So, you think today's temperatures are out of the ordinary?

Nobel Laureate Al Gore does, and strongly made the case in his schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" with all kinds of neat slides and graphs.

Of course, despite incessant claims of a consensus concerning this premise, not everyone agrees.

In fact, climatologist Cliff Harris and meteorologist Randy Mann, who, amongst other things, run a website called Long Range Weather, have created an absolutely marvelous long-term global temperature chart that wasn't in Gore's movie, and every climate alarmist in the media desperately hopes you never see it:

Unfortunately, to configure the picture in the space available, the text inside is a tad illegible. Those interested in viewing a larger more readable image should go here.

That said, it's great stuff, wouldn't you agree? And, so is this article by Harris and Mann entitled "Could This Cycle ‘Global Warming' Finally Be Winding Down?" (emphasis added throughout):

For many years, following widespread ICE AGE predictions back in the 1970s, we've heard that our planet is warming up "at an alarming rate". A study from the National Academy of Science claims that "global warming is real and has been strengthening since 1981." These scientists say that the leading cause of this latest warming is the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide. They also state that by the year 2100, temperatures may increase by 2.5 degrees to as much as 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit above those of today.

Up until late 2002, much of the Northern Hemisphere north of Latitude 40 was actually becoming GREENER with less total ice. In fact, the average growing season had been extended by around 2 weeks based on satellite data at the time.

BUT, now, we believe that temperatures are beginning to cool again, particularly in north- central Canada where this summer there was only about 2 weeks between damaging freezes from late June into mid-July. One of our Harris-Mann Climatology clients went fishing between July 10-13 in northwestern Saskatchewan and reported "piles of ice" still on the ground in the region and temperatures close to the freezing mark.

Although the recent summers of the early 21st Century have been amongst the hottest and driest on record across most of the U.S., the winter seasons, by extreme contrast, have been some of the coldest in recorded history. For example, Siberia in Russia reported readings of -70 degrees in January of 2001.

Even if our planet is warming up as many scientists claim, we're still much cooler today than we were four to eight-thousand years ago. In fact, there were probably no mid-latitude glaciers about 800 million years ago, because the Earth's climate was so mild at the time.

Temperatures today are primarily measured over concrete surfaces compared to grassy ones years ago. We all know that concrete and asphalt absorb heat and this often results in higher afternoon temperatures, especially when we have conditions of very little wind. During a typical hot, summer day, high temperatures may be as much as 3-7 degrees warmer at the official airport or downtown locations compared to outlying rural areas.

Mann and Harris went on to discuss the heat island effect in a fashion that very much confirms the work of Anthony Watts previously reported by NewsBusters.

With that in mind, the reader is strongly encouraged to read the entire piece.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.