plerdsus,

You make a very valid point. Every summer we are warned it is going to be a long hot one. Every winter is going to be a long cold one. The GW doomsday prophets have no credible evidence for GW. 30 years ago similar scaremongering was taking place with global cooling. Amazing how upset people get when you apply a bit of common sense.

This is a silly article. We are actually in an Ice Age already, albeit a warm phase of one (known as an interstadial).

The science of climatology was pretty primitive in the 1950s. Things have advanced a great deal since then: the climate record is longer, for a start (accurate weather data has been around for a little over a century) and now we have supercomputers which can process masses of data.

What is the point of Castle's article? Global warming (strictly speaking, anthropogenic enhanced global warming) is a media construct?

Yes, David Latimer, climate is not about one or two days (although the 1968 Canberra heat wave was considerably longer than that, as was the recent one). Canberra's record low occurred just a few years later, in 1971 if I recall. I was not implying that one swallow makes a summer - an error I observe more frequently on the 'alarmist' side of the debate. The article is about the GW issue in the context of political and technological change.

Incidentally, I was back in Canberra today, February again. They were still sweeping the ice off the roads after last night's storms. There was considerable damage - it seems those supercomputers didn't give enough advanced warning.

Response to Richard Castles:

The BOM has said that 2006 was the hottest Canberra year, for the whole year. It was hottest in terms of average temperatures and hottest in terms of average daily maximum temperatures.

Why do you overlook the official reports, in preference to your anecdotal storytelling? Look at how you have responded by ignoring and dismissing the reliable information provided by reputable bodies.

Are you going to call the Bureau of Meterology hysterical? An example of "new global media"?

You are trying to persuade people that Canberra is not hotter now compared to past decades. Reference to the recent hailstorm shows how you continue in this pattern. And we can see this from the responses in this forum that your efforts have already mislead. Your article has led Treyster to call scientists "silly" (28Feb07 10:10AM) and Plerdsus calls the scientific community "alarmist". (28Feb07 4:59PM)

Remember that global warming deniers operate by providing misleading or wrong information. When that fails they then proceed to attack the scientific community. Article after article, post after post, this pattern repeats itself as amply demonstrated above.

Can anyone say Holocene era? Perhaps it is ending...

I studied physics, Reynard and I am sure that I should have paid more attention to climate issues etc. It seemed a boring subject with no immediate impact. The greenhouse effect would have seemed as interesting as accountancy to me then. My point is that the global cooling scare Richard is talking about is mainly a product of spin; it didn’t really register with the public. I have tried to dig up popular articles, etc referring to it and they are pretty thin on the ground.

Thanks for the stats on Canberra, David. An issue that interests me is whether 2006 would have been even hotter without the effects of the drought. The average minimum for Canberra was up despite the fact that: “There were 117 frosts in 2006, well above the average of 96 frosts”. Well we got those frosts because there was so little water vapour in the air (water vapour being a greenhouse gas, of course) and so little cloud cover, but we still managed a higher than average minimum for the year. So the drought tends to heat things up during the day, due to less cloud cover, but cool things down at night. Does anyone know where the balance lies?

As for the hailstorms, Richard, couldn’t they be a sign of global warming too! I know that it seems to be having it both ways. But isn’t one of the predictions that there will be more severe events. Simple-mindedly more heat means more energy in the system. Greater updrafts in storms mean more hail. Don’t we tend to get more hail in summer? Therefore more hail seems an accentuation of summer conditions to me not the opposite.