Karl is to be commended for his brave stance defending the scientific truth regarding the impact of incrementally increasing atmospheric CO2 levels and for standing fast against what is now becoming the enviro-political mainstream, largely due to the MSM's concerted effort to disseminate a "trace gas hysteria" amongst the general population.

Bottom line is that increased atmospheric CO2, though certainly an anthropogenic impact upon our environment, is not the primary or principal source of anthropogenic climate warming influence.

"Peak Oil" is the real carbon based issue, but in the face of energy shortages, the masses become egalitarian and demand rationing, meaning restricting access to supply universally.

"Cap and Trade" is quite simply energy and ultimately economic policy, cloaked in a “green” shroud.

The Gore preference for caps, taxes and “carbon neutrality” means those wealthy enough to pay higher prices don’t suffer any cutbacks in energy consumption whatsoever, while the poor continue to get squeezed out of sufficient access to energy and the middle class are both further restricted and paying through the nose.

As for the alleged anthropogenic climate influence, the supposed cause of the documented, albiet less than a single degree increase in the global average temperature; human alterations to the planet's hydrological cycle are the principal and primary cause of human-induced climate warming.

The first politician willing to concede these facts openly and honestly is the only one worthy of voter consideration for any public office in this country.

Peace,

Al Gore, the IPCC, politicians like Rep Stupak, and other proponents of this issue are hoping the general public never notices this 800lb-gorilla-in-the-room: with all their claims of the global warming debate being settled, they refuse to answer "when, where, who, how, why" about that debate. If it is truly over, WHEN exactly did it occur, WHERE was it, WHO attended, HOW were expert scientists offering conclusions contradictory to IPCC reports addressed and refuted beyond a shadow of a doubt, and is there any reason WHY Dr S Fred Singer's "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate: Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change" (NIPCC 2008), a collection of peer-reviewed published scientific papers, should not be considered as a second opinion to the IPCC reports?

OK, I have to come and add my 2 cents to this. I like how the global warming alarmisnt crowd is acting like this has been openly debated. I have never seen anyone have a debate on whether global warming exists or whether it is caused by anything they can pin point. I know why I have never seen this. It is simply because the alarmist crowd doesnt want debate. Debate will show the many flaws in their scientific data. Theses "scientists" are using computer generated information that was programmed by more alarmist math people. It is a biased computer program and pushes a certain agenda. If it is so easy to calculate what the tempurature will be on earth in 30 or 40 years, why cant weather forcasts be made for months ahead of time? Karl can surely answer that question. I'd guess it is because you cant accuratly say what the weather will be like in 30 days from now. You can make a projection (which means guess), but you cannot tell anyone for sure. Global warming is FOR PROFIT only. The sale of these carbon credits will generate trillions of dollars for the government and anyone else who can afford to get in the game. People need to stop being so easily swayed. There is a reason why they are pushing this so hard right now. Evidence exists (google it) that the earth is about to enter a cooling cycle. If they dont gather the support and the votes to pass this bill, it will be lost by the next election cycle, then the money will be lost forever (not lost, but left in the peoples pockets). Karl, I and many others appreciate your stepping up and saying something about this farce. I write my representatives often about issues like this, but I never get as good a response. I get form letters back that dont even pertain to what I wrote about...pretty sad really... X

To all who have added to what I posted, thanks.

Dan, you're right, where are the facts, the evidence?

Rick, we can do more to lessen pollution but lowering carbon emmissions is the wrong way. It's extremely expensive and it will do nothing to clean our environment because carbon dioxide is NOT pollution.

William, thanks for contacting Congressman Stupak. If enough constituents do that, he'll think twice about voting for a bill he KNOWS will raise the cost of energy.

Marvin, as a power company employee, you should know. A high energy-use, high tech country like ours provides us with a cleaner environment. Unfortunately, you will not find clean water or clean air in a Third World African country. They do not have the technology because they do not have access to the carbon-based energy we have.

And Hank, you said it well. The science of AGW is purely political (He who controls carbon, controls the world.). All opposing viewpoints are rejected. You could see that clearly in Rep. Stupak's response. He did not directly address any of the, what I think, are valid points I brought up. Unfortunately, it appears his mind is made up.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES)/Cap and Trade are something people in the UP and the United States cannot afford. The carbon credit part of this ACT is a very large tax that will be passed on to us, the people. It could more than double our energy costs. I have been working in the utility industry for most of my working life. I have witnessed the industry that has gone from dirty to the road of clean energy upgrades. They are going in the direction of smart grids and clean coal technology. Lots of utilities are even investing in wind and solar power. These are all improvements over the old way of doing business. Cap and Trade is a tax not an answer to clean energy problems. It seems to me that our current government wants to tax us so they can continue spending money that we do not have. We do not need carbon credits to live in a green world. Listen to Karl. He is more than "just a weatherman". He a voice for the people of the UP and we trust his voice.

The responses by those who believe in "man-made" climate change never attempts to explain the previous climate swings over earth's history.

The believers are intellectually "lazy", and when confronted with facts, generally resort to personal attack, or change the subject. "Faith" in man-made global warming allows them to make these meritless claims with no facts.

You won't find this among the people who haven't joined the "global warming cult"

Finally a voice of reason on the supposed Global Warming issue. I also have contacted our representatives and have received similar politically correct responses. It just makes me wonder who our senators and congressmen are representing. Us or the special interest lobbyists.
Thank you Karl for speaking up.

Karl, Noted your comment on last evenings news. I have said for years that it is important to do what we can to lessen pollution and i still believe it to be important,but all the baloney about global warming is, in my opinion mainly a natural phenomenon. Volcanoes, lighting stike forest fires etc.caused the earth to warm long before man ever showed up.

Thank you Karl Finally somebody has the integrity to voice what most common sense people have known. When I was in High School in the 70s teachers were warning us of a global ice age. If you look back in the NY Times from the early 1900s, every couple decades the head lines change from global warming to global cooling. WEATHER CYCLES CHANGE! This has become yet another PC subject that does not allow a differing opinion. I hope people will think for themselves before they relinguish more of their freedoms and tax dollars.

While not a climatologist, I am a published research scientist who understands the fundamental methodologies of science and complex systems. When someone says “in the scientific community it is not a debate” (Marc Collier@6:37 p.m.) I recognize the apparent lack of understanding of scientific inquiry. I also couldn’t help noticing the immediate dismissal of credibility of Karl by Mr. Colliers, which is always the last defense of an indefensible position - a strategy AGW proponents are now forced to take.

To correct Mr. Collier, there never was a debate and that’s the problem. A panel of government representatives and environmental activists made the determination and called it final. The science of AGW is the only science that summarily rejects the alternate hypothesis as inconvenient and considers advancing knowledge as having arrived too late to be permitted its contribution. Its methods are built on political principals (reject all opposing information) and not those of good science which requires the alternate hypothesis to prove or disprove the hypothesis and so invites debate as a necessary part of the scientific method.

If anything, the debate is now starting as AGW proponents struggle to cope with study after study presenting confounding data which shows the AGW hypothesis to be either an abject failure or very flawed at the least. Presently over 9,000 scientists with Ph D’s (if that is of importance to Mr. Collier), many of them highly respected climatologists, former IPCC authors, and Nobel Prize recipients, are on record as challenging the AGW hypothesis, outnumbering those who support it by a margin of 15:1. And the number is rapidly growing.

Karl, I commend you for such a well articulated and informed plea to Congressman Stupak. I too have written my senators, one of whom is Harry Reid wherein I commended him on his position against the BLM on their moratorium on accepting applications for solar power plants but asked him to reject the ACESA. Of course, Reid could not be bothered to reply.

Don't forget that trees and plants NEED CO2 to survive. The trees and plants will keep the CO2 levels in check. More CO2 means faster growing and bigger trees. Bigger trees will absorb that CO2 and release oxygen, which is what animals need to survive.

Without CO2 this planet would be a barren waste land.

do a google search on Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University.

Ty:

There are others, too. There is Dr. Roy Spencer, a climate scientist with the University of Alabama. Look at the work of Richard Lindzen (who I linked to in my response to Congressman Stupak). Joe D'Aleo is a Fellow of the AMS and runs a very popular skeptic website ICECAP. I just got off the site and was directed to a link that discusses the work of another skeptic, Ferenc Miskolczi. He worked for NASA but resigned because his research showed problems with IPCC models and their handling of atmospheric parameters. It's at this site:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/the-work-of-ferenc-miskolczi-part-1/?cp=all

There are more and more scientists who are speaking up against the notion that a trace gas (and our small contribution to it) is driving global climate.

About 10 0r 12 years ago I read several articles in a magazine Called "The New American". In these articles it showed that the same scientists that were claiming that we were begining global warming were claiming that we were begining global cooling and the next ice age was starting just 15 or so years earlier. I completely agree with Karl!

First of all, Karl Bohnak isn't just a "weatherman" the way someone would describe Al Roker or someone on Fox news. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin and is AMS certified. His resume and experience is well-respected by other television meteorologists and NOAA employees who know him.

To find someone with more years in the research lab than Karl, do a google search on Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University. He's the guy who is called upon by the national media every year for his annual hurricane forecasts. The guy has a PhD and he happens to be a man-made global warming skeptic as well. So don't think for a second that Karl is the only meteorologist/climatologist out there who doesn't quite buy the global warming hype.

I can't add a whole lot to what Karl said above. He probably knows more about this particular topic than I do. But the nuts-and-bolts argument against man-made global warming isn't that complicated. And therefore, you don't need a PhD to give an opinion on the global climate change debate. Even people WITH PhD's who have done extensive research on this particular topic simply cannot claim that the earth will undoubtedly continue to warm into the 21st centruy. The reason: THERE JUST ISN'T ENOUGH DATA. We've only got about 110 years of good temperature records to hang our hats on. (By the way, the 110 or so years of temperature records we have come from data in growing cities. Chicago's O'Hare airport, for example, was "out in the sticks" when it was first built. Now, it's in the heart of the growing metro area. A little urban heat-island bias in the data perhaps?)

There's a little more to our atmospheric heat budget than CO-2 emissions... Something that Karl nicely explained above. Global climate change is something that scientists are still learning about. There is no reason to sound the alarm!

Thank you Karl....So rare is a voice of reason to be heard today.

To begin, you are not a scientist but a local weather man, so your credibility compared to accomplished scientists is little. Aside from the depth of scientific research that has taken place on global climate change, none of which Karl has taken part in, the anthropocentric attitude that human energy and resource use does not need to change is ignorant. Regardless of whether global climate change exists or not, even though in the scientific community it is not a debate, the idea that people should keep burning fossil fuels and depend on resources that are limited is very foolish and clearly not a good plan for long-term sustainability of humans. The way humans interact with the world we live in is in need of dire change. Also, to say humans cannot impact the climate is down right stupid. It is like saying pollution doesn't exist, that it is impossible to pollutant enough. Clearly humans have greatly effected our planet and by altering our world in the slightest in can have the potential to cause a serve chain reaction effect on the rest of our earth. Scientific research and human education has changed since the early 80s Karl.

You're correct. I'm not a research scientist. On the other hand, neither is Al Gore and he is the chief global warming alarmist.

I do not dispute the fact we affect the environment. Note in my initial letter to the Congressman that I brought up the Super Fund Toxic dumps that are still not cleaned up. Why not focus on something we can actually fix?

We need to change and adapt but carbon-based fuels are not the problem (at least the CO2 released by them isn't).

Thanks Matt. My point is about scientific consensus. Science doesn't work by democratic vote. In other words, majority rules is not science.

To begin, you are not a scientist but a local weather man, so your credibility compared to accomplished scientists is little. Aside from the depth of scientific research that has taken place on global climate change, none of which Karl has taken part in, the anthropocentric attitude that human energy and resource use does not need to change is ignorant. Regardless of whether global climate change exists or not, even though in the scientific community it is not a debate, the idea that people should keep burning fossil fuels and depend on resources that are limited is very foolish and clearly not a good plan for long-term sustainability of humans. The way humans interact with the world we live in is in need of dire change. Also, to say humans cannot impact the climate is down right stupid. It is like saying pollution doesn't exist, that it is impossible to pollutant enough. Clearly humans have greatly effected our planet and by altering our world in the slightest in can have the potential to cause a serve chain reaction effect on the rest of our earth. Scientific research and human education has changed since the early 80s Karl.

“An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing this unusual warming of our planet.” Majority rule is not how science is conducted. Good point, but we're dealing with a democracy here.