A major news story is that 2006 is likely to be the sixth warmest year on record. Lubos Motl says that it also is likely to be the coldest year since 2002.

I’m not sure what the right unit of time to use to establish a trend. If we look at 2006 relative to 1986, it’s obviously warmer. If we look at it compared to 1998, it’s colder. This reminds me of the problem of choosing the right unit of time for macro-econometric modeling–that is, before 99 percent of the economics profession gave up on the idea of macro-econometric modeling.