According to NOAA data, all time Antarctic sea ice extent record was set on Sept 22nd, 2012

Curious.
I have a scientific background, but I am not a climatologist. I got involved with WUWT a few years ago because I had read that mankind was responsible for increasing global temperatures due to increasing CO2 emissions. The CO2 acts like a greenhouse preventing heat from radiating back into space so we end up cooking ourselves. Then the “Runaway Greenhouse Effect” was trumpeted where temperatures rise even more sharply causing carbonate rocks to break down and put even more CO2 into the atmosphere. Then CO2 dissoved in water on the Earth comes out of solution (in general cold liquids can hold more gases in solution than hotter liquids, it is the opposite for solids) so more CO2 enters the atmosphere. At this point, so we were told, the effect is irreversible, it becomes a positive feedback, which in science is always destructive. We would eventually have a planet that is lifeless, with temperatures of several hundred degrees, just like Venus.
I was horrified, but then having an enquiring mind (like yours) I did some reading and found the following:
1) Venus has an atmosphere consisting mainly of CO2 and a surface temperature which averages 462 celsius. BUT it’s atmosphere is 90 times denser than ours (about the same pressure as exists in our oceans at a depth of a 7/10ths of a mile!
Common sense tells me that there is not that much CO2 on our planet, nor if we burned all the fossil fuels, forests and anything else combustible is there ever likely to be. The warmists quietly dropped the Venus analogy a few years ago when they realised it was making them sound ridiculous.
2) The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.038%, in other words 99.962% is not CO2. How can increasing that by let us say 100% (note the figures here, this seems like a massive increase) affect the climate? CO2 is now 0.076%, but 99.924% of the atmosphere is not CO2. Common sense tells me that climate is not going to change as a result of this, imagine a greenhouse with 10,000 panes of glass, all removed,bar 4, you add another 4. Is that going to affect the temerature in the greenhouse? I don’t think so.
3) The percentage of CO2 in prehistory was a lot higher in the past and a lot lower too but the world did not end.
4) The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere even at these tiny percentages, the more the plants love it. They grow faster, so we have bigger crop yields and they take the CO2 out of the atmosphere (this is never mentioned by the doom mongers).
5) There is a lot of money given to researchers into AGW. If AGW is not happening this money dries up, they lose their jobs.
6) Likewise with governments and green taxes, they need to make us feel bad about taking flights and running our cars, so we pay a penance in higher taxes to make us feel better. Personally it makes me feel worse.
7) If goverments and scientists really believe that AGW is happening why are we not building thorium reactors (much safer than uranium). Why is research into fusion reactors not given a huge priority? Because everyone knows it is rubbish and they can give the impression that something is being done by building windmills everywhere to generate electricity from the wind. Because this electricity cannot be stored, backup power stations need to be running to put power into the national grid when there is no wind or too much that prevent thes turbines working. Windmills are cheap because the consumer is paying for them.
8) Anyone who calls other people “deniers” and wants laws passed to make it illegal to question AGW, must have a screw loose. This smacks of fanaticism and has no place in science.
9) Various e-mails, sites for weather stations etc make me doubt any claims of warming, hockey sticks, that the medieval warm period did not exist and all the doom mongering.
10) Electric cars are not environmentally friendly, far from it. Their batteries contain substances that are highly toxic and difficult to dispose of. If the wind is blowing or the sun is shining then they can be charged, cheaply, but more often than not they use power from a fossil fuel power station. Oh, and in winter, the heat byproduct from an internal combustion engine keeps the car warm and windows free of condensation. An electric car will have it’s power drained substantialy by the need to use battery power to achieve the same.
Converting chemical energy (coal or gas) to heat energy, to mechanical energy (steam turbine) to electrical energy (losses in power cables are huge) to charge a battery up and then convert the electrical energy to mechanical energy to propel the car is not as efficient as an internal combustion engine. Chemical energy (petrol) to heat energy to mechanical energy! But electric cars are being sold as better alternatives to petrol/diesel cars.
11) When scientists realise their claims ar not coming true they try to bolster their position with more outlandish claims. We have been treated to some absolute corkers on WUWT.Alien invasion and deaf fish are just two of them
All of the above have made me very suspicious of the claims and motivation of climate scientists and governments. Anthony and the moderators do a great job in informing people about scientific reality, unfortunately mainstream challenge to AGW is not as forthcoming as it should be due to the one factor that has always held mankind back; Apathy!
Best of luck with WUWT in the future, Curious, and I hope my thoughts and opinions have been of some help.