Yes I believe the earth is getting warmer. Yes I believe humans have help the earth get warmer. No I don't believe the warming is all from humans. I personally believe it's a small part but we're helping nonetheless.

Who the fuck cares about your beliefs, unsupported by any evidence?

Maybe he's not interested in science and evidence and he just wants to express his true, individual self?

"I believe I can fly

I believe I can touch the sky

I don't believe humans cause all warming

It's a small part but we're helping

You're acting under the false assumption that one weather event is the only outlier in an otherwise regular world. Setting aside rising temperatures, rising sea levels, melting ice, etc, severe weather events are much more common now. The number of weather-loss related events has quintupled over the last three decades, with climate change anticipated to be the major driver of increased costs for insurers in the foreseeable future. So yes, we can and should already be talking the new climate norms and alerting people to how our climate will continue to change.

There are things we can do about it. They're called Government and Diplomacy.

Dear Snotty Sarcastic Skeptic,

Here is a graph of Solar Irradiance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png

Here is a graph of CO2: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide-en.svg&page=1

Here is a graph of Mean Global Temperature: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record_(NASA).svg&page=1

Notice how the temperature tracks with the CO2 concentration and not at all with the solar irradiance?

Oh I get it. You're one of those ideologically driven morons who just likes to rapidly post plagerized bullshit full of links you haven't even bothered to read, wherein a casual glance through aforementioned links quickly demonstrates how distorted and misleading you summaries are.

As a matter of fact, I am suggesting that a hurricane causing devastating flooding and disabling the Northeast corridor of the United States is, as you say, "out of the norm". Nor I am persuaded otherwise by your insipid list of plagerized factoids such as "the weak tropical depression of 1886 which caused no known damage".

No, a hurricane trashing the Florida coast would have been exactly the sort of storm that appears in the alternate universe where there is no correlation between global warming and storm severity. A Hurricane hitting the Northeast was atypical in the former climate, and that's why it's getting so much press. We are not accustomed to seeing hurricanes and flooding shut down the most heavily industrialized region of our nation.

No, you're missing the entire point of the story. And forget about The Boy Who Cried Wolf because that story isn't even relevant.

The story we should be discussing is The Boy Who Cried 'Global Warming is going to dramatically increase the likelihood of severe weather events, including the possibility of hurricanes that could devastate Manhattan and New Jersey' and then was proven exactly fucking right but a bunch of obstinate disphits still wanted to keep their heads shoved up their own asses rather than acknowledge the climate disruption caused by greenhouse gas emissions."

The total weight of the atmosphere isn't relevant because the vast majority (> 95%) of the atmosphere are not greenhouse gases and thus have no direct effect on warming. What's relevant is that we have somewhere between 40% to 50% more CO2 in our atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Say, you wouldn't happen to have a number that expresses what percent of CO2 man is responsible for would you? That should be easy to get if we know so much about CO2 now.

Indeed it is easy.

CO2 levels were about 260–280 ppmv immediately before industrial emissions began and did not vary much from this level during the preceding 10,000 years

Last June CO2 was 395 ppm.

Now can you subtract 280 from 395 or do I need to do that for you too?

2012: Slashdot commenter rs79. Total Bullshit.

When I examine the wikipedia article for Montreal or History of Montreal, I find no absolutely no mention of Hazel, much less that Hazel "wiped Montreal out". Nor do I find any mention of Montreal under the entry "Hurricane Hazel".

Maybe instead of plugging the book "How to lie with Statistics" you should really be plugging "How to lie by just making shit up" since that's apparently the book you're really fond of.

The report says: “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” The report says nothing about "budget cutbacks in response increase damages" [sic].

Obviously I encourage people to examine the numerous publications put forward by the scientific community, which has already clearly explained the connection between global warming and severe weather events. But since a lot of people are big believers in ludicrous conspiracy theories that encompass the entire scientific community, I'm giving them another source to consider.

Go back to basic physics. The atoms and molecules in Hurricanes are moving roughly in concert with each other. Thus it can be said to have kinetic energy. That energy originally came from someplace, and that place was the sun. Eventually the Hurricane will dissipate and through various forms of friction that kinetic energy will mostly become thermal energy. Through this process the hurricane releases warmth originally from the sun back into the earth. As a first order approximation, there is no net thermal gain or loss through the production of hurricanes.

Scientists have warned for years that global warming would increase the likelihood of severe storms hitting the northeast corridor which could flood low lying areas and cripple infrastructure. Then we witness precisely the kind of storm that scientists have been warning us about. But somehow pointing out the years of research that predicted these kinds of events is "sensationalizing" the event.

You've got it completely backwards. The storm was sensational on its own. If anything, it is the implications of the storm and the massive devasation that it wrought that has sensationalized the research. And rightly so. Now is exactly the moment to inform the public of the risks of global warming. Global warming isn't an abstraction, it's a fact that's already happening here and now.