I'd like to take a little time and space here to introduce myself. My name is Laura Hannon, and I've been a forecast meteorologist with Accu-Weather....er.... AccuWeather.....er.... AccuWeather.com for 19 years. Lots has changed in that time. Why, when I first walked in the door, I was greeted by the sound of about twenty clattering IBM Selectrics (that's typewriters for you young'uns). Now, a huge percentage of our business is online.

Unlike many of my colleagues, I am not an alumnae of Penn State. I attended the great State University of Wisconsin, and am a proud, vociferous Badger fan. Another fact that sets me apart from many of my coworkers is that I don't live or work in State College anymore. Like Ken Clark (the trailblazer), I am a telecommuter. I live on Harrisburg's West Shore with my husband and soon-to-be 5 year old twin daughters.

Although I've been in the weather business for a long time, I've mostly tried to stay out of the global warming debate. I'm not an expert on climate, nor will I pretend to be one. My opinion going back 15 years has always been not so much an opinion as a question. "Do we know enough?" Do we know enough to say that the changes that are occurring are exclusively as a result of human activity? Do we know enough to determine what actions need to be taken? Do we know enough about the interaction between the oceans and the atmosphere? Do we understand the atmosphere and climate change well enough to create accurate climate models? I've been doing a ton of reading since taking on this assignment for AccuWeather.com, and if anything I have more questions now than I did when I began. It is up to science, not politicians or special interest groups, to come up with the answers.

Many people, and most journalists, don't have a strong background in science, which adds a layer of complexity to the issue of global warming. People want simple answers, and this is quite honestly not a simple issue. My goal is to act as a bridge between hard science and ordinary people, to try to make the difficult issues easier to understand.

In our culture today, it's hard to have a civilized discourse on any even remotely controversial subject. And without question, global warming is a controversial subject. Nonetheless, the goal of this site is to present information on global warming from all sides. I will sift through the boatloads of information on global warming available on the Web and in the media and bring you information that will be useful and meaningful in your lives. Please, feel free to post comments and ask questions. It may take me some time to get to them, but it's my promise to you that I will read everything you bring to the table.

From the UK comes the sweeping, 700 page Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. Though this is an economic forecast, it contains quite a lot of climate science as well. You can read an AP report on the review here and find the review itself, along with the press release and some other materials here.

I will make no guarantee that I will slog through the full 700 page report, but I have found some interesting commentary on the review by people who have read it. I'll point you to a couple of entries at Prometheus: The Science Policy Weblog, specifically the entries from October 29, 30 and 31. Richard Tol's comment (downloadable as a Word document) is particularly critical of the conclusions of the Stern Review.