Will 2009 Change Global Warming Minds?

Everywhere I look this fall, there is cooler weather than in years past. All of this cold weather is falling on the heals of one of the mildest hurricane seasons in modern day history. So, the question is - will the winter of 2009 change the minds of people who believe that Global Warming is real? My guess is no, but for middle of the road thinkers like myself who are torn between the mainly political debate between extremist like Rush Limbaugh and Al Gore - all this cooler than normal weather does make some of us wonder, if the whole Global Warming threat was ever real in the first place.

I am a proud American that thinks about matters of science in my own way. That said, I have carefully listened to Global Warming proponents over the past decade or so and I have equally listened to the group of people that the mainstream media has labeled as Global Warming deniers. For me, a moderate to conservative thinking American - the whole Global Warming movement has always reminded me of some liberal conspiracy that was cooked up in a basement somewhere to change the American way of life from a capitalistic system to a more government controlled liberal nation. The actions of Al Gore and many of his crony's have further blurred the reality of Global Warming as he travels around the world preaching the "gloom and doom" of carbon emission on a private jet.

Then there are the ultra-conservative voices of people like Rush Limbaugh that make me just as mad as they claim it is more than OK to just keep polluting this Earth until the end of time. Unfortunately, the United States of America has morphed into too many extreme liberals and conservatives that believe their narrow view of the world is the only way to true righteousness. To this date, I have never heard a satisfactory answer to the most basic questions of whether man made Global Warming is real or not. That question is, if it is a proven fact that the Earth was once warmer than it is today and at that period of time there were no man made carbon emissions - then how are we to know that man is causing the current warming trend on Earth?

Like most other Americans, I am 100% in favor of all us cleaning up our act so we leave this Earth cleaner than when we entered it. However, there is a big difference between mankind desiring to clean up it's own act because it is the right thing to do and a bunch of liberal politicians and scientist claiming that we will all die if we don't do it faster. Right now it appears that 2009 will be the mildest hurricane season in decades in the United States and there is better than a 50/50 chance that the winter of 2009 will be one of the coldest we have witnessed in years. In the end, 2009 might go down in history as the year when thinking people say - "enough of this Global Warming propaganda" and started living and enjoying this world that God has given us - without the guilt that Global Warming proponents have tried to instill in us for decades.