Rex Murphy's gaffe today

Rex Murphy's column in the Globe today, "So where's that global cooling alert?" was composed a bit hastily. He should have done a little research on global temperatures first.

Mr. Murphy failed to check measurements of global temperature before writing that, "things have gotten cool" and complaining that no meteorologists have spoken up about how solid the "theory of global warming" can be given that Toronto seems to be "having a Newfoundland summer".

Let's look at the actual measurements. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center has data showing that this past June had the second highest globally averaged land and sea temperature ever recorded. How can that be given that those of us in the middle of North America have been experiencing a cool wet summer? Well, It turns out that other parts of the world - the north and eastern Pacific, north-western Atlantic, Africa, Southern Europe, and Siberia were much warmer than normal. Averaged over the globe, the relatively cooler interior of North America got canceled out and then some.

There has been no global cooling alert this summer because there hasn't been
any global cooling.