Lisa Benson for December 28, 2010

The extra heat evaporates more water from the warmer oceans, which meets the ordinarily cold polar air, and plops down on us. So yes, extra snow is global warming.

Funny how the “experts” predicted that the children of the world would soon never experience snow again.

It is sad when editorial cartoonists have such a poor understanding of the subject they are lampooning.

No significant rises in temperature since 1998, guys…just stop defending it, life here in the great Northeast is continuing on just as it ever has.

Oh, Lisa, don’t you know….it’s “climate change”…yeah, they gave up on global warming years ago. Maybe you’ll buy that one?

CA, milder and drier winters were predicted. That’s just fact.

With so little understanding of the phenomenon of weather, to think that one can simply dismiss the concept of global weather change as easily as one can support it is equally ignorant.

I’ve never seen an intelligent benson cartoon.

Yes, we’ve been experiencing hotter summers and colder winters… and this cartoon makes no sense ( unless it’s an ad for snow tires ).

@wolfhound:

No experts ever predicted that we’d never see snow again. Every time it snows or we get a cold spell, those who have bought the corporate line of climate change denial point to the weather incident as proof that “global warming” is a myth. Why don’t you get your information from science and not from corporate sponsored propagandists? Rush and company are not scientists.

Global climate change has predicted that as the average temperatures rise, weather events like droughts, floods, hurricanes, and even blizzards, will become more intense.

It’s easy, it’s all a crock

It’s hard to take any information from the “experts” seriously when we find out that their own e-mail communications exposed the fact that conspired to mislead the public with faked information they believed but could not prove. At this point, I don’t have any faith in the “experts” who feel the need to lie in order to further their agenda. The fact is everybody lies. So both sides need to get off of their high horses and admit that they just don’t know for sure. Everyone on this message board included.

@fluff: Look at the misleading emails again. Do they really say what your right wing corporate sponsored “experts” say they say? You appear to be grasping at straws in order to believe what is convenient rather than what is true. This is almost exactly what smokers did when confronted with the overwhelming truth that smoking caused cancer. Corporate sponsors wanted it that way then, and they are spending big bucks for you to believe that way again. Do you remember the TV footage of the big tobacco execs(represented by Ken Starr!) swearing that they did not know that smoking caused cancer?

the Left uses deceptive language and marxists moved into the “Green” arena as deception, and “global warming” changed to “climate change” is just the latest deception.

the THEORY has been disproved, by the Eco-nut emails that document deliberate deception in the publicity for a “cause” to increase central government controls.

And just a few years ago in the 1990s the Left Wing of Science was posing the THEORY of Global Cooling! LOL.

Glad I don’t hang my future expectations on fallible human imagination…..my Bible tells me what is to come on Planet Earth…(smiley face)…Have a good snow day!

It’s a very complex issue I know nothing about.

So do I go with Rush and the Righties who seem to have a profit / anti-knowledge agenda; or do I go with the scientists who study the complex body of data?

It’s an important question. If wrong, and you do nothing, it can mean the destruction of the environment and society for future generations.

I think I’ll go with the scientists.

The “corporate greed fake science” argument is especially annoying to hear, considering the gobs of money made from the “green industry”.

But the most annoying thing is how they’ve taken an important issue like air pollution and turned it into a giant load of anti-capitalist BS that people are getting tired of hearing about.

Canbag, it won’t take much of a Google search or even wikipedia search “global warming skeptics” or “global warming controversy” to find thousands of reputable scientists who oppose the current proganda for one reason or another.

Rush and the Righties are not scientists, this is correct. They oppose those who have an anti-liberty, One-World agenda couched in the verbiage of science.

I will post it again because it always bears repeating, if anyone who is anyone is REALLY concerned about CO2, the immediate implementation of millions of acres of industrial hemp being grown radically addresses our energy and environmental concerns overnight. I have not heard a single senator push for this to take place. CO2 is not their concern…control is.

I will not partake in the filling of Al Gore Inc.’s pockets. Example the Chicago carbon credit bank.

Canbag: Scientists also follow a profit system and are in a precarious position when it comes to challenging accepted assumptions. I totally agree with your skepticism of Rush Limbaugh’s political comments, but don’t assume that scientists are a group of free-thinking people with no pre-conceived opinions who blindly follow the data.

Exactly harley! I just wasn’t up to explaining the truth behind that bank. Well said.

Where were the idiots like Benson (and others) when we had record high temperatures this past summer? Din’t hear a peep out of them then.

Take any room full of scientists and you will find opposing views. The majority believe that man-made global warming is occurring.

Twenty, hundred, or five-hundred years from now if anthropogenic global warming is occurring and we do nothing, and the coastal cities of the world are under water from melting polar ice, our descendants will be asking “why were our ancestors so stupid and greedy as to ignore the signs and risk destroying our world?”

Conserve and control the burning of carbon fuels and the release of CO2, you get a healthier environment and conserve a dwindling resource - something that should be done anyway.

If everyone who believed that man made, industrial CO2 emission somehow creates global warming that will lead to the end of the world would actually look at well documented scientific history of highs and lows going back centuries, they would see that its been both hotter and colder. Yet, that was all LONG before the industrial revolution. Yet the world didn’t end and neither did life on it.

However, in great colds there have been histories of great famines and such. In greater warming times life has grown even in places where it had been barren for ages (like in certain areas of Africa). But hey, science schmiance.

The problem with science nowadays is too much of it is subjective. The conclusion is the starting point and only information which supports the conclusion is retained. It’s really hard to know who is honest and objective anymore.

But there are some tells. If the individual make LESS money with their stance and gains greater ridicule for their scientific stance then there is a greater chance they are more objective. It’s easy to follow the money and fame, it’s much harder to stand on principle and truth. The rewards are much smaller.

But here’s a question. If those “scientists” have to keep changing their conclusions and changing information to fit the new conclusions made by other inconvenient truths, how much can we trust that information? Global warming/climate change has veered time and time again as more information comes out disproving the “theories.” So why not lean on a bit of common sense and look at what is actually being done.

First, CO2 is plant food. The more of it the more nature grows in order to compensate. I don’t see how that is a bad thing.

Second, if “Carbon Taxes” and new industries arise that directly benefit the certain individuals, especially politicians, how trustworthy are those individuals.

Third, if rash steps taken will destroy the economies of the world (as even many global warming advocates have shown to be true) while still being non-consequential in their correction of the warming, then the methodology being implemented to “solve the problem” is a much greater problem. Is it better to ruin the world in a few years or let it be ruined hundreds to thousands of years from now?

Is it possible that given time and research better methods of understanding climate and conservation methods could be obtained that would not cause the great, forgive the pun, meltdown that the current taxations and industry wrangling will cause? One of the greatest advocates of Global Warming (out of Sweden I believe) has come out against the methods used with all this information.

Can we employ an ounce of wisdom instead of a ton of hyperventilation and fear mongering?

Two things of significance must be taken into account when reading or listening to reports about ‘Global Warming or Climatic change’. They are:

There is the same percentage of ‘crazy’ scientists on each side of the issue.

Within the general populace there exists only a very small number who possess the intelligence to grasp the issue.

Now before you get all upset with that #2, let me remind you that a majority of people on the planet support their leaders(scary huh). and further that it is scientific fact that 2/3 of all humans are average or below average in intelligence(a fact that holds for all biological factors in nature).

Conclusion: Too few humans are smart enough to understand what is happening and none of them can change the 2/3rds who do not…therefor Mother Nature will handle the problem. And it is almost certain man won’t like the solution.

Hey look, lampooning a church.

The REAL absurdity is that the majority of “deniers” are firmly convinced Jesus is just waiting for a bus so HE can destroy the world, convert the Jews, and give them all their own little cloud to play their harps on. They ALSO believe that 40 days and nights of rain (ever been to Hawaii, or a rain forest?) will submerge Mt Everest and that the moment the water recedes, there will be crops, and fruit trees in full bloom, and a loverly land to land upon– and no inbreeding from one dude’s family of psychotics (who may indeed be gay, it’s about the real meaning of that “seeing his nakedness”)

Benson is is of course again backassward in her view. The RELIGIOUS NUTS- are the deniers. I don’t care for Gore much, and he’s just trying to wake people up, like several thousand qualified scientists who have NOT been on the fossil fuel industry dole.

@dudley d:Your first point is incorrect. There is certainly some disagreement in the scientific community about climate change. Remember they are trying to predict future climate change using models and that is not an exact process. Most scientists, especially climatologists, are pretty much believers in man caused climate change.

Your second point is arguable. Supposedly, half the population has an IQ below 100, by definition. Another huge part of the population is illiterate and uneducated. But do you need to be smart to understand that limiting carbon emissions also conserves precious fossil fuel resources, lowers diseases caused by air pollution, and even may help prevent traffic congestion?

However, I think that you are really making an alternative wording of the fundamental environmental adage that “Mother nature bats last.”

Fossil fuels are unlimited. We’ll never run out of fossils. And if we do, we just make more. *

Try the SPPI Monthly CO2 Report at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/

“UN exaggerated warming 6-fold: the scare is over

SPPI’s authoritative Monthly CO2 Report for July 2009 announces the publication of a major paper by Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, demonstrating by direct measurement that outgoing long-wave radiation is escaping to space far faster than the UN predicts, showing that the UN has exaggerated global warming 6-fold.Report, page 3.

Lindzen’s paper on outgoing long-wave radiation shows the “global warming” scare is over. Thanks to recent peer reviewed papers that have not been mentioned in the mainstream news media, we now know that the effect of CO2 on temperature is small, we know why it is small, and we know that it is having very little effect on the climate. Page 3.

The IPCC assumes CO2 concentration will reach 836 ppmv by 2100, but, for almost eight years, CO2 concentration has headed straight for only 570 ppmv by 2100. This alone halves all of the IPCC’s temperature projections. Pages 5-6.

Since 1980 temperature has risen at only 2.5 °F (1.5 °C)/century, not the 7 F° (3.9 C°) the IPCC imagines. Pages 7-9.

Sea level rose just 8 inches in the 20th century and has been rising at just 1 ft/century since 1993. Sea level has scarcely risen since 2006. Also, Pacific atolls are not being drowned by the sea, as some have suggested. Pages 10-12.

Arctic sea-ice extent is about the same as it has been at this time of year in the past decade. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent – on a 30-year rising trend – reached a record high in 2007. Global sea ice extent shows little trend for 30 years. Pages 13-15.

Hurricane and tropical-cyclone activity is at its lowest since satellite measurement began. Page 16.

Solar activity has declined again, after a large sunspot earlier in the month. The Sun is still very quiet. Pages 17-18.

The (very few) benefits and the (very large) costs of the Waxman/Markey Bill are illustrated at Pages 19-21.

Science Focus this month studies the effect of the Sun on the formation of clouds. IT’S THE SUN, STUPID! Pages 22-23.

As always, there’s our “global warming” ready reckoner, and our monthly selection of scientific papers. Pages 24-27.

And finally, a Technical Note explains how we compile our state-of-the-art CO2 and temperature graphs. Page 28.”

Jade, as long as there’s a Congress, fossils will still be elected to it! *

SPPI is a corporate mouthpiece. I asked for science. Not Hyperbole.

Whilst the exact nature of the connection between the Science and Public Policy Institute and the Centre for Science and Public Policy is not entirely clear, it has been claimed that they are one and the same[43]. As both organisations operate from units in the same building[44] [45] and share the same key personnel[46] [47] [48] [49], at the very least these two organisations are very closely and tightly connected. The SPPI do not advertise their funders, however donations to the CSPP are easier to identify. The CSPP is a project of the Frontiers of Freedom[50] who have received $1,037,000 from ExxonMobil between 2001 and 2006. This breaks down as $40,000 in 2001[51] $232,000 in 2002[52], $195,000 in 2003[53], $250,000 in 2004[54], $140,000 in 2005[55] and $180,000 in 2006[56].

As for people yelling about Gore. Go ahead. Sure there are mistakes in his film but that does not refute the physics, or the chemistry of the matter. Im not going to waste anymore time with you all. Like I said. Write a letter to your kids and just let them know how hard you fought to leave them this world. I’m sure they are going to appreciate it - NOT!