Was 2007 Really the Second Warmest Year on Record?
#spacer{clear:left}#abc #sidebar{margin-top:1.5em}zSB(3,3)Taking the Earths temperature is apparently as much art as science. Depending on which data are used and how they are compared and interpreted, intelligent, well-intentioned and highly credentialed people can come up with very different answers to the same questions. NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies has declared 2007 the second-warmest year on record. That much we already knew from earlier reports. But now, the agency says 2007 is tied with 1998 as the second-warmest year, with 2005 still acknowledged as the hottest. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that 2007 was only the tenth-warmest year in the United States and the fifth-warmest globally. Re