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A review of the present status of the global warming science is presented in this paper. The term global warming is now popularly used to refer to the recent reported increase in the mean surface temperature of the earth; this increase being attributed to increasing human activity and in particular to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere. Since the mid to late 1980s there has been an intense and often emotional debate on this topic. The various climate change reports (1996, 2001) prepared by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), have provided the scientific framework that ultimately led to the Kyoto protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (particularly carbon dioxide) due to the burning of fossil fuels. Numerous peer-reviewed studies reported in recent literature have attempted to verify several of the projections on climate change that have been detailed by the IPCC reports. The global warming debate as presented by the media usually focuses on the increasing mean temperature of the earth, associated extreme weather events and future climate projections of increasing frequency of extreme weather events worldwide. In reality, the climate change issue is considerably more complex than an increase in the earth’s mean temperature and in extreme weather events. Several recent studies have questioned many of the projections of climate change made by the IPCC reports and at present there is an emerging dissenting view of the global warming science which is at odds with the IPCC view of the cause and consequence of global warming. Our review suggests that the dissenting view offered by the skeptics or opponents of global warming appears substantially more credible than the supporting view put forth by the proponents of global warming. Further, the projections of future climate change over the next fifty to one hundred years is based on insufficiently verified climate models and are therefore not considered reliable at this point in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

- Well temperature logs from 61 sites located in discontinuous and continuous permafrost regions of northern Canada are analyzed. The method of functional space inversion (FSI) is applied to the set of precise temperature logs from wells located between 60 ° and 82 °N. There is strong evidence of extensive ground surface temperature (GST) warming beginning in the late 18th century and lasting until the 20th century. This was preceded by a lengthy period of cooling. The approximate average increase of the surface temperature of Canadian Arctic, based on all individual GST histories, is>1.3 °C for the last 200 years. Simultaneous inversion of all well temperature data suggests an even higher warming (approximately 2 °C). There has been no strong south-to-north gradient in the ground warming magnitude when northern Canadian data are compared with eastern and central Canadian data south of 60 °N which also shows warming close to 2 °C. In Alaska, warming of some 2 °C has been restricted mainly to the 20th century. In general, however, a high warming magnitude is common for most of Canada and Alaska for the previous century. The averaged GST history (GSTH) for the Canadian Arctic is calibrated with and compares visually with a variety of recently published regional and hemispheric proxy climate reconstructions. These show that GST warming derived from well temperature logs is generally higher than one shown by other proxy (mainly tree-ring reconstructions). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]