"Pete Dimsman" wrote in message
...

According to this report, all of this may be a moot point soon:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science...eut/index.html
Study: Arctic warming at twice the global rate

Species, including polar bears, may go extinct as ice melts.

OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- Global warming is heating the Arctic almost
twice as fast as the rest of the planet in a thaw that threatens millions
of livelihoods and could wipe out polar bears by 2100, an eight-nation
report said on Monday.

The biggest survey to date of the Arctic climate, by 250 scientists, said
the accelerating melt could be a foretaste of wider disruptions from a
build-up of human emissions of heat-trapping gases in Earth's atmosphere.


Hysteria over normal weather patterns that have nothing to do with man's
influence, noted.

Read the article here
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...ller101504.asp or the
web page of the authors here
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/res...te.fall04.html

Or access it through hehttp://www.acia.uaf.edu/
This will take you to the actual report.

This is worth reading:

The basic information is this: the analysis of the tree ring data that gives
the 'hockey stick' shaped heat increase curve that shows a significant
increase in global warming since the industrial revolution is seriously
flawed. The authors of the web page referenced above found that even
inputting random, meaningless, valueless data (into the analysis algorithm
used to develop the global warming graph) produced the same curve. In other
words, the apparent sudden increase in global warming since the industrial
age started might be totally false. It's a serious mistake to make national
and international policy (Kyoto protocol) based on bogus figures.