In the Swat valley, Pakistan has signed a peace deal with the Taliban that will lead to the imposition of Sharia law -- exactly what the Taliban was fighting for.

On Valentine's Day, tech thingee Cali Lewis of Dallas, Texas wrote the following on Twitter:

It's so sad that smart people don't pay attention to the science that proves global warming is a hoax.

Alas, she doesn't appear to be willing to publish the comment I left on her blog. So I'll publish it.

Update: Sometime before 3 p.m. (and after I Twittered about it), the comment was approved -- more than 14 hours after I left it, and long after other, later ones were approved.

I missed this at the time (lazy blogger me), but here was the prediction of the UK's Met Office for global temperatures in 2009: (posted Dec. 30, 2008)

2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Niña.

According to climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of East Anglia the global temperature is forecast to be more than 0.4 °C above the long-term average. This would make 2009 warmer than the year just gone and the warmest since 2005.

During La Niña, cold waters rise to the surface to cool the ocean and land surface temperatures. The 2009 forecast includes an updated decadal forecast using a Met Office climate model. This indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.

From the UK's Met Office (posted Feb. 11):

Dr Vicky Pope, Met Office Head of Climate Change, calls on scientists and the media to ‘rein in’ some of their assertions about climate change.

She says: “News headlines vie for attention and it is easy for scientists to grab this attention by linking climate change to the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change. This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off. ...

“For climate scientists, having to continually rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme is all due to climate change is, at best, hugely frustrating and, at worst, enormously distracting. Overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of the science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening. Both undermine the basic facts that the implications of climate change are profound and will be severe if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut drastically and swiftly over the coming decades.

“When climate scientists like me explain to people what we do for a living we are increasingly asked whether we “believe in climate change”. Quite simply it is not a matter of belief. Our concerns about climate change arise from the scientific evidence that humanity’s activities are leading to changes in our climate. The scientific evidence is overwhelming.”

As jobless rates rise, so do signs of social instability around the globe, including protests and strikes.