Reader feedback: Was heat wave an anamoly or evidence of global warming?

Each week we select a news story, Letter to the Editor, column or editorial that's generated a lot of feedback at PostBulletin.com and reprint some of those comments on this page. This week's topic is a July 4 column by Eugene Robinson, who argues that the recent heat wave and violent storms are just the latest evidence that global warming is a real and growing threat to the planet.

Below are some of the comments we received.

"The truth is the temperatures have been warmer in the past. A storm of the intensity that hit D.C. occurs once every four years in that area, more often here in Minnesota. The problems become worse when several years go by without a storm, which allows older, weaker trees to survive and increase the tree damage when a storm finally does hit. These are all well-known meteorological facts that Eugene apparently chooses to ignore  in order to continue to push the global warming nonsense. ... Ever notice how these hypocrites always tell us that cold spells are just weather, but hot spells are climate change? The sad thing is our local libbie fall for it every time."

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"Yawn. Eugene's air conditioning must not be working so well."

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"Global warming has been considered an accepted fact by every National Science Foundation in the entire world. ... Yes, there has been warm weather before.Yes there have been bad storms before. But the number of storms has been increasing. The intensity of storms has been increasing.

Climate change is real. And it is serious."

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"Weather patterns change all the time. We've had periods of global cooling and global warming, long before the ideologues started up fiascoes like ethanol subsidies, the Chevy Volt, and Solyandra. The strange thing about the ridiculousness that goes on with all of this (on both sides) is that even if it is real — even if it is somehow man made — China is pumping out more carbon than anybody else. So please, spare us the blathering and go to China and convince them."

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"Try typing in 'global cooling' and see what they were saying about the climate in the 70's. I don't thing they have a clue as to what the planet is doing."

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"Gee. Did that. 'Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation. This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community.'"

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"At one point the consensus among scientists was that the earth was flat, blood letting was medicine, and phrenology was a justification for liberal elitism. Imagine that."

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"Denial or delusional? The far right are both. When even they can no longer deny warming, they will likely claim some absurdity like 'It's a punishment from god for gay marriage.' This is what comes with idealizations; in this case idealization of American culture. Inevitably, failure occurs and that failure is too much to accept.

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"Funny how righties jump up and down with glee when there's a stretch of cold weather in the winter months, claiming THAT as some kind of proof that global warming is a myth. But not a peep when the tables are turned and we're in the middle of a hot spell for weeks on end. Nope. They've got their talking points and don't want to be bothered with the facts."

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"Though it's largely a waste of time arguing with science-deniers, let's repeat that no one to the left of Rush Limbaugh is claiming they have all the answers relative to global warming/climate-change, but at least they're open to the questions that everyone should be asking."

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"Thank you, Eugene, for a clear and succinct article on this matter. It's so unfortunate that people fail to realize that climate change is a valid threat until it effects their own backyard. The time to start acting on this was over 30 years ago."

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"Total nonsense. How many times have we heard 'the science is settled,' starting with Al Gore and repeated hundreds of times?"

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"Yep, it's darn hot out there. It was hot in the summers like this in the 1930s also. I am thankful that we still have coal-burning electric plants that provide the electricity to run our air conditioning. Lets return to this topic next January."

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"Yep. The 1930's had some horrible weather. Especially '34 and '36. Of course the Dust Bowl years were very clearly caused by Human Ecological Destruction. We changed our farming methods. Planted some trees. And it cleared up. Mitigation is a solution. Ignoring it is not."