…Gronam [Ox; the oldest of the Elders of Chelm] said, “Last night I couldn’t sleep a wink for thinking about why it is hot in the summertime. Finally the answer came to me.” “What is it?” the elders chorused.
“Because all winter long the stoves are heated and this heat stays in Chelm and makes summer hot.” All the elders nodded their heads, excepting Dopey Lekisch, who asked, “Then why is it cold in the winter?”
“It’s clear why,” replied Gronam. “The stoves are not heated in the summer, so there is no heat left over for the winter.”
FROM: “The Elders of Chelm and Genendel’s Key,” in Stories for Children Isaac Bashevis Singer, New York, 1995, p. 5.
Joseph D’Aleo, from the invaluably sane ICECAP site, debunking the hysterical claim that the first decade of the 21st century is the warmest decade of the last century:
…is not likely the warmest decade of the last 70 years (the 1930s would take that prize as the state records –see graph below–imply). On top of all these issues, the data centers, make frequent arbitrary adjustments to the raw data, (a story for another day, addressed to some degree in the EPA comment above). Their adjustments always show a cooling of the older decades especially the 1930s and 1940s and a warming of the 2000s. Like flipping a coin a dozen times and getting heads every time. Not statistically impossible, but highly improbable.
[Click to enlarge graph]
The satellites are the most accurate and objective source [of temperature data]. They provide more complete coverage and are not subject to the same issues. They integrate any urban warmth in with rural. Unfortunately they only go back to 1979. Temperatures peaked in the El Nino year of 1998 and have not exceeded that level since. Since 2002, a very clear downtrend is seen in this plot of the Hadley CRUT3v global station and ocean data and the UAH MSU data (about 0.3F).
[Click to enlarge graph]
