Know what this proves? That 2012 was hot in the continental US.
What it doesn’t prove is anthropogenic causation. But, hey, it
gets all the Warmists out and about spreading awareness as they
drive to demonstrations in their fossil fueled vehicles What
they’re forgetting is that the study only encompasses the lower
48. Alaska has been cooling. Which isn’t proof of a coming ice
age, either. Nor is it proof that “climate change” caused by
mankind is causing cooling. The numbers are in: 2012, the year
of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt
and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle
Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever
recorded in the contiguous United States. How hot was it? The
temperature differences between years are usually measured in
fractions of a degree, but last year’s 55.3 degree average
demolished the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree
Fahrenheit. Still not as warm as previous warm periods.
Scientists said that natural vari