[bigheadfred]

"People talk about how we are in the midst of several years of a dry spell now and say it must be coming to an end. Well, there have been dry spells of hundreds of years, so maybe we shouldn¹t be so sure," Ben-Avraham said. We have noticed that climate events have come in clusters, he added.

Wonder is any of those clusters resemble the climate cluster-ummm...event Al Gore and his buddies have created?

[SunkenCiv]

One of my favorite reprises, haven't used it in a while:

Caves reveal clues to UK weather
by Tom Heap

At Pooles Cavern in Derbyshire, it was discovered that the stalagmites grow faster in the winter months when it rains more. Alan Walker, who guides visitors through the caves, says the changes in rainfall are recorded in the stalactites and stalagmites like the growth rings in trees. Stalagmites from a number of caves have now been analysed by Dr Andy Baker at Newcastle University. After splitting and polishing the rock, he can measure its growth precisely and has built up a precipitation history going back thousands of years. His study suggests this autumn's rainfall is not at all unusual when looked at over such a timescale but is well within historic variations. He believes politicians find it expedient to blame a man-made change in our weather rather than addressing the complex scientific picture.

I like that closing sentence -- "future decision-making could be made based on scientific data and not on political expediency". I wouldn't count on it, but that would be great.