Interesting

Some articles on how the IPCC report on global warming (the one Gore won his Nobel Prize for) significantly exaggerated the effects of human-produced greenhouse gases, and how Alaskan glaciers are rebounding for the first time since they began retreating.

Honestly, the more I read about global warming from real scientists, not the sensationalists and the scaremongering of Al Gore, the more I begin to believe it's all horseshit. Earth has been warming for over 200 years. Anybody remember learning about the Little Ice Age back before America was a full independent country? Of course not, cause then you'd have acknowledge that we've seen a warming trend over a much longer period of time than humans have been pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Also, CO2 is not the most significant greenhouse gas. Take it from someone who had to get infrared astronomy data from a satellite instead of ground-based telescopes because H2O absorbs infrared radiation. Yeah, water is a major greenhouse gas. Keep in mind also that water in its liquid and solid forms has a negative warming effect:

-Most of the sun's energy is in the visible part of the spectrum (very little IR)
-Earth absorbs some of this radiation and re-emits it in the IR
-The greenhouse gases absorb this re-emitted radiation and re-emit it at longer IR wavelengths
-Ice and water reflect the sun's radiation, keeping it from being absorbed and re-emitted as IR radiation
-This radiation is allowed to pass through the atmosphere undisturbed and does not heat our planet
-Any positive growth in glaciers we see will begin to put downward pressure on global temperatures

Anyway, that was a long enough brain dump for now.

Alternative views on global warming

Some scientists, with research being performed over the course of decades, are point to the sun as a possible cause of the increase in temperature of our planet. The hypothesis being that the eleven year magnetic cycle of the sun's surface also impacts the solar irradiance (energy emitted by the sun). Solar irradiance is the single largest factor in global temperatures (obviously). Apparently, the evidence is pointing some to believe that the sun's magnetic cycle is a part of a larger cycle of solar irradiance. Every couple centuries, it is opined by some, the sun will either hit a lull in magnatic activity and causing a serious cooldown in the solar system, or there will be a flurry of magnatic activity that will increase temperatures. Some of the evidence supplied shows that our current temperatures are close to where they should be given that the sun is has experienced higher than normal sunspot activity during its cycles over the past few decades, and that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be having a minimal effect if that were true. Keep in mind, carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas, water being another. If Sol increases Earth's temperature slightly, air will inherently become more humid and ice will melt; the melting ice will result in less solar radiation being reflect thus heating the ground further, and less ice cover means more exposed ground to absorb the heat.

Anyway, that's sort of a haphazard summary of what the authors of the following two articles are saying. The first one also saying that the United Nations' own report on global warming is ridiculous, though I haven't been able to read any of the academic papers he cites, so I can't yet add any of my own opinion. Basically, global warming is way more complicated than people say, and there's no argument yet that ends the discussion, as some windbags out there would like to say.

BE SKEPTICAL!

The first article talking about the UN report and the gross misrepresentations of the truth that it makes

The second article detailing research on historical data of the sun and the artic ice sheets

I hope to be doing a lot more research on this and other topics over the coming weeks, and I'll probably post some of the more interesting stuff on here if I get the motivation.

Things I'd like to look into more:

• I've heard reference to how Earth's temperature has historically increased significantly just before its various ice ages and I would like to investigate the studies on this.
• I want to look more closely at the evidence posited about the change in solar irradiance over time.
• My background in solar physics is pathetic at best, so I need to go back and look through some of my textbooks and notes from my astrophysics class. I know the sun is not a stable system, with the radius constantly fluctuating and massive convection currents roiling around, but I want to investigate the irradiance changes.
• Carbon dioxide's impact on warming the planet is the hottest topic and I would like to investigate how they're determining the level of impact it has. Yes, CO2 absorbs energy in the near infrared region and re-emits it, but how much does a 50% increase over 100 years in the CO2 levels really impact the overall absorption?