At AAAS, Al Gore urges scientists to get involved in climate change debate: Scientific American Blog

Gore used a dramatic video of scientist Katey Walter lighting a plume of methane gas bubbling up from a frozen Alaskan lake to introduce the idea of methane as a potent greenhouse gas. Methane emissions from such lakes is thought by many scientists to be increasing as the permafrost thaws, allowing organic material trapped in the ice to be converted by the lake's bacteria into the gas.

(But Gore didn't stick only to climate change. He also revealed that he's an iPhone fan. A few minutes into his talk, he had to turn the phone off. As he did, he told the crowd: "Anyone who hasn't switched to one, you really should.")

Gore--who didn't take questions after the talk, citing his schedule--seemed optimistic about the Obama administration's appointments to the Cabinet and other senior posts. "This is a moment in our history as a nation and in the history of the world's population that is without precedent," he said. A few minutes later, he said, "We as a species need to make a decision."

Alleged "expert" from IPCC: As per usual, next assessment to be even more CO2-hysteric than the last one

Stanford, CA— Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising more rapidly than expected, increasing the danger that without aggressive action to reduce emissions the climate system could cross a critical threshold by the end of the century, warns a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Studies indicate that greenhouse warming could trigger a vicious cycle of feedback, in which carbon dioxide released from thawing tundra and increasingly fire-prone forests drives global temperatures even higher.

Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and co-chair of the IPCC Working Group 2, will address these issues at a symposium titled "What Is New and Surprising since the IPCC Fourth Assessment?" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago. The IPCC Fourth Assessment, for which Field was a coordinating author, was published in 2007. As co-chair, Field will oversee the Working Group 2 Report on the predicted impacts of climate change for the IPCC Fifth assessment, scheduled to be published in 2014. The Fifth Assessment will incorporate the results of new studies that predict more severe changes than did previous assessments.