Polar ice the past couple of years both in the Arctic and Antarctic are increasing.
Can you show me the satellite photos that demonstrate this? Because all the actual data that I can find (and I can find a LOT) is clearly to the contrary.
Do you know what an average is? On average (i.e, after you mathematically account for extremes), the planet overall is warming. When we add the various temperatures all over the world and divide by the surface area of the earth and time, the average is higher than it was decades ago. Your snowstorm is mathematically canceled out by heat waves in Asia and Europe over the summer. Sum 100 evenly distributed temperature readings daily for 365 days, divide by (510,072,000 km^2 x 365), and graph the result over the past howevermany years you like. You can pick an even distribution over the earth simply by using longitude/latitude lines and finding the nearest towns or islands, then searching the
NOAA database for that day's results. Use Excel's Chart Wizard on the XY setting to graph your numbers and "add trendline" to find out whether the trend is linear or exponential.
Did you ever take physics in college? Heat is a form of energy. As we add heat to the planet, which is mostly water, the water evaporates. When it evaporates, it makes clouds that turn into storms. Since the atmosphere is in layers, as the water condenses back into droplets, whether it will be rain or snow depends on the temperature of the layers it falls through, not the temperature of the water surface that originally evaporated. Clouds can travel pretty far, transporting an awful lot of water before they condense back into precipitation. They can definitely go somewhere that has a layer of colder air at low altitudes.
With respect to money:
The R&D budget of Exxon-Mobil in 2007 was $814 million (per
their own shareholders report. The average pay of an Exxon-Mobil senior scientist is about $100,000/year (per
Payscale.com). Exxon-Mobil supplies all equipment, travel costs, corporate expense account for little things, protective clothing as needed.
The National Science Foundation budget for grant proposals on climate change in 2007 was $205.25 million (source:
NSF budget request to Congress) . The average major grant award in geology is about
$150,000/year , which pays for equipment (satellites, sampling equipment, chemical analysis machines, etc.) and a couple of technicians or grad students to help with the research over three years. Academic scientists buy a lot of their protective clothing and travel expenses out of pocket; those are not usually included in the grant. The university takes a percentage of the grant money (usually 30-40%) for "administration." The scientist in charge of the grant gets perhaps $20,000/year of that money. Most of 'em have no more than three grants, only one of them major. The minor ones are more like $60,000 over three years, and tend to have more restrictions on what they can be used for.
Corporate scientists make about 2-3X what academic scientists do. I should know, I work for Big Pharma! Believe me, my previous academic advisors are green with envy at my paycheck and my working conditions. If geologists were really just following the money, they'd ALL be working for Exxon-Mobil and BP! Especially considering that right now there are far fewer jobs available at universities, but the oil companies are still hiring. If you had a choice between a job paying maybe $60-70,000/year, where you had to do four actual jobs (1. research 2. grant applications and administration 3. teach 4. train students and postdocs), vs. a job that paid $100,000/year and you only had one job to do (research) with all expenses paid, which would you choose?
Sorry, but I do get tired of the misconception that scientists are all wealthy and sitting on piles of lucre in our remote castles, which we use to buy lightning machines and pay our hunchbacked servants and so forth. If I wanted to be filthy rich, and had no sense of ethics, I would have gotten an MBA and become a hedge fund manager or something. It's way easier.