Thank you Kevin.

Can we get an actual scientist to weigh in on this, not Guy Smiley weatherdude?
Just what is your angle, anyway? I cannot understand why people are still denying global warming. Selfish, selfish.

You can get beyond personal opinions, political convictions, and the latest weather to satisfy your own climate change curiosity.

Here is a recent NYT citing of the long term global temperature curve
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/temperature-trends/

Behind this is a bunch of data (curves) at
data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
(this is the "graphs" link off of Krugman's link). This gives a number of interesting perspectives including the fact that the warming is much more significant over the land than at sea.

Locally go here,
www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=buf
Then click on "Preliminary Monthly Climate Data" then "Rochester" and then pick a month. For June 2009 you can see our average temp (under [Temperature Data]) was 63.5 degrees F which was 2.3 degrees F below normal (from the most recent 30 year average). Month by month you can get the data and find out how much Rochester's temperature varied from the norm for a given year. Viola - your own local measure of climate change.

Thanks for that. However, some of the most significant changes are happening in areas of the world where they personally contribute to global warming the least:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1664429,00.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Effects-of-Global-Warming-in-Africa-41077.shtml

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/africa-suffering-worst-effects-of-global-warming-588326.html
from the last one:
"Some scientists have suggested that any warming is likely to be caused by natural phenomena, such as volcanoes or changes in solar energy reaching the Earth, rather than man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.
However, Dr Stott said that the latest findings support the view of the majority of climate researchers who believe that global warming is both real and the result of rising levels of carbon dioxide pollution.
"The continental warming of the past few decades cannot be explained by natural factors such as solar changes, volcanoes or natural variability," Dr Stott said. "But once we factor in the effects of human activity, we find we can explain the warming of the past few decades is largely due to emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide."

Dear Mr. Williams:
Please share with us your credentials in climate research.

This is an interesting way to debate. Kevin Williams gives his opinion on a letter to the editor attributed to John Kastner. No one comments on the original John Kastner piece (at least not to this point in time.) Before this addition there are five comments on the Kevin Williams' letter, including one personal attack, one that is looking for credentials and one that refers to the data collected by an economist (Krugman) that proves the economist's points. What are the "climate research" credentials of John Kastner and Paul Krugman? Or is it simply a matter of agreeing with one certain line of thought is good enough? If Mr. Williams had agreed with John Kastner and Paul Krugman, would we have heard requests for credentials? Just curious.

This debate surprises me; the 'lines' are clearly drawn and neither side seems willing to budge from their position. Certainly, we know that our planet has gone through fluxuations in the past and probably will continue to do so. It is possible that human activity may accelerate the process, in which case it is best to err on the side of caution. As an old man, I don't have much skin invested in this game; it is unlikely that any changes will occur within my lifetime, so it really is a 'non-issue' for me. Nonetheless, I am surprised that young people, and especially people with children, seem so unconcerned about their future. Of course, the same thing happened with the Wall Street Bubble, Americans don't seem to react until it's too late.

Whether warming or cooling, I believe the threat of global climate change. I believe it’s ignorant to think all the crap we’ve been putting into our air, soil and water isn’t having some effect. We already can’t eat some fish, or fish from some waters. We can’t swim at our beaches. Smog blankets our cities. Hasn’t anyone noticed the dramatic increase in respiratory ailments in America? Our kids are asthmatic from birth for crying out loud. No human effect? That’s crazy. Be it global warming or cooling, we’ve soiled our sandbox. Cleaning it up could be the next gold rush if we only embraced it. You don’t have to believe in global warming , you only have to ask yourself, what is the price of being wrong?
And what’s wrong with building an industry designed to get Americans back to work? America needs an industry. The automobile industry has left, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, and it isn’t coming back. America’s workers don’t want handouts, they just want jobs. Our economic woes won’t be cured with safety nets for failure. America needs to invest in itself and there’s a whole industry waiting for a leader.
If we invest in America we can build not just factories, but a whole industry that employ many millions of people. We need to design and produce transportation vehicles that are safe, efficient, affordable and don’t pollute. We need to find ways to harness enough wind, solar and bio energy to drive our vehicles, power our homes and businesses, and not pollute the environment. The competition is a major pollutant of questionable supply with volatile pricing that nations fight wars over. Why? With all of today’s technology can’t we do better? The world is our market. Energy will cost more but since oil is a finite product, energy will cost more either way. With increased technology and production of renewable energy sources, more people will work, and prices will eventually come down.
The choice is ours. Whether global warming is a reality or not, the world will have to pay for it’s energy use. My question is, why not clean energy? Stop the debate about global warming. Other than cost, can anyone present an intelligent argument against clean energy? Common sense would indicate only those invested in oil have a legitimate opposition to going green. When the automobile was first produced it was too expensive for the average person. It wasn’t until Henry Ford came up with mass production that the auto became affordable. After that, it powered America to the pinnacle of economic performance and world dominance. Why can’t we do the same with renewable energy?

Doug Hand, I pointed out Paul Krugman's curve as it was a relatively prominent placement of a basic and essential global average temperature record. I didn't in any way reference Krugman as climate change competent. Then I reference behind it to the larger set of data curves at the NASA site. What is more relevant than these curves? Rhetoric?

Finally I go on to point out one way an interested person can track Rochester's climate. A second way - a bit more succinct and crude - is to follow our annual cumulative Heating Degree Days. Having done this for a couple of decades, I can attest it gives me some confidence in the climate change predictions. It is also nice to be able to investigate a little on your own.

Ted Christopher - Thank you for the follow up. I appreciate that you refer to actual data, and am not qualified to judge it one way or another. The point is, Kevin Williams (along with yourself and others that feel the need) is just as able to look at data and form an opinion as Paul Krugman is. A couple of questions though. You mention the data curves at the NASA site and then ask about relevance and rhetoric. Are you saying that NASA is somehow immune to or above the possibility of rhetoric? While the folks at NASA are typically "smarter than your average bear," they are still people after all and subject to errors and influence I would imagine. Also, does a couple of decades long local trend really say much about climate? I have heard both sides of the discussion beat this point of weather vs. climate to death so I am a bit more confused than usual about this these days.

One average reader - you ask the following question: "Other than cost, can anyone present an intelligent argument against clean energy?" Answer: there is no other argument and there does not need to be. Resources are finite and COST should reflect their relative value. You mention a plethora of environmental issues (air, water, and soil pollution, food contamination, asthma, etc.) How about carcinogens, cancers, GMOs, PCBs, drought, deforestation, etc? Those all seem to be immediate issues that need attention also. How about the amount of environmental damage that the U.S. military has done over the years and continues to do on a daily basis? Doing something about all of these issues is about one thing - COST. Unfortunately, those costs are greatly distorted and I fear the real costs will not be understood soon enough to make a significant difference in remedying the most important issues. I only wish I had fewer questions and more answers.

Doug Hand thanks for your follow-up. First with NASA and the bears. This isn't about smart-ness. It really ticks me off the unquestioned authority given to supposedly very smart people (think Wall Street), and often to science in general. The NASA curves reflect measuring the temperature at various locations. No rocket science required.

Yes a few decades of average temperature deviation globally or even at one location matter. There are shorter term phenomenon like the lower-jetstream-giving-the-East-a-cool-summer-so-far,
democratandchronicle.weather.gannettonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=WEATHER0507&Zipcode=14600&City=Rochester&State=NY

As for other problems and costs, I agree with you. There are many and cost do matter. There is a fine recent NYT article by the philosopher Pete Singer "Why we must ration health care" highlighting the relevance of costs. My simple take on US climate change policy is that the government should be encouraging and twisting arms to get our citizens to live simpler, less energy consumptive lives. There is no good reason why Americans should be using energy at twice the rate of Europeans.

There is no real concrete evidence of any manmade co2 effecting temperature. We have thousands of record low temperatures all across the US this summer alone. Anything but warming is occurring. In the northwest where i live, all mtn glaciers are growing. AS i write this im looking at a well snow covered and glaciated Mt Rainier.Mt Shasta and Mt.Hood, all recording an increase in glacier thickness and coverage. I do get the romance of this tale of AGW. It literally makes you feel part of a bigger solution to a supposed world wide crises.But ardent study of the climate data suggests, its nothing more than that, a fantastic tale of man's duality for his "actions".
But as with all tales, they do have an expiration date. That date is when time proves it to be false.Just as all end of time proffecies and salem witch hunts.Just as we read about Salem, when the world went mad screaming spirits spirits everywhere, so shall one day children will read about when the world feared the great warming that never came..

With the release of Dr. Gerald Dickens' (professor of earth science at Rice University and noted oceanographer) study on the PETM of 55 million years ago in Nature Geoscience, the question of CO2 being the cause for temperature rise seems to have been settled. In the article he said "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models. In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record" .
Can we please let go of the CO2 religion and get back to being concerned about REAL pollution, like chemicals in the water, and sulphur dioxide and other pollutants i in the air? These are the things that will definitely kill us all. By taking emphasis off the real pollutants and worrying about "manmade global warming" we are really harming every living thing on this planet.

gwhite713 and Richard Blaine none of your arguments go anywhere. "Thousands of record low temperatures" and you can see "Mt Rainier.Mt Shasta and Mt.Hood, all recording an increase in glacier thickness and coverage". Can you also see Denali and assess its snow coverage from your location? And trace pollutants are "the things that will definitely kill us all". No single conclusion by a "noted oceanographer" settles anything. By the way even a person with casual interest in the ocean should be concerned about the rising acidity in the oceans associated with the absorption of CO2.

Do your own homework and see if you can find a single location in the US that has not witnessed a rise in average temperature over the last 20 years. Forget the glib anecdotal quotes and look up the temperature records yourself (NOAA gives monthly average temps and also the seasonal Heating Degree Days for many locations).

Looking at the facts (not the manipulated temp data sets from Nasa and NOAA but the satelilte data, which indicate a cooling planet since 1998, the main argument that Anthropogenic CO2 is the driver of a slight warming between 1978 and 1998 is falsified.
There is strong evidence that our oceans drive our climate together with changes in the strength of our magnetic field due to fluctuations of our sun.

Historical observations of our sun (sun spots and corona) have been connected to a cold period, the Maunder and the Dalton Minimum.

The fierce winters of 2008 and 2009 and the remarkable cold summer on the North American Continent are in sync with the current Solar Minimum and a Negative PDO + La Ninja.

If this Solar Minimum continues and the Atlantic switches to a negative phase as well
(seawater temps are pointing in that direction) we will experience further and faster cooling.

For the next few years we will see the winter weather we had during the sixties and the seventies. Later we will see the winters we experienced at the beginning of the 19th century.

Several outstanding solar scientists have predicted the return to Dalton/Maunder like conditions by 2030. If this is the case we will be confronted with a totally different ball game.
We will loose at least two months of our growing season and depending on the temperatures, frost and rainfall, a huge part of our agricultural capacity.

Therefore we should not focus on a reduction of CO2 which has helped us to grow record crops during the last 20 years, but on how to maintain our agricultural output
on a level that enables us to feed our growing world population.

The entire concept to qualify CO2 as a toxic gas is a form of insanity that I can not understand, just like the arrogance of our politicians stating that they can influence the
temperature of our planet by 2 degree Celsius.

Why not make a law that forbids the eruption of volcano's, earthquakes, tsunami's, tropical storms, stop the planet from turning or make the sun rise in the West instead of the East? Politicians who make this kind of statements belong in a closed institution for life.

I hav similar thoughts about people attacking the professional qualifications of meteorologists. Very often they talk the talk of Al Gore who has no weather/climate related qualification at all.

Could it be that the climate subject has been high jacked by politics?

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index went negative in Jan 2009, this (if the trend continues downwards) will have a serious cooling effect upon the areas-land masses bordering the north Atlantic. Temperatures in the USA are showing a distinct cooling, with many summer lows being recorded. We are in a 'warm phase' of a glacial period (Pleistocene Glaciation) spanning many thousands of years, to say that we could be entering a new major cooling episode is not beyond the bounds of reality. However , I sincerely hope this is not to be the case, otherwise we are in trouble.
To my mind to blame warming upon man-made emissions is to say the least credulous, the major climate driver of temperature is the sun, I believe it is supreme arrogance to think we can stop/start planet warming, perhaps we are beginning to believe our own HYPE.

Tom (Yorkshire, England).

Wouldn't it be a kicker to discover that the emission of the dreaded CO2 has actually delayed the onset of the next, inevitable glacial period?

AGW is a testament to the incredible hubris of some humans that think the climate has always been as it is today, and should always remain so. Maybe they should take a peek at the last interglacial (about 120K years ago).

Ted Christopher

Whenever alarmists get a bit worried about cooling temperatures spoiling the whole "The End of the World is Coming" storyboard they trot out GISS temperature data. As this organisation is lead by arch alarmist and political activist James Hansen, I would not trust it as far as I could throw it.

Look to the satellite data. Forget the dodgy and gerrymandered surface measurements.

The concept that CO2 is forcing climate has been widely discredited. First, it is a trace gas. Second, it has absorbed about as much heat as as it will, meaning further increases in CO2 should not result in more warming. Third, the effect of aerosals has been found to produce less cooling than thought, meaning that the warming associated with CO2 is less than thought. Historically, CO2 rise happens 800 years after major warming events. Finally, there NO PROOF.

Climate Change, Global Warming, is a politically motivated HOAX. The US Gov't has paid 97 Billion Dollars to "Scientists" to come up with what the government wanted to justfiy their desire to control us. I think that's a lot more than any oil company ever paid anyone for scientific support. Eisenhowers two warnings: Military Industrial Complex.....and GOVERNMENT SCIENCE. Check it out. Here's a good site: www.isthereglobalcooling.com.

I continuously see, and I'm sure will continue to see, comments disputing the science of global warming. What I don't see (other than cap and trade, which is an argueable issue) are comments about how embracing green will hurt. Is there any evidence anywhere that going green will hurt anyone? Saving planet earth is somewhat like eating healthier. It may not work for chocolahaulics, but it certainly won't hurt anyone else. As for an increased cost of energy, I'd rather pay more for clean energy than pay more for no other reason than oil company profits.

one average reader - I understand where your thoughts are going, I am just not sure how you plan to get there. Quote: "Is there any evidence anywhere that going green will hurt anyone? " Depending on how "going green" is done, there is plenty of evidence "it will hurt anyone" and I imagine you and I are living it right now. Perhaps you can do some research on how things are going with the green initiatives in Spain. Gas, oil, electricity, food, etc cost as much as they do right now due to certain well intentioned ideas (I am giving people the benefit of the doubt here) and their unintended consequences. One example - how has the whole ethanol being added to gas thing turned out ? Hint: some food shortages and increase food costs, some wealthy corn farmers, increased fuel costs, etc.
You say you are willing to pay for clean energy. How much are you WILLING to pay? How much are you ABLE to pay? Is everyone else willing and able to pay as much as you are? How do you keep the "evil" corporations from profiting on the green energy?
Which will work best: solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, nuclear? A combination of some of them? A combination of all of them? What ratios? I am certainly not intelligent enough to be able to make those decisions. I can not think of any other individual or small group of people that I would trust with the power to make those decisions for everyone else. Do you have anyone in particular in mind to decide for you?

Doug Hand.............no, I don't have any idea how I'm going to pay more for energy. Already have a hard time paying what it costs now. And when the price of gasoline goes up for no other reason than going into someone elses pocket, I pay less by staying home. This of course, works only in summer when I don't have to pay more for heating my home to a livable condition. I agree, ethanol has it's drawbacks since it amounts to burning our food to provide our fuel. My point in all of this is that if as much effort was spent on clean energy research as is spent on denying the need for it, we may come up with a solution we can all live with.