"If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe."

"Some context: So far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.) Given those impacts, in fact, many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target. "Any number much above one degree involves a gamble," writes Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes, "and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up." Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it like this: "If we're seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much." NASA scientist James Hansen, the planet's most prominent climatologist, is even blunter: "The target that has been talked about in international negotiations for two degrees of warming is actually a prescription for long-term disaster."

"CO₂ emissions last year rose to 31.6 gigatons, up 3.2 percent from the year before. America had a warm winter and converted more coal-fired power plants to natural gas, so its emissions fell slightly; China kept booming, so its carbon output (which recently surpassed the U.S.) rose 9.3 percent; the Japanese shut down their fleet of nukes post-Fukushima, so their emissions edged up 2.4 percent. "There have been efforts to use more renewable energy and improve energy efficiency," said Corinne Le Quéré, who runs England's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. "But what this shows is that so far the effects have been marginal." In fact, study after study predicts that carbon emissions will keep growing by roughly three percent a year – and at that rate, we'll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years, around the time today's preschoolers will be graduating from high school."

"It was highlighted last summer by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a team of London financial analysts and environmentalists who published a report in an effort to educate investors about the possible risks that climate change poses to their stock portfolios. The number describes the amount of carbon already contained in the proven coal and oil and gas reserves of the fossil-fuel companies, and the countries (think Venezuela or Kuwait) that act like fossil-fuel companies. In short, it's the fossil fuel we're currently planning to burn. And the key point is that this new number – 2,795 – is higher than 565. Five times higher."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719#ixzz2IGYzIK2Y 
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-I only pasted a couple of the paragraphs that i thought were alarming, theres plenty more to be found in the entire article. 

-So my question to you fellow members is, where do you stand? IS Global Warming a Myth or Fact, are we causing it, is Jupiter's gravitational pull on the Earth causing it, Sun may be increasing in size? Let's hear some theories. Will it be a Status Quo, Bad, Terrible, or Catastropic Outcome for the planet in the next 50-100 years? 

-And if you have anything to prove or disprove your case, please share information with us, collective knowlegde is why the internet is so awesome. 

-Also, if you think we are in danger, how do we ever plan to overcome these obstcles? Reforms and regulation, technology, reverting back to pre-Industrial society, planet hop? Any and all suggestions are welcome, ESPECIALLY outlandish ones! 

Sorry if a discussion like this is already out there.

when we drown we'll know.

Its overhyped, and if it is 2 happen we wont see it in our life time.

@MARCUSDJACKSON - I personally don't wanna drown.. but how would a "Waterworld" life work out for us?

@PScollector - May be true, but people will be living longer and longer through medical research and bio replacements, we may live a bit longer then we hope if anything bad were to really go down.. I mean ~80% of the Pop lives along coasts which would be bad for sea level rises, places that produce food for the world are drying up at alarming rates which means greater costs in food, possible shortages down the line.. and maybe not even that far down the line..

Well be long dead. But Earth's climate is bound to change naturally at some point. It wont be temperate forever.

Do you see any changes happening in the next 50 years?

More floods. Gradual process offcourse. Thank God I live in a high altitude province in Canada.

At this point there isn't really much we can do about it. The only way to reverse these trends instantaneously is if one of the supervolcano's would have a massive eruption but that would cause another set of massive problems.

Ahh so you're one of the Lucky Ones.. living up in the Great White North. Actually as it warms, you should become more comfortable over time! Too bad we all can't ba as lucky.. But yeah, i see more floods, more Hurricanes, more wildfires, but we will life on!

I think it's serious enough to stop treating it like a political issue and more like the scientific issue it is.