More ice

After a couple of cold days, last night began with a dusting of snow followed by a fair bit of rain as the temperature edged above freezing. However, once the rain cleared the temperature plummeted again with the result that today everything is covered with a thin, but highly dangerous for walking, layer of ice. The forecast is for another couple of days of this stupidly freezing weather before a return to somewhat milder conditions.

Not suprisingly, the cold weather in Europe and North America (or at least the populated parts of it) have led to a decline in public belief in global warming, which from the point of view of we skeptics can be only a good thing. However, the cooling trend isn't global, as the Canadian arctic is a fair bit above normal for the time of year, with the result that the arctic ice cover is somewhat lower than would be expected for the time of year.

Claims that 2010 is either the warmest or second-warmest (or close to the most-warmest or whatever) year "on record", however, need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. First, these claims are, of course, made by those with a vested interest in keeping public anxiety over global warming high, namely the UK Met Office and NASA's GISS. The latter's data must be suspect as (somewhat ironically, considering it's NASA) they insist on using only surface-based weather stations, which of course are spread very thinly over those regions of the globe with sparse populations (such as the oceans and polar regions). As well, GISS has been caught fudging the data over the past few decades to make it look warmer, relative to prior decades. The Met Office is justly infamous for its inability to get much of anything right, and is of course closely associated with the University of East Anglia (of Climategate fame).

As for any climate phenomenon being the most extreme "on record", we must remember that, for truly global data, obtainable only from satellite measurements, the "record" in question goes back just 30 years, which is nothing on the geological time scale. Thus any phenomenon which hits an extreme value within that time frame means absolutely nothing.

The simple fact is that nobody has a foolproof way of measuring the Earth's temperature with any high degree of accuracy, and nobody has any computer models that can correctly predict climate over the coming decades, so nobody really knows what is going on, despite all the claims.