We've had record snowfall here in Virginia. It's been twenty years since it has snowed this much. Also, global warming is an insubstantiated theory that cannot be tested. Also, any test you claim to be valid is false. You use science to become right, not to prove you're right.

So where in Va are you?  They say we are in for another wallop next Tuesday/Wednesday.  I love snow, but......

Just as this winter is not proof there is no AGW, so is the ice caps melting (or not as is the truth) proof that there is. Ke5trel needs to talk to you as you are the reason no one is believing AGW.

And many scientists do not believe the AGW hype.  You just dont read enough.

That well may be true.  In any case, time will tell.  Certainly it's a bad thing to dump CO2 into the atmosphere without any regard for its environmental impacts.  Is there anyone that would say this is not a bad thing? 

Not even that.   The talk radio has people like Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh saying the ice caps are not melting.  Which is just plain delusional.  If any of these people actually went up there and looked at it, it's pretty obvious.  The ice caps could be completely non-existent, and these guys could convince the public they were advancing.

The truth? We have no clue what this does. We can guess, we can try to see patterns, but we all know how our minds like to trick us into seeing non-existent patterns. CO2 supposedly holds in heat, but at the same time, it contributes to what we know as "the anti-greenhouse effect," which makes our atmosphere more opaque, reflecting more light. We can't really discuss things on a global scale when we barely understand them in controlled environments.

Also, I find the whole 'scientific consensus' bit that is so often repeated. 

1. There isn't a consensus
2. Even if there were, it's still meaningless. We've had plenty of consensus' in the scientific community, and they've all turned out to be wrong a few centuries later.

@drguy - Richmond, and yeah, that's what I've heard too.

Delusional is convincing yourself there's a problem your existence can somehow change or create, all because the ice caps are melting.  I'll get over it if Rush has said something stupid, but Antarctica has been melting since that whole ice age thing ended.  It's not exactly news.  At some point, it had to melt off fast enough to expose the coast all the way around it.  Otherwise some crazy bastard couldn't have mapped it out thousands of years ago.  What it's doing now isn't anything special.  Why anyone would get hysterical over the retreat of ice built up during the ice age is beyond me, our mere existence in arctic regions sorta required it to occur.  Humanity would be a few hundred million people squeezed into the tropics if we still half the world covered in it.

It's all about averages.

For example, if you took all the AGW and anti AGW 'experts', put them all in one place then nuked the lot of them, the world's average IQ would rise by at least 20...

Fallacy of the mean.

Also, failure to understand definition of IQ.

I expected more from somebody with a Spock avatar.

It requires a little understanding of Thermodynamics.   I'll just quote from another source:

http://www.finewaters.com/Water_Ice.asp

The ice caps are the earth's temperature regulators.  The earth warms, the ice caps absorb it and melt a little.  The earth cools, the ice caps absorb it and advance a little.   But the 32 degrees remains 32 degrees.   But once those ice caps are gone, that lifts the lid on the global temperature something serious; probably to the point of making the planet uninhabitable, as far as I'm concerned. 

Now, I could really care less who caused it.   I'm not too keen on dying.

There is no substance on Earth we could pump into the atmosphere that would make heat the Earth to a point where it becomes uninhabitable. PROTIP: The Earth's energy comes from the sun.

I see you have a good fundamental understanding of the greenhouse effect.

I see you have a good fundamental understanding of the anti-greenhouse effect.

I see that you don't know the planet Venus.

Also, you didn't read what is in your link.

You raise taxes, of course! Isn't that the solution to everything?

Don't believe your lyin eyes. In all the places where nobody lives, the weather was hotter this January than any other on record. I know because that's what the scientists tell me. You have to trust them. Nevermind the fact that alot of what the scientists have been telling us about climate change has been discredited over the last few months, and alot of dissenting information has been suppressed, you gotta trust them anyway. Their future funding depends on it.

The solution naturally is to raise taxes and cap emissions in western countries, and to pretend China and India don't exist. The scientists assure us there is no other agenda involved in these "solutions" which just happen to be very convenient for people who just happen to have other agendas.

Also, they're after you. They want you, especially you. Beware!

And I guess now believing in scientists who tell you something instead of believing in the facts makes you part of the global warming religion eh?

It's funny because I've been following the weather since december.  Parts of europe and the us have experienced the coldest temps ever.  Canada has had mild temps, but they weren't setting records.  I could easily make a graph from what I've been folllowing and show that this has been a pretty cold january.

I'm pretty sure that a religious global warming believer such as you still wouldn't believe it.  You mention incredulity, yet the temps on record speak alot differently from what this man says.  Maybe you should look at yourself before others when you speak of incredulity?

I love how you go to conspiracy theories and delusions, and talking about the ice caps.  Is it such an inconvient truth for you to also mention that some ice caps are regrowing while some are deminishing?

Can't be.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/january-2010-uah-global-temperature-update-0-72-deg-c/

Note this same post is cross-posted on noted TV weatherman and knighted saint of the Anti-AGW crowd Anthony Watts' site.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/04/january-uah-global-temperature-warmest/

Whats Up With That? Two noted skeptics agreeing with evil climate scientists? What's to become of us?

Note that these reports among others from more mainstream "climate scientists" are their interpretation of University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) satellite data which is available at the following.

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

Also just so that it's clear there's another source of corroborating data there's the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellite record that also reports the warmest January ever.

The following article references both the UAH and the RSS records along with NOAA's combined global land and ocean reports.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/16/noaa-warmest-january-on-record-in-both-satellite-records/

The raw RSS data is available at the following.

http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_2.txt

So we have both satellite records agreeing that January was the warmest on record along with the agreement of two of the most noted climate skeptics. But I'm sure the religious anti-AGW crowd will find some way to discount or ignore this.

Also if you take a look at the raw data you'll see that January 2010 was not only the warmest January ever, it was the 3rd warmest *month* ever following Feburary and April of 1998 in the UAH dataset and the 4th warmest *month* ever following Feburary, April and May of 1998 in the RSS dataset.

Just to be painfully clear warmest in this context means deviation from the norm which is why a Janurary can in some sense be warmer than a July (in the northern hemisphere of course).

Not to mention the rise in sea level that would result in the loss of many coastal cities.  That can't be good for business.  I'm actually surprised at the number of skeptics posting here.  I thought the situation was pretty much past that point.  But whatever, if people refuse to believe there is a problem until New York is under 10 feet of water, then I guess that's what it takes to end the argument.  Of course, by then it will be too late to do anything about it. 

My feeling is that even if there really is a problem and just about everybody believes there is a problem, nothing's going to change.  Oil interests are too powerful and developing countries are going to keep polluting the air regardless of what we do (the US).  So, we'll find out what happens.  I'm pretty sold on the idea that it isn't going to be good.

We are not capable of changing our planet's temperature. Our CO2 output is like peeing in the ocean. If the Earth is warming (has not been proven), then there is nothing we can do. Global warming is a political powerplay to control the government.

Oh dear...

The thing is that over the past 35 years Global Warming has progressed counter to the prevailing direction of the suns output. At this point we are at a very deep minimum of the sunspot cycle which has accounted for all the "global warming stopped in 1998 arguments" which of course it hasn't but that's another story.

Anyway here's a graph from http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm. Also included is the caption providing links to the data sources of this graph.

Figure 1: Annual global temperature change (thin light red) with 11 year moving average of temperature (thick dark red). Temperature from NASA GISS. Annual Total Solar Irradiance (thin light blue) with 11 year moving average of TSI (thick dark blue). TSI from 1880 to 1978 from Solanki. TSI from 1979 to 2009 from PMOD. 

Note where we are at a very deep minimum of sunspot activity. I suggest that the Anti-AGW crowd better start praying for a Maunder Minimum the likes of which haven't been seen for over 300 years or the next upturn in sunspot activity will see unprecented year over year temperature increases.

Of course if someone can deny the 30 years of warming that we've already experienced then they should have no problem denying another few decades.