A meterologist gave a talk to my local electronics engineering society in fall of 2012. We had had over a year of way above normal temperatures in Wisconsin. I asked her is this global warming. She said you couldn't know b/c global warming is about trends over decades. It's hard to look at a few years' data and say. She said there had been similar warm periods for a year or two in WI's history. She said "weather is not climate".

After her trip, the warm period continued, and we had a mild winter. The summer, though, was cool, and this winter has been very cold. So if I were an idiot, I would have concluded in a year ago we were in major warming. Today I would conclude we're in an unbelievable cooling period. You can't go by one region and one time.

I'm not sure what the solution to climate change will be, but people's capacity for wishful thinking is astounding.