climate change denial squad, here's a fact for you.

Great article. The distinction between weather and climate is one I will remember.

Chris: "Have a nice, warm, day."

Thanks, but it's hot as hell here too!

Thanks, guys. One day later, it's 101 degrees today. I'm not sure if we broke another record, but it's close.
Lyndon- yes, I think there is a bit of ego there. The CCDS seem to feel that us global warming nuts have some sort of agenda to ruin their lives- failing to note that any collective constraints, taxes, etc. would penalize us as much as they.

10 day forecast here is 100F or more, except Saturday, which is 99F, with no rain.

Chris: "The CCDS seem to feel that us global warming nuts have some sort of agenda to ruin their lives...."

Truly. They also fail to see that there's money to be made - someone is going to make it - it may as well be U.S. companies, rather than - say - European or Chinese.

Natural Capitalism. Hawken, Lovins & Lovins, pp. 241-3.

On May 19, 1997, John Browne, the chief executive of British Petroleum—
then the world's third-largest, now its second-largest, oil company—
announced at Stanford University: "[T]here is now an effective consensus
among the world's leading scientists and serious and well informed
people outside the scientific community that there is a discernible
human influence on the climate, and a link between the concentration
of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature." He continued:
"[W]e must now focus on what can and what should be done, not
because we can be certain climate change is happening, but because
the possibility can't be ignored."22 Obviously, "what should be done"
is mainly to stop raising and start lowering the rate of burning of
fossil fuels, the source of 84 percent of America's and 75 percent of the
world's energy.23 Mr. (now Sir John) Browne went on to announce that
BP had increased its investments in solar technology, which it expects to grow markedly in the decades to come. His lead on both the climate
issue and energy alternatives has since been followed by several other
oil companies.

Three months earlier, eight Nobel laureates had led some twentyseven
hundred fellow economists in declaring what all mainstream
studies have found: Market-oriented policies to protect the climate by
saving energy can raise American living standards and even benefit the
economy.24 They were largely ignored. Instead, a coal-led industrial
lobby, the Global Climate Coalition, saturated the airwaves with ads
that scared almost the entire press corps and the U.S. Senate into presuming
that protecting the climate would be prohibitively costly. The
prospect of having to reduce carbon emissions has subsequently
aroused dismay, foreboding, and resistance among many in the business
community, who fear it would hurt earnings and growth.

As economic columnist Robert J. Samuelson asserted in Newsweek:
"It would be political suicide to do anything serious about [climate]. . . .
So shrewd politicians are learning to dance around the dilemma."25 In
Samuelson's widely held view, carbon emissions would probably be cut
only if companies were levied with a tax of roughly one hundred dollars
for each metric ton of carbon they emitted. Even then, he warns,
such a burdensome tax might only reduce 2010 emissions back to 1990
levels. Thus, "Without a breakthrough in alternative energy—nuclear,
solar, something—no one knows how to lower emissions adequately
without crushing the world economy." Congress, wrote Samuelson,
"won't impose pain on voters for no obvious gain to solve a hypothetical
problem.And if the United States won't, neither will anyone else."

Samuelson, like many businesspeople, believes climate protection is
costly because the best-publicized (though not most broadly accepted)
economic computer models say it is. Few people realize, however, that
those models find carbon abatement to be costly because that's what
they assume. This assumption masquerading as a fact has been so
widely used as the input for supposedly authoritative models, which
have duly disgorged it as their output, that it's often deemed infallible.

What is less well publicized is that other economic models derive the
opposite answer from more realistic assumptions (including what
international treaties and U.S. policy actually say), rather than from
worst-case hypothetical conditions. Better yet, an enormous body of
overlooked empirical data, including government-sponsored studies26
and the results of worldwide business practice, tells an excitingly different story, one more positive than any of the theoretical models predict.
As previous chapters have described, the technological breakthroughs
that Samuelson seeks have already happened. America could shed $300
billion a year from its energy bills using existing technologies that
deliver the same or better services and are rewarding at today's prices.
The earth's climate can thus be protected not at a cost but at a profit—
just as many industries are already turning the costs of environmental
compliance into gains from pollution prevention.

America is confronted, as Winston Churchill said, by insurmountable
opportunities. Because there are practical ways to mitigate climatic
concerns and save more money than such measures cost, it
almost doesn't matter whether you believe that climate change is a
problem or not: These steps should be taken simply because they make
money. Together, the following opportunities can turn climate change
into an unnecessary artifact of the uneconomically wasteful use of
resources: 27

Sorry, I forgot the link:

http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter12.pdf

Guess what .. as the surface of the earth is heating up, the core is cooling down. Both events are pretty much out of our control.

When people are ready to discuss serious solutions (we can't just all go out and buy new cars) I'll be happy to join the conversation.

Dan: "When people are ready to discuss serious solutions (we can't just all go out and buy new cars) I'll be happy to join the conversation."

Can you go out and buy a new book?

Ending the Oil Endgame. Lovins, et. al.

http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Oil-Endgame-Amory-Lovins/dp/1881071103/ref=sr_1_4/104-1692228-2284715?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186694339&sr=1-4

The winters are milder and the summers are hotter. I think that that tells the story. Frankly, I miss winter and don't need these hot summers. I wish that something could be done. As I drove home from work today, I realized that all of these cars and airplanes are the problem. It's a slow crawl up the expressway in my town. I live near an airport and become increasingly aware of the CO2 output there as well. And, yes, with the right incentive, we can all go out and buy new cars.

Now everyone knows it's Clinton's fault ;-)
Here the winters have been getting shorter and the summers longer for quite some time.
We are down to two seasons fall and summer.

Thanks everyone for your comments.
Steve, I agree with you completely on Samuelson. He can be insightful, but I have decided that he looks at everything through his "short term economics" lenses. With climate change, he fails to understand that ignoring it will inevitably and eventually damage our economy more than addressing it would. And so I end up feeling sorry for him and his limited world view.

Chris: "...limited world view" reminds me of Hawken's book, "Natural Capitalism", in which the economic balance sheet is described as being myopic because it excludes "natural capital" from the idea of assets. Myopic, in this sense, is extremely costly.