Global Cooling?

NASA has released the data for average annual temperatures in the 48 contiguous states, going back to 1880. It turns out the warmest year on record was 1934. The year previously thought to be warmest, 1998, moved to second place. Third place is held by 1921, and fully half of the ten warmest years occurred before World War II. Now...where is the evidence of recent global warming in these figures?

Read Mark Steyn's Sunday ruminations on this climate story and on the liberal self-loathing implicit in all the "we have met the enemy and he is us" stories in the MSM. My favorite Steynism is the following:

There are many honorable reasons to oppose the Iraq war, but believing that our troops are sick monsters is not one of them. The sickness is the willingness of so many citizens of the most benign hegemon in history to believe they must be.