When was the last time you heard economic figures released from the government? Friday? Monday? Last week? Last month?

The United States Department of Labor, the Commerce Department, the Treasury Department and a whole slew of other University, Wall Street and government release figures on a monthly and quarterly basis measuring the key, and not so key, measures that each is charged with monitoring. This information impacts interest rates, the stock market, yes, even the price of tea in China!

But what time period did that information cover? I mean, if the information that you heard reported was released on Monday, was it for the month of July 2007, the previous full month?

Most likely no.

Most information released by the government covered a period several months in the past, and some is final information even more distant into the past.

For example, it is not uncommon to hear economic news released to the national media on any particular day in the third quarter (July, August, September) that covers 1st quarter (January, February, March) of that year or even the 4th quarter (October, November, December) of the previous year. And final economic figures often take much longer to be, well, finalized.

Remember the dot.com bubble bursting? The company that I worked for in early 2000 was experiencing a very nice spring sales season. We manufactured and retailed wooden playsets for children's back yards. Well, our busy season was usually from March through June. That year January and February were really good months and March through June were fabulous. But the rest of the year was terrible!

It turns out that in 2002, after I had started my MBA program, economic data was released that showed that the economy had taken a downturn in exactly March of 2000. Remembering back to our great spring and the rest of 2000 being awful, I completely agreed with that assessment, even though it was more than two years after the fact!

This is actually not a blog that has to do with the economy. It has to do with global warming and the governmental bureacracy's tendency towards slow reporting when compared with yesterday's news that Friday, August 17, 2007 was "a(n) historic day."

You see, on September 21, 2005, sea ice in the Arctic Ocean covered 2.05 million square miles of the ocean's surface and yesterday that amount had receded to 2.02 millionn square miles, a new record low.

A couple of things first. One, the difference between "2.05 million" and "2.02 million" is 30,000--as in 30,000 square miles. Roughly equivalent to the State of Maine.

Now, this might not be of great concern to most of you, but I am rather concerned that at this rate of one Maine every two years we might lose one Texas by approximately the year 2024. Sea ice. North Pole. Texas. See my cause for concern??

But while history was being made on the global war against global warming, an even more startling occurence took place.

The government reported such a startling and alarming event...on the very day that it happened!

Now, say what you will about pre-existing agendas altering the manner and speed with which information was observed, analyzed, reported and such. I think that the National Snow and Ice Data Center is onto something here and should be commended!

You think that I make this up: National Snow and Ice Data Center! See for yourselves:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070818/ap_on_sc/low_ice

You can't buy comedy relief like this, folks.

I have to say that it is amazing that someone would make such a big deal about such a relatively small chunk of ice. Here is what I mean.

We know that over the last 10,000 or so years that the earth has warmed from a state of what was then known as the Ice Age to the balmy conditions that we now enjoy. Poor Northern California--they've only been able to start surfing in the last 50 centuries or so!

Just think, if the Mormons are right and Jesus hopped over to the New World before gliding off to Heaven on a cloud, he could have stopped by Santa Cruz and caught a wave first. Might have been kind of hard dodging all the sea ice, but the Bible tells us that he passed through a wall when He appeared to the Disciples in the upper room, so me thinks an iceberg wouldn't be that big of a deal!

So 12,000 years ago, big glaciers stretching down into North America and Europe.

Today, we just lost Maine, folks.

Does this news really surprise anybody in the listening audience??

Recap: The earth's atmosphere has been warming for 100 centuries. The Arctic ice shelf is shrinking. And Friends just took one of Seinfeld's nights in the re-runs.

WHO CARES!?!?

But the government finally learned how to disseminate information in a timely manner. This, I believe, is worthy news and worthy of conversation.