The disaster lemmings are out in force in this article. Gloabal warming is not the ineveitable it is made out to be. It verges on junk science. The model the forecasts are predicated upon is flawed, skewed, biased...whatever name you want to give it.

The writers should research the other side of the question before regurgitating the standard "consensus" line. But that would be too hard and require work I guess.

Hype-along calamity Janes like you ought to be banned from the media for fear mongering. Get a science degree and learn to hypothesize after your research instead of band wagon science.

I wish I could blame everything on global warming. It seems like anything that goes on in this world can be linked to global warming....come on.

Like weather forecasts, run off forecasts are more accurate in the near term. I have high confidence in the 120% runoff forecast this water year, lower confidence in the gloom and doom longer term worries of global warming theory supporters. There is no scientific consensus yet on what is man caused and what is natural in the global warming arena. In terms of geologic time, temperature volatility has been a main characteristic of the past few 10s of thousands of years.

Strong said the Colorado's flow will be ample this year. The lake is expected to rise by 50 feet from above-average upstream runoff, mostly from snowfall in Colorado. This is the fact the rest is Al Gore hype.

If it was this low 500 years ago what was warming the earth then? The climate of earth goes thru changes and cycles all the time. The difference now is there are legions of chicken little "scientist" running around screaming for attention. Get a grip, girls.

about 3 weeks ago the des news reported that lake powell would be up 40 feet this year and did not mention globel warming. did we have a drought this winter that i missed?

Given the forcasters record we better start building dikes now.

If the river will be at its lowest level in 500 yrs then what was happening 500 yrs ago?

Could it be that we simply don't have enough data to say anything about global warming?

smattering and snowboy, or the "two s's" as I like to think of you, just exactly what kind of background do you need to work for the U.S. Geological Service? I expect at least a Master's of Science, more likely a PhD. And these are the guys you are telling to "get a science degree", and of dealing in junk science? You have blinders on, if you can't see that at the very least, the USGS is staffed by people with the highest level of expertise in earth science. The fact that you refuse to admit that tells us that you are simply in denial.
Pick a fight with their data or techniques, cite a reliable conflicting opinion we can go to, but don't trot out your ignorance of the U.S. Geological Service, one of the most respected scientific agencies around.

Why is there no mention in this article of the 10-year cooling trend that the Earth is currently experiencing and the impact to the Colorado if that trend continues? 1998 was the hottest year on record and temperatures have receded since then. I proposed a new UN panel called the Intergovernmental Panel on Meteor Impacts (or "IPMI") which could constantly warn us of the dangers of meteor impacts to the Earth. The IPMI could periodically release studies of what would happen if small, medium, or large meteors impact different geographical locations. It would have the same value as the IPCC. Governments, in turn, could fund scientific research of yet another hypothetical event.

To Johnson: right on! Can we get an "amen" to brother Johnson?! He tells it like it is.

I have known/worked with the USGS off and on for decades. The agency is filled with neutral and well trained scientists who just love to crunch numbers, run models, and let the conclusions be based on science, the systematic verifiable body of knowledge.

The Colorado is overwhelmed by us. Of that there is no doubt, unless you are biased toward the view that man can only do great things and that some how we are supposed to procreate more and more and hope that something good happens to our limited water supply.

These problems of over population and limited water are so well-known that it is suprising to see that there are folks left who are still in denial. Amazing relics.

As to global warming, the scientists with no cross to burn, point at us, we, you and I, as adding to the problem. Not the sole cause, but definitely a significant factor in the change.

Go back and run the tape again of what Gore said. He told it truthfully.

My campus applauded his effort. Reasonably so.

The Shadown Knows.

Global warming and cooling is a natural cycle that can be historically proven. To think that Al Gore, the great climate prophet, can precisely predict what the snow pack or temperatures are going to be next year or 10 years from now requires blind faith in this new religion.

Their prophets have been wrong two years running. This is simply a religious scam that is being crammed down our throats.

The other media outlets have mostly figured out that if they are going to allow comments from the public that they can't run the global warming stuff because they will get ripped to shreds.
We should all be thankful for global warming because we don't have to listen to the press go on and on any more about the hole in the ozone layer!
In like sense global warming will only be "solved" when the media comes up with their next scary story that they can fall back on when there is no real news!

There are just some people out there who refuse to believe that humans have the potential to alter the earth's climate, and look for any reason to poke their fingers in your eye. It is true that the earth goes through natural cycles, but one thing the doubters of global warming are missing is that perhaps we are not in a natural warming cycle. Heaven forbid that a natural warming cycle occurs at the same time humans are warming the planet. Perhaps the doubters are right and the scientists are wrong; I'm still not willing to take the chance, besides what is wrong with the fringe benefits of cleaning up the air that we breathe and living like true stewards of the earth, and even better yet, a whole new industry could be spawned that will help employ millions of people in developing and manufacturing green technology--something that can't be outsourced too easily to third world countries.

I predict it the Colorado River will rise in the next 50 years because of global warming. I have as much authority in saying this as these wack jobs have in saying it will shrink away. On another note what will the weate be like 14, 21, 28 days, or 4 years from today? If you can tell me I will buy global warming. I love the global warming we are having this winter.

I woke up with a cold this morning. Turns out it was caused, at least in part, by global warming.

This article's research on this subject is sloppy. You completely ignore evidence from the National Science Foundation's researchers in Greenland and Antarctica that suggests that during periods of rising temperatures precipitation over the mainlands actually increases. Even school children know that dinosaurs lived in a wet/warm climate. But hey, that just doesn't fit in well with the alarmist intention of the article, does it.

Global warming? Sure would like it to hit here this was one of the coldest winters I can remember!

Please call me and the press when YOU can make the wind blow...or when you make a cloud appear in the sky...or when you make it rain, snow, sleet, hail....or when YOU cause a tornado....

I love it when the arrogance of man THINKS they can actually change the climate..... the earth has been through how many coolings and warmings over the thousands of years? Was man responsible for the Ice Age or for when it ended?

You are not in charge my friend. Their is only One in charge of this earth and its existence....and as far as I know, you ain't Him.

Yep, global warming is a farce. I know this because a bunch republicans told me so and we all know republicans can be given complete trust when we're talking about the environment and determining whether or not something is based on "junk science".

So... you folks know more about climate change than the actual scientists who've spent years gathering and analyzing the data. They're "wack jobs" and you're the experts, right?

The level of ignorance about how science works exhibited in most of these messages is appalling.

Yes !! I’m afraid the “whack Jobs” here do know more then the Mad Scientists that cant predict the common whether report past 24 hours, Let alone predicting the weather one week in advanced. They are 96% wrong on the weather next week. So What make one believe they have anything right?

Sad & Scary these people reflect what they believe. This is useful data. We have people who believe that science fails them more than Rush Limbaugh.

Lack of education or the expertise that we acquire in getting a degree, carries no weight with many conservatives. In their minds, they aren't at a disadvantage because, they lack this educational back ground.

To be educated is to be dismissed as being elitist. In the conservatives mind, there is no benefit to learning and no cost in the dumbing down of Americans. Why care that China and India produce more engineers? America has destiny on our side. God will intervene and save us.

If you're elitist enough, to assume these folks have been brain washed using noble lies to control them, you see this brainwashing really works. You can also see the futility trying to reprogram people once they have been brainwashed by a belief system. Your time is better spent spitting into the wind.

Regardless of what people believe time will pass and events will happen based on causation and effect. Denial can't change the outcome.

Earth can and will go on after the extinct of any species, even humans.

Yes, it's true! There IS a global warming agenda.

The left wants to panic the world into thinking we are all doomed unless we turn our lives over to Gore et al to tell us what to do.

Don't fall for it, America!

...or it could push the Colorado River to historic highs. These "experts" are complete idiots. Everyone knows the weather is not predictable, that things go up, things go down, and they are making this prediction based on something that never happens--the weather continuing in the same course for years into the future. Ignore these fools, they'll be wrong again and again, and again.

The liberal out of touch media and the even more liberal out of touch academic world are using their positions of trust in society to push their fraudulent theory.

They say the facts are incontrovertible and that no more research is needed.

A LIE!

Science is about ALWAYS studying and testing your hypothesis. If it is true more research will bear it out, or, you might actually stumble on the truth, which is what the far left pseudo science crowd fears.

Any academian who questions global warming in today's witchhunt environment will lose his university support and be ridiculed by the press.

FREE SCIENCE from the far left.

Any speaker who suggest the evidence for man made global warning is incontrovertible should be immediately beaten to death by a righteously indignant audience. (Instead, on the close minded fawning left herd mentality campuses of today they are cheered like rockstars)

Don't suggest the general population is too stupid to understand, they understand all too well, and that is the problem for the left.

FREE SCIENCE

It was interesting reading the posts on this article. I would say that at least 90% are written by people with absolutely no scientific education or experience, but want to argue scientific data with people who have advanced degrees in the area. There seems to be a certain mindset that's common among people who get so upset when the issue of global warming is raised. They seem to be individuals who want to do whatever they want, when they want, use up as much as they want, overpopulate if they want, and not take any responsibility for their actions. Interesting.

It is amazing to me to witness the senseless belief that man can't alter the earth's climate when we have done a pretty good job at altering it's landscape. Deforestation in our rain forests have caused erosion on such a mass scale that you can see it from space. Oil, natural gas, and coal is simply carbon pulled from the atmosphere and stored in a harmless state, then we enter man and in one century release half of what the earth has taken millions of years to scrub out of the atmosphere and put it right back in the atmosphere and then have the audacity to say that we are doing nothing to our planet, and for all the religious zealots out there who think that God is going to swoop down in his golden chariot and save us, whatever happened to "God only helps those who help themselves. You can never convince people no matter what kind of evidence you present them. We even have people out there who still believe the world is flat.

There is nothing so pathetic as someone impressed by their own level of education.

They personify the expression about a little knowledge being a dangerous (and also delusional, evidently) thing.

Truly educated people are more impressed by what they don't yet know and never cease striving for it.

It matters not a whit but rest assured there are a lot of doctorates posting for true research. (does that impress you, follow-the-herd boy?)

Spanky, once my Mormon ancestors were believers in not wasting resources. They bought locally. They recycled. They found wasting deplorable. Then, these ideas reflected the conservative values of their community.

How do you protest Al Gore? You can leave your lights on, keep your car running and you can stop taking your soda cans back and cashing them in. Don't do anything in a single trip, you can do in five trips?

You don't want to be a followers of Al Gore.

If you follow Gore, you cut your carbon foot print by cutting down on your cost of heating your home. You shop at farmer's markets were there is a community spirit. You live within your means. You walk or ride a bike. You become healthier.

It amazes how Rush Limbaugh and Fox can get Americans to believe acting in their best interests is wrong. It's liberalism. Don't question that your best use is being a unit of consumption. Using more is always better.

God forbid we return to living in the villages of my Utah childhood where people knew you and where concerned about you.

that Americans consume sinful amounts of oil and other resources (which are going to run out and in the meantime pollute)

It is also true that the jury on man's role in climate change is still out.

The best thing that could happen for the environment would be for Gore to disappear because a great many people, out of spite and loathing of Gore, will never concede a millimeter in the debate as long as Gore personifies the other side.

This has always been true of the environmental movement (they are their own and the environments worse enemies in terms of the public debate) but the problem is much bigger with Gore (as is Gore himself; much bigger, that is)

Wait a sec... if the globe is warming, and the ice caps are melting, wouldn't global water levels rise? This very excuse is being used by some as to why the Mississippi and Merimac rivers are so high in Missouri right now.

Seems like "climate change" can be an excuse for anything. River's up: climate change! River's down: climate change. Unusually cold this year? Yep, climate change. Unusually warm this year? Rinse, repeat...

I wouldn't agree with Al Gore, but I would at least take him seriously if he practiced what he preached. He has an ENORMOUS carbon footprint- hundreds of times larger than the average American's, thanks to his lavish consumption of energy. He is like any other hypocritical, scamming preacher that reduces his naive followers to ruins while he cruises around in private jets and SUVs. Deceitful liar.

For another, more accurate take on the matter, see yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial by Patrick Michaels, professor environmental science at University of Virginia. To quote, in part:

"For years, records from surface thermometers showed a global warming trend beginning in the late 1970s. But temperatures sensed by satellites and weather balloons displayed no concurrent warming..."

And:

"There have been six major revisions in the warming figures in recent years, all in the same direction. So it's like flipping a coin six times and getting tails each time. The chance of that occurring is 0.016, or less than one in 50. That doesn't mean that these revisions are all hooey, but the probability that they would all go in one direction on the merits is pretty darned small."

Read the whole article and you'll learn a lot about where we get our "global warming." It ain't from greenhouse gases...

if it just reported the facts and skipped the editorializing.

Every story about climate or weather doesn't have to rehash Kyoto and CO2. If you try too hard people get wise to your con.

I think the most effective thing we can do at this point is allow the United Nations to levee a tax. No matter what, we must not question Global Warming. The best thing, the only thing to do is give more money to government, any government. They are wise and they will save us. You can't argue with this logic, other wise you are ignorant.

Matt I have read some great articles covering views from both sises of this question. Science isn't about believing. I'm not invested in an outcome.

I do have a bias. The same people who said that George the Second would be a great president tell me they have the answer to global climate. The same folks who linked conservatism to returning morality to politics argue against golbal warming.

This is like taking investment advise from someone in bankruptcy.

I'm not a scientist, but I am an observer. I've observed that, in the minute speck of geologic time that has been my lifetime, the climate has changed. I've also noticed that adding a lot more people in an area does not make life better. And that more lawns, more people, more agriculture, it has had a serously negative influence on our water supply, especially in the desert west. Finite supply, increasing demand. Doesn't work. And, if you put too many cows in the field, god doesn't simply make it grow more grass, whether I want it or not.
We claim to eschew gambling in Utah, but I wonder if betting against global warming isn't the stupidest risk we've ever taken. One thing I know is that we've proven time and again men have proven hubris to be stupid.

I go with the scientists. Not the people who cannot understand long term consequences or intervening variables.

I am with the scientists.

Those who do not believe in global warming are free to express their opinions. If only the data supported them. It does now.

We have added to the change in our climate. And somewhere there is a point of no return. Why not adjust now when you have the opportunity, and not later, when you might not have the opportunity?

We can better than we are doing, can't we?

we cut emissions to zero, live in caves and eat dirt and slow the rate of temperature increase.
then a volcano erupts, fills the atmosphere with ash for 10 years and plunges us into an ice age.

The arctic ice cap, which last summer was half the size it was only twenty years ago, won't change sea levels because its melting. Floating ice displaces water equivalent to its weight. Your glass of ice water doesn't get more full as the ice melts.

What arctic sea ice melting does, however, is seriously endanger species such as the polar bear that depend on arctic ice for their survival. It also changes the salinity, and hence the density, of the water, which has the potential to alter ocean currents. Moreover, as the amount of ice declines the amount of light reflected back into space by ice also declines. Liquid water absorbs much more energy from sunlight than ice. This accelerates warming.

Global warming causes the temperature of the oceans to rise. and as water warms it expands, which raises sea levels.

The really serious threat to sea level stability from melting ices relates to the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctic ices. Glaciers in both areas are now flowing at about 8x their normal rate, which is alarming.

ocean sanity is serious, no one wants insane ocean currents.

There is overwhelming consensus in the scientific community regarding global warming because scientific evidence supports those conclusions, not because of some political agenda. The implications of global warming are not fully understood but they are dire. For example most of our food crops grow within a narrow moisture regime. If our crop land areas warm up, the soils dry up and a food shortage could occur. A few degrees warmer will make a huge difference. Just look at the mountains on the Wasach front. The north facing slopes have Doug firs and the south facing slopes have oak scrub. The difference between those two areas are a couple degrees temperature, which dries out the soils on the south slope and prevents doug fir from growing there. To reject global warming is rediculous. Consider venus, it is not hot because it is closer to the sun. The extreame temperatures on Venus can be wholly attributted to CO2 and the greenhouse effect. Similarly Mars is cold because of a lack of atmosphearic CO2. Reality is that all of us should be very concerned about global warming and it should not be a partisan issue.

The word used is "salinity."

Yes, “global warming” has brought us to one of the best years ever for snow in Colorado (186% of the normal snow pack). By the way, the NOAA forecast at the start of the season was this would be one of the worst years for snow in CO due to global warming. I live in Pueblo, CO, and authorities are VERY worried about flooding this spring from the runoff. Lake Pueblo is at its highest level in 10yrs. When do we start holding these “scientist” accountable for their fear mongering and fabricated forecasts? The hoax that is Global Warming is about one thing and one this only, an effort to weaken the US in the world economy (which is the reason Clinton –not Bush as everyone claims – refused to sign Kyoto) and to justify a liberal government (the royalty) to assume more control of the lives of the peasants. Just look at Al Gore – demands that we all make massive changes in our lives while he drives ¼mi in 3 SUV motorcades and whose home consumes 20x the average household energy – but don’t worry, he buys carbon credits to offset this (from the company that HE OWNS!).

Spanky, just to have you know - I have a MS in Engineering. I have extensive experience in complex closed-loop linear and non-linear systems. Let's be very honest with ourselves, any model of the earth's atmosphere that we feable humans have the capacity to create would be so oversimplified so as to have only a slight correlation to reality. Case in point, how many hurricanes did the NWS predict for 2007 (Hint: their models predicited it was going to be really bad due to GW)? How many did we have? I also have extensive experience with research communities. It is very common for researches to be hell bent on createing data that justifies additional research and consequently more funding. There is no check and ballance! Anyone that tells you that Global Warming in not all about the $$ to be made off of the hysteria is living in a fanstasy world. I'm a scientist - and I KNOW not all are to be trusted.

ocean density is worse. NO ONE wants stupid oceans.

Robert, you have a good point. The complexity of modeling climate is immense. This is why this is great science. This explains why the way we look at climate changes over time.

Robert when you compare what a researcher earns compared to a CEO, who looses billions of investor dollars, you can't say science is more corrupt than business.

Do you think Rush Limbaugh will risk his moneyline by turning liberal anymore that Matt Drudge or Hanity will? Many ideologies are fueled by cash.

In terms of political fear mongering, there is more cash to be made being a conservative radio head than a liberal essay writer for newspapers. The president of Green Peace earns penny compared to the CEO's that started the subprime debacle.

Robert we may disagree but I respect anyone with your grasp of science. I think too many conservatives try to view a non-linear world using linear modeling.