An expert on the payroll of an environmentalist lobby is no more reliable than one on the payroll of big business or the energy industry. However none are automatically disqualified but must be examined. If you have a major problem do you try to go to a hack for answers, or just somebody average? Or do you seek out the elite? Call me a snob, but when I need help I like elitism. When you or a loved one is ill, how many opinions make a scientific consensus for you to agree to a treatment plan? One, two, three or over 2,500 looking at a 29,000 data series from about 80,000 data sets and 577 studies from around the world, or maybe 928 is your magic number. (these are the numbers from the IPCC consensus report) What if there are still dozens or hundreds of people with varying credentials that disagree? Computer models are far from perfect but they are powerfull tools. The largest and most comprehensive international global coupled climate model experiment and multimodel analysis effort ever made went into the IPCC by 17 different forecasting groups from 12 countries using 24 different models.

Even a Department of Defense workshop report for the Pentagon in 2001 showed global warming since the late 19th century—with the most rapid warming occurring over the last two decades, and the past 50 years warmer than any period in the last ten centuries. As it was in the beginning, so it is now. We were not present at the creation. So theories of science and religion are advanced and tested and argued down through the decades without perfect data or evidence. Pick your poision: evolution, creationism, intelligent design, global warming.

Was there once a scientific consensus that a new ice age was coming due to global cooling? NO, not even close. In fact the scientific consensus of the 1960s and 1970s was that we did not yet know enough about the past or have good enough models to predict future climate. But some such cooling theories were advanced then just as they are today as part of ongoing research.

It was once a concern that the urban heat island effect of population growth in big cities had contaminated our surface temperature records so they were not useful for studying global warming. But studies by the National Climatic Data Center found the effect was not great enough to prevent its use in studying climate change, nonetheless just to be sure the National Climatic Data Center is developing an enhanced data set that will better take into account the uncertainties in the U.S. instrumental record that goes back to 1895.

The media will report any finding that is announced. Be it weather or bird flu. We then get to evaluate it. But the report belongs to those with the findings, not the press who pass it on to the public. Remember Swine Flu and Y2K? One scare came from the medical field and the government and one from the private sector. So lets not trust government, modern medicine or free enterprise ever again. Or maybe we should just think and evaluate what is reported without undue alarm and without blaming the messenger like ancient Romans. We are free to critique individual reporting efforts, but its intellectually lazy and inaccurate to broad-brush criticisms.

Mankind and science make progress. The earth is no longer flat or the center of the universe. Doctors no longer use leaches or blood-letting. But they once did so we can't trust them today, right? The doctor/dietician recommended government approved food pyramid generations grew up on has been changed. Oops, their bad. Eat and drink as much of whatever you want nobody really knows anything for certain. Whether or not wine, chocolate, fish, caffeine etc are beneficial or not or how much and to what extent keeps changing. We learn and we make progress through research and debate with the help of invention and new technology and the testing of theory. I would not compare today's sophistication level of science or medicine or any field with those of the ancients. So it is silly to say the scientific consensus of the period of Copernicus and Galileo is equivalent to a scientific consensus of the modern age. As we think and study let us seek fairness to all sides. Balance is best as a practice not a slogan.

All things in moderation Ben Franklin said. We needn't be hysterical about global warming nor put our heads in the sand like an ostrich. Scientific reasoning leads me to reject both extremes of the left and the right. The author of American Gospel, Jon Meacham, writing on the ratification of the constitution—more critical than the Kyoto Treaty—said the controversy over ratification had its share of partisan fights and news media skirmishes. But on the whole the debates were conducted "with a sense of grace and generosity" for the founding fathers felt "the matter was not for us alone, but for generations yet unborn". Where is this sense of true patriotism today? I guess its been sacrificed on the altar of sound bites, bumper sticker logic, and mock talk show outrage.

I could go over the differential equations governing the LaPlacian of vorticity but the keyboard lacks the symbols. So let me give you an excerpt from an article in the March 2007 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. I offer it to let you see the language of science: "A new method for estimating the systematic component of the nonperiodic errors linearly dependent on the anomalous state is based on a method know as Leith's empirical correction. Singular value decomposition of the forecast error and state cross-covariance is used to obtain the coupled components of the error and forecast anomalies during the training period. The coupled signals are then used to estimate and correct by regression the state-dependent errors during forecasts of independent data." Don't worry there's no pop quiz to follow. But that's my world. Contrast it with the simple slogans of professional bloviators who write or talk for pay or votes.

It has only been a year since I softened my position of skepticism on our role in global warming because more and more data from across a multitude of scientific fields are seeing evidence of the same thing, not just climatologists. This tells me something real is happening even if a large portion of it may be natural. Given some uncertainty and given the broad and extensive consensus of modern science that there is a man-induced fingerprint in the data ANYONE who tells you there ABSOLUTELY IS or IS NOT is either ignorant of science or advancing their own agenda.

This is not to say that the debate is over, that science has done its work, the results are in and there's no need for more research or discussion on the subject of climate change or what is causing it. I don't think we understand the complex earth system well enough to model its past or future except crudely. This is also true of weather models and yet we do amazing things DESPITE oversimplifications in the models. Predicting a blizzard a week in advance before a low pressure has even formed. Forecasting a freeze by Easter half a month in advance while everyone is wearing shorts. These are things I have done and I only have a bachelor's degree. Wrong at times oh yes, but today some of us also accurately predict rain while the sun still shines with scientifically measured accuracy that has far out paced the jokes about my field. But I am talking about trained degreed meteorologists, not just any source from which you might get a weather report. There are a lot of pretenders out there and automated web sites are weak. The vast majority of you always have and still do today, get your weather forecasts from an informed and well intentioned person who is NOT a meteorologist. Might want to remember that before using the forecast or making a joke.

The problems involved in weather vs. climate are different so you can't judge one by the other anyway. The two are different phase-state problems. Chaos theory applies more to weather because it is short term with nonlinearities, which amplify the rate of change in even the most certain initial conditions. This is less true in climate change models. And of course the limits of numerical prediction equations is taken into account in the process study. A useful demonstration of the validity of current climate models is their ability to reproduce the global mean temperature changes of the 20th century (when and only when) they include all known NATURAL and human-induced climate forcing mechanisms.

Here's an analogy for the difference between weather and climate model projections. Six sports experts predicted the final season record of my favorite football team before the start of last Season. They all accurately predicted a winning season, they got right the team would be over .500 and that they would have at least 10 wins. And on average they were only off by 3 wins out of 16 games. A great call for the football climate ahead. However, in getting to those numbers the individual game predictions record (the weather) was much more spotty. This was true of the advanced predictions and those made with the latest information just before each game. But the big picture (climate) predictions made well in advance were right in the wheel house, to mix sports metaphors. You can look at a baseball teams roster and make a right prediction of who will have the best bat and the best pitching record at the end of the season. But in any given game you'll be in for surprises. You might be right for the season but wrong for many a game along the way, that's the model difference between future weather and future climate. Of course in weather, climate, stock markets and all other projections what Yogi Berra said is true: "its tough to make predictions, especially about the future".

I think global warming has occurred in the last 50 years or so but its causation is more problematic. I think we will have our answer in some 20 years because that time frame will allow competing theories to point to the accuracy or inaccuracy of present day claims. I suspect that projections for the climate will prove more correct than projections of consequences. But we will have to separate the science communities projections from the politicized claims of end users of science reports in evaluation, just as we should now in evaluating present day best and worst case scenarios.

I think both single extreme weather events and multiple or back to back extremes are part of the normal monthly yearly and decade long variability of Mother Nature including natural cycles, man-made influences and things we don't know about yet. Over the long haul nature tries for equilibrium of extremes and the pendulum swings. No singular example is just El Nino, or global warming or anything else.

It doesn't seem a stretch that science is on to something when it says if you introduce a new element (man-industrialization) into a system (earth-atmosphere) it will have some impact. That's commonsense. So planet wide the impact of population growth and industrialization and deforestation and agriculture etc. can't help but impact the atmosphere and oceans. Try it on a small scale in your neighborhood with a lake, a pool, or a few smoky fires and you'll see what I mean. My pet theory: I think there are a multitude of natural factors of the earth sun ocean and atmosphere that each impact climate at differing intervals or cycles and they probably produce different lasting weather regimes or short term climate fluxuations by themselves and in differing combinations and when all switched on or off in the same direction like a Rubik's Cube they change weather and climate from one mean or tendency to another. And different combinations of the cube result in different short-term weather and long term climate regimes. I don't think we've figured this puzzle out yet and it makes sense that mankind's global activities could at least influence the natural roll of the dice or twist of the cube. "Come forth into the light, let nature be your teacher. For I have learned to look upon the earth, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity"—William Wordsworth.

Despite the uncertainties noted the weight of the preponderance of scientific evaluation is well documented and provides adequate evidence to the trained mind from observation and interpretation of climate simulations to, as the AMS says, conclude that the atmosphere, ocean and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on societies, on economies, on ecosystems and land and ocean wildlife beyond the 21st century. Letting environmentalists alone dictate policy is as bad as letting the energy industry alone set policy, but if you're ok with one you must be ok with the other. We all want to enjoy life and make a profit. But it's hard to make a buck or enjoy life if your country or planet dies.

As the AMS says the earth system is highly interconnected and complex with many processes and feedbacks just beginning to be detected and understood. Policy decisions are seldom made in a context of absolute certainty. Prudence dictates extreme care in managing our relationship with the only planet known to be capable of sustaining human life. Unless you want to travel 120.5 trillion miles to that "New Earth" astronomers just reported, for which there may be no consensus without uncertainty that it really can support life.

In May of 2006 the Federal Climate Change Science Program reported to the administration that "there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system due to changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols and stratospheric ozone and that observed patterns of change over the past 50 years can not be explained by natural processes alone." I can agree with that much. But determining the amount that is manmade and the amount that is natural I think remains elusive.

I can comfortably associate myself with the 2007 and 2003 AMS policy statements on Climate Change: "The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement among scientists. Individual scientific statements—the validity of some of which have yet to be assessed adequately—can be exploited in the public policy debate and can leave the impression that the science community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus. The international effort strives to reflect the consensus results of peer-reviewed research. They provide an analysis of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on various statements and conclusions." And I concur with the statement of the American Association of State Climatologists "ongoing political debate about energy policy should not stand in the way of common sense action to reduce societal and environmental vulnerabilities to climate variability and change."

As we continue to study climate change and global warming we need to study what to do about it and the most effective and cost efficient manner to do mitigation. If one solution is tried will it cause another problem? Many new specialties will have to work together to find solutions to the problem. We can do it if we do a better job of following Washington and Jefferson's recommendation and put political parties last and country first. I think there are things we can and should do in the interest of healthy air and water and energy independence that will also help mitigate man-induced global warming without ruining economies or standards of living. Even if there is no global warming, there are ancillary benefits to fossil fuel alternatives because energy independence is a matter of national security! Working together we've improved the environment before without the predicted end of capitalism but instead enlisting free enterprise in the effort. These undertakings to be effective must involve all nations not just North America and Europe-- for it is a planet wide matter.

Let us honor the words of the ancient hymn: "Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, 'twixt that darkness and that light...New occasions teach new duties; ancient values test our youth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth..."

As the creators highest life form we are charged with being responsible stewards of the creation. As President Kennedy said: "In the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. Here on earth, Gods work, must truly be our own".