[quote] It appears that we’ve just seen yet another surprise from the climate system — and yet another process, like the melting of Antarctica, that seems to be happening faster than previously expected. And indeed, much like with that  melting, the upshot if the trend continues is an especially bad sea level rise for the United States — the country more responsible than any other on Earth for the global warming that we’re currently experiencing. [/quote] Basically even if you're a person who denies the whole thing, there's still no down side to pushing for more renewable energy development and usage. Energy independence relies on renewables, and energy independence has literally no down side economically, or environmentally. Please note, this doesn't mean there will be some catastrophic end of the world day after tomorrow shit. Its just means we are causing ourselves more issues, and it can be prevented. For comprehensive information [url=http://climate.NASA.gov]check here[/url] Since this seems to be a big issue thats often brought up [b]I'll spell it out below.[/b] Co2 isn't the most potent greenhouse gas at all, but it is a greenhouse gas. So what's the big deal then? The literal metric tons of [b]Co2 we put into the air causes a very small amount heating[/b]. In fact you could argue that its probably not that noticeable. But here's why its the key to the snowball affect. [b]Warmer air holds considerably more water vapor than cold air and water vapor is by far the very best greenhouse gas.[/b] That little tiny rise in global temp one year means that all the air can hold significantly [b]more water vapor[/b] which does greatly cause heating, more heating means more ice melt, and rising sea levels and [b]more water vapor[/b]. More ice melt and higher sea levels means more exposed oceans to absorb sunlight, which means more heating, and so on. This creates this giant positive feedback loop of heating and enhancing of the greenhouse affect. This would Normally be offest by seasonal changes, but the constant increase in Co2 means the base amount of water vapor the atmosphere can annually hold is gradually increasing, thus attributing to the increase in avg global temperature, and all the negative affects of that. Our Co2 production is the kid at the top of the hill pushing the snowball. I hope that's clear.