I am not exactly sure when the environmental lobby began to expunge the term “Global Warming” and replace it with “Climate Change,” but the move says a great deal about the debate. I spent the first 27 years of my life in southern Britain, where a white winter storm was as rare as a genuinely funny comedy on the CBC. This past winter, however, the entire country came to a halt due to Canadian-type levels of snow. It was cold and rainy, too. Not warming at all. So the far more generous and encapsulating Climate Change definition is now used. In other words, the argument is mutable.

I am not a scientist. Unlike most other journalists who write about the environment and inevitably embrace the left-of-centre approach, however, I’m prepared to admit it. I am, though, a historian. And I know that throughout the human story, conventional wisdom, even of a scientific variety, has often been entirely reversed within a half century or less. Few scientific beliefs or alleged facts stand the test of chronology.

So is there a change in climate? Of course. Always has been and always will be. The issue is whether it is man-made, and whether it will destroy the planet. Not, by the way, destroy people, because so many of the most active campaigners for the planet seem to rather dislike people and see them as problems to eradicate rather than as souls to save.

There are many in the rapidly growing anti-climate-change community who argue that 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved — which is just as sweeping and arrogant a statement as those made by the green zealots who refuse to listen to any contrary points of view. But earlier this year, a leading critic of climate change theory presented a pack of challenging claims to me. He argued that temperatures have been dropping in the past 18 months to a degree not at all expected by establishment science, and it’s an observation that does seem to be supported by objective research. He also claimed that the northern hemisphere now receives more snow now than at any point since the early 1960s, and that most evidence proves that the earth was hotter 1000 years ago than it is now. In fact, he continued, Europe was certainly warmer in the Middle Ages than it is in the 21st century.

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2007 and 2008 were the coldest years since 2000 and the warmest decade of the last century was not the 1990s but the 1930s. The University of Illinois’ highly regarded Arctic website Cryosphere Today used detailed data to prove that Arctic ice volume is now 500,000 square kilometres greater than it was a year ago and that sea-ice in the Antarctic has reached its highest level since records began. As for those poor polar bears whose apparent and oft-announced demise makes my 11-year-old daughter so upset, if you watch TV, there seem to be more of them around now than ever before.

Meaning that at the very least, this is a fascinating, on-going, and open discussion. Not, as has been said so often, an essay that is already written or an obvious problem with obvious solutions. It also reveals and explains why people who dare to question the status quo are not “deniers” — a concerted way to make them appear as dark and dumb as Holocaust deniers. Not so. Not so in abundance. Their arguments are compelling, whereas some of those made by the other side often, well, simply melt away when the heat is turned on them.

For more of Michael Coren's thoughts, visit his website.