I just read the most recent (June 2009) issue of Discover magazine, which is not peer-revewied but generally writes about stuff that is. There was a fantastic article you all should read, entitled “The Big Heat”. It was an interview with three publishing climatologists – Robin Bell, Bill Easterling, and Stephen Schneider (please, people, stop it with that seemingly scandolous quote of his) – and one publishing Earth scientist, Ken Caldeira.

The article covered common questions such as “is it natural?”, “what problems will it cause?”, and “what do we do about it?” in a more in-depth, cited fashion than your average middle-school science unit. They talk about things like D-O events, rate of warming, credibility, and risk management. Fascinating stuff. I danced around a little as I read it.

A small excerpt:

“When we entered into the computer all the various things that forced the climate to change, we were able to faithfully reproduce the temperature record of the past 100 years globally. When you take out the component of human-generated carbon dioxide, the models don’t work at all. There are all these people who say, “Well, what about the sun? Why don’t they think about solar variability?” Of course we think about the sun. The models think about all these things, but the models work only if you put all the components in, and one of the big components is us.” – Bill Easterling

I’d expect that Discover would be available at most libraries in North America. Definitely worth a read.