Record cold actually doesn't disprove global warming, as one thing, warming (as cooling) does is mess with weather patterns, and also wind and water currents. These altered patterns aside from causing storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc can cause radical changes in temperatures including making certain areas colder.
There is also fairly hard scientific evidence that global warming is happening, such as the average temperature globally has been increasing for a while, particularly with the earth's 'radiator', the oceans. Then there are the massive losses of ice in the north and south pole regions and with glaciers around the world. Numerous fish species have been having problems due to being very temperature sensitive when it comes to reproducing. Changes in migratory patterns of animals have also been observed. Ocean levels have been slowly rising due to the ice melting in the poles. Most of the scientific community believes that we are in a global warming period and that man is a significant contributor to it.
Now as for that news article, I have several problems with it. First off its a news article and should be taken with a massive grain of salt. This guy is a news person and is probably not trained in understanding scientific theory and methodology, and is unlikely to comprehend the implications of the research he is discussing. Second there is no data backing up any statements or claims in the article or any links or reference to any data, he drops a few names but that doesn't mean much.
As for the content of the article, its hardly conclusive. He has one scientist claiming that we will be entering a cooling period of 30 years. Also from what I was able to quickly gather 2006 came very close to being the warmest year in the US with 1998 being the first, and globally according to the GISS the 6 warmest years are all after 1998. This summer the oceans were also their warmest ever according to NOAA.
As for money, ya global warming is big money, and sure people will be exploiting it as they exploit any other opportunity. But the counter argument is look at who its going to be costing a lot of money, all those trans-global corporations exploiting 3rd world environmental regulations, could you imagine what it would cost them if they were forced to clean up their act? That's pretty good motivation for them to throw as much mud into the water as they can. You can also imagine how these dissenting scientists can profit as well (media attention can mean research funding).
Anyhow some links with statistical data to back up my statements in my 4th paragraph, in no particular order.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/...s-summary.html
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2007/20071210_GISTEMP.pdf
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories...obalstats.html
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/...ansen_etal.pdf
those links all have further links of their own.