On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:42:11 -0600, "Ryan P."
wrote:

z wrote:

.
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Which should be proof that ANY climatologist is just guessing at
what's going to happen beyond the 3-day forecast.

Yeah, that's a good one. "The people who agree with me are obvious
idiots, therefore I distrust the people who disagree with me, also".
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Read for context... This whole discussion is about whether or not
man-made rapid climate change is taking place.

If experts were wrong 25 years ago, they can be wrong today. Today,
we have groups of experts saying completely different things. Hence,
there is debate (despite those of you who like to yell at the top of
your lungs that 'the debate is over.")

More news:

2007 a Year of Weather Records in US
By Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press

Saturday 29 December 2007

Washington - When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on
and the weather just got weirder.

January was the warmest first month on record worldwide - 1.53
degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began
in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the
norm for any month of the year.

And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the
hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature
records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather
data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping
there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees
Fahrenheit.

It wasn't just the temperature. There were other oddball weather
events. A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the
tabloid headline: "This ain't Kansas!"

In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June,
hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry
about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first
significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles
east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days - a world
record for the most rain in 72 hours.

Individual weather extremes can't be attributed to global warming,
scientists always say. However, "it's the run of them and the
different locations" that have the mark of man-made climate change,
said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate
research unit at the University of East Anglia in England.

Worst of all - at least according to climate scientists - the
Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed
in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice.

2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the
thermometers, and those who warned that it was beginning to happen
were suddenly honored. Former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An
Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize
with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international
group of thousands of scientists. The climate panel, organized by the
United Nations, released four major reports in 2007 saying man-made
global warming was incontrovertible and an urgent threat to millions
of lives.

Through the first 10 months, it was the hottest year recorded on
land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included.

Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather
stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for
specific August dates.

More remarkably that same month, more than 100 all-time
temperature records were tied or broken - regardless of the date -
either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at
night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or
tied all year long, as of early December, according to records kept by
the National Climatic Data Center.

For example, on Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102
degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16,
it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was
broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.

Daily triple-digit temperatures took a toll on everybody, public
safety director George West recalled. The state had 15 heat-related
deaths in August.

Portland was far from alone. In Idaho, Chilly Barton Flat wasn't
living up to its name. The weather station in central Idaho tied an
all-time high of 100 on July 26, Aug. 7, 14 and 19. During 2007,
weather stations in 35 states, from Washington to Florida, set or tied
all-time heat records in 2007.

Across Europe this past summer, extreme heat waves killed dozens
of people.

And it wasn't just the heat. It was the rain. There was either too
little or too much.

More than 60 percent of the United States was either abnormally
dry or suffering from drought at one point in August. In November,
Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, shrank to an all-time low.
Lake Okeechobee, crucial to south Florida, hit its lowest level in
recorded history in May, exposing muck and debris not seen for
decades. Lake Superior, the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes,
dropped to its lowest August and September levels in history.

Los Angeles hit its driest year on record. Lakes fed by the
Colorado River and which help supply water for more than 20 million
Westerners, were only half full.

Australia, already a dry continent, suffered its worst drought in
a century, making global warming an election issue. On the other
extreme, record rains fell in China, England and Wales.

Minnesota got the worst of everything: a devastating June and July
drought followed by record August rainfall. In one March day, Southern
California got torrential downpours, hail, snow and fierce winds. Then
in the fall came devastating fires driven by Santa Ana winds.

And yet none of those events worried scientists as much as what
was going on in the Arctic in the summer. Sea ice melted not just to
record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record. The Northwest
Passage was the most navigable it had been in modern times. Russia
planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, claiming
sovereignty.

The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an
all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.

Meteorologists have chronicled strange weather years for more than
a decade, but nothing like 2007. It was such an extreme weather year
that the World Meteorological Organization put out a news release
chronicling all the records and unusual developments. That was in
August with more than 145 sizzling days to go.

Get used to it, scientists said. As man-made climate change
continues, the world will experience more extreme weather, bursts of
heat, torrential rain and prolonged drought, they said.

"We're having an increasing trend of odd years," said Michael
MacCracken, a former top federal climate scientist, now chief
scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington. "Pretty soon odd
years are going to become the norm."