Yes. Global warming was a sad misnomer.
For much of the United States, this last winter was colder than any in the recent past.
Not here. It was 55 degrees in the Boston area over Christmas.
Via the news media, travelers snowed in at airports were fed a steady diet of looming catastrophe. The newscasters have shrewdly altered the phrase to highlight the viciousness of the weather. To a passenger sleeping on a cold airline terminal floor, any warming would be a relief.
Put a sweater on for crying out loud. The fact is according to the National Climatic Data Center of the U.S. Department of Commerce, "The global annual temperature for combined land and ocean surfaces in 2006 was +0.54°C (+0.97°F) above average, ranking 5th warmest in the period of record." Climate change is real. The question is whether we can or cannot do something about it.
And has been occurring for as long as there has been a climate.
An average is average because it is the AVERAGE of the sample population, not a maximum or ceiling limit. This means that there will be some samples that are more, and some samples that are less than the average.
The climate may or may not be warming. But I do not believe there is anything we can or should do about it. The human additions to the atmosphere are minuscule compared to what nature can and is doing on a continuous basis. Attempting to force a change in warming is not only a waste of time and money, it can have unintended consequences.
When I hear some of the hair brained ideas being floated around like flooding the upper atmosphere with light reflectors, I cringe. These idiots will not allow building a windmill off Cape Cod, a nuclear plant, a coal burning plant that is helping man (not hurting), or a dam on a river, but they want to do something so stupid, unpredictable, and irreversible.