At time of writing, I saw two or three people declare this proof of global warming. Most people simply defended AGW, without using the 12-month period as evidence. They do this as part of the eternal argument with the other side, which uses every mention of temperature, climate, or weather to shit all over people who listen to scientists.

There's plenty of good evidence for AGW already without jumping at every outlier on the temperature charts.

All that says is that the U.S. has a really abnormally hot 12 months starting in Nov. 1999, and had an even abnormally hotter 12 months starting in May 2011. Neither of these things say anything on their own about temperature trends even in the U.S., let alone globally. It's just supposed to be interesting that the 12-month average U.S. temperature record was broken, the same way it's supposed to be interesting (but isn't) when local papers say "Rainiest Year in UK Since 1903 :(" or "California June Sunniest Ever!"

Maybe it's also useful for scientists who use the NOAA report, who might investigate other variables to see if that "hottest 12 months" correlates with increased insect populations, or lower cancer rates, or whatever.

I think the problem is that you're trying to have an argument about what this data means with someone who never showed up. Not EVERY story about temperature or climate has anything to do with the politics of AGW.

It's called The State of the Climate report because it contains information on the state of the climate. If you'd ever bothered to read it, you'd know that the "Global" section contains lots of data on global temperature, sea ice extent, precipitation, and more. Of course, since the information is compiled by the U.S. government, it also contains in-depth information about weather and climate in the U.S. (believe it or not, global climate isn't the only kind of climate).

So no, the label doesn't convey any lie. But you certainly do, whether by ignorance or intent.

[...]

YOU get slandered? Wow, how hard that must be for you. If only those Nazi libs knew what it felt like to be slandered, I'm sure they'd never do it you again.

By the way, the Pol Pot talking point is one that you might want to reconsider. It makes you sound like a foaming rabies case. Why parrot all the other fringe Repubs when there are plenty of other socialists both real and fictional to pick from?

What? Why do you think it matters when the period begins? And how do you think it indicates anything "opposite of what the standard AGW crowd will take away" from it? Since it's just the US (contiguous, at that) it doesn't indicate *anything* with regard to AGW. So how about you just leave it at that, instead of trying to stretch thin evidence and make flimsy claims.

The Austrian school of economic thought is not the only one with claims to legitimacy, so hold your horses. Keynesian economics is at least as legitimate, even if you personally can't believe it. If government spending kickstarts the economy, then it's worth paying the (very low!) interest on debt and then repaying the principal somewhere down the line. The question is, can it fire the economy to that degree? Well, no one can agree, but Krugman isn't "shit-your-pants-insane" for thinking so.

Here's another point Krugman makes that I think is pretty good: Without some inflation, businesses and individuals just sit on tremendous amounts of capital, since that's the safest thing to do. If inflation was higher, you wouldn't see companies sitting on cash reserves billions of dollars thick- they'd be investing that money in economic activity, hopefully job creating activity. Obviously there's such a thing as too much inflation, and we can quibble about where that is. But the conservative position- that 4 or even 5% inflation would mean the apocalypse- neglects the fact that companies are holding on to their cash right now, and that hurts growth.

And for what it's worth, austerity can and does hurt the economy in all kinds of ways. Maybe it also helps in some ways, but here's the thing(s): public healthcare saves money, via preventative care, so long as the poor won't be left to die otherwise. Police forces save money (if they're working right) by preventing property damage, theft, and ensuring the safety of those engaged in commerce. Coherent public education strategies create money by preparing the workforce to be productive. Cutting these programs *costs* money, and it may cost more than it saves.

If you disagree with me and you want to counter-argue, that's great. I only ask that you recognize I'm not "shit-your-pants insane" or "beyond help" to think any of these things.

It's weird that you chose to a link to a site which argues exactly the opposite of what you're claiming: even when some scientists predicted cooling, six times as many predicted warming.
It's strange how more and more, the "skeptics" are leading me to information that validates AGW theory! Just the other day, some particularly rabid commenters on the conservative blogs convinced me that the "97% consensus" number was totally unfounded and lacked a source. Since I'm the kind of *legitimate* skeptic to whom all claims are suspect but worth investigating, I attempted to track down a source myself and within three minutes had two published papers showing 97% agreement among the scientific community on AGW.

The comments on that article show just how entrenched positions have become. A lot of conservatives got wind of it via Alex Jones, who painted the whole thing as "The cult of AGW wants to burn your house down," which is preposterous to anyone who bothered to read the article. It very clearly doesn't say that. Yet somehow there are many replies along the lines of... well I'll quote: "Come to my house with matches, pal. You'll be leaving on a stretcher under a plastic sheet." Also: "Wow Steve, you ride a bike and burn down people's houses. You really are a moron. Not just that but a dangerous psychopath to boot. Shouldn't you be in jail or institutionalized in a psychiatric facility?" And so on and so forth.

I can't stress this enough... the two sides aren't even speaking the same language. It's was already apparent that both sides have their own talking points, their own debunkers, their own pejoratives, even their own scientists. What only became clear to me here was that they can look at the same sentence and come to totally different conclusions- not just about the import of the sentence, but about the literal meaning of the sentence.

not to mention the CLOUD project at the European Organization for Nuclear Research!

Brought to you by the society for redundantly linking redundantly to redundant links

I'm not sure by what metric you mean, but if you're talking about delegates, Paul is fourth (says Politico) behind Romney, Santorum (campaign suspended) and Gingrich (campaign apparently still chugging along for some reason Newt only knows). Paul has half as many delegates as Gingrich, about a quarter as many as Santorum, and just under a tenth as many as Romney. It's a done deal, and unsurprisingly the result is the one the "lamestream media" has been predicting since before the primary even began.