The scientific consensus is that global climate change is not only real, but presents a mortal danger to civilization as we know it. Last winter, when most of North America was having colder than usual weather (like snow inHouston), the climatically-challenged went nuts, with much wailing, gnashing of teeth , and rending of garments (my personal favorite), that this proved global climate change was false. Sigh. Once more into the breach.
It proved nothing of the sort. A cooling effect in one part of the world does not only not disprove global warming, but is an inevitable byproduct of it. Global warming does not entail that the entire globe warms uniformly, only that the annual mean temperature of the earth will be warmer, and in fact, due to regional differences in climatic engines, some areas of the earth will be significantly colder, but will be overbalanced by the regions that become catastrophically warmer. For example, while Houston was having snow, it was above freezing in Alaska, northern Canada, and Russia/Siberia, to the point where the permafrost is thawing, Moscow in February was 45 degrees F (compared to a normal February in that part of the world, with highs between -20 F and -10 F). Do the math, kids. Houston is 15-20 degrees colder while Moscow is 55-65 degrees warmer. Not good, especially considering there is a huge frozen peat bog in Siberia that is no longer frozen, and is beginning to release billions of tons of once-trapped methane into the atmosphere. Methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Okay, let's look a two of the predicted effects of global warming: unstable weather, with more frequent and more violent storms. Why? Visualize a pot of water on the stove at room temp: still and calm with no more than the usual convective movement as the room temp varies with the seasons or normal daily solar warming, and nighttime cooling. Now, turn on the burner, and add energy to the closed system. Suddenly, you have a who shitload of convective movement as the body of water strives to reach equilibrium. The same thing is happening to our atmosphere.
The other thing the models are predicting is the partial desalinization of the North Atlantic due to the rapid melting of the Greenland ice cap, which is happening as we speak, and at a far greater rate than predicted. The glaciers are melting so rapidly that the melt water, rather than staying on the surface and trickling off slowly, is melting straight down through the ice cap to the bedrock below, and forming a lubricant layer which is allowing the cap to slide off the rock into the North Atlantic at an alarming rate. One reearcher, who had been gone from his camp for only a month on a short lecture tour, brought a PBS camera crew back to Greenland with him, and was visibly stunned when the helicopter arrived at what had been the location of his camp, and it was nowhere to be found. They eventually found it 5 miles from where it was supposed to be. The adjective "glacial" is used to express the epitome of slow movement. A speedy glacier wouldn't move 30 feet in 30 days, let alone 5 miles. The reason this is cause for concern to climatologists is that the thermohaline circulation component of the Atlantic Ocean currents, the subsurface currents that return cold water from the North Atlantic around Cape Horn and into the Indian and Pacific Oceans, where it wells up to the surface, is powered by the "meridional overturning circulation (MOC) which is itself driven by temperature and salinity alone as opposed to other factors such as the wind. Cold, saline water sinks to the Atlantic's abyssal plains, and flows south, replaced by the north-flowing current commonly known as the Gulf Stream, which cools the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico by moving the jeat north, where it simultaneously moderates the temperatures of the northeast US and eastern Canada and to a large extent those of northwest Europe. The introduction of large amounts of less dense fresh melt water into this area of the North Atlantic, is believed to have slowed the MOC sufficiently 12,900 years ago to create the Younger Dryas period, a mini ice age that took effect in the above areas abruptly (in less than a decade), lasted until 11,500 years ago, created a population bottleneck, and set civilization back. It would have much the same effect now, because despite our technology, you cxan't have civilization without settlements, and you can't have settlements without agriculture. If the northeast is having a mini ice age, and the south and midwest are in permanent drought, where are we going to grow food? And don't tell me Canada. The Laurentian ice sheet of the last major glacial period scraped Canada clean of most of its topsoil, most of which ended up in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. In fact, 10% of the world's richest topsoil is in Iowa.
You talk about the cost of cap and trade and the ruin of the economy. What the hell do you think is going to happen when catastrophic climate change bites us in the ass? For years, the Pentagon has been computer gaming scenarios for wars fought not for ideology or power, but for food and water. There is no surrender for that kind of war...it's a fight to the death.
Grow a clue.
