On 2013-05-17 16:20, mastermindreader wrote:
That is exactly the position of Big Oil. We don't need any regulations. Trust us.

Since Memorial Day is typically deemed as the unofficial start to summer, many people of the Northeast may find it hard to believe that frost and freezing temperatures are a concern tonight.

The same unseasonably cold air that led to substantial snow in the northern New England mountains will make for a chilly night through the Northeast tonight.

West of I-95 (and west of I-81 from southern Pennsylvania to northern Virginia), temperatures will be cold enough for areas of frost to form.

On 2013-05-27 18:32, Steve_Mollett wrote:
Damage done will be on your grandchildren's/great-grandchildren's doorstep. We and our offspring (make that YOUR offspring--I have none)will probably dodge the first volley of consequential bullets.
So don't worry about it--it won't affect you, just your progeny, who will then curse your generation.
No big deal. That's their problem, let them deal with it, right?

As Bob Tisdale has recently pointed out, the monthly temperature anomaly series published by the Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has just been extensively revised.

A commenter on a previous posting about the temperature record asked whether the entire 163-year HadCRUt4 dataset could be displayed graphically, with the uncertainties (red and green) and trends illustrated. Here is the requested graph, based on the revised data:

The least-squares linear-regression trend across the entire 1959-month period shows warming equivalent to 0.47 Cº/century (0.9 Fº/century), well within the natural variability of the climate. The 95% (2 σ) confidence interval falls between 0.33 and 0.6 Cº/century, as shown by the trend-lines flanking the central trend.

The result should be adjusted to allow for the finding in Michaels & McKitrick (2007) that urban heat island effects and other extraneous influences over the past 30 years have led to overestimation of the warming rate over land by as much as double. On the assumption that this bias may have existed since 1850, the true warming rate since then is equivalent to just 0.4 Cº (0.7 Fº) per century.

For how long has there been no statistically-significant warming? In the following graph, the zone of statistical insignificance is shown in pale blue. Since the entire central trend-line falls within that zone, the warming since February 1996, more than 17 years ago, is not statistically distinguishable from zero.

On the evidence summarized in these graphs, there is no rational case for taking drastic and costly steps to mitigate global warming. It will be cheaper, and wiser, to wait and see.