JP> Er….Walter, don’t worry. It’s called summer.

But ditto for last year. It’s the difference that’s worrisome. June 1st 2008, we were 0.280 below June 1st 2007. As of June 12th 2008, we were 0.157 above June12th 2007, and pulling away rapidly. It’ll get even worse the next couple of days, because the temperatures actually *FELL* on 13th and 14th last year. See the numbers below; they are lower troposphere temperatures in degrees Kelvin (== Celsius + 273.12). Barring a major drop, I expect the UAH (and other global datasets) for June 2008 to be above June 2007.

Day 2007 2008
== ==== ====
01 271.913 271.630
02 271.968 271.630
03 272.031 271.704
04 272.027 271.751
05 272.076 271.824
06 272.058 271.876
07 272.066 271.982
08 272.077 272.077
09 272.083 272.133
10 272.115 272.200
11 272.143 272.226
12 272.150 272.307

FWIW, my comment about Prof. Akasofu’s paper was less to call in question his credentials or the findings of his paper and more to express amazement if a dissenting view had been permitted through the highly political climatology peer-review process.

/// Cooney monitored global warming policy and science for the Bush White House. Documents obtained by Greenpeace through the Freedom of Information Act reveal a trail of communication between Cooney and Exxon-funded think tanks including the George C. Marshall Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute

This is the same Greenpeace that tells people GM foods aren’t tested and that if you eat them you could grow a third arm, or some other ghastly mutation. Yeah, there’s some science there, boy, let me tell you.

I remember someone at dot Earth screaming about the hot summer of 2007 claiming every part of the USA had record-breaking heat. It never happened, it was yet another false memory induced by a media stampede. There was a stalled high pressure area over the northwest & rockies that made them hot, but the majority of the 48 was cooler than normal.

Never got very hot in Seattle last summer. Pretty mild really.

Government is blunt;
can’t we agree?
So don’t use it on me
and I’ll not on thee.

But that’s what politicians do – they lie through their teeth.
However, if I may play devil’s advocate, sometimes you have to have an ace or two up your sleeve in order to not get completely crushed by the AGW political and media juggernaut

It’s about time we started scientificating politics.

Perhaps not the climatologists, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past their political and politicized bosses – not to mention the media.

I don’t agree that he thinks he’s God. I think he believes that God answers to him ;-)

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Solar_Changes_and_the_Climate.pdf

“..Geomagnetic Storms and High Latitude Warming”

“…When major eruptive activity (i.e. coronal mass ejections, major flares) takes place and the charged particles encounter the earth, ionization in the high atmosphere leads to the familiar and beautiful aurora phenomenon. This ionization lads to warming of the high atmosphere which like ultraviolet warming of the stratosphere works its way down into the middle troposphere with time.

Here is an example of an upper level chart two weeks after a major geomagnetic storm. Note the ring of warmth (higher than normal mid-tropospheric heights) surrounding the magnetic pole….”

Whoever wrote this article (it lacks a byline & abstract) has citations at the bottom. John over at skepticalscience.com says some of the citations in the article are stale, but at least there’s some interest in the possibility of boreal heating from solar storms.

“La chaleur fait 30 victimes aux USA
Le bilan de la vague de chaleur qui touche actuellement la côte est des USA
s’est alourdi pour s’établir jeudi à plus d’une trentaine de décès, dont 15 sur la seule ville de Philadelphie. Six Personnes sont aussi mortes à New York.

Les températures ont avoisiné les 40 degrés entre samedi et mardi. Les victimes sont surtout des personnes âgées, selon les autorités sanitaires.”

I am not fluent in English, so i will not try to translate all the text. To summarize, they say that they are 15 people dead in Philadelphie and 6 in New York because of warming. Also, the temperature were near 40 degrees between saturday and tuesday. I don’t know how they know exactly that people died because of warming and not of old age. Of course, in winter, they are never talking of people dying of cold. How strange!

This news comes from Teletext on the Swiss channel.

I live in DC and there were no deaths that I know of associated with the heat. This is because, unlike the hospitals and old folks homes in France, we have air conditioning, so the heat does not affect us as it did the French in 03.

You lose far more people to cold extremes (even in hot years) than you do to heat (a fact that the media tends to ignore completely).

Was there much coverage this past winter of the literally thousands who died of cold exposure in Afghanistan and Pakistan?