Better fire up your SUVs. We have to fight off the new global cooling trend.

That's nonsense as far as my locale is concerned. Todays WaPo has color coded maps of the warming of this region with southern plant species beginning to thrive much further north. Must be an anomaly in the cooling trend, I guess, or else part of the global warming conspiracy ;-)

Eh, we might as well take it to the absurd conclusion. "I noticed that someone turned up my thermostat yesterday, the global cooling trend has been broken!"

Uh, selective data picking there. In other words, five of the previous nine years have been colder, and four warmer? How does it look in a longer trend? That isn't mentioned.
It could be an attempt at humor except with mr Motl you really can't be sure.
I guess everything goes as evidence if it supports your opinion, Rand.

Not that the media wouldn't report inaccurately about global warming, they do.

Add to that winter has yet to arrive in Moscow this year and 2006 is the warmest year on record in Britain since record keeping began in 1659 !!!! That's since the time of Isaac Newton!!

Sometimes when the abundance of evidence indicates otherwise, it is time to change our opinion.

"Add to that winter has yet to arrive in Moscow this year "

Never fear, I predict winter will arrive in Moscow in around 48 hours or so.

Wow, Rand, I didn't believe you when you said that people don't read the links you post before proffering up opinions on the matter...

If anyone HAD read the article that was linked (after waiting 5 minutes for the music to stop and the page to actually load), they would have seen that Motl wasn't actually saying ANYTHING about whether we're in a global warming or global cooling trend.

Instead, he talks about how the media could use the recent WMO data to show that we're in a cooling trend, just like Al Gore chose to represent the data to show that we're in a warming trend.

Motl doesn't actually say one way or another if the world is warming or cooling. His only statement on the whole subject is "The world would be different in details but the general picture would be isomorphic."

But, it's good to see Rand's satire taken so seriously out of context again...

It's hard to tell when it's satire or not since I've never seen a satirical reference from the opposite perspective on this topic over here.

One has to admire the stalwart few who keep saying that there is no evidence for global warming, like the stalwart few who say we are doing great in Iraq. It is great to stand on principle on the fringes of a probability distribution, no different than buying a lottery ticket. Sometimes, though very rarely, you might win.

Mike, I stand corrected, winter in 48 hours is right Dec 22-23 etc. etc. Let's say I meant what we think of as winter, like SNOW, COLD etc...you knew what I meant ;-)

"One has to admire the stalwart few who keep saying that there is no evidence for global warming,"

No, what we remain unconvinced of is a significant anthropogenic warming effect. Entirely different from what your are arguing.

After all, solar output is increasing and we are still coming out of the little ice age so aome warming might not be uncharateristic.

There is strong historical evidence that Europe has been warmer at periods in the past two thousand years than it is today so such events are not without precident.

Call us skeptics the: "Correlation does not equal casuation" camp.

Never fear, I predict winter will arrive in Moscow in around 48 hours or so.

Or two weeks after the French or Germans invade. Whichever comes first.

A large number of the 'skeptics' are aren't focused on whether global warming is happening or not - but on whether it will be catastrophic. The 'global warming crowd' have successfully convinced people of the 'Mann hockey stick' view - where records of the Thames being frozen, and records throughout the 1000-1300s are discarded as anecdotal. (Because, apparently, people are too stupid to properly record whether a river is frozen or not without thermometers that measure to the thousandth of a degree.)

1) We've been hotter before.
2) It isn't open-loop unstable.

That little piece removes the 'disaster' from the whole discussion. We aren't going to become freaking Venus. With 'disaster' removed, making a longer baseline with modern instruments before panicking completely makes more sense.

"A large number of the 'skeptics' are aren't focused on whether global warming is happening or not - but on whether it will be catastrophic."

Also this skeptic questions if man has anything to do with the warming or not.

IF global warming is happening and IF it is going to get as bad as Gore claims and IF man has little or nothing to do with it and can't stop it we better be devising ways to live with it rather than wasting time attempting cures for something we've not caused.

I would just hate winter if I couldn't ski. Just my personal thing, but I love that crisp white snow and the view in winter from a high mountain. So if there is anything we humans can do to preserve that, I'm for it. In that sense I WANT to believe in an anthropogenic and significant component to global warming.

I guess I did give the impression that I didn't think it was satire. My real complaint was that the satire got as silly as its target. I suppose I could have detailed the valiant but desperate struggle for local climate control between myself and my evil, capitalist, cold-loving housemate. If the ice comes south, you will know I lost. :(

I would just hate winter if I couldn't ski. Just my personal thing, but I love that crisp white snow and the view in winter from a high mountain. So if there is anything we humans can do to preserve that, I'm for it.

How about we take the Dubai route and build a giant airconditioned geodesic dome over Aspen?

Boys and girls, my pasty white butt (sorry for the mental image) is C O L D here in the midwest USofA, so global warming, however it's caused, is a good thing.

You know, if the media had latched on to this concept 100 years ago, we'd still be on horseback and we'd be typing letters on manual typewriters. Is that really the kind of progress you want?

All I can say is that guy better not be taking any money from oil or auto companies and live California, because Attorney General Moonbeam will arrest his a*s.

Add to that winter has yet to arrive in Moscow this year and 2006 is the warmest year on record in Britain since record keeping began in 1659 !!!! That's since the time of Isaac Newton!!

1659 was a minimal period of the Little Ice Age which likely lasted into the 19th century.

Wikipedia covers it well enough.

Bill Richardson in New Mexico, as part of his plan to run for president, has promised to make global warming part of the legislative agenda here.

Imagine that. We in New Mexico are going to reverse the effects of global warming, be it man made or natural. I guess we'll ban bean burritos, since it's been established that flatulence is worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Just another way to add to government and send more jobs to our neighbors in Colorado, Texas, and Arizona.