I can’t locate the column online, so I will give you an excerpt from Accuweather.com’s Joe Bastardi, whose commentary on global warming appeared in Sunday’s Durham Herald-Sun:

“Nothing that is happening today is new or different. I have yet to have a global warming “true believer” tell me why over the past hundreds and thousands of years, before any significant or even detectable human influence, there were periods where carbon dioxide and temperature levels were well above those of recent experience. There are also places in our northern plains that have been covered with glaciers at one time and tropical rain forest at others, all without man’s influence. There is no reason to think that this can’t happen again no matter what we do. Anyone with a true understanding of climate history knows that the relatiavely small changes experienced over the last 100 years could easily be ‘natural.'”

We can only hope that more scientists like Bastardi, who is a meteorologist and chief long range and hurricane forecaster for accuweather.com., will join this discussion. Learn more about North Carolina and global warming here.