Nature has published another major study confirming the impact of global warming, “Attribution of observed surface humidity changes to human influence” (subs. reqd.). Why is the study important?

Water vapour is the most important contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, and the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is expected to increase under conditions of greenhouse-gas-induced warming, leading to a significant feedback on anthropogenic climate change.

The humidity level is also important because it affects the pattern of extreme storms. What did the study find?

[T]his study demonstrates that the observed increase in surface specific humidity is directly attributable to anthropogenic influence and is distinct from the predicted response to natural forcing….

Although radiative forcing of the climate is dominated by changes in the amount of water vapour in the upper troposphere, anthropogenic moistening of the surface and lower atmosphere is likely to have important implications for extreme precipitation, tropical cyclones and human heat stress.

In short, global warming is happening, humans are the cause, and it is going to lead to more severe hurricanes and rainstorms.

Sure the real Nobel prizes get all the intention, but the Ig Nobel prizes are much, much funnier! As Nature (subs. req’d) reported:

[R]esearchers at the US Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio proposed to develop chemical aphrodisiacs that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. The idea — dubbed the ‘gay bomb’ — earned the unnamed Ohio scientists the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded at Harvard University on 4 October along with nine other prizes.

What are the Ig Nobel prizes? Awarded annually since 1991, they aim “to honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” The awards themselves are handed out by actual Nobel laureates!

Other deserving 2007 winners include:

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This morning Paul Krugman trashed the childish reasoning and antics of the anti-Gore camp, diagnosing them with a case of the “Gore Derangement Syndrome“:

On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal‘s editors couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore’s name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.

Then he goes on to note:

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right… For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.

Krugman then discusses a key point that I made in my book — that conservatives dis climate science because they strongly oppose the key climate solutions — carbon prices and government regulations:

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Why does most of the public lack urgency on climate? Maybe because most opinion leaders also lack urgency. To mark their 150th Anniversary, the Atlantic Monthly (subs. reqd)

invited an eclectic group of thinkers who have had cause to consider the American idea to describe its future and the greatest challenges to it.

Now this one is real easy — you don’t have to be scientifically literate or read the work of James Hansen, you just have to have seen Al Gore’s movie or maybe read Time magazine (reading the Atlantic itself is, however, no help, as previously noted).

By far, the greatest challenge to the American idea [i.e. unlimited abundance, supreme optimism about the future, global moral leadership and our special place in the world (okay, that one's a bit tarnished already)] is global warming.

In fact, if we don’t adopt something close to Barack Obama’s extraordinary climate plan within the next few years — and I suspect conservatives will block such an ambitious, albeit necessary, approach as too “big-government” — then global warming will destroy the American idea, perhaps for a millenia or more.

Global warming means we move from great abundance to oppressive scarcity, from optimism to pessimism (especially if we cross carbon cycle tipping points that cause an accelerating greenhouse effect in the second half of this century), and finally, as I wrote in my book:

For decades, the United States has been the moral, economic, and military leader of the free world. What will happen when we end up in Planetary Purgatory, facing 20 or more feet of sea level rise, and the rest of the world blames our inaction and obstructionism, blames the wealthiest nation on Earth for refusing to embrace even cost-effective solutions that could spare the planet from millennia of misery? The indispensable nation will become a global pariah.

The Atlantic assembled a who’s who of the intelligentsia who in the main, though very thoughtful, just don’t get it:

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