While many people in the US may have wondered this summer what happened to Global Warming, other parts of the world showed some new affects of rising temperatures. In the US, the map shows that Texas was the 8th warmest on record, Florida was at the fourth highest average temperature for any summer since 1895 and Washington had it 7th warmest summer. But, other parts of the country were decidedly colder. Michigan went through the 5 coldest summer on record and a number of other states in the Northern Plains came in with the 7th coolest summer. The US was determined to have gone through the 34th coolest summer on record.

As for the Arctic Ice extent, which many use as a bellweather for Global Warming analysis, the ice extent is growing for the second consecutive year. Back in 2007, the ice extent fell to its lowest levels, which prompted media outlets to trumpet some scientific speculation that perhaps the north pole would become devoid of ice for a time. Of course, these media reports neglected to mention that the scientific probability was well less than 50% and instead made it sound like it was a hard-fast prediction.

Anyway, the Sea-Ice at the North Pole did not decrease in 2008 but instead increased. Instead of reporting that the ice grew, the headlines said it was the sccond lowest in recorded history, which only goes back to 1979. So far, in 2009, the ice continues to run above the 2008 levels. So, do the headlines say that the sea-ice has grown for the second consecutive year? Of course not. Instead the headline say that the “Arctic Ice Meltdown Greater Than Average Again in 2009.” On the flip side, there is another story afoot that Global Warming may be the reason behind future cooling of the North American continent in the future! Now, that would cause quite a problem politically. If the rest of the world gets hotter but Americans feel cooler, then that would probably cause a very large chunk of the American population to oppose any political efforts to curb Global Warming. See additional Sea Ice Data from Sea-Ice News.

Now, the ice growth seems to fly in the face of global warming advocates and I do not believe that the increasing of ice over two consecutive years made it into the presentation of Al Gore’s movie. Nor do I think it was part of any solution posed by climate modeling data on which speculation has been based. But, it’s happened. Then again, the fact that a Northeast Passage has opened up in the sea-ice for a couple of ships kinda fits the whole notion that North America might get colder when everyone else gets warmer. While one year does not a trend make, it would seem we saw it this year. This all fits into my contention that no one knows. We as humans think we have all the answers when in fact, there are no absolutes. So far, the overall predictions of Mr. Gore’s movie and even the IPCC report are not going as planned. Arctic Sea Ice is growing over the past two years and much of the United States is cooler. But, on the other hand, other parts of the world are warming and there is that little issue of the Northeast Passage.

Don’t believe the hype either way and encourage your politicians to allow the scientific process to conclude in a normal, academic fashion, instead of the current trend of allowing political gamesmanship and opportunism to corrupt the proper methodology.