elliot - Did you even look at the source you are quoting or did you first see it on the magazine rack at the grocery checkout when you were in England? I am surprised you didn't quote the article about cable TV boxes spying on you in your home. Trying to pass off some daily Yellow Rag jurnalism as a quotable source is rather sad.

Too bad I won't live to see snow free winters. :/

Don, it seems like you have a problem with the publication, how do you feel about the data they published?

You are clearly trying to discredit the content by attacking the source, pathetic.

elliot

There has NEVER been a peer reviewed article that has successfully refuted the current theory of global climate change.

And who are these peers? Scientists getting big a$$ grants to perpetuate this claim of man made global warming. Try to see all the angles.

This story of grant greedy scientists perpetuating a fraud to make millions is just so much Limbaugh crap. Just like all the stories about Al Gore's scam. Bunch of crap. Stinky crap.

Anyone that doesnt believe in global warming at this state in the game IS A FOOL. Scientists said that its only safe for there to be 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere but yet we are rounding in on 400 we are all @!$%#ed. By the time we change the climate will have changed so drastically that food prices will soar and on a global scale we will not be able to feed the population by 2100 but yet no one has to care about that since its your kids kids that will feel the pain but hey you wont be alive so @!$%# those people!

"And who are these peers?"

People who know a hell of a lot more about the science than you do.

Elliott(lotsa numbers): Of almost 1,700 scientists involved in the investigation of climate change, only 24 refute it--and they are all on the Koch Brothers' payroll. Most recently, Koch-funded scientist Richard Munger admitted he was wrong, and that man-made climate change is absolutely real.

We're releasing 88 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every day, or 140 pounds per American person daily.

I'm sorry, I've been reading your posts for a while and simply find you too ignorant to bother with anymore. Thankfully the "Ignore" button works both ways!

ONE THING IS FOR SURE WITH NO ARGUMENT:

If this article is wrong, there will be no retraction come fall

2012 warmest year in US? Odds rise to 99.7 percent

only because 2013 isn't here yet.....

Yes climate is cyclical....but...what we are facing now and in the very near future can't be attributed to cyclical climate. The TYPE of CO2 spike that is causing this rapid warming of earth is not from any other source other than mankind's use of fossil fuels. It is this TYPE of CO2 that scientists are able to identify that Is increasing at levels that our earth hasn't completely adjusted its thermostat for yet and we are going to be in serious trouble when it actually has it's full impact on the temperature of this planet. Typically the earths temperature tracks with the rise and fall of the CO2 and both are gradual ups n downs, decades and centuries....We have caused a spike in the CO2 that the earth's temperature is trying to catch up to....and it will.

Imagine.....remember the bank bailout?...if we would have took that 700 billion or so bucks and divided it up amongst our 50 states ...14 billion each and told the states to build factories for solar panel, wind turbines and electric cars and basically give them to the public what it would have done for creating jobs, the economy and energy independence ....the leap forward it would have made in addressing global warming, the leadership it would have shown the world.

Global warming is here, no need to buried your head in the sand. The human race, and all species are going to pay a huge price. One thing is for sure, Global warming can't be bought, so if you are rich or poor, all are going to feel what is coming. We can try and reverse it, that is the best all Nations can do. Whatever the answer is, there will be no overnight solution.

elliot-3020456 said:

Don, it seems like you have a problem with the publication, how do you feel about the data they published?

You are clearly trying to discredit the content by attacking the source, pathetic.

Actually, in this case the source is misleading in its representation of the Met Office's data.

Don't take my word for it, take the word of the Met Office themselves:

An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: 'Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it'

It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here.

To address some of the points in the article published today:

Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.

Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.

http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/

As you can see, the source of the data is not at all impressed with the quality of the journalism of the piece.

As we've stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.

So, I don't need to bother trying to discredit your source, as the source your source used discredited the article just a day after it was posted. You should also take a look at the Daily Mail credibility yourself, as it is recognized as a politically-biased tabloid.

Not the best source for unbiased opinion. Don't take my word for that, either:

The British newspaper the Mail on Sunday and its writer David Rose are notorious for publishing misleading (at best) climate-related articles, as we have discussed previously here, for example. They have recently struck again, claiming that according to a "quietly released" Met Officereport, global warming stopped 16 years ago (a myth which Skeptical Science debunks here and here). This assertion is entirely fabricated, as the Met Office explained by publishing David Rose's inquiry and the Met Office's responses.

Rose's factually challenged article was predictably reproduced uncritically by the usual climate denial blogs and referenced by Fox News, perhaps in an attempt to distract from this year's record-breaking Arctic sea ice minimum. However, virtually every point made in the article was factually incorrect, as Rose would have known if he were a Skeptical Science reader, because we recently pre-bunked his piece.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/16/daily-mail-global-warming-stopped-wrong

You may recall The Guardian, as it was prominent in the news in 2011 for exposing the News International scandal, which culminated in the closure of the News of the World newspaper.

There you have it: the article you sourced has been thoroughly discredited with little effort.

Any questions? There are more reputable sources who debunked the Daily Mail article you posted; if you need them, check Google.

In fact, use Google to check your sources in the future so you don't end up embarrassing yourself.

People hiding behind their computers talking mumbo-jumbo is global warming..ridiculous comments.

Here a little common sense for those that don't have any, think about all those man made devices that give off heat. like your air conditioning, your car engine, your refrigerator, your computers, your TV's basically most modern devices, that use energy gives off heat so is all this heat being generated by our man made devices adding to the Warmth of our planet?, anyone that thinks it does not is plan STUPID!

the light bulb in my frige...cause's global warming...

What a bunch of Chicken Littles... You will ALL get what you richly deserve.

it's just wall-mart propaganda...trying to sell air conditioner's...

I wonder is this is the same group who told us a month ago that the NorthEast would have a super cold snowy winter this year, and blamed global warming on it.

the light bulb in my frige...cause's global warming...

LOL plain bob, there is nothing we can do but have a good spirit

OMG, everyone on the planet needs to stop using fossil fuel immediately, starve and die! YAY!

Then the planet will keep on warming right on schedule without us.

The headline of this piece is deceptive. The link stated "US facing warmest year ever." Then the article states "warmest year on record." Then article details indicate it may be the warmest year since 1895. Scientific data using tools other than modern thermometers (not mentioned in article) show that global and US temperatures were warmer 800 and 1000 years ago and way warmer 50 million years ago by perhaps 15 degrees!

I don't know whether or not human activity has caused the recent increase in global temperatures, but I do know that a reasonable alternative hypothesis is that the trend over the past few decades could be "regression to the mean." Another hypothesis is that the recent upward blip in temperatures (due to unproven effects of man's activities) may be offsetting a longer term trend of a dangerously cooling earth which maybe a good thing that should be encouraged.

Wow. A more false piece of crap journalism I don't think I could find, Elliot.

If I showed you a graph of the DOW Jones that ran from 2009 through today, you'd probably think... WHOA! We've had some real creation of wealth.

Now back that graph up to show data from 2000 to 2012. A lot less "impressive". We've gained back what we've lost, but the DOW hasn't made an really appreciative move forward in 12 years. But from a three/four year graph, I'd be thinking I've really "missed out".

If you want to be even less impressed with your sources graph, take a look at where they chose to start the data and end the data. It "starts" on a graphical high-point and ends on a graphical-middle point. The graph itself tricks the eye into thinking there's no discernable warming pattern.

I don't mind hocus-pocus journalism. Honestly, I've come to expect it. But if you're going to quote one article denying global warming, balance it with the 9 other articles produced in the same timeframe supporting it. As I recall, 90% of environmental scientists and members of the scholarly world have already determined that global warming is happening. If there's any argument to be made - it's over what's causing the global warming. Is it truly a natural cycle that mother nature goes through? Is it a global reaction to man-made pollutants in our atmosphere? Is it both (natural, but exacerbated by our carbon emissions)? Again - a fairly significant number of scientests and scholars say it's both with a heavy skewing toward the effects of industrialization.

Thank you, though, for trying. I always appreciate reading "other opinions" - it's just a shame yours wasn't more valid.

So scientists who get paid to study global warming says it exists. Wow, thats amazing. Lets see them pull data from millions of years ago, or even thousands of years. Our Earth is 4.54 billion, with a b, years old. We've had modern day ice ages (mini ones) and even really hot ages. Sorry if I dont shake in my boots when Gore (who's house put out more CO2 than any other house in his state) puts out a propaganda movie that just uses a couple hundred years of data. There are numerous things that determine our temperature from the tilt, wobble, and orbit of the Earth, to Sun spot activity, to Ocean currents. But everyone gets scared when we have Sandy and Gore and other opportunistic wackjobs come out to say its because of global warming.

It may be real, but I would like to see a real study and data before I just obey.

And before the libs start howling like lunatics again, I dont watch Fox, nor do I listen to Rush. I studied atmospheric sciences at UCLA (it was not my major, just an interest) and nothing I learned there convinced me of any so called proof.

One word......H.A.A.R.P.!!!

Sam-

A refridgerator and air conditioning unit transfers heat from one place to another, the actually process does not produce addtional heat, the motors that run the appliances will produce additional heat (plus some inefficiencies within the process). Gas engines produce heat by burning fuel, however to create the oil requires heat so is there really a net heat gain involved? Point being, one can't just look at the end result without looking at the whole system (cycle) to determine the net heat loss/gain.

Chuck-

Really? Electric cars?? Where is the electricity coming from?? The coal-fired power plant? Again, people just looking at the end user and not the whole system. Plus, what about the whole infrastructure thing, where is one going to recharge their car? And adding more solar panels and wind turbines may have a detrimental effect on the climate as well since you are taking energy from the "climate" itself and converting it to electricity. It would be akin to saying all this excess carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

The greatest in-morality that man has ever committed, on a scale of greater consequence than anything in the history of human beings...worse than war, genocide, or abortion...the legacy that we humans will leave for human beings of the future will be one of greed, pollution, and selfishness

Time to change has come and gone...and some of us are still to blind to see what we've become and what we will leave for future humans on this planet

JamesfromWisc said:

Really? Electric cars?? Where is the electricity coming from?? The coal-fired power plant?

Did you know that coal is only one of the many sources of energy used in the US? Coal accounts for 42% of electricity production, and it is declining as natural gas becomes less expensive, and thus more attractive. Coal is losing market share to natural gas.

Keep in mind that the average fuel economy of newly sold passenger vehicles is only 24mpg when you read this next snippet:

Put another way, for 45 percent of the United States population, an E.V. will generate lower levels of greenhouse gases than a gasoline-engine vehicle capable of 50 m.p.g. in combined city-highway driving. Cities in this group include the predictable — Seattle, for example — as well as the less obvious, like Buffalo or New Orleans.

About 37 percent of Americans live in regions where a Leaf’s greenhouse gas emissions would equate to a gasoline-powered vehicle rated at 41 to 50 m.p.g. Some 18 percent of the population lives in regions with a comparatively dirty power supply, where the well-to-wheels carbon footprint of a Leaf would be the equivalent of a vehicle rated at 31 to 40 m.p.g., typical of models like the Chevrolet Cruze, Ford Focus and Hyundai Elantra.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/automobiles/how-green-are-electric-cars-depends-on-where-you-plug-in.html?pagewanted=all

Darn, in only 82% of the USA an EV like the Leaf would be just under or slightly higher than twice as efficient than the average fuel economy for new cars sold in USA. In the dirties places, it's only 23-40% more efficient.

There goes your analysis.

Again, people just looking at the end user and not the whole system.

Wow! I can't believe we totally forgot that EVs need to be manufactured! Oh wait, no we didn't.

Plus, what about the whole infrastructure thing, where is one going to recharge their car?

A house is a good place for that. Most people don't drive more than 40 miles per day anyway.

And adding more solar panels and wind turbines may have a detrimental effect on the climate as well since you are taking energy from the "climate" itself and converting it to electricity. It would be akin to saying all this excess carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

You're really grasping for straws, but not really thinking (or you simply don't know a thing about science). Look out your window. You see pavement and other hard man-made structures. Those structures tend to reflect heat rather than absorb them -- you never heard of the heat island effect? That's increasing the localized energy. Solar panels would reduce that, but unlikely to any noticeable degree.

There it is Debt Free "Bart Simpson" saying it's not my fault. The fact that we have released billions of tones of CO2 that was locked up in coal and oil had nothing to do with it. "Just ignore that man behind the curtain."

January-November was already the warmest first 11 months of any year in records that go back to 1895...

Perhaps you missed the above point. No cycle to detect there. However, we do know that CO2 in the atmosphere has fluctuated on about a 130,000 year cycle until the early 1800's and the industrial revolution. In the last 200 years atmospheric CO2 levels have have nearly doubled any previous cyclical peak. We are presently off any before recorded cycle into new, unknown territory. It would be prudent to be more careful with our one and only environment.

Gotta love it when non scientists tell scientists they don't know what they are talking about...

horse - actually we're much right on the 70-80 year weather cycle.

http://home.onemain.com/~gplains/clim_hst/intro.htm

http://home.onemain.com/~gplains/clim_hst/spect.htm

Over the past several centuries great historical droughts in the interior of North America have occurred at intervals of 75 years

Debt Free

Climate scientists will tell you that the human component to global climate change is SUPERIMPOSED on the climate cycles that have been present throughout the history of the Earth. Therefore, the fact that climate cycles exist is not a reason to refute the science. This may be a news flash for you but SCIENTISTS ALREADY KNEW ABOUT CLIMATE CYCLES. You are not introducing any new information to them.

See if you can come up with a real reason to justify your rejection of this accepted scientific theory. I know you can do it. You want to maintain your anti-science position on this issue because, like so many others, if you accepted the science you may have to agree that we should work on solutions to this climate problem.

The real question is if the current hiatus in warming is a global warming stair-step or peak in the natural weather cycle. Will it break warmer or colder? We should have a more clear picture within a couple of years.

Brian, took only about a second to come across this in the very same website that you quoted.

While natural variability is an important factor in climate change, there are no longer any grounds on which a conscientious person can deny the reality of the present episode of rapid global warming and the fact that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are the principal suspect for the warming that has occurred since 1990.

OP, very observant and you are correct. These weather fluctuations coincide with the 11 or so year solar cycle. It's always 'near record' high low as the solar seasons wax and wane. +1 for knowledge.

horse - I'm assuming that you either didn't read the analysis of the cycles on the second link or chose to ignore them. Dr Davidson's own analysis on climate cycles of the North American Plains does not justify the quoted conclusion.

Brian, I don't need to spend 2 hours reading Davidson's website when everything I read leads to the acknowledgment of manmade elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Please do yourself a favor and read the website that you're touting - especially the page below.

home.onemain.com/~gplains/clim_hst/globwarm.htm

Blah blah blah. Look at it this way. Man has finally figured out how to control climate. Maybe now the next period of glaciation won't crush the major cities in the Northern Hemisphere, suck all the water out of the planet and lock it in ice and drop sea levels 400 feet making oceans more acidic and salty.

See, there's a bright side to everything. :)

So just what is the real reason these guys are trying their best to ignore the scientists? They have to know that the scientists know more about this issue than they do. Is the answer to be found in studies of psychology? Can political beliefs outweigh reason? Are they just avoiding any responsibility at all costs, ie. "Mom, I didn't break your crystal!", and it's just a case of how they were raised? Or could it be, as many of us suspect, a case of viral stupidity?

Space Captain

I think you are on the right track. I suspect that the real reason to deny any human cause to the global climate problem is that to acknowledge human cause would be to imply responsibility, including the responsibility to do something about it.

In a similar way, religious conservatives reject evolution because to accept the science would be to dismiss the creation story that most of them have believed since they were small children (and thus easily susceptible to brain washing by parents and other family, peers and church officials.)

Space Captain

Not any one person did what you are mentioning, and for the most part all the people in charge are on board with what you believe, so who is really mucking things up?

So there are skeptics but they have so little clout it can't be them that is the real problem.

The problem is on all of our shoulders, but the skeptics are trying their best to hinder any efforts to deal with it. I think when the whole thing flips out of control, and there's nothing to eat............hmmmmm, maybe we should eat them first. Barbequed denier, boiled skeptic, roasted dumb-ass? Maybe with some chili peppers, if there are any still around.

Unfortunately, I have a LOT if friends that are deniers. I think that it has to do with the fact that they would have to radically adjust their lifestyle if they were to take it seriously. North Americans, especially, seem to be addicted to the life of excess.

The per-capita consumption of the United States dwarfs that of any other country. With 5% of the world's population, they happily consume 24% of the world's energy.

Sadly, I fear that the "skeptics" are a large enough portion of the population that they will skew the politics away from any viable solution to the problems we face until it is too late. And let's not forget that society is greatly influenced by the media, which is controlled by the very Military Industrial Complex that stands to make the most profit by destroying our ecosystem.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122117544271875.html

Oh I think we have something to do with the current warming cycle but again I will say this,the world's been worming logarhythmically for the past 10,000 years as it is,since the last ice cycle.The Earth has had at least seven ice ages.This past one was the eighth.But yes,us pulling 250 million year old carbon out of the ground and burning it has not helped,especially when other forms of energy are out there that work just as well in our current combustion processes.Natural gas(which is easily made)compressed or otherwise works quite well as well as many others.

"the world's been worming logarhythmically for the past 10,000 years as it is,since the last ice cycle"

No it hasn't. The temperature peaked over 6000 years ago.

Well jock... it sounds like the weather is going to peak this year. So toss your 6K out the window.

I did not know solar panels needed heat to work, I thought they worked on sun.

They work on light. The more heat, means the more direct or higher intensity light. Correlate much? :P

It isn't that we're now getting MORE sunlight, nitwit. It's that the heat radiation from the earth is not escaping due to greenhouse gases.

So you love the nice warm December? What about the killer hot summers? The wildfires destroying whole communities? The extreme droughts? The destructive floods? The CROP FAILURES????? Do you remember this past summer? Global Warming (which it is, not "Climate Change") is DANGEROUS. Wake up and smell the heatwave!! Maybe you don't really like eating? Maybe you don't care about your house staying standing?WELL I DO!!!!!

Space Captain:

No wonder most folks don't bother to read your posts, your limited language skills and your propensity to resort to name-calling tend to make your stuff unreadable. Just trying to help------

Ferndoc,

Anyone joining a discussion on global warming who does not understand the basics I would consider a nitwit.

Was that written in an English that you understand? No help needed.

UrbnPrsn

"wildfires destroying whole communities?"

The wildfires are much more severe than in the past due to the enviro-nazis influence on policy in national forests-namely zero removal of deadfall and undergrowth-leavuing all the combusibles crap laying around increases intesity of the fires-prior to humans living in the areas,fires were allowed to burn,not put out-creating natural fire breaks.

"The destructive floods?"

The floods that would have NEVER occurred had humans not drained swamps and marshes,and paved over huge areas with concrete and asphalt,and deforested huge areas of the planet?

"The CROP FAILURES?????"

The crop failures that never would have occurred had humans not relied on mono-culture agricultural practices?

The crop failures that would not have happened had man not relied extensively on fertilizers for successful crops?

The crops that would not have failed if man had not relied so heavily on irrigation,and grown crops in arid and semi-arid regions?

There is no denying that the climate is changing-there are however, simple ways of reversing the part of the changes-simply stop paving over land with concrete/asphalt,stop using black/dark colored roofing materials,and most importantly-plant more trees!
IF CO2 actually is the reason for climate change-then the major difference in the planet is not the burning of fossil fuels-it is the amount of deforestation-the trees USED TO STORE CO2-replace the trees-reduce CO2 levels-simple solutions are usually the best.

I don't think that you have to worry about living long enough for the next ice age. Do you understand how many thousands of years are associated with going from an unusually warm climate back into another ice age? It's highly possible that humankind will be extinct before it gets here.

Earth is still in an Ice Age. Has been for about 2.5 million years.

Just like you said, every other time it has warmed up it's followed by an Ice Age. It's happened before and it will happen again. That's an empirical fact. Not the view of 30 individuals that work for the U.N. (That have no real agenda... Right?) when hundreds of other "Scientists" say their data is wrong. I will just let them argue about it, but what I won't do is pay for the air that I breath or expect industry here in America to pay ridicules carbon taxes when the rest of the world could give a crap about what they are throwing into the air.

Rvon- you mean the rest of the world, or at least the greater part of the industrialized nations, that are kicking our ass in production of renewable energy?

scales67 -- "Do you understand how many thousands of years are associated with going from an unusually warm climate back into another ice age?"

The theory is that we will get one summer with a continuous warm weather pattern that will cause massive melting of the Greenland ice sheets, thus spilling enough fresh water into the northern Atlantic to effectively shut off the ocean currents which bring warm water north. Europe would freeze first, the rest of the land in the northern latitudes would quickly follow. By quickly I mean 1-2 years. Sure, the ocean currents might restart in mere decades or centuries, but that is besides the point. If you live in these areas just imagine twenty or thirty years without a summer. (Zero food production). It could happen that quickly; this time things are different.

Yes, modern humans evolved during an ice age. We are cold climate animals. The dinosaurs were warm climate animals. We don't look much like dinosaurs. We are not built for a warm, wet, swampy world. Some dummies here seem to think it will all be OK. Guess we have to figure out how to eat blue-green algae (look it up, it's poisonous)

we need to over populate the earth...so we can cuddle up...and stay warm...during the next ice age...

Within 20 years the average summer temperature will be 102 degrees and the entire southwest part of the US will be without water, lets see how well you love it then.

The average summer temperature where?

Within 20 years the average summer temperature will be 102 degrees...

How about citing your reference for that little gem of information, Baddog40?

Yeah, dude seriously just pulled that out of his ass. In 20 years, we'll be about a quarter of the way thru a solar activity cycle. Sooo... my guess it'll be getting colder every subsequent winter at that point. at least for a few years.

I would love it if it only got to 102 during the summer and Dude, most of the southwest is arrid desert. So what in the world could your point be? Sounds like one of Fat Al's gems of wisdom.

In my little corner of S.TX we went through pretty much the entire summer of 2011 with the mercury topping 110 degrees. Many days topped 115. The reason you don't know about that is that it was never talked about. Our nightly news would always report it was 105. It got to be a joke.

This summer was much cooler by comparison only 105-110 most of the time. We have been running about ten degrees warmer than "the average" all this year and for the past few. Eventually though, "the average" will be recalculated to reflect the new hotter temps. And then it won't seem so hot at all...will it?

Oh, and we have had hardly any rain in this southern portion of the state, for years. Our ground is hard and cracked, the hay fields are mostly brown, the cactus is shriveled and even the mesquite trees are looking stressed. But that doesn't really matter as the energy extraction companies are bulldozing the entire landscape for industrialization to support the fracking industry. Eventually the industrialization, over use of our water and then the poisoning of said water will render an area of S.TX, about the size of Vermont, uninhabitable.

While global climate change is a problem that must be dealt with, for many of us the tipping point will come sooner than later.

Please let us know where your little corner of S. TX is, because checking the NWS data from south Texas for the summers of 2011 and 2012 most certainly does not support your numbers...or really even close. Yes it was above normal, but not nearly as much as it was further north in N. TX and OK. Even there, it was not routinely 110-115 in the summer of 2011, and 105-110 in the summer of 2012...only a handful of days were that hot even there. 10 degrees above average? Again NWS data shows no locations in the southern plains anywhere even remotely close to that in 2012, 2011, or any other year on record. Perhaps your thermometer needs a recalibration.

So you are hoping the corn and soybeans and wheat crops in the great plains all fail again this year? Like they did last summer? Are you hoping for crop failures going forward then? What about that nice wildfire in Colorado that ate the suburb? More of them are a good thing? Dust storms are really fun too. And it's so nice to see the entire western forests on fire all at once, we don' t lumber for anything I can think of.

Kathy Stuart, Some news outlets did report about the heatwaves in Texas and the plains states. this one (NBC) did, and the Wunderground.com site, which is now owned by the Weather channel did an excellent job of reporting the heat wave and the dust storms. I live in Washington State and we are very concerned here about the other problem with Global Warming, which is Ocean Acidification, which is rarely given press, but our oyster industry is already suffering due the the increased PH of the ocean due to excess CO2 dissolving in it.

Mark said:

Please let us know where your little corner of S. TX is, because checking the NWS data from south Texas for the summers of 2011 and 2012 most certainly does not support your numbers...or really even close.

Kathy said:

The reason you don't know about that is that it was never talked about. Our nightly news would always report it was 105. It got to be a joke.

Though I do remember hearing about awful heat and drought in Texas, I wasn't paying much attention to the where and how high as the east coast was having it's own issues. Worst tick year on record! I'm just hoping for one good frost this year to kill those little buggers for next summer.

I'm not sure geological ages mean much to people who can't think past the next pseudo-reality TV show

Plantagenet -

Um, care to cite your source on this "cooling period"? We're in what we call an "interglacial period" right now. The reason for that is that the Earth's climate appears to have 2 stable setups: green earth and white earth; for those who aren't familiar, green earth is marked by lots of vegetation, large animal and plant populations, and a notable lack of significant ice cover. White earth, as the name implies, is the glaciation period.

Chaotic mathematics shows the workings behind these two models of the Earth, as well as positing several factors contributing to the change between the two. Barring asteroids hitting the Earth, or the sun rapidly changing its output, or some as-yet-unknown magical carbon sink, we are warming, and we will continue to warm, and it will be primarily due to humans mucking up the atmosphere.

Also, gotta love that idiot up there who took one other data point (1998) and declared the entire thing cyclical, nothing to see here, move along. Because honestly, we only need 2 data points to draw a curve. Clearly. Science? Pshaw!

I said cool, not cooling, the really funny part though is what the hell you gonna do about it?

My favorite is that once we pass a certain carbon/temperature threshold we will be trapped in an irreversible trend that will destroy the world as we know it.

So melodramatic it sounds like somebody trying to sell insurance or perhaps run a protection racket.

With the Earth population as it is there will be no significant reduction in carbon emissions. So, if we are on a freight train to hell over this carbon issue it is already too late.

Plantagenet -

Well, there is the idea that we can mitigate and even reverse the trend, if we do certain things like:

reducing consumption and pollution

reversing pollution effects using new technology to filter CO2 and other carbon compounds out of the atmosphere

Our climate may change rapidly, and we may be able to slow the change, or even reverse it after time, if we really buckle down on it. Like you, I'm a bit of a pessimist in whether we've already passed the tipping point, but luckily, we can always begin to plan for the new climate we will encounter in terms of building locations and structuring, power supplies, arable land, etc. It'll be hard to adapt, so we'd best begin now, then.

Sorry to say the time to mitigate or reverse the tipping points is past.Everytime we read a new report on GW or climate change the scientists are amazed at how much faster warming and thawing are happening compared to predictions.I understand now the gulf stream has been measured as slowing and is flowing off course,this can only affect all the ocean currents and I don't think its possible for mankind to ever restore the oceans flow.

The deniers will say ,oh good warmer water at the beach.If that ever is a blessing, it will be short lived as the frozen deposits of methane turn into gas and will hasten our demise.

What would make more sense and could be accomplished in around seventy years would be to cut the global human population in half. Hell that's probably what the very maximum human population density should have been anyway.

If it was a bunch of animals overpopulation an ecosystem we'd kill half of them off without a second thought, with humans though it is a little more complicated, that's why seventy years.

i am intrigued by your theories and wish to subscribe to your newsletter!

UDunnoBro, did you happen to check actual data from the U.S. Weather Service, or did you post whatever you think happened? You do realize that whatever happened weather wise in your little tiny section of the country really has no relevence to the average for the entire nation or world, right?

That should be "relevance", not "relevence". Spell-check didn't work.

scales67 -

And likewise, whatever happened, weatherwise, on the contiguous 48 states cannot be assumed to indicate global climate conditions.

Brian - if you actually bother to check the records worldwide, you will find that the same thing is happening globally, not just in the U.S.A. Why do you think that the ice caps are melting at an unprecedented rate, or that glaciers are receding globally?

Gotta love those people who make up their minds without checking facts!

scale67 -

Globally high but not record, continuing the trend in lack of global temperature increase.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/6

I figure you have it right on this issue.

Whether or not the change now happening was already in progress before our burning of fossil fuels is up in the air to me. I haven't read any data showing that we were on an "upswing" to begin with. The famous hockey stick graphs actually show a slow decline until fossil fuel burning, followed by a sharp upward spike. So it might make us feel better to say, "oh, well. It was happening anyway", but that is all it would be doing.

To think it is a "ho-hum" not to worry issue is avoiding the fact that there have been many mass extinctions, none of which were pretty for the planet's little critters, and that most, if not all, were directly correlated with atmospheric gases. You know, like CO2 and the big boy, Methane.

To give you guys some "religious" solace, just remember the story about Plato's uncle Solon visiting the Egyptian priests. They told him that "god" always "purifies" the world by water, then fire, then water, etc. etc. Well, the last one on record was water. And for those of a more mystical intent, the Mayan long counts, the 5,200 year cycles in their calendar, each signified a new and different world. The world ain't gonna end, but it will probably be a very different and new one after all these changes settle down.

So whatcha gonna do about any of it? Probably nothing. Probably not much you can do. Are you going to quit driving your car and watch your family go without because you lost your job because like a dumb-ass you threw the car away? No.

I'm an old acid head from the sixties. Timothy Leary was right. We saw this coming long ago and tried to warn people to change their lifestyles way back then. I gave the fight up after about 15 years and joined the rest of you idiots in the traffic jams on our way to work.

Yeah Space Captain...so much for Callenbach's book, "Ecotopia" also. We were right forty years ago. Thanks for speaking the truth. Young folks will appreciate it but it will blow their minds because all the yuppies and rednecks convinced them that Buckminster Fuller's, Smaller is Better and Spaceship Earth and all the other great visionaries we had and all this hard work we did was just a fad and not for real. Too bad the rwnjs had their way again so soon after Nam. Well, we tried to question that authority and they called our professors trouble makers for screaming about the nuke plant that had the pipes in backwards but they were right and just think what a disaster that would have been had they allowed Diablo to go online that way. That plant needs to be shut down now, it is getting old and on fault lines on the oceanside near a populated area.

Yes, we tried to warn people and were laughed at. I still remember that L.A. smog in the fifties when just a kid. They had those red days they announced on the news when we had free TV and antennae on our roofs, no cable yet. You had to stay inside it was so bad. You know there were reasons and realities we lived with that made us do that warning and protesting, it didn't just happen out of the blue for fun and games. Thank goodness there are still some fine old hippies left to tell the stories and one thing is for sure, we still have soul and rock and roll.
It has all been painfully exasperating trying to keep up the good fight for truth, a vindication to see it surfacing when it can no longer be denied. But a sad justice is there with major losses after a long fight. We really thought we had the answers, were on our way to the new future world and then, Tricky Dicky gets voted into the governorship of California and goes on to the White house after bankrupting the state. With voters this ignorant and easily charmed I guess we all got what we deserved. Well, my governor is shaking his head too on his second term after all these years, doing what he did in his first one...cleaning up the mess left by the Republican before him.
One thing they all have seemed good at is leaving messes for others to clean up.

You must take stupid pills...

Workingman-

Wow. One input, one insult. Your contribution must be close to a record demonstration of lack of intellectual capacity.

Brian - people in glass houses...

scale67 - If I ever move into a glass house I won't throw stones.

JohnnyB, you are right!!! People don't tend to recognize the effect this will have on food production or on the rise in sea levels. The truly ignorant among us want to attempt to politicize the issue, but very few consider the true consequences on our lives.

If World War Three turns out to be a nuke war there won't be anyone crying about global warming anymore.

Exactly...

1983 was almost 30 years ago. There were far fewerpeople on the planet. Countries like India and China had not become the manufacturing giants that they are today. Do you have any idea how much more pollution is pumped into the atmosphere on a daily basis now, in 2012, as compared to 1983, due to the increased demand for oil and coal worldwide, but particularly from countries like China? The world population and pollution have increased exponentially since 1983. Thirty years can produce significant unpleasant changes.

Try taking some science courses so that you can actually understand the concepts.

@Dale-154984:

Please pretend to understand the nature, scope and magnitude of what confronts us. The "Global Warming" you reference is part of the exact same cycle of events that include "Global Freezing". As the Earth battles to reach a state of climatic equalibrium within its arsenal of "Climate Change" inner regaulatory physics. The Earth battles to maintain a moderate rate of equilibrium (measured in 10-100's of thousands of years down to smaller cycles). It regulates itself based on internal atmospheric, tectonic and oceanic dynamics, weighted against exteranl solar and interstaellar forces. I liken it to a planetary game of poker. Man and his inputs is the Joker in the deck. A force that can produce unestimated consequences. And we have done just that.

The 1983 incident you referenced is exactly the kind of example that scientist mention to articulate that the periods between warming and cooling cycles have been drastically reduced in the past 200 years. We shouldn't be having these extreme hot cycles this close to your cold example, if your premise was true. And if this is normal; the permafrost in the arctic shopuldn't be melting at such historically high rates. If your premise was true; Frozen Methane should not be converting to gases at the life threatening rates they are doing in the oceans right now. If you are correct; the ice shelf on both Polar caps should not be melting at such an alarming rate. And that projects to be completely thawed within 100 years at the current rate, unless something more catastrophic happens. Or we change. Or it changes. And that could be a Planetary freeze into a massive global Earth Iceball! Same forces. Different outcome! The worldwide increase in Volcanism, Massive Earthquakes, Droughts and Hyper Storms are harbingers of those titanic "Climate Change" forces at work, at a hyper accelerated rate.

WE ARE IN TROUBLE! The Planet is not. It'll just go Super Hot or Iceball for awhile (Eons or millinnea). Until it rids itself of the virus (US) causing it's temperature to fluctuate artificially. That is as far as my Graduate School geology lessons from the University of Wisconsin can take me on this. I believe what the real scientific experts are telling me about this. Along with what I am experienceing as fact of life. I do concede some will not accept the truth of radical Climate Change until they see "Jaws" swimming past their bedroom windows in Pittsburgh or elsewhere. The people of New Jersey and the Northeast got real close to that scenario in November. It was so frightening to them, it wiped out politics and made Chris Christie into a friend of President Obama. The whole country and world better follow their example before its too late.

Dale--Why not take a look at what's happening in the Arctic? There are photos from 1983, to now. You can see exactly what's occurred in the intervening three decades without ever leaving your couch.

For the life of me, I don't get how people can just blather their opinions without ever once clicking anywhere relevant on their instrument of choice to actually LEARN something first.

If you're so glued to the TV, go to the National Geographic channel and watch "Six Degrees That Could Change The World." And guess what?--we've already hit 3 degrees.

I don't think our species can survive against Dirty Energy's wild spree to rake in a few more years of wildly exorbitant profits while the rest of us argue about whether the problem even exists, let alone what to do about it! In 200 years, the world we know will no longer exist.

Nature will correct. Too bad the human species won't be around to witness its next, great experiment in critical thinking--hope that species fares better than we mortal fools.

O Dee hun I hope you are so wrong but know u are hitting the nail on the head

The current CO2 spike that mankind is responsible for and the Earths temperature is trying it's best to track is just not on the radar of the average person .... Koch brothers 1 mankind 0

@Dale-154984

What do you want your government to do? Tell you what what you want to hear? Regardless of whether it is the truth or a bald face lie? If your government is telling you Russia has shot a nuclear bomb your way. And Russia really has done it. What do you want your government to tell you? Not to worry? Or oops; Russia's bad! Get a grip on blaming government for your own shortcomings, or lack of knowledge and understanding about subjects that are too complex for you!

Dale: The media in our nation is not controlled by government at all, but by 5 corporate tiitans: VIACOM, AOL TIME/WARNER, DISNEY, NEWSCORPS, & CLEAR CHANNEL. These media giants are run by just 5 men: Phillip Dauman, Jeffrey Bewkes, Robert Igor, Rupert Murdoch, and Bob Pittman, respectively.

Together they own thousands of TV stations, many thousands of newspaper and magazine publications, and everything you watch, read, and see. They dictate what you think and believe, and they ARE NOT ON YOUR SIDE.

Please read "Who Owns American Media? Here's the List" published July 11, 2012, at whiteoutpress.com.

You really need to know who's controlling the agenda you've adopted--and it's not the government.

Hotter summers = more fossil fuels burned to keep buildings cool.

Droughts = little to no plant growth, more plant death.

Forest, particularly tropical rain forests, continue to be destroyed on a daily basis.

Hotter summers = Liberals believing human actiivty is the main cause/blame for global warming.

Solution = Liberals should self-termination to eliminate their carbon footprint and releive the rest of us from their annoying whining.

RyanDallasinTexas: Sounds nice, but growing forests won't work for a number of reasons. First, too many people are taking up too much land. Second, forests are under assault on all sides, from bark beetle infestations due to rising heat, to clear-cutting for agriculture and cattle, to our consumption of oils taken from tree seeds for various human purposes, to climate change's growing lack of water in traditionally well-watered places.

Finally, every forest to be grown will be subject to the same assaults, and will then add to instead of decrease the amounts of CO2--every burning of trees and forests, every decay of trees and forests, whether or not the result of climate change, contributes to the bigger problem.

This is a conundrum that faces climate change scientists: every time we find one solution to help, it turns out to contribute to other, previously unforeseen problems. We may have reached our Waterloo. If there is ultimately a working solution, we are too quarrelsome a race to find it and implement it in time for our own survival.

f-u-c-k you, comrade.