Temperatures of -350C and less across the US, snow in Texas, Canada brought to a standstill by snow, and immediately the comments on the stories online are "what about global warming now?" If you read the comments you would believe that more than 90% of the population are "climate change deniers".
Are those people really all so easily led by those few scientists speaking against climate change, and likely funded by oil companies and others with lots of cash and lots to lose? It's like the "smoking causes lung cancer" debate of the last century, where tobacco companies funded anyone to carry out 'research' that proved their products harmless. Here we are again, with the same results. People will die.
It's easy for anyone to see global warming. The Arctic Ice is melting. Let me say that again - THE ARTIC ICE IS MELTING. Companies are fighting to start drilling oil up there (!) because they can now get access that was not possible in the last 10,000 years!
You can even see it just by watching the weather forecasts. Isn't it pretty obvious that we are getting hotter and worse droughts than ever before (USA and Australia), colder snaps and more snow then ever before (USA, Canada) and worse storms than ever before (Katrina, the Philippines, the UK this winter). These are all in the last few years. You would need to go back periods of decades to find even individual events of their like, if at all.
Why is that a sign of global warming? Simple, global warming is largely a misleading title. CO2 prevents energy from escaping into space. What this actually does is not necessarily warming, what it does is put more energy into a closed system. When you put more energy into a closed system, more energetic things happen - so you get greater variation in WEATHER. If you continue to pump more energy in than the system can dispose of, then that variation and energy will continue to increase.
So those 450C temperatures in Australia might be 550C in a few years. Those droughts and wild fires there, and in California will get worse, those hurricanes and typhoons will get stronger and more frequent, those freezing winters will get colder and rougher. More energy can mean more water being carried in the atmosphere. Heavier snow falls. Heavier rain showers. Changes to the Jet Stream as it adapts to a new equilibrium bring unending rain to the UK and unending drought to California.
And why haven't average temperatures risen as fast as predicted for a few years? Most likely is that the Ocean has absorbed a bit more heat than anticipated, that the stronger winds and storms have allowed heat transfer to go to greater depths than anticipated, so the deeper ocean has become a more important heat sink. Does that help? No. It just puts more energy into the ocean, and helps to power typhoons such as the one that hit the Philippines to a greater and greater degree.
Sadly, the online comment and "perceived" public opinion seems to guide our "headline hungry" politicians. The current Australian government is taking so many backward steps I think they'll end up in the 1950's. Our own Conservative party is littered with the kind of people that would pass a law to make Pi=3. The result is a UK government that has reduced support for every green initiative, and that seems to believe that they are 'helping' businesses by doing so.
So to all of the nay sayers shouting down climate change and posting your troll remarks online, and influencing politicians with your comments - Take off the tinted glasses and LOOK don't just listen to the propaganda. You only need to watch the weather forecasts around the world, take note of the weather induced disasters, and compare with historical records.
Do your own research. There is enough information available that you don't need scientists of either flavour. It's so obvious when you look for yourself that the 'anti' views expressed online by clearly intelligent people are just shocking!