To summarise the article in ten words: the US is warmer than it was 30 years ago.

OK, but that's not in dispute. The points of dispute are a) what caused the increase? and b) will it continue? -- about which the article provides no arguments or evidence whatsoever.

One is reminded of Mark Twain's famous extrapolation: that if the Mississippi continued to shrink at its current rate it would be four miles long by 1997.

Leigh, the human species has not encountered temperatures this high and modern human civilization, ESPECIALLY as we try to feed 6.5 billion people, has not encountered anything like this. Just what do you think happens when 600 to 800 million people across Indian and China lose agricultural water because the winter glaciers that provide summer meltwater are just plain gone?

Why can we test Co2 in the lab like this? Watch from 1 minute 30. Eagerly awaiting your scientifically informed link to a peer-reviewed paper that deals with why the candle flame couldn’t be seen by the infra-red camera on the other side of a tube full of Co2.

(IE: WE KNOW WHAT CO2 DOES and can REPEAT THE EXPERIMENT AGAIN AND AGAIN!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Un69RMNSw&feature=related

Would Leigh, Runner, and John J try and explain this? Watch it with your own eyes and “please explain”. Thanks.

John J, “The points of dispute are a) what caused the increase? and b) will it continue? -- about which the article provides no arguments or evidence whatsoever.”

Umm, the extra Co2 which is demonstrated in the link above to trap long wavelength heat energy, adding energy to the atmosphere, and the evidence is available to anyone in a lab that can run Co2 through a spectrometer.

It’s also easily calculable through the Radiative Forcing Equation as to how much energy is added by how much extra Co2.

QED.

Also sceptics, do you want to explain why all the INDEPENDENT climate bodies, full of skeptical scientists in lab coats, all agree? Forget your young radical dreadlock wearing hippie, why do the SCIENTISTS all agree?

Anyway, I’m off to see your friends in the “Moon landing hoax” and “Area 51” conspiracies to try and understand the conspiracy mindset. ;-)

Bye for now.

Eclipse Now, No its not the warmest period we have ever experienced. The Roman warming was hotter than now and, contrary to your predictions of doom it was a period of high crop growth and general prosperity. The Dark Ages and the plague on the other hand were during a cold period. Its a damn good thing that Alaska is warmer than it used to be though I doubt that information in the article is accurate.

Temperature increases actually increase rainfall. CO2 is a relatively unimportant greenhouse gas as 95% is due to water vapour. Humans produce very little of the total CO2.

Some of the Global Warming doomsayers were, in 1976, predicting Global Cooling.

Ah, more gloom. With warmer climes historically linked to good times, I'm a wee bit surprised there's absolutely nothing in the benefits column. Suspect the fashionable glass-half-empty focus in the studying and the reporting. No news is good news. Bad news is even better.

JonJ, it was Mark Twain who is also attributed with the line about everyone complaining about the weather, and no one doing anything to fix it. How things have changed. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed complaining about the icy morning in Melbourne today - lowest minimum in 12 years. Yes, I know, Q&A, weather is not climate - just trying to relive those happy days when God was in heaven and people conversed about such things.

Did Protagorass say something?

Yeah the whole thing is some kind of elaborate global hoax designed to extract a few more tax dollars out each of us and provide a bunch of scientists with some extra grant funding.

Lets keep talking about selective local weather conditions because that's where the truth really lies, not in the term "average".

Meanwhile various glaciers and the Arctic aren't really melting and the Siberian Tundra can't be thawing for the first time in 10,000 years because hey, it was warmer in Roman times.

"Why can we test Co2 in the lab like this? Watch from 1 minute 30. Eagerly awaiting your scientifically informed link to a peer-reviewed paper that deals with why the candle flame couldn’t be seen by the infra-red camera on the other side of a tube full of Co2."

So we are supposed to waste time and effort preparing a serious response to a YouTube video entitled "Climate Denial Crock of the Week?" Oh, come now.

If you want to read some serious appraisal of the 'greenhouse gas' theory, try

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/no_evidence.pdf

http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m6d2-Examinercoms-exclusive-global-warming-debates-Roger-Pielke-Sr-part-1

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/10/another-scientific-consensus-bites-the-dust/

These are papers worth responding to -- if you can.