As I am writing this, Boston and other parts of New England are getting slammed with a whopper of a winter storm. Glad I’m not there.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love snow and Lord knows we need precipitation big time where I live, but who needs three feet of snow all at once?!

Now to the point. I know that the usual suspects have already begun bobbing up in the news, on TV, on the blogs, Facebook, etc. to tell us that “climate change” is indeed very serious and that we must drastically change our lifestyles lest we destroy planet Earth. And we are bound to hear things like “if only the Republicans would get out the way, we could save the planet.” These ninnies will hold up this latest winter storm, the one they are calling “Nemo,” as “proof” of the harm fossil fuels are doing to the Earth’s climate.

I’ll bet you ten to one that the alarmists in the media will refer to this issue in the wake of this latest winter storm as “climate change.” They probably will not identify the cause of this massive snow storm as “global warming” because it is hard to convince shivering people that warming is the cause. This back and forth switch between the phrases “climate change” and “global warming,” (depending on current weather conditions) long ago added to my suspicion that we were not being told the whole truth about this issue.

I have reached out to a few of the scientists involved in climate research because I don’t trust the media to get the story straight. We all know which side most journalists are on regarding global warming/climate change and we simply will never get a proper representation of the debate from them. I reached out because I know I don’t “know it all” and besides, I like to think that I have an open mind, so I decided to try to live up to that ideal. One of the scientists I reached out to works at one of the federally funded research and development laboratories here in New Mexico. It is a first-rate R&D facility. I wanted to get some first-hand, scientific opinions on the climate issue, which I will say can be very confusing to the average person. The man at this lab who I contacted has his PhD in Applied Physics and has worked on projects which including climate modeling. I specifically contacted him because he was actively involved in the public controversy over climate science and I wanted his side of it.

This physicist was very confident in his opinion that by adding CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the Earth’s atmosphere we are increasing global temperatures. Actually, he wouldn’t even call it his opinion, in his view it is scientific fact. He said that heat trapping gases are warming the planet, “which is required by the laws of physics.” Wow, inquire no further, the science must be settled!

But wait. This raises a question, if “global warming” is our problem, why isn’t it always referred to in the reporting as “global warming?” Why is the issue often referred to as “climate change” instead?  I’ve already hinted at this and will leave it to the reader to answer that question.

I recently saw a story at Science Daily that said the average American’s view of the climate issue varies back and forth like the weather; no actually it varies with the weather. What I think is in play all too often is that instead of trying to get at the truth most people just latch on to the things that seem to back up their beliefs. It’s human nature. But in evaluating the global climate it is pure silliness. Not the report, which seems to back up my observation when talking to people about the climate issue, but the fact that people are so easily swayed on this issue by the weather outside their window or being reported on the Weather Channel. That’s about as unscientific an approach to this issue as is possible. The AGW [i] crowd, people like Al Gore and others, know of this flaw in the average person’s thinking and use it to their advantage. Convince people that we are destroying our planet and you can raise a lot, and I mean a lot of money.

I used to work for an environmental activism group and I used to belong to World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, Adirondack Council and others and I like many people would send them my hard-earned money. Many of these groups use the climate issue to raise a lot of money. They have an agenda and it is very lucrative. Do not expect them to give you a balanced view of the climate issue. If they did they would hurt their own pocketbooks and human nature being what it is, well you know …

So if the laws of physics demand that an increase CO2 in the atmosphere necessarily leads to more global warming, as was explained to me, why is it that there had been no statistically meaningful increase in global temperatures in the previous decade? The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in those ten years had gone up significantly, so why didn’t global temperatures rise accordingly? It was recently reported by NOAA[ii] that 2012 was the 10^th hottest year since 1880, the year that continuous and reliable records began being kept. Why wasn’t it the hottest? NOAA initially reported that it was the hottest year on record and then had to correct their mistake after it was pointed out to them. Sloppy work, eh? Could it be that the global climate is an extremely complex system that scientists are just barely beginning to understand? Why yes, I think that may be the case.

Another very prominent climate scientist with whom I have corresponded with, and who was very kind to me, published a report in 2009 in which he admitted that climate scientists were having trouble explaining the lack of recent, measurable global warming. One of his explanations, which he hopes to prove if it is true, is that the additional “energy,” what you and I call heat, may be hiding in the depths of our oceans. The problem, he explained, is that we don’t presently have the technology to accurately measure deep ocean temperatures. Sounds to me like there is still a lot to be learned about our very complex global climate system.

I started to touch on the politics and economics of the climate issue, but I will not elaborate too much upon this point except to say that if there is money to made and power to be gained by convincing the public that there is a crisis, then this “crisis” will be used by those who stand to benefit from it. And we all will pay for this at the expense of our wealth and our liberty.

While I think it is very probable that current human activity has an effect on the global climate; for the time being, I will remain skeptical about the global climate “crisis” which is already being blamed for the massive snow storm that’s currently dumping on New England. One thing I am sure of is that the climate is and always has been in flux and that violent weather was and always will be the norm with some sunny breaks in between.

Frotho