It May Have Been a Cold January Where You Live
But it was most definitely not a cold January for the Earth. In fact,
Spurred on by unusually warm Siberia, Canada, northern Asia and Europe, the world's land areas were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a normal January, according to the U.S. National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. That didn't just nudge past the old record set in 2002, but broke that mark by 0.81 degrees, which meteorologists said is a lot, since such records often are broken by hundredths of a degree at a time.
3.4 degrees warmer than normal. That is like winning a World Cup downhill by 5 seconds or winning a major golf tournament by 25 strokes. Just doesn't happen.
The temperature of the world's land and water combined - the most effective measurement - was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, breaking the old record by more than one-quarter of a degree. Ocean temperatures alone didn't set a record.
I'm sure the global warming deniers will latch onto the last sentence above with pitbull-like fervor, but their ability to obfuscate on this issue is quickly waning. Listen, global warming deniers, the planet is heating up. Get used to it. I think Fareed Zakaria has it right when he says,
As we debate the meta-theories about global warming, we're increasingly unprepared to deal with its consequences. Whether or not CO2 emissions are triggering certain reactions in the atmosphere, we can see that sea levels are rising. What are we going to do about it?
