That global warming thing has apparently forgotten Michigan.

Normally in March, we get about 8.3 inches of snow, said Dennis Kahlbaum, a University of Michigan weather observer. So far in March, with more than a week to go, we've seen 16.7 inches of fluffy precipitation.

A good chunk of that came Friday night and early Saturday morning.

The storm - a narrow band across southern Michigan - dropped 7.5 inches of snow in Ann Arbor, Kahlbaum said.

That was enough to send this winter into the record books and shove the 2004-05 winter aside.

In 2004-05, 83.9 inches of snow fell. This year, we're sitting at 85 inches. That's a lot of shoveling.

For more incovenient truths, I suggest this post over at Q&O on some Australian research which suggests that either we're no longer warming or we might just be cooling.

Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"

Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

It might be THE SUN?!?! You're kidding, right?