We actually do have a pretty good big picture of the Earth's temperature, and some decent ideas about its climate. Just because no one was studying climate before modern science doesn't mean it's impossible to know what the climate was like hundreds, thousands, even millions of years ago.

This chart is a good place to start when thinking about global temperature records:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Tempera…

A much more technical analysis can be found here:
http://sheba.geo.vu.nl/users/peef/teaching/orbita…

To be honest, I don't understand most of this paper, but the gist of it is that they've constructed a temperature record going back 750,000 years, and make a pretty compelling argument that their record is good.

Again– anyone who feels strongly on the issue of global warming should absolutely go do a little scientific research. Its amazing how much your understanding of this issue can improve with a little time looking at the instrument and geologic temperature records.

The scientists say there's overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic global warming, but there's absolutely no harm in going back and checking their work. Read some papers and look at some charts. If you feel ambitious, try a little number crunching on your own!

Yours, is one of the better explanations of how useless and wasteful of resources the plan to alter the weather is,

none of these groups receiving all this grant money have been able to predict the future weather but I will say this, any extreme occurence of nature is immediately touted as being caused by greenhouse gasses.

from hot days to hurricanes it's sickening.

If that does not sound reasonable, read the additional information about the failures and inadequacies of climate models that can be found here:

http://www.c3headlines.com/climate-models/

More importantly, all of us need to recognize and accept that humans are incapable of changing global climate. Humans, and nature's plant and animal species, are capable of adapting, though. Thus, spending resources wisely to adapt to climate change is a cost efficient means to coping with future climate change.

If one thinks mankind can modify incredibly complex global climate outcomes, then one most also believe that man is capable of stopping a single summer's thunderstorm. The latter will never be possible; how then can the former be even remotely possible? Spending trillions, literally, in attempt to change or stop the climate is an immoral waste beyond comprehension and it's important to accept this now – this is indeed settled science.

C3H Editor, http://www.c3headlines.com

Several years ago a team found airplanes from WW2 that crashed landed on Greenland. They were buried under snow and ice.

The climate is controlled by the cycles of the sun.

Mars is warming,…there's got to be a factory there somewhere.

This is a money grab, and the biggest HOAX ever perpetrated on mankind ever.

http://franklinslocke.blogspot.com/

This just shows how cherry-picking of a statement out of context can be used to "prove" the opposite of what is really being said. Swanson also said in his paper that was the origin of the Discovery News article:

"When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming. Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."

So, even though Swanson believes we may have decades in which the warming doesn't show statistically because of what he sees as atmospheric anomalies, all during these decades, greenhouse gases will still be pouring into the atmosphere, like banking money for later use, and will still have the effects predicted by virtually all climatologists, only it will all catch up with us at once.

So, it is still just as important to stop putting these gases into the atmosphere – if not for our own wellbeing, then for the wellbeing of our children three decades hence when all three decades worth of greenhouse gases hit them at once.

BTW, in a response to Swanson's hypothesis – which is all it is right now – Dr. Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, NJ, has written Discovery News to dispute Swanson's 30 year prediction. He says that based on studies done from 1970 to today, which do show minor periodic fluctuations, "the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again."

It seems that the intellectual Conservatism I remember from my youth has turned into the worship of an extremist ideology that is more interested in bending the facts to fit the ideology than to forming an ideology that accounts for the known facts.

The reason the Republican Party is currently self-destructing is that whenever their "map" differs from the actual "terrain" they blindly and faithfully continue to follow the map. And they have finally followed it right off of a cliff.

It will be interesting to see if this comment isn't purged because it doesn't follow the "map." Do you have the intellectual honesty to print a differing view?

Also, the political side of Global Warming is simply another way to tax the use of Natural Resources.