Proving once again the absurdity of the Kyoto treaty, scientists have "noticed":http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060124_earth_albedo.html less sunlight is reaching the earth and acknowledge they have no idea what that means to the global warming debate. bq. After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes. bq. That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period. bq. Increasing"cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood. bq. "The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight," said study leader Philip R. Goode of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "These large and peculiar variabilities of the clouds, coupled with a resulting increasing albedo, presents a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate." Last week the big discovery was that plants contributed substantially to greenhouse gases in the air. Today, the AP "informed":http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060124/ap_on_sc/warmest_year us that 2005 was the warmest (by 1 degree) year of the century. Although if you read to the end of this thin offering, you may note maybe 1998 was: bq. Over the past 30 years, Earth has warmed a bit more than 1 degree in total, making it about the warmest it's been in 10,000 years, Hansen said. He blamed a buildup of heat—trapping greenhouse gases. bq. Jay Lawrimore of the federal government's National Climatic Data Center said his own center's current data suggest 2005 came in a close second to 1998, in part because of how the Arctic was factored in. But he said a forthcoming analysis "will likely show that 2005 is slightly warmer than 1998."[/quote] But don't worry, Al Gore, who I believe took no science classes since prep school is about to explain it all in his forthcoming "book":http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006—01—24T184950Z_01_N24233070_RTRUKOC_0_US—ENVIRONMENT—GORE.xml&archived=False Clarice Feldman 1 24 06