Dean,

I guess you didn't get the memo that's been floating around for the past several years: you are not supposed to the phrase "global warming" anymore; you are supposed to say "climate change".

You see, although CO2 has been increasing at above average rates, the planet has stopped warming for about a decade now. In fact, the planet has been cooling. This has been rather unfortunate for those harping on about global warming. Instead you are supposed to be complaining about climate change and the need to stop the climate from changing (never mind the fact that the climate has been changing for as long as the earth has been in existence).

Sorry to interrupt. Now, back to your regularly scheduled dose of statist propaganda.

"Global warming" is acceptable and accurate. The long-term trend is up, which does not mean every year is warmer than the year before.

Real world data are noisy and don't necessarily move in a straight line. If you look at the months of April and May, you find that the warmest day in New York was April 28. So clearly it’s nonsense to say that New York’s weather is getting warmer as we move into summer.

Seeing science as a conspiracy belies a willingness to gang up on and bully others. And your secret dark side sees slavery - for others - as not such a bad thing. Propagandists know how to make use of that. Don't worry, the billionaires will make out okay.

Two good SCIENCE reads (as opposed to political hack reads) on solar activity and global warming:

http://solarscience.auditblogs.com/tag/maunder-minimum/

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html

Global warming has been disproved many times by SCIENCE! Guess what? We are actually in a global cooling period! I know crazy, and it looks like we'll be in it for a while, but who cares about science and facts! Propaganda and fear are so much easier! Oh btw give all your money and power to politicians to fix this problem.

Corrections,

"Propaganda and fear IS so much easier." I should really proof read before posting.

"Global Warming" is just those liberals trying to get us to ride public-transportation with THOSE PEOPLE! YOU figure it out.

You said "there is no problem of mortgage lending at present". Oh you must not live in California!

The Messiah has just announced that anthropogenic global warming is real, Joe.

Dean,

You dismiss as "deniers" (I call them skeptics) as the equivalent of flat-earthers. As a person with an extensive science background I think this betrays an extreme ignorance of science. I very much doubt that you have read the scientific literature on this topic and instead base your very strong belief on the fact that people you trust believe it and that you have read in the popular press repeatedly that global warming is "settled science".

If you have so much faith in our ability to computer model complex systems and to make accurate predictions about the future, I suggest you you start work on such a model of the world economy. You will make a mint.

I find it appalling that so many people are drawn into the AGW denial industry. http://www.ipcc.ch . Do some research. Look at what actual scientists are reporting. Don't get sucked into the industry obfuscators and the tired old lies about global cooling. Read some books. If you don't know about AGW then do the research. Don't copycat someone else's opinion and strut about like a proud peacock.

Globally and in the US, electric power generation produces more CO2 than transportation fuel does. So why are we proposing to make oil refiners pay upfront for most of their allowances while giving the power generation industry both free allowances and massive subsidies to reduce their future emissions? Most of the CO2 emissions associated with oil come from its end use. So what are we asking of the auto industry that makes the products that are responsible for most of the end-use? Oh, right, we're giving them billions too. I'm sure there's sound science behind all the policy decisions.

Folks people believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest. Hence the tragedy of Greenland and Easter Island whose power elites I am sure said there was no reason to change a system that served them so well. It has become part of libertarian and Social Movement Conservatism Ideology that human activity Climate Change/Global Warming is a fraud no amount of evidence will alter them from their belief that it is all a liberal/socialist conspiracy to deprive them of their hummers.

Apply Occam's razor to the situation: either the majority of climate scientists and geologists are engage in a world-wide conspiracy (apparently because they enjoy being called names and having their funding cut by corporations and Governments unhappy with the results) or it is their good faith, nuanced, best guess based on current models and evidence hypothesis about what will happen if us 7 billion humans keep pumping out the green house gases. If it is the later, perhaps we should do something about it.

Finally, Fred Singer is a paid hack who has made a small (or perhaps not so small fortune) at denierism. The models of climate that he, Joe, and Erick L. so deride have proven remarkably accurate to date. They they can be run backward to see how accurate they are compared to the known climates of the past, and have been proven reliable that way. Unlike economics, which deals with human beings who can act in amazingly unpredictable and irrational ways, the very complicated interaction of atmospheric gases, the ocean, land, and sun follow predictable results of physical law and chaos mathematics.
Finally, I have skied twenty years in the European Alps and the glaciers, and despite the oscillations of an occasional snowy winter or cold summer, at the end of those 20 years I find that they have shrunked hundreds of meters. I will not be surprised if they disappear in my lifetime. Here in Virginia, insects and plants once rare, like Crapemyrtle, because of cold are now becoming common. Meanwhile formerly native plants retreat up the mountains and to the North. In fifty years the climate deniers will be spoken of with the same contempt as the pro-slavery defenders of the status quo in the 1850s or the defenders of Eugenics in the 1920s and 30s.

Rick:

It seems that most people believe there are only two possible opinions on global warming. Either it is definitely happening and all real scientists completely agree on it and the extent of the damage that will occur or it is a global conspiracy designed to accomplish (what I am not sure). This enables people on both sides smugly to consider the other side idiots.

People like you may be right but I doubt that you have gone to the literature yourself. You are far too dismissive of skepticism.

The computer models you write about may fit the data going back many years. This may be because whenever new data comes in that contradicts the earlier models, they adjust the models to take into account (fit) the new data.

I'm sorry, the predictable results of chaos mathematics? Doesn't that kind of prove my point?

it's kinda sad that people here ignore the evidence on global climate change. yes, the south pole ice is growing, while the north pole ice recedes. but the long-term trend has been up. there's no doubt about that and pretty much all the members of the academy of arts and sciences view global warming as real.

"Global warming has been disproved many times by SCIENCE" Only in the mind of wingnut political and idealogical hacks.

Keep on lying. I'm still waiting for that science.

Man, I expected to read post after post about Ben Stein and his tenuous grip on reality, but instead I find a legion of GW-Deniers who better fit that definition.

The simple fact is that the scientific consensus is convinced that GW is real and man-made. There is plenty of evidence out there for anyone interested to read. But, instead, we get the usual Denier propaganda based on long disproven arguments.

For instance, the claim that Tom presents that we've been going through a cooling spell is in fact a gross misreading of the evidence. It was an artifical distinction produced by cherry picking data -- in this case only measuring tempatures starting from 1998 which due to a number of factors was unusually hot. So, since average temperatures haven't been as hot since the lie is made that we are in fact "cooling". In reality the trend has been continuing upward at a regular pace. It's only by misrepresenting the data that this "cooling" argument can be made at all.

GW represents a serious long term threat to human civilization, one that must be dealt with sooner rather than later. Yet, here we have a whole mob of people who not only embrace GW denial, but hold it up as a great virtue. Lord help us all.

A classmate of mine is an oceanographer and expert on arctic ice. A prof at a major west coast university, and currently on sebatical working for NASA.

At our 25th reunion (1987) thinking ocean temperatures are probably more steady and more slow to change than air temps, I asked him about global warming and he said the noise was covering whatever signal there is.

At our 45th reunion he gave a seminar on the melting of the Greenland ice cap -- frightening actually. When I repeated my question about global warming he didn't let me finish. He interrupted and said, "Yes. It's true and we humans are causing it."

Nasa just released a report from the newest satellite data:

In the last four years 57% of the old arctic ice has melted.

It seems that everyone has been brainwashed into thinking the earth is cooling - total BS.

While temperatures have flatlined since 1998 - the warmest year on record, if you check any accurate graph of global temps' it is very clear that all of the last 10 years are the warmest on record, even if they are cooler than 1998 - yet the satellite data shows that regions of the planet are warming every year.

A ten year flatline of high temps, even if not going up, is too small a sample to make broad statements.

People are brainwashed by the right wing and by the oil companies.

Bob Pinkus

That the NY Times provides space for a third-rate actor with zero credentials in either physical or social sciences (oh, sorry, he graduated from college!) to pontificate weekly in its pages is baffling to say the least. If Ben's daddy, a distinguished professional economist, were still alive he would be so embarassed. It's too bad Ben doesn't have the self-awareness to see what an embarrassment he is. It's beyond belief that the editors of the Times don't.

Ever since that "Expelled" movie, Stein seems to be on a mission to be roundly recognized as the stupidest smart man in the world.

...paid hack who has made a small (or perhaps not so small fortune) at denierism...

...I expected to read post after post about Ben Stein and his tenuous grip on reality, but instead I find a legion of GW-Deniers who better fit that definition...

...usual Denier propaganda based on long disproven arguments...

...usual Denier propaganda based on long disproven arguments...

The scientific consensus?

Some peoples definition of "Global Warming Skeptic" seems to be "Accepts debunked theories that don't meet journal standards" while "Climate Change Propaganda" is "Repeatable experiments that give consistent results".

Things equal to the same thing being equal, that would be "Tin foil Conspiracy theorists" and Science" respectively.

And Ben Stein is just kinda pathetic.