Over at Slate.com, Eric Holthaus kindly points us in the direction of the year-to-date U.S. climate extremes index (YTD-CEI).  Then he states the following: The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (which is maintained by NOAA) says January-July 2014 was the seventh most extreme on record. That index factors in things like drought, extreme temperatures, and flooding. If you look at the chart, you can see the frequency and severity of extreme weather events have been steadily increasing for decades. Here is the chart Holthaus is referring to: Indeed, the YTD-CEI has been increasing since the early 1960s, which is effectively perfectly balanced out by the declining trend during the first 50 years of the dataset. In other words, there has been absolutely no significant trend in the YTD-CEI over the past 105 years.  I wonder what the cause of all that extreme weather during the first few decades of the 20th century could have been!  Because we know for...(Read Full Post)