Global Warming, Climate Change or however one prefers to reference this global climate pattern, we must face that something is going on, regardless of the cause(s).

Fox News reported (Sep. 09, 2013) on the subject, contrasting a statement of Anastasios Tsonis, University of Wisconsin: Ph.D/M.S., Meteorology / B.S., Physics and Mathematics with that of Walt Meier, glaciologist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Tsonis: "We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped."  Meier: "[An ice-free Arctic] is definitely coming, and coming sooner than we previously expected. We're looking at when as opposed to if." Fox quoted the U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper rag – and I do mean "rag" – which reported a 60 percent increase in Arctic ice in 2013 over 2012, as a debunker to the melting of the caps.

<http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/09/09/arctic-sea-ice-up-60-percent-in-2013/>

Mitch Battros, Earth Changes Media (ECM), has been a long-time sceptic of the man-made-CO2 emissions, global warming link. Earth Changes recently posted (Sep. 16, 2013) an article about the scientific expedition that, after trying for five years, reached the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica. The goal of the international team expedition, "led by NASA's emeritus glaciologist, Robert Bindschadler and funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA… was … to measure how fast the sea was melting the 37-mile long ice tongue from underneath by drilling through the ice shelf." Measurements were taken on and below the glacier ice shelf.

Battros theorizes that the cause of warming oceans is "the result of an 'uptick' of mantle plume expulsion. This occurs when the lower mantle heated up in the process of convection by heat transferred from the core and from radioactive decay in the mantle. Eventually, the lower mantle gets so hot that it is less dense than the mantle above it. Blobs of super heated molten rocks begin to rise from the core-mantle boundary region up toward the Earth's surface. The vast majority of mantle plumes, hot spots, fissures, and submarine volcanoes are on the world's oceans floors."

Yesterday (Sep. 17, 2013), Earth Changes Media cited a "First ever study of air trapped in the deep snowpack of Greenland" showing that "atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide (CO) in the 1950s were actually slightly higher than what we have today." ECM quotes Vasilii Petrenko, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences: 'It seems that no one thought to study carbon monoxide in the Greenland snowpack before our work… Also, the difficulty of taking the samples and making measurements may have discouraged some researchers.' ECM goes on to reference a recently published paper in the journal, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, where Petrenko and his colleagues are said to have concluded that CO levels rose slightly from 1950 until the 1970s, and then declined strongly to present-day values. According to this article, "This finding contradicts computer models that had calculated a 40 percent overall increase in CO levels over the same period."

http://earthchangesmedia.com/

Since CO or carbon monoxide is considered to be a weak greenhouse gas compared to CO2 or carbon dioxide, which typically gets the bulk of global warming charges leveled against it, I'm not sure what lower CO levels prove in that regard. But clearly, if the oceans are warming, whether from within the earth or from without, affecting earth temperatures and weather, we need to concentrate on how to respond, not ignore what is a problem.

After all, the effects of catastrophic events of nature: floods, super storms, extreme temperatures, fires are not confined to political and ideological rhetoric and posturing. Human survival is on the line, not elections or party allegiance, or who is favored by the gods. The climate on Capitol Hill needs to reflect authentic awareness, which sees and acts, rather than blinds and distracts. We're simply out of time for stupidity. We must embrace what is and respond intelligently – not with slogans but common sense, thoughtful appraisal and action.

Carl