Sweltering July was 2nd-hottest on record

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14233583/?from=ET

Folks who sweated through last month’s blistering heat wave may be surprised to know it was only the second hottest July on record for the United States.

More than 2,300 daily temperature records were broken from coast to coast, and the average temperature for the 48 contiguous states was 77.2 degrees Fahrenheit, the National Climatic Data Center reported Monday.

July 1936 still holds the record at 77.5, while July 1934 fell to third place at 77.1, the agency said.

The average July temperature is 74.3 degrees based on records going back to 1901.

Overall, the first seven months of 2006 were the warmest January-July of any year in the United States on record.

[lvx35]

1. Al Gore has it right.

This is the most serious issue of these times. It has to be faced any way that we can, and its way beyond normal partisian politics.

[jus_the_facts]

3. Isaac Asimov did too.....

"In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by middle class flight to the suburbs. His last non-fiction book,
Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

[lvx35]

4. Oh sweet, thanks for the tip.

I did not know that at all, but it looks like Amazon has it, I will check it out.

[jus_the_facts]

6. That's the book that first influenced me in my political thinking......

...that our destruction of the environment is THE most important issue we face...it makes all other matters moot...sure enlightened me and I recommend it highly still.

[krkaufman]

7. And considering Global Warming* is just ONE of the symptoms of ...

... our dependence on oil, it's mind-numbing that we're doing effectively nothing to get off the oil habit. (see: national security; national debt; job losses; environment; climate change; wars for oil)

Global Warming : Now we know what the GW *really* stands for.

[Toots]

13. Alternative energy sources is the Democrats issue if they so choose

We need to get off foreign oil dependence for security reasons if nothing else but even more important is saving the Earth. Why are Democrats so slow to coalesce around this issue? It is the number one issue facing America and the world.

[hatrack]

2. Shocked, shocked, I tell you!

:eyes:

[krkaufman]

5. Before the trolls start piping-in that global warming has now been ...

... proven to be a farce by these numbers (1924 and '36 were warmer), let's remember that these numbers speak only of the US -- and don't speak to *global* warming.

If my body hadn't already sweat-out every last drop of fluid, I'd be pi**ing my pants.

[RamboLiberal]

11. Exactly - in England it was hottest in nearly 350 years!

and last month ranks as England's hottest July since recordkeeping began in 1659.

What also has struck me the past couple of years have been how the nights stay so incredibly hot. I've seen it still stuck at 90+ after sundown for several hours.

Trenberth pointed to a study published in March by the Journal of Geophysical Research that showed that for more than 70 percent of the land researchers had surveyed worldwide, the number of warm nights each year had increased and the number of cold nights had declined, between 1951 and 2003. The researchers, led by Hadley Centre scientist L.V. Alexander, concluded, "This implies a positive shift in the distribution of daily minimum temperature throughout the globe."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301489.html

Nuclear power - well last week the water in France and Spain became too warm to cool the nuclear power plants.

Even Mediterranean countries were caught unawares. Last week Spain and France, hit by temperatures 7-9C above average, had to shut down nuclear power stations as the rivers supplying water for cooling became too warm.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-2291760,00.html

[krkaufman]

16. Hadn't heard about the overheated rivers and the nuke plants.

Thanks for the info.

[SensibleAmerican]

12. Whilst I would not call legitimate scientific questioning trolling,

especially on a general forum such as this, I believe that we should be looking at "trends" more so than what month was the hottest.

[Bandit]

14. Well there are some inconsistancies

July was the coolest July in sixty years in SE Alaska and yesterday 8/7/06 set a record for coolest day ever (38 degrees) for this date. I would gladly trade you guys for a week or so. It has been so long since we have seen sun that I believe it is only a rumor that it exists at all. :shrug:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

8. I had to bite my tongue so hard today...

I think it's still bleeding.

A CO for the company I am hoping to gain a perm position with was in the store we are setting up... he brought up the fact that the records we broke last month were only a hundred years old... aaakkkkkk!

deep breaths... I really want this position.

[BeyondGeography]

9. I got caught in another fire-hosing today at Dulles

a t-storm from hell, which has followed me to the Delaware coast this evening. I've never seen so much angry rain in my life as I have this summer, which fits perfectly with Gore's presentation in An Inconvenient Truth. It would be interesting to see how much precipatation accompanied those temps in 1934. My guess is not nearly as much as we've seen on the East Coast this summer.

[RamboLiberal]

10. At least in the Midwest I believe in 34 there was probably little rain

These were the days of the Dust Bowl.

[mom cat]

15. Great. We ate only beaten by the Dust Bowl.