Individual and Community

Besides having the warmest winter in recorded history, UN scientists discovered that global warming also destroys crops, producing damages estimated at $5 billion.

According to scientists at NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. , the last winter, from December 2006 to February 2007, was the warmest in Earth’s recorded history.

Precipitation in the US was above average in the center, while large sections of the East, Southeast and West were drier than average. The global average temperature was the warmest on record for the December-February period.

The winter temperature for the contiguous United States (based on preliminary data) was 33.6 degrees F (0.9 degrees C). The 20th century average is 33.0 degrees F (0.6 degrees C). Statewide temperatures were warmer than average from Florida to Maine and from Michigan to Montana. Cooler-than-average temperatures occurred in the southern Plains and areas of the Southwest.

The 11th warmest December on record occurred in 2006.

In January, the coldest climate was registered in Southern Plains and in the West, determined by upper-level wind patterns. States like Arizona, Texas and even Southern California experienced snow and ice, with California suffering important losses in orange production.

More typical winter conditions finally arrived in the eastern United States by late January and a period of colder-than-normal temperatures persisted through President’s Day weekend.

February was 1.8 degrees F (0.9 degrees C) below the 20th century average of 34.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C), placing it in the top third coldest Februarys in the 113-year record for the contiguous U.S. Thirty-six states in the eastern two-thirds of the nation were cooler than average, while Texas and the eleven states of the West were near average to warmer-than-average.

NOAA came up with a positive aspect of global warming: the use of energy in residential areas dropped 3% last winter, compared to average climate conditions for the same period. Had February been warmer, energy consumption would have been even smaller. Overall, February’s Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index (REDTI—an index developed at NOAA to relate energy usage to climate) was approximately six percent higher than what would have occurred under average climate conditions for this interval.
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Scientists have inconvenient news for Gore

William Broad
March 14, 2007

THE environmental campaigner Al Gore may have won over Hollywood with his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. But the scientific world is proving a much tougher audience for his relentless campaign to raise public awareness of climate change.

There is a rising chorus of concern, extending even to “moderate” scientists with no political axe to grind, over the former US vice-president’s tactics and advocacy.

The nub of their concern is a belief that he has over-egged his case. That, in trying to sell to the public the dangers of complacency in combating global warming, he is guilty of a number of convenient untruths or distortions.

The main charges are that he has skated over the Earth’s history of climate change and that his talk of impending doom ignores that change is a slow-motion process.

Even a top adviser to Mr Gore, the environmental scientist James Hansen, admits the former vice-president’s work may hold “imperfections” and “technical flaws”.
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