Please. If there was ever an anecdotal paradise for tossing "facts" back and forth, it is the weather.Weather is regional, climate is universal (over the whole world). What happens in a year or even a decade is not indicative of what will happen in the next decade as climate is cyclical. Some facts- the earth has been warming since the little ice age, so there is "global warming" if that is your start point. Go back to the medieval or even the Roman warm period, and the earth has been cooling. (You can prove anything with statistics.) Over the past decade, the data shows that temperatures measured by satellite (the only unbiased measurement) flattened out and are now declining. Sea level rise has also flattened out. The over all temp for this winter is lower than average and snow cover higher in the Northern Hemisphere. (There is a place called Europe and Asia out there somewhere.) We fret over the variables in our colonies when conducting any experiment, but they are dwarfed by the complexity of the earth's climate and weather. Just look at long term forecasts. There is more to the world's weather than our own backyard and more to climate than a winter. Of all the sciences, climatology is still more black art than science. The greatest truth is - hope that the global warmers are right. Here in Maine I would much rather live under a palm tree than a glacier, which is the norm over the past million years (under 1 km of ice). We are at the end of the inter-glacial period, so odds are better for cooling than warming. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm