The heat goes on: After a blitz by climate change skeptics, hard science vindicates their targets

Of late U.S. public opinion has turned very chilly for the vast majority of the world's climate scientists whose data demonstrates that human-generated emissions are heating the globe with potentially catastrophic results. Thanks to a confluence of events, some significant and others bogus, polls show Americans are increasingly confused about the reality of global warming.

After the election of President Barack Obama, the expectation was that the U.S. government would end the foot dragging of the George W. Bush administration and aggressively move to reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. While the Environmental Protection Agency did classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant and the House of Representatives passed an ambitious energy bill with cap-and-trade measures to reduce emissions, the bipartisan version in the Senate sponsored by John Kerry, D-Mass, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., faces tough sledding.

The Copenhagen climate summit that was supposed to design a global climate treaty to succeed Kyoto instead produced little more than platitudes about future action. The worldwide economic recession made the costs of combating global warming less acceptable to both industrialized nations and their developing counterparts.

In the midst of that gloomy outlook came a pair of highly publicized incidents that were used to cast doubt on the validity of climate change theory.

First, hackers raided the computer system at the climate research unit of Britain's East Anglia University and published thousands of scientists' private e-mails. Global warming skeptics portrayed the communications as proof that devious researchers were cooking data to support a global warming hoax. That charge was decisively rejected by a British government commission that examined the e-mails. Although it faulted the scientists for petty and sometimes vindictive comments about their detractors, the commission found no grounds to challenge the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity.

In a second flap, global warming disbelievers seized on a single misstated claim in a 900-page report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers will melt by the year 2035 as proof the massive body of science authenticating global warming was suspect. Although the evidence of retreating glaciers around the world is incontrovertible, a single error on a timeline was used to cast doubt on the U.N. panel's work. is cooling rather than heating up. Brushed aside was the fact that globally 2009 was the second warmest ever recorded, and the past decade was the warmest ever measured by man. An analysis compiled by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies projects that this year may be the hottest yet.

As writer Elizabeth Kolbert points out in the current issue of the New Yorker, “The message from scientists at this point couldn't be clearer: the world's emissions trajectory is extremely dangerous. Goofball weathermen, Climategate, conspiracy theories — these are all a distraction from what's really happening.”

For those of us living in hurricane-vulnerable areas, keep in mind this ominous measurement: Sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic main development area for tropical storms last month were the warmest ever recorded for March, already reaching levels typical of late June. The conjunction of several climate patterns combined with ongoing overall warming of the world's oceans is thought to be the cause.

Despite all the spinning and hot air, the science is solid and global warming is a real, deadly serious concern. It's time to deal with it.