A few days ago George Ochenski started a conversation with an opinion piece in the Helena IR titled, âMontana is melting due to fossil-fuel addicted politicians." And although I disagreed with using local weather extremes to prove the point, I strongly agree with his conclusion and primary point of his piece that in the long term increasing global temperatures is having an eï¬ect on local weather patterns and the continued use of petroleum is causing it. And I also think that this is a good time to go over some basic information global scientists have garnered over the past 50 years. Here are some very basic pieces of information. Solid, proven facts.