NYC Enjoys Historically Cool Summer, But Don't Dare Call It Global Cooling!

As New York City enjoys a historically cool summer, suddenly weather is just weather, not a sign that climate change is coming. But when regions suffered spurts of warmer-than-usual weather, it was seen as a sign of global warming by the Times.

Saturday's front-page story by Sam Roberts is a local story on New York City's historically cool summer: "Dog Days? So Far, It's the Summer That Isn't." Does this mean that fears of imminent global warming dangers spread by liberals and the Times just might have been overblown? Of course not.

The Times has previously pointed to lack of snow at international ski resorts (a hot topic with the paper's affluent readership) as a sign of global warming. A December 2006 story by Mark Landler included the phrase:

The record warmth- in some places autumn temperatures were three degrees Celsius above average- has brought home the profound threat ofclimate changeto Europe's ski industry.

But when it's unseasonably cool outside, weather is suddenly just weather, with no broader climate implications. Reporter Roberts addressed the possibility once, only to dismiss it, finding a geography professor (wait, I thought you had to be a climatologist to have an opinion on global warming!) who has his fingers crossed that New York City will get hotter before summer's end:

William D. Solecki, a geography professor atHunter Collegeof theCity University of New Yorkand co-chairman of a mayoral panel onclimate change, warned that this summer's unusually mild temperatures should not buoy global warming skeptics.

"Ask them to visit Seattle," he said, where a record temperature of 103 was recorded on Wednesday.

"On average, going back decades, we would only have a few days above 90 in any given summer," he said, "and while we haven't hit that mark yet, there's still a lot of summer left."