Globe Still Warming

Recently, one of my friends who doesn't believe in global warming referred to an article he had seen about record cold temperatures, and he said that it just confirmed his opinion that global warming is nonsense.

Indeed, there have been a number of articles about unusually cold temperatures. Here's one of the more infuriating ones:

Global Warming Gets the Cold Freeze

The subtitle is Global warming hoax exposed by record global cold, and the article references a number of reports of record cold temperatures.

But one of the clearest predictions of global climate models is that, with an increase of the global average temperature, local weather extremes of all sorts will happen more frequently and be more intense. That includes cold snaps. In fact, not as paradoxically as it sounds, one of the feared results of global warming is a possible ice age in Europe.

But "global warming" means an increase of the overall global average temperature -- and it doesn't even refer to the average at any specific time. It means that, every year, the annual average of the entire globe's near-surface air temperature -- over land and sea -- is increasing.

And then, today, I see this article: Record Heat for Land Surfaces in March, saying this:

Last month was the warmest March on record over land surfaces of the world and the second warmest overall worldwide. For the United States, however, it was just an average March, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday.

So it looks like that "record cold winter" might need to be taken with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, people who live in the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases had "an average March" and can happily dream on, believing that nothing they do is causing any problems.