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Maxx - The Man Without Facts! (hey, I'm a poet and I didn't know it!)

Love to know your sources for that trillion dollars. Best estimates I have seen (Forbes - not a fan of Climate Change) is $89 BILLION by the US. Which means that globally it's probably more like $200 billion at the most (this is WAY on the high end of estimates). Now, if you are looking at the whole thing (including consumers spending money on solar power - supposedly for the sake of climate change), then you might get $100 billion a year over the last decade or so. I would argue that a lot of this money is capitalism at work - it certainly isn't "investigating" monies.

The 11 year solar activity link has long been disproved - but it was looked at. Longer term drivers are still being looked at.

The world has NOT been cooling. The rate of warming has declined which is not the same thing. The last decade was still the warmest on record.

You want to question difficult data? Investigate on your own the problems with assembling a data set from the various MSU satellites. I wouldn't place my bets based on that record. Yes, scientist's know this is a problem data set. But if you want to talk real trends, the RSS trend is more like .131°C per decade since 1979, so more like .4° C above what the temperature was in 1979, not a "normal temperature."

Lastly, they aren't Top climate scientists, except in the view of the documentary makers. A little bit of research would show you that the claims in these movies are way off, unsupported and just plain wrong.



Fg56Jker34 - you can't just look out your window to say things haven't changed. It's not that we haven't had these events, it's the CHANGE in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events that is concerning.

regerugged - it may be beyond YOUR abilities, and no one is saying that we will 100% understand the weather - but I want you to name ONE area where we claim to understand the vast majority about it.

Ha! Ha! Maxx the RSS was great for the greenies when it was for their advantage. The mean was great for the greenies when it was for their advantage. Now Thomas comes along and says they are no good. Apparently he should get with Jeff M on how to read charts. The method of establishing the Earth's temperature was set by the greenies, like Hansen and Jones, and now that is not good enough for Thomas.

In answer to your question. In particular, "Should we investigate and study it or should we just shrug it off and blame the Democrats?" I think we have enough scientists down there 'investigating' right now.

Also it is always the official stance on this site to blame Bush.

Furthermore, the 'wacky' weather your refer to has always been wacky as history shows. Some years are just more wacky than others.

But I'm sure you will listen to the nuts on this site like Trevor, " What climate change is doing is turning what were once fairly rare events into something rather commonplace, after a while we begin to accept the disrupted state of affairs as the new norm."

What dear old Trev fails to realize that these climate changes are supposed to be WARMER. The dreaded increase of CO2 is supposed to cause the Earth to be WARMER!

Ha! Ha! Thanks for the wacky rambling question. It was enjoyable.

I can't help but laugh when weather/temperature "records" are compared. The temperatures that were recorded in the past do not go very far back into the past. So, whatever temperature comparisons are made, they are made with incomplete information in regard to "temperature record breaking" as our data only goes back a very short amount of time in comparison to the actual past temperatures that were never recorded with modern instruments we have today.

The "matter of record" you refer to is incredibly incomplete and therefore not comparable when you take the reality of all of the unrecorded weather from long ago.

Hi Thomas,

All the events you mentioned are unusual in their own right but they shouldn’t be taken as proof that the climate is changing. After all, these are just a few isolated incidents.

To determine if changes are taking place we need to take a global overview over a long period of time. In climatology we use minima of 30 years as this reduces the interference from short term oscillations.

Pretty much every aspect of global climates shows significant disruption with very clear and established trends.

Here’s a graphic showing the number of floods by continent since 1950:

http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/thumbs/1...

And this one shows the average temperature each year since 1880:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Fil...

High record temperatures are being broken right around the world, nine times more frequently than cold weather records. Here’s a comprehensive list of all records broken since 2002:

http://www.mherrera.org/records.htm

As for the ships in the Antarctic, that was more bad luck than anything else. Strong winds pushed ice-floes toward the Akademik Shokalskiy causing it to become stuck in the ice. The crew knew this might happen and were prepared, as were the crews of the ships that went to assist.

Some of these unusual weather events would likely have happened without the added assistance of climate change. What climate change is doing is turning what were once fairly rare events into something rather commonplace, after a while we begin to accept the disrupted state of affairs as the new norm.

Many people may not be aware, for example, that prior to 1980 that hadn’t been a single heatwave in recorded history that had claimed more than 1,000 lives. Since then we’ve had heatwaves claiming up to 70,000 lives. They’ve become that commonplace that we almost expect them to happen.

Here in the UK for example, 1976 was an exceptionally hot year that took everyone by surprise. Mention 1976 to anyone who lived through it and the first thing they’ll tell you about is the heatwave. But since 1990 then there have been 16 hotter years and we now think nothing of them. In fact, people complain if we get the type of weather that would have been normal prior to the onset of global warming.

The weather has ALWAYS been whacky.

We have ALWAYS had floods, droughts, freak freezes, tornado swarms, hurricane swarms, typhoons, etc.

The weather is no more "wacky" now than it has ever been.

Guess what? It gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Storms have always been around, deal with it.

Weather is beyond the ability of mortal man to understand completely. There is no man made global warming.

Cguy Trillions and thats just Germany http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0SO8zDgu...

I’m going to weigh in on the ship(s) frozen in Antarctica; I’ve read the other postings, and they make no sense other than being a pathway for humor about global warming and ice.

I live on the Great Lakes and have met some of the fellows who drive these ice breakers to keep the shipping lanes open. They are professionals, and rightly proud of the job they do.. For 1 ice breaker to be stuck in summer ice is amazing; having 3 ships frozen is crazy. But it gets more bizarre.

Australia, Argentina, and Africa are also in the middle of their summers, and all are experiencing record breaking heat waves. Again. Brazil is experiencing incredible flooding with an ever increasing death toll. (That is not without its humor – some of the dead are from the PMDB party, which is their right wing party) (recognize sarcasm).

Isn’t anyone the least bit curious why their weather is so wacky with record heat and record ice? Does it have anything to do with the huge number of record breaking temperatures we had in the United States, India, and Europe last year? Should we investigate and study it or should we just shrug it off and blame the Democrats?