable doubt may be enough to set a guilty man free, but it doesn't change the fact that he committed the crime. Similarly, the verdict in the court of public opinion won't change the reality of our condition.

Hey, so do I!

I especially love this one;

http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess-2.htm

Your link mentions Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit. Even he admits the planet has been cooling since 98. Here's one of his emails ;

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: John Christy <john.christy@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: This and that
Date: Tue Jul 5 15:51:55 2005

John,
There has been some email traffic in the last few days to a week - quite
a bit really, only a small part about MSU. The main part has been one of
your House subcommittees wanting Mike Mann and others and IPCC
to respond on how they produced their reconstructions and how IPCC
produced their report.
In case you want to look at this see later in the email !

Also this load of rubbish !

This is from an Australian at BMRC (not Neville Nicholls). It began from the attached

article. What an idiot. The scientific community would come down on me in no
uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only
7 years of data and it isn't statistically significant.

The Australian also alerted me to this blogging ! I think this is the term ! Luckily

I don't live in Australia.

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php...=1120593115.txt

Completely agree with you on that, Tony. We're in the early stages of expanding on a little herb garden we have in pots on the verandah of our rental. I love gorwing vegies but I'm not very good at it.

Decent vegetables can be grown even if you don't have a garden. Give it a go! During the war, Victory gardens in the US were a big thing. A little bit of self-sufficiency can be fun.