As I've mentioned several times before, I don't think global warming will necessarily result in dramatic and catastrophic climatological changes. Its more than likely life on Earth will survive, civilization will not collapse, and Man as a species will continue.

But there will be changes, and we will have to adjust, perhaps at great human and social cost. Those changes will not be that much different from those we have already witnessed or surmised from historical or fossil evidence. The major difference will be they will occur in a human lifetime, or even during a single generation, instead of spread out over historical time scales.

The climate change community, especially the non-technical, non -academic activists, have a tendency to exaggerate and go over the top. The result is that they inadvertently give the denialists a renewed lease on life when the predicted activist disasters fail to materialize on schedule. And even when the changes are obvious and undeniable, as is the case in the Arctic, it is easy to obfuscate the results.

Since I have been involved in monitoring this issue, primarily relying on NSIDC for data and the Neven Ice Blog for analysis and interpretation, I have noticed two things, and they are worth keeping in mind. First, the scientific community is very conservative, and loath to commit itself unless the evidence is quite convincing. Second, even though there is healthy debate as to the details and what conclusions can be drawn from the data, (check out the lively commentaries in Neven) they are predominantly unified in their opinion that this is one of the greatest crises the human race has ever faced.