It’s been an abnormally warm winter this year, not just in Minnesota, but across almost all of the United States. Of course, that’s just one year’s weather. However, the long-term climate appears to have warmed as well. Climate data show that there hasn’t been an abnormally cold winter in a very long time.

What’s more, the scientific evidence that human beings are to blame for global warming has continued to grow in size and scope. A new study of the relationship of energy output from the sun to atmospheric absorption of energy shows that the sun cannot be to blame for global warming, as some pollution industry advocates suggest. Even a scientific review funded by the Republican Koch brothers, with the purpose of debunking the anthropogenic hypothesis of global warming, determined that the anthropogenic hypothesis is valid, and that there has not been any global scientific conspiracy to distort scientific data in order to create the false appearance of a global warming crisis.

Scientific research has delivered a thoroughly substantiated, double-triple-quadruple checked, explanation for the reality of global warming: Human activities are to blame for it. The facts behind this analysis apply in Minnesota as much as anywhere else on Earth.

Yet, the current political platform of the Minnesota Republican Party pretends that these facts simply don’t exist. The Minnesota GOP platform currently includes the following statement: “We oppose policies, legislation and mandates that are based on the theory that humans are responsible for global climate change including the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming.” Minnesota Republicans seem to be saying that they don’t care what scientific information is available. They just don’t want to deal with the issue.

Today, the Minnesota Republicans has the opportunity to correct this irresponsible position of willful ignorance and inaction. In local meetings across Minnesota, Republican voters can do much more than just vote for the Republican presidential candidate of their choice. Voters in local caucuses will also have the power to propose changes to the political platform of the Minnesota Republican Party.

In Rochester, in St. Paul, in Duluth, in Grand Forks… somewhere in Minnesota, one decent Republican voter can propose today that the GOP in Minnesota stop its opposition to solutions to the immense and growing problem of climate change. That voter’s caucus can then do the right thing, and approve that platform change for consideration by the statewide Republican Party.

Will that voter step forward today? Will the Minnesota Republican Party step forward and deal with reality?

This year, it’s different for me. This winter, the unseasonably warm weather has me feeling out of place. At the same time, I’m watching America’s political landscape continue its slide toward the Right, though I had for years hoped a restoration of balance could take place after George W. Bush left office.

In short, I’m feeling exhausted. Yet, the idea of Groundhog Day this year provokes within me some hope for renewal of energy. Upon reflection, it occurs to me that this is what the Groundhog Day celebration has always been about.

Punxsatawney Phil is a gimmick who stands at the mouth of a burrow that runs deep. The groundhog represents a re-emergence of life into a world that had been in darkness and death, a symbol of rebirth out of the womb of the Earth quite similar to, if more hairy than, Persephone, the stolen bride who returns to us the warmth of her youth for a short time.

The Christian holiday of Candlemas held about this time is a borrowing from the Celtic holiday of Imbolc, honoring the goddess Brigid, who foretold the weather of the weeks to come by watching the behavior of a snake that emerged from the ground at the base of a sacred tree. This mythological basis for the holiday was lost only after St. Patrick waged his campaign against the snakes.

Whatever animal is seen to come out of that hole, be it reptile or rodent, has something of the cthonic character of mystery that is found in the world’s most ancient surviving art, in the ritual caves of stone age Europe.

Nobody really knows what the future will be like, shadowy or sunny, of course. In hazarding a guess about the storms to come, however, we’re engaged in a sort of reflection on the cold and hard times we’ve just been through.

For what it’s worth, the first flowers of spring emerged here yesterday. The bright yellow of winter aconite is in bloom a full month and a half ahead of its usual schedule this year.

This year’s Groundhog Day ritual has become something of a joke, as we all know that winter has not yet obtained a solid grasp on us, even in the far north. Punxsatawney Phil may say that there are six more weeks of winter, but that could only be true if we had six weeks of winter already, and though the astronomers may tell us that winter has been here regardless of the warmth, the rest of us know better.

From now on, Groundhog Day should become more to us than just a quaint tradition of weather divination. Groundhog Day, after all, is a day that recognizes a warmer future. What better holiday could there be, then, to dedicate ourselves to a renewal of activism to the cause of contending against the global warming we have created as a result of our desire to tame the rhythms of nature, rather than observe them?

As if to provide an accent to the urgency of the scientists’ message, the National Snow and Ice Data Center released data showing that in late January, the surface area of the Arctic Ocean entered into a record breaking low for wintertime. The extent of ice now on the Arctic Ocean has been, for many days now, below even the levels from the 2007 to 2008 winter season, the year when remarkably low levels of Arctic ice grabbed international attention.

Over the last several weeks, we’ve been taking note of the highly unusual warm winter weather in places like Council Bluffs, Iowa, northern Michigan and Upstate New York. It’s been easy to imagine, however, that though we are experiencing warm weather down in the lower 48 states, the Arctic remains unchanged, literally frozen.

The new measurements from the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that’s not the case – that even in the land of polar bears and walrus, the winter is just not as cold as it used to be. This year’s ice extent is more than two standard deviations below the historical norm.

I grew up in the Northeast, near the Great Lakes, so I know what it is to get a lot of snow. I thought I knew what it was to be cold, too, but I had never, until I moved to Iowa, experienced a truly extreme chill. I still remember the afternoon in late December when the temperature got up to minus 17, and I went outside in short sleeves because it felt so warm by comparison to the minus 30 it had been for the previous week.

That’s not the kind of winter Iowa is seeing this year. This afternoon in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the temperature almost reached 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Tomorrow, the weather will be the same.

As a result, the Winterfest Ice Fishing Derby that has been held every year in Council Bluffs has been canceled. For an ice fishing derby, after all, you need ice. As a consolation, they’re still going to hold a raffle, in which you can win a warm knit cap… but then, who needs a warm knit cap when it’s 60 degrees outside?

I’d say that this weather is unusual, except that this kind of winter warmth is becoming more common. It might be more accurate to call the weather unnatural.

For Iowans who remember what winter used to be like, and for Iowans who are concerned about the extreme imbalance that has been created in the climate, there’s this bumper sticker: Iowa Wants Action to Stop Global Warming… because the heartland is becoming the heatland.

Still, Barack Obama refused to keep his promise. There still are no solar panels on the White House, even though global warming continues, with a record-breaking winter of unusual warmth setting the stage for drought and wildfires across the southern half of the United States.

Why won’t President Obama keep this simple promise to install solar panels? It could have something to do with the position he’s in, wedged in the pocket of the oil industry. Obama just opened up more of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling, though no new safety protections to prevent another oil spill disaster have been enacted by Congress.

Now, 350.org points out that while Barack Obama has stonewalled against solar power on the White House, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, a country that makes most of its money from oil, has installed solar panels on the roof of his court.

If a crown prince can do it, why can’t we install solar panels on our national buildings here in the USA?

The reader wrote to us, “Please notice that NASA data shows that every planet in the solar system is experiencing similar warming over the same period. It seems hard to make a case that terrestrial activity can be responsible for such widespread results. Further study is clearly needed to establish a tentative hypothesis regarding causality.”

Americans who have been paying attention to the science of climate change for more than a few weeks are aware that “further study” has been going on for an entire generation, since before Ronald Reagan advised that “further study” was called for before action could be taken. In the meanwhile, temperatures have kept on rising, and the impact of global warming has become more apparent every year. A mountain of further studies on the human contribution to global warming has accumulated.

Recently, another study supporting the anthropogenic hypothesis of global warming was published in the peer reviewed journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The study, led by James Hansen, found that, throughout a period of unusually low solar activity, resulting in diminished energy from the sun reaching planet Earth, the Earth’s atmosphere continued to increase the amount of energy that it absorbed. These findings indicate that the Earth is becoming more efficient at absorbing energy from the sun, and refute the notion that the unusual warmth we are now experiencing can be explained by increased solar activity.

It’s also important to note that there is no peer-reviewed scientific study that indicates that, as our reader claimed, all the planets in the Solar System are warming. Assertions of such interplanetary warming trends are completely without foundation in fact. The idea of Solar System warming is, to use a word that Cold Earthers like to use, a hoax.

It’s not the most serious consequence of global warming, but it is significant. Global warming is melting away a snow-based regional culture in the northeast. In Upstate New York especially, where we normally receive some of the most snow of anyplace in the country, the change is being felt especially strongly.

Today, it felt like a nice afternoon for April. This afternoon, the temperatures are in the 60s, Fahrenheit. We haven’t yet received even a foot of snow yet – total. Most of our precipitation this winter has been rain.

Cold blasts have come, but they’ve been brief. I’ve shoveled the driveway just twice, and didn’t really need to do it either time.

It would be a problem with weather, if this was just an unusually strong January thaw, but it’s not isolated. We’ve had unusually warm winters for years now, and this winter, the warmth is especially remarkable. It’s a long-term trend, and that makes it an issue of climate.

Climate change is the most serious problem we face. Yet, Obama won’t even try to do anything about it.

That’s not cause to give up hope, however. There is another presidential candidate environmentalists can consider, one who won’t capitulate to the Republican ideology. Her name is Dr. Jill Stein.

In her own State of the Union Address, Stein warned that delay in confronting the root causes of global warming creates a national security risk. “At the recent UN climate conference in South Africa, the Obama administration worked to delay international agreements on carbon emissions until 2020,” she pointed out. “This delay will allow critical climate tipping points to be passed that will accelerate warming to the point it cannot be controlled. As renown NASA scientist James Hanson puts it, delaying action to aggressively lower carbon would mean game over for the climate and therefore for civilization as we know it.”

Yesterday, Stein repeated the warning, saying, “We’re running the campaign now because if you follow the science there we don’t have four years to wait. I mean, we don’t. We really have to start tackling this now. It’s really important for the climate and it’s time that people put their politics where their values and science argue they ought to be. I think Obama supporters are really having a rude awakening right now.”

Barack Obama is not going to promote the environmental policies that we desperately need right now. Instead, Obama is helping the oil industry begin yet more offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Voting Democrat won’t do. Of course, the Republicans are not a reasonable alternative. So, in 2012, the responsible vote is a Green vote. Of all the Green presidential candidates, the most effective, the most responsible, and the most clearly planned is Jill Stein.

If you truly believe in protecting the natural environment upon which our prosperity and security are founded, then vote Jill Stein for President in 2012.

Some recent events fit within the warming trend. In the Upstate New York mountain town of Lake George, many events in the annual winter carnival have had to be canceled this year because the weather hasn’t been very wintry. Many of the carnival’s activities are supposed to take place on the thick ice of the lake from which the town takes its name. The lake has not frozen this year, however. Ice for the carnival has had to be shipped from far away.

Down in Florida, normally wet swamps have dried out because of changes in weather patterns, and have begun to burn, sending thick clouds of smoke over Interstate 75. Yesterday, that smoke caused several collisions on the highway, killing ten people.

Whether these particular incidents are due to global warming is impossible to say. What they do show, however, is that, despite what the Wall Street Journal editorial board would like us to believe, the consequences of global warming are serious – both in terms of the normal rhythm of life in local communities and in terms of human lives.

This introductory line from an Australian Broadcasting Corporation article contains one core piece of information that’s essential to understand the latest Cold Earther effort to convince people that there is no urgent need to address global warming: It was published in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal.

It was not published in a scientific journal. It was not subjected to review by outside scientists. The only thing that qualified the editorial to be published was an approval by the editors of a corporate-aligned newspaper that is operated by right wing publisher Rupert Murdoch.

The Wall Street Journal opinion piece was designed to gain attention because it was designed by “16 scientists”. Once a person starts to look into the qualifications of these sixteen signers, the article begins to look less impressive.

For example, one of the signers, Harrison Schmitt, is indeed a scientist, but he’s a geologist, not a specialist in a climate-related field. Schmitt has never published any peer reviewed articles in any scientific journal on the subject of climate change.

In spite of his lack of expertise on the subject, Schmitt has been very politically active for years in anti-environmental circles. Schmitt is the former chairman and president of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, which advocates against action to protect the environment, and is still active with the Annapolis Center as chairman emeritus. The Annapolis Center has accepted nearly a million dollars in from ExxonMobil.

Schmitt has also been a keynote speaker at the Heartland Institute, a political organization that has taken tens of millions of dollars from the oil industry.

Schmitt promotes the conspiracy theory that environmentalism is really just Communism in disguise, having declared, “I think the whole trend really began with the fall of the Soviet Union. Because the great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely Communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement.”

Another signer, Jan Breslow, is a scientist, but he runs a lab that studies hardening of the arteries, not climate. Does Breslow have some data showing that we can understand global climate by examining blood vessels? If so, he has yet to release it.

Michael Kelly specializes in the electronic structure of metals and semiconductors, as well as the development of microwave technology. These fields are not related to climate science.

James McGrath is a chemist who studies polymers to help in the development of adhesives. That sounds like useful work, but it’s not at all related to global warming.

Another one of the “16 scientists”, Burt Rutan is not a scientist at all. He’s an engineer who admits that, on the subject of climate change, “I have a clear bias. My bias is based on fear of government expansion.”

I don’t know these people, and I don’t mean to insult their general intelligence, or professional accomplishments. What I am trying to point out is that they don’t have qualifications in the area of science in which they are being quoted as scientists.

If the sixteen signers wanted to make a significant contribution to our understanding of global warming, or climate more generally, they could have done an analysis of scientific data and submitted a paper for peer review in a scientific journal. The fact that they did not, but chose to write a letter to the editor in a newspaper that is politically aligned with Wall Street’s anti-regulation slant, is telling.

There’s nothing wrong with publications that have a political slant. America is the better for them. The American people, however, should be wise enough not to regard such publications as reasonable primary sources on scientific research.

If you want a better understanding of what’s happening with global warming, look at peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals. Overwhelmingly, these papers indicate that global warming (along with other aspects of climate change) is taking place, is caused primarily by human activities, and is resulting in significant harm to economies around the world.