DARN YOU GROBAL WARMING!!!...oh wait, i already did that one...ah..anywho, who knows. i mean alaska is getting record cold temps so who is to say what we will have to deal with, even in the next month. My friend living in Buffalo, Ny is just greatful he doesn't have to climb out his second story window just so he can walk in 6 feet of snow for half a mile over 3 hours to get a half gallon of milk and a pack of smokes.

The constant dumping of 90 million tons of heat-trapping emissions into the Earth's thin shell of atmosphere every 24 hours. Twenty percent of the global warming pollution we spew into the sky each day will still be there 20,000 years from now!

The Polluters and Ideologues are financing pseudoscientists whose job is to manufacture doubt about what is true and what is false; buying elected officials wholesale with bribes that the politicians themselves have made "legal" and can now be made in secret; spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media; hiring four anticlimate lobbyists for every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General's Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades. This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged "unequivocal."

It is what it is.

Today and the next several days it will be 80 here in Phoenix, last year it was 50 this date.That means 110;s the entire summer instead of 30 days.

kind of funny that the average temperature has not gone up for the last 15 years?

Just climate change. Not global warming. The climate has changed and will always change over time. No record of it exactly for any super length of time.

twenty percent of the pollution will still be there in the atmosphere after 20,000 years ; wow thats so alarming . wait aminute if Im still alive now when theres 100% of the pollutants in the atmosphere why would I care if 20% is still there in 20,000 years WAIT what did I say TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS

hey witchking isnt there anything you's like to do today;beach bowling bikeriding going to the movies going out to eat skiing boating etc instead of worrying about the atmosphere in 20,000 years . Dont worry theres a gamma ray burst heading straight at us that will hit the earth in 17,856 years so the atmosphere will be sanitized along with all life as we know it see so rest easy and God bless

It has been in the 60s since Sunday here in Denver, and a couple of days last week were also as warm too. On the other hand, while not a banner snow year, so far our mountains have received about 70% of their average annual snowfall for this date historically, plus earlier this Winter we got about 30-40 inches of snow at lower elevations too, so our fire danger should not be extreme until late Summer either. So, if you really want to go skiing badly, all of our Colorado ski areas are open sporting packed powder on 3-4 ft of base depth, and our local economy could use a little extra jolt this Winter too!!!

I live in Upstate New York. Last year we had record cold and set snowfall records. This year we have hardly any snow and it's warm. Next year we'll probably have freezing temps and lots of snow again. Everything is cyclical. You left-wing crazies just can't see the truth. You've been bamboozled by Gore and the gang. ONE volcanic event dumps more CO2 into the atmosphere than human beings and our inventions have for our entire existence. To think that WE can change the WEATHER is just poppycock. It's all just a ploy to get more of your money. Follow the money trail, it will lead you to the truth 100% of the time.

It' called a WINTER WEATHER PATTERN and after two years of brutally COLD patterns (including the earliest recorded freezing temperature here the first week of October, 2009) we are in a WARM pattern this year (and it's cold where it's supposed to be).

I have and will always support conservation of natural resources and limits on toxic emissions (which is why I support converting old coal fired power plants to natural gas for an immediate 30% reduction in per-plant carbon emissions), but the AGW crowd aren't about "saving the environment", they're about destroying capitalism and destroying democracy !!

Letting nations like China and India become the "new leaders in going green" with input into environmental regulations that they ARE NOT required to follow will amount to allowing the fox to guard the hen house !!!

@Witchking

since you're concerned about global warming there are a few things you should do to help reduce the # of pollutants that are spewed into the air.

Don't use your car to go buy your next computer. How old is that computer you're using? Do you realize that if your computer is 3 years old, that you spewed greenhouse gases that contributed to global warming 3 years ago just so you can spout off some global warming cr*p. Oh wait, sorry. you probably shopped at several stores before you bought your computer. So that means you were probably running around town trying to find the best deal (trying to save $5.00), but you spewed out at least $10 worth of greenhouse gases during that same time. What? You didn't drive a car while you shopped? Okay, I suppose that means the bus didn't spew out any greenhouse gases.

Stop using your computer. The manufacturing process of the motherboard and the IC's spewed greenhouse gases. As does the forming of the plastics for the case, the LCD screen you're looking at and all the other peripherals you use.

Also, since there was mining involved to obtain the gold, silver, copper, fossil fuels were used to mine those metals as well as during the processing.

Those Lion batteries were also manufactured in a process that added to the ozone busting gases.

Then there's the electricity to power your laptop/desktop, as well as the electricity to run the modem so you can get access to the internet. Did you have the room light on while you were using the computer? and the TV at the same time? Are you married? Have kids? Were they using computers too?Oh wait, are you on WIFI there in your home. Uh oh... I think you've surpassed the acceptable level of greenhouse gas emissions to be considered a true Global Warming pundit.

oops. sorry for the greenhouse gases I'm spewing out just to write this, but at least I know you won't be spewing out any more because you (in the interest of reducing global warming) will not be using your computer anymore so as you don't contribute to anymore to global warming.

Not true that the global temperature hasn't gone up in 15 years, when you adjust for El Nino. A strong El Nino like the 1997-98 event can temporarily warm the atmosphere as much as 10 to 15 years of carbon emissions, so the fact that we're now back to the 1998 average temperature (actually a little above it in 2010 according to NOAA) is what climate models predict.

James W315:

You deniers keep rehashing the same old falsehoods over and over again. Here are two examples:

1. CO2 concentrations have been monitored continuously since the late 1950s. How many volcanic eruptions have there been in that time frame? Dozens, including Pinatubo, the biggest eruption since Krakatau. So where are the CO2 spikes that should have resulted? That's right, they don't exist.

2. If I follow the money trail, I find that the lobbyists and apologists for Big Oil make far more money than climatologists at first-rate research institutions do.

I may be crazy, but you're either blind or, even worse, willfully ignorant.

"If I follow the money trail, I find that the lobbyists and apologists for Big Oil make far more money than climatologists at first-rate research institutions do."

You seem to ignore the fact that top climatologists are reliant on grant money, that will dry up if there isn't really a crisis that needs to be addressed. You don't honestly believe they're objective, when their very livelihoods are at stake? They must maintain the crisis storyline or find a new line of work.

Rob-523523:

1. Tenured professors (such as a great many climatologists) are not dependent on grant money at all.

2. The total amount of available grant money for climatologists is a fraction of what the denialist camp pays out to its own mouthpieces...who really are dependent on their controllers for their jobs. Any climatologist whose "livelihood is at stake" has only to become an outspoken denier to gain instant financial security.

"Tenured professors (such as a great many climatologists) are not dependent on grant money at all."

Not true. Institutional science departments are clamoring for funding, particularly given the university budget cuts in recent years. Nothing better than a good crisis to pre-empt budget cuts, or at least focus such initiatives elsewhere...

It may me the one of the warmest winters but the utility companies are sure making up for loss in gas,by gouging us for electric.

This is global warming. We were at 50 degrees in Wisconsin today. That's a last week of March temp.

I've seen much warmer temperatures when I was about 12. We were playing football in shorts without shirts. That would have been about 1968. Haven't seen that type temperature since.

Oh weemee.... so it's nice out and of course it's GLOBAL WARMING OF DOOM.... and i'm sure if it was exceptionally cold and snowy this month it would be some other form of impending apocolypse... Way to be scared of the normal occurance of Earth's changing climate instead of enjoying the non-bitter-coldness for once

We can undo some of the damage we have done. It doesn't change the fact that gases that are proven to cause greenhouse effects are in the atmosphere in record numbers. It stands to reason that they are the primary (maybe not total) cause.

However, one has to keep in mind that global warming is a global issue, and while we can take steps to reduce what we emit into the atmosphere, other countries need to work with us if we are going to take steps to reduce the effects that we as humans have on the environment.

Al Gore may be a "nut case", but global warming is real.

http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

http://climate.nasa.gov/uncertainties/

al gore who?

What if NASA is right? What does NASA say concerning any dire outcome? Nothing from your links. You see any?

The data shows a steady increase in temperature of .016 degrees F per year since 1911. Has that rise meant something dire for civilization? NO. So what would another 100 years of that mean?

The data shows the CO2 level up dramatically since 1950. Has the temperature increased more because of that? NO. If sixty years is too short a period to detect the change, who cares?

The data shows several ice ages. Does NASA have any CO2 explanation or anything as to the abrupt (NASA within a 10 year period). Maybe some solar cycle we have not seen yet, but hard to believe an orbit shift would come on and retreat so rapidly.

Just what does NASA say about APW?

The data does show a very clear increase in the rate of warming in the last 30-35 years; it's now 0.016 deg C (0.029 deg F) per year. And there are good explanations for ice ages; do some online research.

I don't think so. http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

• The datum for 1911 shows -.34 deg C
• The datum for 2011 shows +.51 deg C

That's a temp increase of .85 deg C in 100 years, which is .0085 deg C/ year, which is about .016 deg F /year since 1911. The slope is fairly regular and not stat not cherry picked. Were you wrong about this?

The NASA data does NOT show any real increase in the warming rate in the last 60 years So, what affect did the jump in CO2 after 1950 have?

NASA did not give any explanation for the ice age that I saw. Did you see one?

And the comment was on the NASA data. If you want to discuss some other set, a link would be appropriate.

When I look at the same NASA graph, I see an increase from about -0.3 deg C to 0.0 deg C up until about 1978, and then an increase of 0.5 deg C in only a little over 30 years since then, supporting a recent rate of increase of about 0.16 deg C per decade, which is what other researchers have reported. There are good explanations for ice ages in other places; they are caused by cycles in the Earth's orbit and axis tilt, but greenhouse gases have a feedback role.

Couldn't have said it better myself, thank you. :)

I know! last year on this day we got slammed by almost 3 feet of snow, on top of the 1.5 feet we had on the ground already. So defiantly not complaining! :P

I just hope this summer will be better than last.

I live in Oklahoma and the temps were just flatout brutal.

So John, if it happens once and a while, why would 10 of the past 12 years be among the warmest on record?

All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. ⁵ Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. ⁶ Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase. ⁷

Ruken,

So why are you complaining. Enjoy it because it won't last.

Ruken

I assume you believe the worlds gonna end Dec, 21 as well?

john-3403713: So you believe that heavily tested and reviewed science is akin to fake Mayan prophesies which even the Mayans didn't believe?

I take you to be a little smarter than that, John.

No, @!$%# the Mayan calender, that's nothing but a load of bull@!$%#.

The only people who are "nuts" are the tards like you that don't believe the word of the world's top scientists and weather/climate experts. How do you explain the polar ice caps melting at an alarming rate and causing seal levels to rise rapidly? Get a clue you inbred hick.

gopSTOMPER

I believe were going thru a warming cycle, like the earth goes thru a cooling cycle about every 10,000 years. It goes back and fourth you moron, granted the human race does have an impact on whats happening to the world environment today. But to say that the world is gonna flood or turn into a barren desert solely because of our actions is retarded, just like you apparently are.

And I'm pretty sure the "seal" levels are going down rapidly, not up. Maybe learn to spell before you decide to attack a persons post. It will make you look like less of a dumbass. If that's possible.

/

If you enjoy trout fishing in streams, you'd better be quick about it because mountain stream temperatures have been continuously heating up and if it continues over the next 15 years, all the trout will be dead. Someday, all animal and plant life will be gone from the Earth with only us humans will be here eating each other to sustain our foolish lives because we refused to see the warnings that were right in front of our faces.

gopSTOMPER. take an ice cube(from an old fashioned ice cube tray. measure the dimensions. . Then let it melt in the same container. Does the water overflow the container?

oh. it doesn't. ...so how is the world gonna flood by polar ice caps melting?

gopSTOMPER: "How do you explain the polar ice caps melting at an alarming rate and causing seal levels to rise rapidly? Get a clue you inbred hick."

Were you looking in the mirror when you typed that? Because you obviously don't want to have facts stand in the way of a good argument.

You need to look at the Antarctic increasing ice extent trend, that substantially offsets the Arctic trend. And there's no conclusive evidence that sea levels are accelerating their rising (which they have been steadily since the last ice age).

Ruken... A cute stat (10 of the last 12 years were the warmest on record) but look at the NASA temp graph - it is almost ALWAYS true for any 12 year period in the last 100 years except 1940 to 1970.

http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

Grin: And if you look at that same graph and carry it out over the full graph, it goes up. What's your point.

A better stat is the CO2 levels in your reference. It shows that it's higher now than it has been for 400,000 years, longer that human civilization and farming. Carry those numbers back, you have to go 35 million years in the past to see CO2 levels as high as today.

And when you go back that far, you'll notice that CO2 levels would spike at about 350 to 400 ppm and cause frozen methane in the oceans to thaw and trigger heat and mass extinctions. Nearly every major extinction event that wasn't meteor related has this pattern.

And people are alarmed at this because we are at 380, which puts us at that tipping point for methane release.

same graph and carry it out over the full graph??? Can't figure out what you mean here.

The second point - CO2 goes straight up at 1950 on. CO2 is stilla trace gas and who cares? You probably there is linkage between the CO2 level and the temperature. BUT, if so, wouldn't the temperature show a sharp increase in the rate it had held since 1880? The 60 years since 1950 should have shown a sharp bend up - not there. Where's the linkage between CO2 rate and temp rate?

The methane ice is interesting speculation. While CO2 levels have not been this high in 400,000 years, temperature has. No mass extinctions for a few hundred million years. We safe for now except for the occasional lake exploding?

If you look at an actual tabulation of the atmospheric CO2 measurements, you will find that the rate of increase during the 1960s was only about 1 ppm per year versus about 2 ppm per year today. Graphs can sometimes look "flat" when they're really not.

Glad you take the point - CO2 has dramatically increased since 1950 - by the NASA data.

http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

But the temperature increase has not shown an increase in the rate of warming since 1900, when the CO2 levels were much lower. Form the NASA charts, one could figure the CO2 necessary today to increase a degree of temp would be much greater than when the temperature was lower - like 1900 to 1940.

Don't you think it is the level of CO2 (and not the rate of increase) which would increase temperature? There was a period between 1950 and 1975 when NASA says the temperature was stable - dod the CO2 remain stable then?

The part and magnitude CO2 plays in global temperature is only part of the story and possibly a minor part. We should not forget water vapor and water droplets are the major regulators of temperature. A bit of disturbing news - apparently NASA has given up on climate change:

It’s true that the “golden age” of state-of-the-art Earth-observation science missions is gradually ending. There is currently a real problem that no government agency has been specifically funded to carry on climate observations into the future….

NOAA has been charged with doing it, but with no additional funds to develop replacements for all of the NASA instruments now flying. So, they will have to use whatever weather satellite assets they have. As far as AMSR-E goes, it will be replaced with AMSR2 on a Japanese mission early next year.

As of now, NASA has no plans to fund us to participate in that mission.

Apt name for a Republican - economykiller

Ill informed remarks in in both cases. Need to read more than E-mails.

What you say about the Jet Stream is largely correct, but that doesn't change the fact that the global average temperature is increasing by about 0.16 deg C per decade due to greenhouse gases, when you adjust for other known effects such as El Nino. Recent research has confirmed this.

Eric: "Recent research has confirmed this."

It may have confirmed the warming trend, but some very recent research suggests the increase in greenhouse gases is the result of the warming, not the cause.

EricH-3359508... global average temperature is increasing by about 0.16 deg C per decade

I think you have your C's and F's mixed. NASA shows global temperature has increased 1.6 deg F over the last 100 years. Things have been so good for humans over that 100 years that there are now over 7 billion of us. The rate set in 1911 has remained steady over the century with no affect shown by the dramatic rate of CO2 increases since 1950.

http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

Once again, that's not really correct. The 5-year mean shown on the NASA graph has gone up more rapidly and consistently during the period since the mid to late 1970s than ever before, even during the 1910-1940 warming period. I don't have C and F mixed up. Yes, the graph shows evidence that CO2 wasn't the only variable (solar variability and aerosols are also thought to have been important during certain time periods, along with cycles like El Nino), but there is no other good explanation for the recent sustained warming.

Kinda lippy ain't cha?

would money-grubbing corporations steer us wrong; NO!

so keep up that good-old-fashioned "personal responsibility" and dump as much junk into the atmosphere as you want;

if we can't see it, then it must be ok; right?

La Nina usually causes dry weather patterns in the Midwest. El Nino usually causes wet weather patterns in the Midwest. Your right weather will be different in separate areas of the Earth. Yet the results are usually the same in each area every time we have a La Nina or El Nino.

Thanks for the lesson Bobby: but weak La Nina is indicitive of the weather desribed in the article above. Se NOAA below :

A majority of models predict a
weak or moderate strength La Niña to peak during the December – February season,
and then to continue into early Northern Hemisphere spring season before
dissipating during the March to May period (Fig.
6). A slight majority of models predict La Niña to remain weak (3-month
average SST anomaly in the Niño-3.4 region between -0.5 and -0.9^oC)
this winter, while several others predict a moderate-strength episode (anomaly
in the Niño-3.4 region between -1.0 and -1.4^oC). The latest
observations, combined with model forecasts, suggest that La Niña will be of
weak-to-moderate strength this winter, and will continue thereafter as a weak
event until it likely dissipates sometime between March and May.

During January - March 2012,
there is an increased chance of above-average temperatures across the
south-central and southeastern U.S., and below-average temperatures over the
western and the northwest-central U.S. Also, above-average precipitation is
favored across most of the northern tier of states and in the Ohio and Tennessee
Valleys, and drier-than-average conditions are more likely across the southern
tier of the U.S. (see 3-month seasonal
outlook released on 15 December 2011).

Yes the unseasonably comfortable days only go so far in terms of the outcomes of a rapidly changing climate. There are certainly other impacts that suck, big time.

Charlie, # 1 I'm jealous. but don't tell too many people. They might all move to Denver and you won't be able to get a tee time anymore.

Global warming amounts to more than saving some of your money in heating. You'll be paying a lot more for various impacts resulting from things being thrown off worldwide with natural cycles, water availability, etc. Ecosystem services we depend upon messed up, etc. Not good.

Costs of insurance are also likely to go up in response to damages from extreme weather events brought about by so much carbon and methane in the atmosphere.

I'm looking forward to more harvests in the plains states up through Canada.

No you're not.

You're looking at quicker soil erosion due to the lack of snow fall to blanket the ground and negate the winds whipping across the plains.

What you have to look forward to is poor soil conditions that will yield increasingly smaller harvests.

Warm weather is good for the economy

Tell that to the multitude of industries, businesses and jobs created just for the snow.

Watch for democrats to start taxing us for increased earthquakes soon.

I would much rather have short sighted people that can't look past themselves that political mud sling in every article be taxed more.

Me as well. Handing down a rapidly changing climate to them is not something I would have chosen.

One of my concerns is how quickly it looks like we will need to adapt. The pace of climate change is proceeding even faster than many of the climate scientists had predicted.

Fielday you are having afeildday with facts. Please document you sources and examples.