"Peter D. Tillman" wrote in message
m...

Thanks, Alastair. Very nice review--just what I was looking for.
As you say, it's more documentation that rapid changes have occurred,
and not just in polar regions. Scary stuff.

Have you (or others) read his book?
Weart, Spencer--Discovery of Global Warming, Harvard, 2003
http://www.aip.org/history/climate

Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Consulting Geologist, Tucson & Santa Fe (USA)

I am reading it at the moment. I only found out about it a few days
ago from a post to sci.environment by Thomas Palm.

The section on Simple Models is equally scary, but the GCM section
ends reassuringly "Nearly every expert now agreed that the old predictions
were solid - raising the CO2 level would warm the globe." He does not
say which of the old predictions were correct. Nor does he point out
that if we get rapid climate change there will be no warning, almost by
definition. Is the rise in temperature now happening in Europe and in
much else of the Northern Hemisphere the start of a rapid climate change
event which will raise tempertures by 5C in less than ten years, rather
than part of a slow warming of 3C spread over the next century?

BTW There is another book on the web about abrupt climate change
from the National Academy of Sciences. "Abrupt Climate Change:
Inevitable Surprises" (2002) See;
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309074347/html/
It is a bit heavier, but even so it also comes to no definite conclusion.

HTH,

Cheers, Alastair.