Staying Cool

The National Climatic Data Center reports that in October, “All regions [were] near to or below normal temperature (first time since February 2003 with no regions above average temperature).” This one month finding, of course, doesn’t say anything about overall climatic trends, but then again neither do any of the constant reports of this month or that summer being especially hot or especially dry. For every headline that seems to point to advancing march of catastrophic global warming – “Hottest Summer in a Century!” – there are just as many reports which don’t make the headlines because they’re much less likely to throw readers and viewers into a panic.