Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yup, and hard to measure to boot in a global sense.  Think of all the ocean area with no data.  Ideally, one would have reliable measuring devices every 100 km or so, or something, making a grid.  The satellite data are not considered reliable, and in any event would only cover 50 years or so.  How did "we" measure global T in 1930?

So we fall back on notional feelings, memories, recollections, etc.  This is a reason it's pretty easy to be a "Denier".  And as noted, that position usually/nearly always reflects one's politics more than ones dispassionate assessment.

Can going from 280 ppm to 420 ppm really make much difference?  Well, even if it does, it's not much difference, in terms of one's own climate experiences.

Maui burned.
We have to do something!!!

Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

Do we need more forest fires?

I think all the "alarmism" gets in the way of having any rational discussion of the topic, not that it would help much anyway.  We're going to throw money at it and then wonder why it didn't help.

Maui burned.
We have to do something!!!

Hawaii could have done something but chose not to. Now, predicably, the power companies are being blamed.

Yeah, in some ways, it would be "better" if we had a string of weather catastrophes.  In a general sense, human beings are fairly selfish.  We don't really take action unless something personally affects us.  While the data indicates things are getting hotter, it is not in a way that can really be measured by anecdotal recollections.  We only remember the extremes that stand out to us because those affected us personally ("I remember the summer of '83 being so hot.....").

If a catastrophe happened like what happens in some of those disaster movies, it would be easy for us to say, "Yup, this is a problem, and it's big enough we need to do something about it."  Since we can't really "feel" the difference because it has stretched over decades, we can't mobilize enough people to change accordingly.

One thing I noticed a few years ago that I am curious about is fall foliage.  Two years ago, the leaves didn't start to turn until much later than usual (at least, here in central Ohio).  When they did turn, they didn't start to fall until the first week of November or later.  Last year was closer to normal (mid-October), but this is something I am going to pay attention to a bit more this year to see if two years ago was just a one-off or whether there is a trend.  I seem to recall that when I was younger, the leaves were always on the ground by mid-October (anyone else remember those Hefty garbage bags that were bright orange with a jack-o-lantern face that you could use as a cheap Halloween decoration when you filled it up with yard leaves?  I don't think I've seen those in a long while now and I'm wondering if it is because the leaves aren't falling as early as they used to).  My understanding is that there are several factors that can go into that besides temperature (rainfall, number of hours of daylight, etc.), but just something to keep an eye on, you know, from an anecdotal standpoint.....

To answer the question posed in the thread, I voted the 2nd answer. Yeah it seems warmer, but not all that much. 

This summer has been one of the mildest summers that I can remember. We have had plenty of rain and temps are generally in the high 70's to low 80's. We have only had the AC on for about 9 or 10 days this summer when usually it would run from early July until sometime in September. I really notice this in my electric bills. 

Now, I don't see this as evidence of CC one way or the other, just an observation. I do believe that the Climate of the Earth is changing, just as it has done since the Earth had a climate. I just don't buy into the notion that it is being driven by humans. That is not to say that we shouldn't be good stewards of our environment and do what we can WITHIN REASON to keep the Earth as pristine as possible. 

But we also have to balance the needs of humans to live comfortably and prosper allowing for innovation that will allow future generations to carry on and hopefully do better with each successive generation. The notion that we can simply give up fossil fuels in favor of green energy now is simply a pipe dream. The technology to effectively eliminate FF's and replace them with green energy is simply not there and would result in millions of people starving/freezing to death.