The big problem here is how environmentalists, and this reporter, conflate the two terms "global warming" and climate change" as though they are the exact same thing. They are quite different.

OF COURSE climate changes. I'm in the Chicago area -- right next to a lake that was carved by a freaking _glacier_. Where did the glacier go? Well, the climate changed, and the ice receded north.

When this writer says "climate change was still theoretical", he is falsely combining the two terms. Climate change was not theoretical 20 years ago; it was both common sense and historical fact. Global warming, on the other hand, was, and still is, a theory.