Those of us who are skeptical of man-made abrupt climate change are often accused of being hostile towards science. We're told that the facts prove our world is on an unprecedented and nearly irreversible warming trend and mankind is largely responsible. If we don't believe that, they say, then we're basing our skepticism on ideology rather than climatology.

The advocates of global warming theories, however, style themselves as unbiased observers who form their beliefs through the scientific method and remain immune from personal perspectives, political influences or simple mistakes. They're the enlightened Galileo, while we're his ignorant and superstitious inquisition. But if their observations change – if the facts change – would these unbiased observers change their theories as well?

Here are some recent inconvenient facts for them to consider:

Alabama had one of its coolest summers on record, averaging 87.87-degrees during June, July and August. In fact, weather monitors throughout the state didn't record a 100-degree measurement for the third time in the last dozen years, according to data released this month by John Christy, director of the Earth Systems Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Moreover, six of the state's coolest summers have been within the last 20-years, according to the Office of Alabama Climatology.

Worldwide, there was a drop in the average temperatures in the lower stratosphere for 2012, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It reported that last year was "nearly the coldest on record in the lower stratosphere since records began."

The Daily Mail reported this month that a cool summer in the Arctic Circle has left more than a million square miles of additional ice than last year – an increase of 60-percent. The newspaper noted that the increase happened six-years after the BBC predicted that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.

"We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least," Professor Anastasios Tsonis, of the University of Wisconsin, told the Daily Mail. "There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped."

Those undeniable measurements may have proven too problematic for the theory's advancement because recent arguments to support global warming have focused on "extreme weather" events. So now every natural disaster has become evidence of man-made climate change, regardless of temperatures.

"Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and more intense," President Barack Obama said during his State of the Union speech last February. "We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it's too late."

However, the staff at the Earth Systems Science Center has tracked all the activity of hurricanes, tornadoes and extreme temperatures and found little change during recent decades.

"You can see that hurricanes are not increasing," Christy told Al.com in June, "tornadoes are not increasing, droughts and floods are not increasing, snow cover is still around – in fact, last winter, the northern hemisphere had its largest extent of snow cover measure."

Mark Twain is reported to have said "there are lies, damned lies and statistics." I suppose the same can be said of measurements and observations when they don't fit neatly into a long-held belief like global warming.

Still, maybe the changing facts will eventually have an impact and the theories will be updated. Otherwise, if global warming advocates ignore data that challenge their models and stick to their predictions regardless of the facts, they'll become less like Galileo peering through a telescope and more like Nostradamus staring down into a bowl of water.

(J. Pepper Bryars grew up in Mobile and is now a writer living in Huntsville. You can reach him at jpepperbryars@gmail.com.)