Flee the greenhouse gases!

Okay I'm skeptical. I don't believe that global warming is as huge of an issue as some try to make it. I'm not saying that global warming does not exist, or that greenhouse gases have increased, however I doubt the claims of the effects as touted by the media. Things like this irritate me (from the above linked Washington Post):

Extreme weather events -- including heat waves, floods and drought -- are likely to become more common over the next century in the United States because of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study by Purdue University researchers.

Under this scenario, which assumes the amount of carbon dioxide in the air will roughly double over the next 100 years, the coldest days of the year in the Northeast will be as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and the temperatures currently experienced on the 18 hottest days of the year in the Washington area will prevail for two months.

The Southwest will become drier and hotter, the paper predicts, while the Gulf Coast will become warmer and experience less frequent, but more intense, rains.

Sounds pretty scary doesn't it? Until.....

But Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, questioned the Purdue paper because the scientists assumed carbon dioxide concentrations would double.

"That's not going to happen," said Michaels, who has accepted funding from coal, gas and mining interests opposed to mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. "These are very high assumptions that are not borne out by reality."

Diffenbaugh said his team did choose "a high-end scenario" in predicting future greenhouse gas emissions. He said it took five months to run the climate model on a supercomputer, and said he and other scientists did not have the time to calculate the impact of less carbon dioxide pollution.

I got curious, so I did some research. In Hawaii they have been doing research on carbon dioxide concentrations since 1958, which is supposedly longer than anyone else has been collecting numbers. What do these numbers show?

The Mauna Loa record shows a 19.4% increase in the mean annual concentration, from 315.98 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of dry air in 1959 to 377.38 ppmv in 2004. The 1997-1998 increase in the annual growth rate of 2.87 ppmv represets the largest single yearly jump since the Mauna Loa record began in 1958. This represents an average annual increase of 1.4 ppmv per year. This is smaller than the average annual increase at the other stations because of the longer record and inclusion of earlier (smaller) annual increases.

Yes, in 46 years there was a 19.4% increase, and the largest increase? Is not now. The increase for 2004 was 1.82, the increase for 2003 was 2.53, the increase for 2002 was 2.04, 2001 was 1.57....

Sooo, if you walk out into the street? You might get hit by a bus, but then again? Maybe you won't. Yes, yes, most of these people deal with worst case scenario situtions to hit us with because it makes cooler headlines. However, when you continually predict the worse and it doesn't happen? Some of us start to not believe you. So HURRY the world might end...then again? Maybe it won't.