Global Warming is Not a Local Thing

Dr. Jeff Masters at his weather blog from Weather Underground had a couple of interesting bits on Friday. First:

April 2008 was the 13th warmest April for the the globe on record, according to statistics released by the National Climatic Data Center. The January-April year-to-date period ranked twelfth warmest.

That in spite of a La Nina event that brings cooling. But to show that when we talk about global warming it is important to remember that we can't look at any one place for the statistics. A good example that Masters gives in the next item:

For the contiguous U.S., April was the coolest April in 11 years for the lower 48 United States, and fell into the lowest twenty-five percent of all Aprils based on records going back to 1895, making it the 29th coolest April on record.

I can attest to that here in the great northern state of Minnesota. My guess is that at least in this neck of the woods May is going to be cool, too, unless things warm up a lot in the next few days. (Example of our coolness is that this was the first fishing opener in 13 years where there was any ice on northern lakes.)

All those who poo-poo global warming use the coolness here to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. We must remember that we are dealing with more than a local area, even the size of the lower 48 United States. On a global scale things are getting warmer, even with a La Nina event. Yes, it was cool in the lower 48 United States. Imagine how much warmer the rest of the world was.