A brown winter

I sit here in the Detroit area looking at the brown winter we've been having. Yes, there has been snow. But I haven't shoveled my driveway yet and this is the end of January. There was one snowstorm when there was enough I probably should have shoveled, but the weather report for two days later said it would top 40F and I knew it would melt.

NASA has released an average temperature for 2011. Data for the average goes back to 1880, so scientists have been saying that 2011 is the ninth warmest since 1880. Yeah, that eliminates warmer periods in earth's geologic history, but it is a bit misleading when discussing the current climate change. All the years that have been warmer than 2011 have been since 1997.