The "global warming" story took a weird turn this weekend:

"The Chinese icebreaker which helped transport passengers away from a stranded Antarctic ship has itself become stuck in ice."

Obviously, we want everybody safe and back in a warm ship, even if it means that we have to leave 'carbon footprints" and pick them up in a helicopter that burns fossil fuel.

There are a couple of lessons here for those watching from afar and a bit skeptical about this new religion of "global warming":

1) Mother Nature likes her ice in the earth's poles.  She likes frozen tundra especially in places like the North and South Pole.  Don't go around claiming that the ice mountains are melting because Mother Nature will get back at you.

2) We have good reasons to be skeptical as The Oklahoman points out;

"In recent years, global warming believers have typically described every major weather event -- whether drought, ice storm, tornado, or hurricane -- as both "unprecedented" and an outcome of man-made climate change. Yet John R. Christy, distinguished professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, warned lawmakers such conclusions are largely unsupported, with many claims based on as little as 50 years of data instead of centuries.    

Where long-term data is available, it often undermines portrayals of recent weather events as unnaturally extreme. Christy noted "our nation experienced droughts in the 12th century, the so-called megadroughts, which were much worse than any we've seen in the past century."  

A 500-year history of moisture in the upper Colorado River basin actually "indicates the past century was quite moist" compared to other centuries. From 3,000 to 1,500 years ago, Christy noted, the Great Plains were so dry "a significant parabolic sand dune ecosystem developed," particularly in western Nebraska and northeastern Colorado.  

"In other words, parts of the Great Plains resembled a desert," Christy said. Similar drought reoccurred during Medieval times (900-1300 AD) before the "climate moistened and cooled beginning around 1300 AD to support the shortgrass prairie seen today ..."  

In the Antarctic, a reconstruction of 308 years of temperature variations (from 1702-2009) using stable isotopes found a recent warming trend, but also showed "this warming trend is not unique."

More dramatic warming and cooling trends occurred in the mid-19th and 18th centuries."

So let's have a thoughtful discussion about climate change!  

P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.