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“Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” – Charles Dudley Warner

Perhaps not, but the 19th-century writer and his buddy Samuel Clemens (to whom the famous weather remark is nearly always incorrectly attributed) might take interest in some classic Paddy Power proposition bets known simply as “Warm Weather Specials.”

The UK/Ireland-centric odds offered include:

Top Irish temperature to reach over 33.3⁰C (approximately 92⁰F) in 2009: 4/1
Top UK temperature to reach over 38.5⁰C (app. 101.3⁰ F) in 2009: 6/1
2009 to be warmest year on record in the UK: 10/1
2009 to be warmest year on record in Ireland: 12/1

Now this is already one of the most tempting bets out there, what with climate change spiraling beyond control and everyone’s social attentions diverted wallet-side. Despite gut feelings, though, betting these props may be complex enough to require more than mere cynical apocalypticism.

After all, according to Reuters and the Environmental News Network, 2008 was but the 10th warmest year on record and was the coolest year worldwide of the entire decade thus far. (For trivia buffs: “The warmest year on record was 1998, followed by 2005 and 2003, with other years this century closely bunched.”) On the other hand, the UK experienced its hottest summer “since records began in 1659” (!) in 2006.

The UK government’s own officially-approved experts make up the Orwellian-titled Met Office, one of four institutions providing key data to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Met declared at year’s end 2008 that 2009 would be one of the five hottest summers ever (or at least since 1659, eh?) because the fortuitous activity of the tropical ocean phenomenon La Niña, which had kept temperatures down last year, would be changing.

As for the individual records, 38.5⁰C is the British record, with the mercury reaching that high in a town called Brogdale in August 2003. The Emerald Isle, while seeing an increase in annual temperature for 14 consecutive years culminating in the country’s warmest year ever in 2007, has remained relatively free of serious brain-baking (and, for that matter, eyeball-freezing) temperatures. The Irish mark of 33.3⁰C was actually set in 1887, and the highest the thermometer reached after the 19th century was a 32.5⁰C reading seen in 1976.

The Os Man’s advice: At 10/1 and 12/1, betting on record-breaking years for both the UK and Ireland at Paddy Power may ultimately be worth a few bucks. Just don’t complain about the weather as you’re sweltering; you’ll be able to bathe in banknotes by year’s end.