<<my colleagues at work (who are of the conservative persuasion) who appeared to be positively gleeful. I gather that yesterday's winter demonstration was proof, from their POV, that Global Warming is nothing more than a crock hatched by the liberals, that Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" crusade is a bunch of hooey.>>
How they can they still be so ignorant? Perhaps it would help if they were reminded that the "global warming" expected is only an AVERAGE figure for the whole globe. The effect will be to add more "energy" to the reactions and interactions of the atmospheric systems. Weather should become more extreme. Droughts will increase. Dustbowls will become more frequent. Flooding will happen more often and more severely and, also, snow storms will become worse. In addition to increases in intensity and frequency, extreme weather events will happen in places where they never used to.
And what is this obsession that some Americans have that the whole idea was cooked up by Al Gore? That is just mindbogglingly stupid. The basic physics is that the "greenhouse" characteristics of CO2 and a few other atmospheric gases have been established beyond doubt - first proposed in 1824 by Fourier and then Arrhenius in 1896. Subsequent laboratory measurement confirmed this. Al Gore is merely a messenger - do not shoot him! - passing on the overwhelming scientific consensus view (of climate scientists) in a campaign aimed at the ordinary person using a simplified, dramatic presentation. The theory has been developed and refined over many decades and although the current predictions from this theory cannot be confirmed until they "come to pass" or not, the likely changes are sufficiently worrying to demand action to avoid them for the sake of everyone. Some of the less likely, though still possible, predictions are frightening and should command extreme action to avoid them. As Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry almost said "Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punks?
