Why Does It Freeze?

Way long ago on a warm summer day when I was about 5 or 6, I was playing at a friends house. Sometime around the middle of the afternoon Benny's mom came out of the house with a contraption. She said "We're going to make some ice cream." Well, I was highly skeptical. I figured "making ice cream" was pretty much like "making potatoes", or "making milk". I was one of those who thought food came from the market. Anyway, we (she) poured some stuff into the middle part of this Ice Cream Maker,

and put ice and rock salt in the surrounding bucket. And told us to start cranking the handle. After what seemed like a long time (but probably wasn't) and a lot of work (and probably was), the cranking got difficult. We stopped; took the thing apart; opened the cannister in the middle, where we'd poured the cream, sugar, and things I don't have any idea about, and Voila'! Ice cream! Just as advertised. How? On a warm day, with the two of us sweating over the crank, and the ice melting; How? How did the liquid in the cannister freeze?

At last, the point - If you can't figure out how this happened, you shouldn't be allowed to talk about Global Warming. The simple answer is: heat transfer. You could look it up, to quote the late great Casey Stengel.
Now Steven Milloy, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, says HERE, global warming claims are contradicted by the fact that at one point on the Earth the temperature indicates we are making ice cream.

OOPS: I mean, rather, that thermometers aren't indicating a temperature increase in that locale. Therefore, the heat content of the system is not increasing! An incredible and totally unbelievable argument. Such illogic is stunning in its scope! There are still a number of people who, like Mr. Milloy, are finding local cold spots that they can point to in order to support a claim that the energy (heat content) of the Ice Cream Maker - I mean the Earth - is not increasing. You would suppose that any sensible person would be embarrassed to make such a fool of himself, and in public too! I suspect Mr. Coal and Mr. Petroleum are spending a lot of money to ease the embarrassment of these people.

Of course it's simple logic that the Earth is always either warming or cooling, so it's about 50/50 that at any given time we are in a warming part of the cycle (epicycle, or epiepicycle, etc.). The science regarding the Greenhouse Effect is simple, well understood, and clear. It's been known for decades. Without the Greenhouse Effect, the Earth would be uninhabitable by creatures such as ourselves. It's also been known, since the '50's anyway, that the release of Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and other greenhouse gases by humans increases the atmospheric concentration of these gases, magnifying the effect. Thus, the warming/cooling cycles are shifted toward increased warming. Can it get any simpler than that?

What seems toxic to me about the debate over this is that there are some who deny that warming is occuring, others who deny it could be a problem, and still others who say we really shouldn't pay any attention to the situation unless and until we are absolutely certain that there will be negative effects! OH!, I'll think about it tomorrow!, said Scarlett.
Now NOAA says that we are setting yet another record HERE.
I realize NOAA is a part of the US government, and therefore not to be trusted (heck, George W. Bush says not to trust a buncha bureaucrats), but I personally will take what the scientists there, using a lot of data, over what an "adjunct scholar" at a near-fanatical reactionary Cato Institute says, using his select subset of thermometers.

Once upon a time, the United States Government (and some local governments also) was preeminent in taking steps to reduce pollution, reduce impacts of human actvites on the environment, and generally led efforts to clean up and improve the health of the world environment. What Happened? Why is the government in a state of paralysis here? How do people (like the President) get away with claiming that reducing human impact on the Earth is A Bad Thing for the economy? This is belied by past experience; in general, reducing the release of industrial waste products has always been an economic boost, as well as improving the health of the population and the country (and the world) generally. I think we lost our compass.