It appears that not all Y2k bugs have been fixed; one was found in NASA’s handling of raw climate data.¹ After the corrected figures² have been released, it turns out that 1934, and not 1998, is the warmest year on record. Why a Y2k bug would have changed the readings for 1998 I am unsure. It is very puzzling, but the new data linked to does in fact seem to state that. Still, I wonder if the author is not misinterpreting something (though I would of course love to be able to state that our warmest years were so far back).

UPDATE: 2007-08-17: As I watch the confused reporting on this, I see very little worth linking to. Still, it seems to be that this was not a Y2k bug, though the fact that there was a bug of some sort, and that it has been corrected, is not challenged. Many are also being very quick to challenge the idea that the ranking of various years matters at all.

Global warming is real. We have not seen it in much of the recent data¹, the ice at the antarctic is increasing², and other parts of the southern hemisphere are getting colder also,³ but it is real. Scientists everywhere assure us of this fact.

Not only is it real, but it is our fault. It does not matter that some of the data from Mars indicates that Mars might be warming also.⁴ This does not matter; the greenhouse gases we produce must be the cause.

That is why even though scientists are now sure that their models underestimated the role of various natural weather variations, and that a new model that tries to take them into better account predicts no warming for at least another 2 years, we can be sure that after that things will get really bad.⁵ We should trust this model, even though none of the previous ones have been all that accurate.

This incredible explanation is why I have taken the time to recap some of the highlights of the last year or so of following this issue. While scientists have tried to refute the role of the sun in the Earth’s climate (an article I regrettably lost the link to before I had a chance to write about it), they have ignored (so far as I have seen following only the public news) the data points I have listed here. It seems to me that what we do not know about climate far eclipses what we do know about it, and that any gloom and doom projection should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Particularly when it is saying, in essence, “we know we have been claiming it will get warmer for years now. It has not really gotten any warmer, but just keep paying us, it will any year now.”

It appears that maintaining adequate vitamin D is linked with avoiding cancer.¹ While the article primarily looks at breast cancer, it also mentions colon and prostate cancer, and one researcher quoted thinks that it might be true of cancer in general.

Looking at the effect of brown clouds over the Indian Ocean, a group of United States researchers have managed to explain the fact that glaciers in the Himalayas are melting without resorting to blaming any and all warming on carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.¹ They claim the warming is caused by the pollution put out from burning wood and fossil fuels. The answer to both of these problems is to improve the power generation in Asia, and the general standard of living.

I wonder what those of my friends who know more about the brain would/will make of this video:

There exists an elementary school that has a “reading time” for its third-grade students, in which they may read a book of their choosing. One child chose to read the Bible, and was told by the school that he may not.¹ Unfortunately, I cannot honestly express surprise that this series of events happened in the United States. Fortunately, the school in question backed down after receiving a letter from the Thomas More Law Center reminding them that such activity has been repeatedly protected by the United States Supreme Court.

Johannesburg, South Africa has its first confirmed snowfall in more than 25 years¹. While the city normally gets cold, with an average minimum of 4.7 degrees Celsius in June, this is the first snow they have had since 1981. The capital, Pretoria, had its first snow since 1968, an even longer period.

Meanwhile, Australian citrus farmers are worried that their fruit might have suffered frost damage after experiencing their coldest June day ever.² These data points fit well with earlier news stories that it is getting colder in the Antarctic.³

“If, as the editors of Nature claim, our minds are merely the product of materialistic evolution, then the opinion that our minds are merely the product of materialistic evolution is itself just the product of evolution.” - Michael Egnor¹

In other words, if their theory is true, we cannot know it or prove it, because there is no true intelligence to be doing the thinking. It is all just the random interactions of random atoms. In order for rational thought to proceed, we must assume that, whatever is true, materialist philosophy is false.

The sun not only varies in brightness, it also has a major impact on how much cosmic radiation reaches the earth. Between the two, it is the primary cause of change in our climate.¹ This article focuses on a series of mud cores from Canada, but also has a number of references to scholarly journals.

The Pittsburgh Tribute-Review reports that there is reason to doubt the temperature recordings from NOAA.¹ According to the article, a former meteorologist is spot-checking the quality of the NOAA weather stations across the country. So far only a few of the 1,221 stations have been checked, so much work remains to be done. Still, at least some disturbing news has been found. At least a few of these stations are no longer in isolated rural areas. Though they are intended to “be 100 feet from buildings, not placed on hot concrete, etc,”² some are in close proximity to air conditioning exhaust vents, cell phone towers, and parking lots. This would seriously compromise the data, because of the highly localized nature of the temperature in such areas. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that the air around an exhaust vent might be experiencing a warming trend after all.