so this is the coolest summer i can recall in this region. now, that has no - or little - bearing on the question of global warming. but let me ask you this: if this had been, in your region, the hottest summer on record, what would you or the so-called experts (there are real experts: i'm talking about the spokespeople), take that to show? i think you'd better get worried when all data supporting x is relentlessly emphasized, while all data in tension with x is dismissed. the global warming debate has an a priori moral edge: questioning it doesn't merely supposedly display your ignorance; it displays your evil. the running-together of the scientific and moral aspects - fact and value - make the actual research doubtful: the researchers already know, as a matter of commitment or personal moral display, how the thing has to turn out. what if you were a serious climate researcher and your data seemed to show that the world was cooling, or that the warming was slowing, or that it would level off at a reasonable level, or that it wasn't primarily due to human emissions? well, if you were to report that, you'd be an evil crank in the pay of exxon. you will be discredited, without actual wrestling with your data. your academic position would be endangered. so you'd have to retrench, re-interpret, re-research etc. i say this corrupts the research fundamentally.