Back in 1988, when much of the nation was suffering a frighteningly hot and dry summer, then Sen. Al Gore told his fellow Tennesseans and others, "People, get used to this. If we don't make changes immediately, we'll continue to experience summers like this one and even worse." We've had mostly mild summers here in Tennessee since that milestone season of nearly 20 years ago.
If those of us who laugh at global warming can't look to record-setting low temperatures in April and say, "See, see," then I think it only fair that those who embrace global warming keep their traps shut if summer leans a little hot.
Ya'll have a good one.

Why is it the old reliable 'weather isnt the same thing as climate' excuse AGW proponents fall back on isnt trotted out when the global warming cultists in the media are pimping every heat wave and hurricane as 'proof' of global warming?

This summer, if there's a heat wave or a lot of hurricanes that get exploited by the climate hucksters, I _will_ be expecting to see the 'weather isnt climate' excuse also applied to them on this blog.

There is a difference between weather and climate. I think the comments we are hearing now about needing some global warming are just as hilarious as the comments we will hear about needing global cooling when the "Eco Rock Concerts" are going on in the middle of the summer.

thanks laura for relaying your personal experience with the old tooth doctor...sure hope yours was a pleasant one with him...all i think of when i go see them is pain...having a background in geology, i see this AGW stuff as nothing more than a get rich quick scheme where guesses and predictions are rooted in suspect science just to make a buck at the expense of most...its a crying shame and a dastardly sham and we shouldnt let these AGW wolves in sheep's clothing pull it over our eyes...all these things we see going on around us whether its cold or hot, are just a snapshot in time that has happenend many times before, all of which can be correlated and explained quite well by natural occuring phenomenon...if you look at the cold hard facts, agw caused by co2, just doesnt hold water...yes, pun intended...what i think is particularly helpful in your comments is that other readers hear that the good ole doctor also sees the contradictions...i think it points out that many and probably most educated americans feel the same as he...there is an old truism when one is confronted with life's contradictions that helps you steer down the right road... that is: if it looks like, feels like and smells like (you fill in the rest), then AGW probably is...i think the good doctor has it right on the money...

I use a line similar to that whenever it gets cold, even though I know the difference between weather and climate. Plus, Sid the Sloth uses a similar line at the end of Ice Age, "You know? This whole ice age thing is getting old. You know what I could go for? A global warming."

A few simple solutions:
Something like 40% of America's energy use is in electricity generation. Just converting this use the rest of the way toward nuclear generation would help a great deal.
Foresters tell me that a mature pine forest grows only like 2% to 3% a year, while plantation planted pine grow at a rate of 10% per year in the juvenile phase. As they grow faster more carbon is absorbed and more oxygen is released. So simply change this crazy environmental concern which is ill considered that causes us to not cut the trees. Leaving trees to die and then decay back into carbon rather than use the lumber in construction is another environmental bit of non-sense.

I really wonder why we have a government that moves so slow on matters of concern to all of us and does not use good science in its considerations, i.e.
1. restrictions of forest management.
2. restrictions on drilling off-shore many States and in declared environmentally sensitive areas.
3. is it better to depend on the Middle East for oil thus exposing us to their understandable feelings of exploitation?
4. it is better to let our soldiers fight and die than to become energy independent? Maybe the Americans that died for our country would have not wanted to die so that we can protect our beaches from some small exposure to possible damage from a drilling or production accident. Did the poor people in the Trade Center Towers sacrifice themselves for our beaches?

Let get this government going on getting things done.

The UK doesn't censor the news like we do. And they had a documentary that proved that Global Warming si a big scam.

Here is the link to that video

http://www.gorelied.notlong.com

I agree with you that recent weather has nothing to do with long-term climate trends. However, I wish someone would tell that to Al Gore and his merry band of global warming fanatics. Any abnormal weather anywhere, they attribute to global warming, even blizzards. Gore, once, even agreed with a questioner that smoking cigarettes contributes to global warming.
It makes any rational, thinking person be very wary of siding with this bunch.

I still can't see why weather has no effect on "climate". I noticed that conveniently the record high/lows are missing from accuweather. Mainly the record highs in my area were in the EARLY 1900's. Sorry to sound paraniod, but was this information removed to prevent us from realizing that we aren't always in the highs?

Ok,
so here are some more links:
Chicago breaks snow record:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/338364,CST-NWS-snow12.article
Freeze loss comparable to that of hurricane:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070412/ap_on_bi_ge/farm_scene_2
Snow fall record in Bismark:
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/04/12/news/topnews/131842.txt

But of course I did not hear about this on one of the big three networks. I had to find it on a "new" media forum. Like I have said in past posts, lets really start discussing the truth here before the enviromental wacos create a beast that no one can stop.

If it gets cold, it's global warming. If it gets hot, it's global warming, if it stays the same, it's global warming. With a theory like that, you can't go wrong.
Jim

jon,

I think it is too late, they have all the bases covered... if the climate is hot it is directly related to GW, if the climate is cold it is indirectly related to GW... the beast is free and running riot!

Too much money is at stake to try and catch him, not just money being made today, but future money, such as the wealth that is being stored up in the mineral rich, 'so-called' developing nations... ("oh, we are sorry developing nations, you cannot develop and support yourselves, us developed nations already suffer from GW so let us save you and prohibit you from using up all that money.. oops, we mean resource.")

On this blog, I haven't really seen any of the people who believe in AGW resort to using their backyard weather to prove AGW.

However, I have seen this more times than I can count from the denialists. Every time we have a cold day, we hear comments like "It's 20 degrees outside...how could it be so cold?"

The media has covered the recent cold wave too much, in my opinion. Last weekend, it was one of the lead stories on all three of the evening network newscasts (NBC, CBS, ABC). Maybe if you changed the TV station to something other than Faux Noise Channel, or do your own research rather than relying on the Rush Limbaugh talking points, you'd see more of this.

Of course, that would require effort on your part.

Rose - Let me give you a specific example, see if this explains the weather/climate thing for you. Let's take Minneapolis, and look at April 6th. Here's the high temperatures for the past 10 years, starting with this year and working backwards.
29
62
58
67
41
47
52
51
56
64

If you total those up and divide by 10, you get an average high temp of 52.7. The normals the national weather service uses are based on 30 years of observation (currently 1970-2000), but it's the same overall idea. That 30 year normal temp for Minneapolis on April 6th is 52, so even just using a 10 year data set, you're in the ballpark. You can see for yourself that the "weather" is all over the place - a range of 29 to 67 - but when you take the average over a period of years, you get the climate.

As for your record highs, records are not available at every site. You're in South Texas, if I remember correctly. I know records are available for Brownsville, Harlingen and for McAllen. Even if someone locally keeps track of records, they may not be available to us.

Laura,

I'd appreciate it if you could post sites that show where temperatures have actually risen over the last century. I can't find any indication that temps in the northern hemisphere have reached the highs of the 30s & 40s, let alone achieved some sort of record.

By the way, if you look at the long-term temperature records for cities like Bodo, Zurich, and Helsinki, which are all above or near the Arctic circle, none show signs of warming.

Thanks,
Chris

...it won't be long before any weather which deviates from a cloudless, light wind, 75 degree day will be blamed on global warming.

The level of human arrogance needed to think we are in charge of a system the size of the earth's atmosphere is mind numbing.

Mark, I know that you want to tow the party line in whatever you throw on this site, but give us all a break and try and show some individule initiative. Quoting Olbermann, or Air America or MoveOn.com demostrates a limited perspective of the serious topics we are trying to discuss here.

Good luck,

I was a weather forecaster in the US Army in the mid 1970's. Part of my training at Chanute Air Force Base included a series of climatology classes and in those classes I received and kept to this day... volumes of historical temperature data from all over the world. The other day I came across those volumes in a box in my cellar...and I paused and looked through them....one of the volumes was prefaced by some post 1965 hippy dippy weather weenie who was predicting a frozen planet by the year 2000.....of course he and they were wrong......and now the same kind of "crowd with a cause" is predicting a hot planet....the day someone can provide the next set of winning Powerball numbers to me...before the drawing occurs.....that will be the day I put one ounce of credence in any of this left wing...environmental wacko "deep down I really hate America and anything else successful" group of please let me cling to something somethings. Believing in God too difficult for many of them....but predicting the future of this planets climate something more worldly they seem to have no problem buying into hook line and proverbial sinker. This Global Warming thing....if dissected piece by piece...has little in fact to do with the globe or with any warming....it has instead much more to do with controlling through the force of government....activities that thus far have been limited in scope by only the human imagination and entrepreneurial spirit...I know...I know....I love poison air and poison water and putting Grandma and little children out on the frozen streets to starve to death....blah blah blah.

Laura,
I had a similar conversation with my dentist, it went something like this.

Dentist: Sure is cold for April.
Me: mfflmmff
Dentist: I could sure go for some of that global warming.
Me: mddfflksdalk mmmeffllshhtth
Dentist: spit here please, see you in 6 months.
Me: uhh, ok

It's Friday, have a nice weekend!

Chris,

Zurich is near the arctic circle? Define near.

Hey, here's a story about this guy who's a big-time Global Warming denier; you should read it and post some comments for him to know what we think about his ideas."

The link: �Global Warming Is The Biggest Tale Ever Told to Humanity� http://www.orato.com/node/2160

I think the point has been missed, Global 'heating', Global 'cooling'... it all happens in cycles and is good and natural... Human beings, just like any other mammal are just along for the ride... the debate has always been how much of it is cause by human activity?

Take for example a lone surfer on a wave, you can't tell me that if that surf turned left instead of going right with the flow of the wave that the whole structure of that wave would change... silly example but effective, makes you think...

rbnyc:

Zurich is at 48 degrees of latitude or about 18 degrees below the Arctic circle.

I mean "close" in the sense that it's far enough north for the effects of global warming to be felt, yet there's no sign of unusually increasing temps in the long-term records.

Thanks for the link to Ball's commentary, Simon.

You might reconsider using the term "denier." The obvious connotation is to equate denial of Global Warming with denial of the Holocaust and that's as offensive as if I called AGW proponents the "N" word because you're enslaved by Gaia worship. See? Nobody can have a debate if one party insists on using epithets. Kindly stop.

Back in 1988, when much of the nation was suffering a frighteningly hot and dry summer, then Sen. Al Gore told his fellow Tennesseans and others, "People, get used to this. If we don't make changes immediately, we'll continue to experience summers like this one and even worse." We've had mostly mild summers here in Tennessee since that milestone season of nearly 20 years ago.
If those of us who laugh at global warming can't look to record-setting low temperatures in April and say, "See, see," then I think it only fair that those who embrace global warming keep their traps shut if summer leans a little hot.
Ya'll have a good one.

REPLY: I remember that summer of my youth! It was hot, dry and WONDERFUL! (Yes, I like tropical weather. I am sorry, but you don't have to shovel, can't slide on, or scrape off of your car heat and humidity!) And since then, the only summer that I can compare to 1988 here in Pittsburgh would have to be 1995. And after the misery that has been this never ending horrid winter here in the northeast, I HOPE IT BURNS COME MEMORIAL DAY, and doesn't stop until Christmas! And if it does, you can rest asure that Al Gore and his lap dogs will go tooting their alamrist horns again loud and clear, and I will laugh at them. Laugh at the fools that they are!

The media has covered the recent cold wave too much, in my opinion. Last weekend, it was one of the lead stories on all three of the evening network newscasts (NBC, CBS, ABC). Maybe if you changed the TV station to something other than Faux Noise Channel, or do your own research rather than relying on the Rush Limbaugh talking points, you'd see more of this.

REPLY: In the words of the GREAT Ronald Reagan, Mark, (and I hope that raises your ire) "there you go again." Showing your true colors! However I will say this, the three "mainstream" network newscasts have seemed to have backed off on their global warming (farce) stories lately. Can't imagine why!.....;-D....

Rather than rely on other people's compilations, averages, reconstructions, and other data manipulations, I created my own 100-year charts based on historical instrument readings for various locations around the world. You can view the results at:

http://home.att.net/~larryad/charts1.htm

Four of them (New Orleans, New Delhi, Bodo, Valentia) show absolutely nothing abnormal. Both Zurich and Helsinki shows rising temperatures, but nothing that even within the time span of the chart has not been seen before! Compare Zurich 1980-2004 and Zurich 1930-1950. Helsinki 1930-1950 was hotter than current Helsinki temperatures. Most charts show a rise in temperature around the 30's to 40's that only recently we have been approaching.

The next question would be is this data (and charts) accurate? I consulted and download historical readings from NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

http://home.att.net/~larryad/charts2.htm

These charts all show the average temperature for the month of August during those years. Again, all of them show hot temperatures in the 30's and 40's, hotter than now for the central and northeast regions. Both South and West shows an increase in the last ten years, but nothing that has not been seen before, even within the time span of the charts. The length of data for the above charts was all that was available, or at least that I could find.

In summary, can anyone show me the dramatic increases in temperatures that are producing the daily headlines of mankind's demise? Finally