Here’s the headline:

Earth’s Temp at 400-Year High

By John Heilprin
Associated Press
posted: 22 June 2006
11:37 am ET

The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.”

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is running a fever and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news:

The Illinois State Museum reports that the thawing ice age of the last 18 thousand years continues to do so:

"During most of the last 1 billion years the earth had no permanent ice. "

( Clue here, if the Earth had NO permanent ice, would that mean it was warmer or cooler than now? )

In related unrelated news, Al Gore thinks people who wonder why, if the Earth had NO ice for a long time but has some now, how could man have melted all the ice then, but be blamed for melting the ice we’ve had the whole time man has been around, well, he says this: "Well, they’re in the—the people who still say that global warming isn’t real are actually in the same boat with the flat earth society. They get together and party on Saturday nights with the folks that believe the moon landing was in a movie lot in Arizona."  And, the Bad Astronomer agrees. 

Well, I don’t believe in a flat Earth, I don’t believe in Area 51, I know Man has been to the Moon and actually attended the Apollo 13 launch.  And, believe this or not, I believe the Earth follows cycles of global warming and cooling, and most importantly, I believe we can make the Earth a better place for all of us, but, we are not God and we are not going to stop that natural cycle that is returning the Earth to a climate it has endured many times in the past without Man.  We’re along for the ride, not the other way around.  Rather than wasting all our intellectual resources pretending to be God, we need to spend those resources figuring out HOW we’re going to live with it.  The Earth doesn’t give a damn whether Man’s here or not.  It’s totally up to us to survive living on Earth.  If the climate does naturally warm another 10 degrees, how are we going to deal with it?  Do we just keep pretending we’re God and stick our thumbs in the dyke till it’s too late?   The climate has RARELY been as stable as it has been for the past several thousand years.  Why are we to assume the exception is now the norm?   That’s what Al Gore is expecting people like me to believe, that the norm for the last BILLION years is suddenly, and only, the fault of man.  That folks, is a god-complex that I can not buy.  I’ll have my doubts until someone explains to me, in detail, why the global warming cycles of the past are any different than the one we have now and why I should expect that a planet who’s history has been dominated by being ice-free and is in the process of returning to it’s most normal state is something that I should consider abnormal only because of mankind’s doing what volcanoes have done throughout the history of the planet.  That’s all you gotta do.  Calling me silly names won’t bother me or change my mind.