Duffy asked Marohasy: “Is the Earth still warming?”

She replied: “No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.”

Duffy: “Is this a matter of any controversy?”

Marohasy: “Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it.”

The article carries on to discuss press coverage and NASA’s Aqua satellite.

Tags: science, global warming, climate change, NASA

Suprasegmental: of or relating to significant features (as stress, pitch, or juncture) that occur simultaneously with vowels and consonants in an utterance. For example:

The growing list of annoying acronyms, or initialisms that the Internet encourages in the subliterate — such things as ROFL (“rolling on the floor laughing”) and the uriah-heepish IMHO (“in my humble opinion”) and, most widespread of all, the infuriating LOL (“laughing out loud”) are justified, if such awful things can be justified, among people who can’t be bothered to use words when letters will do, the fastest way to express their exaggerated reaction, which reaction might, face-to-face, be indicated, just as intolerably, by such gestures (suprasegmental features, really, but not to be found in any updated Trager and Smith) as a mouth shaped into mock-laughter, or hands placed so as to supposedly hold from bursting a mimicked heaving-with-mirth belly.

Seen here in a post on Silly Acronyms, And Useful Ones

To start with, Will at View From the Foothills has tagged Lars and me with a meme. Lars did this last week. The rules are as follows:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

I have to ask how one can tag random people. What would make my picks random? Nevermind, here’re my six:

1. I have worn contacts in the past. I wear glasses now, and I’ve been thinking about wearing contacts again.
2. I dislike mowing my yard, but I do enjoy planting flowers and vegetables. I may buying a tiller for our garden, because I don’t think I can borrow one. I probably won’t buy a tiller, but I’ve been thinking about it.
3. I took my little family to Disney World last September, but we didn’t go in. We tried to do several free activities available outside the parks. We failed to interest the children much, but the ice cream parlor and candy store were hits.
4. I like to try new foods, but I’m not keen on meeting new people.
5. I don’t share the usual beefs about the clichés people use when they pray. In fact, it irritates me a bit to hear people gripe about other people’s prayer habits. I understand the need for teaching us to pray better, personally and publicly, but let’s smear some more grace on this problem and avoid whining about it. Just trying to be a blessing.
6. I enjoyed watching Double Indemnity last night. That Edward G. Robinson is fantastic. I have to see him in another movie.

Now, I’ll post this entry and tag a few people later today. Feel free to volunteer.

I have to pass on this metaphor alert from the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web:

“We hit the ground running. We’re at the bottom of the food chain but . . . we have really made a dent up here.”–Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.) on his time in the Senate so far, quoted in the Washington Post, March 21