I like polls, I wish there were thousands of people coming to my site just to make my polls a lot more relevant.  Until there are thousands coming here, I’m going to do them anyway.

This has been one of the coldest winters in the history of my area.  Right now we’re teetering around the 10th coldest winter since 1895, and the last few days will only push us higher on that chart.

I read an article the other day about how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration might have a major functional flaw in their assessing global climate.  Do note, I did not say assessing global warming, but global climate.  Here goes:

Part I: NOAA relies on the NWS to report basic data to them in order that they can assess climate changes.  Now, with the advent of computers and the internet, readily accessing current weather data is becoming much easier and the NWS now gets information from hundreds if not thousands of locations.  This has not always been true.  Up until the 60′s or so, the NWS got it’s weather from airports at locations that had media.  Ergo, cities.  Small rural towns were approximated to their nearest city.

Part II: Urban Warming has been documented now to be a legitimate phenomenon.  The basic jist of urban warming is that the environment changes alone create a warming effect within cities.

Now, ponder this.  If urban warming is indeed a common effect within cities, and, if the only data being quantified came from cities, what result do you think you’d get?  That’s right, the whole planet is warming.

I live in the country, the temperatures here have been approximately the same as they were in 1895.  This summer has been cooler than 1895.  It’s been several years since we’ve had a 100 degree day, I used to remember them all the time as a kid.  It’s just not warming here.  Period.  There are global events occurring that indicate warming, but, there are global events occurring indicating a pending ice age as well.  Scientists are split into two camps, global warming is here and global warming is not here.

I think we need to do things to make mankind more hospitable to the host he lives with, but I don’t see a need for a manic rush to change what man is doing at the risk of a global economic meltdown that render man’s ability to make the changes obsolete.  Especially this summer.  I’ve had way too much time to work on this blog during the 70 degree dog days of summer ( it should be 90 ).