You can tell how worried the climate deniers are by how many fields of science they have to trash to try and have people not see what’s happening.
it will not have escaped most people’s notice that global temperatures are heading into uncharted territory. The proximate cause of this week’s headlines is the Climate Reanalyzer website at the U. Maine which provides a nice front end to the NOAA NCEP CFS forecast system and reanalysis and shows absolute daily temperatures in early July clearly exceeding the highest pre-existing temperatures from August 2016. It’s an arresting graphic, and follows in from the record high ocean surface temperatures that were being reported a month ago.
This is however a relatively new resource and was not online the last time that we set absolute temperature records (in summer 2016). So this has both salience and novelty – a potent combination!
The ultimate cause of these patterns is of course the ongoing global warming, driven almost entirely by human activities.
What are we looking at?
As we’ve explained before, all global temperature products are based on some kind of model – statistical, physical etc. There is no direct measurement of the global temperature – not from satellites, stations, or from the one random person who happens to be in most average place on Earth (where might that even be?). But that doesn’t mean the products aren’t useful!
In this particular instance we are looking at the output of a weather forecast model (NCEP CFS) that ingests multiple sources of in situ and satellite data every 3 hours which is then averaged over a day and over the surface of the planet. These calculations are precise reflections of what is in the model, but for multiple reasons this might not be a perfect reflection of what the real world is doing.
We looked at the coherence of different products, including the reanalyses, before and found that while they are highly correlated in terms of annual anomalies, they differ in their absolute magnitude (graphic from 2017).
Differences will depend on resolution – higher resolution models have better (and higher topography) and then will have slightly cooler temperatures (all else being equal – which it isn’t!), tuning, model structure etc. and can’t really be discriminated using the pure (sparse) observations.
Coherence at the monthly scale is also quite good (though a little noisier), and I haven’t (yet) seen a good comparison of the coherence of the different products at the daily scale (note that the standard products (like GISTEMP, HadCRUT5 and NOAAv5) don’t produce a daily product). One might anticipate that there is a similarity, but perhaps not a one-to-one correspondence on exactly which days were the warmest.
What are we seeing?
For the global temperature, it’s well established that the maximum is during the Northern Hemisphere summer. This sometimes comes as a surprise to people (why doesn’t the opposing seasonality in the Southern Hemisphere cancel this out?), but it relates to the fact that there is a lot more land in the Northern Hemisphere. Since the seasonal cycle over land is much larger than over the ocean (smaller heat capacity, and less evaporation), that means that the seasonal variations in the north outweigh the variations in the south.
Thus the months of July and August are generally the warmest in the year, and consequently we expect the warmest days during those months – and this is reflected in the CFS output (and in the ERA5 output also). The monthly variations are also reflected in the GISTEMP product which allows you to see the shifts from 1880 onward (about a 1ºC warming in each month since the late 19th C):
The station-based products are a little delayed with respect to the reanalyses, but they generally reflect the same patterns – thus one should expect the June temperatures in NOAA, GISTEMP and HadCRUT5 to be the warmest June on record. Given too, that these temperatures are being driven by persistent warming in the oceans, increasingly juiced by the growing El Niño event in the tropical Pacific, records in July and August are also likely. This is of course increasing the odds for 2023 to be a record year (I would estimate about 50% at this point).
But the WSJ Opinion page says that there’s no such thing as the global temperature!
Well, they would say that wouldn’t they. [Narrator: there is, in fact, a perfectly well defined global mean of any two-dimensional field defined on the sphere, including temperature].
More generously, one might think that their argument (such as it is), is that the global mean isn’t directly relevant for anyone. That is, no-one lives in the global mean, all impacts are local and driven by weather variations. But we’ve known for decades that the global mean change is a really good predictor (not perfect, but pretty good) of local impacts on heat waves, intense rainfall, drought intensity etc.
But let’s be honest, it’s basically pure distraction and attempts to complicate something that is pretty basic:
The climate is warming, records are being broken, and we are increasingly seeing the impacts.
I know why the WSJ doesn’t want you to realise this, but it’s not hard to see past their obfuscation.
Just looked at the Climate Reanalyzer for Saturday and it turns out that the 6 days up to Saturday have been the 6 hottest days in their record.
Very well explained. Thanks a lot
yes
“I know why the WSJ doesn’t want you to realise this,..”
Would you care to definitively share?
I’ve found that if one scratches the surface of a denier/contrarian/sceptic one almost always finds a very right wing personality that believes that climate science is strongly biased by a left wing ideology to make findings that support left wing ‘solutions’. Organs such as the rather right wing WSJ tend to spread opinions that, they hope, will counter the ‘closet socialism’ they believe is piggy-backing on, and exaggerating, climate science for ideological reasons.
I think it simpler than that. They are deniers or contrarian because to acknowledge that the problem exists would mean also acknowledging that urgent action is needed to address the problem. But in an economy that is still revolving around fossil fuel combustion, such action would be “very bad for business, my job, and especially my stock portfolio!”.
Or to quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Yes, and it does not even have to be so. It keeps and it works allready if you just have the belief and the feeling that it is so.
I do not believe that they are “Businessmen with stock portefolio” either.
I checked up the chairman. He was sitting in high depts with negative fortune. They are running after virtual money and fortunes after a long career of unsuccessful education and speculations still making up their hopeless business firms..
Climate surrealism and denialism seems rather like a modern general and popular sports training of how to be right when you are unright, simply training of how to cheat people in business and in society.
Such people will allways be among us but they should be shown to their special town or camp where such manners are convenient.
.Debt prison with open sentence for instance. .
The monastry capacity is much too low in our days, that could take better care of the beggar and the preacher brothers, and sisters. Under strict regime and order.
I experienced the same when talking about evolution and ecology with a local leader of the John Birch Society, many years ago.
In 2002-2005 I worked for an international NGO in London focused on development and poverty in the south, with not only many different development projects around the globe but with, in the UK, a high campaigning profile. At that time, we were very much emphasising the grossly unfair debt impositions stemming from neo-colonialism. (The World Bank’s horseshit ‘structural adjustment programs’ etc.) These were the most intense years of the ‘cancel the debt’ campaigns.
At that point, climate change was just taking a huge jump in being on the radar & there was a real debate over whether we should take it on. “C’mon that’s Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth who need to deal with that” versus “Jeez, if this is what it seems it will so unravel our development and campaigning work in the third world it will set it back decades so we HAVE to campaign on it.”
In the end, we did take it on and we went with a policy position of “Greenhouse Development Rights”. (We had the Ecoequity guys over from California to discuss this excellent idea of theirs after identifying it as perfect for us). The notion being that if third world countries were now going to be unable to “use” the “commons” of the atmosphere for their own development because rich countries had so exhausted its safe levels of greenhouse gas ppm for all of humanity, that effectively meant that rather than those countries being in debt to us, we now owed them. Rather than them having to service these nonsense debts at 25% of GDP and consequently able to only spend a pittance on health, education, development in general, we would now owe them for having rapaciously used their share of the safe parameter absorption capacity of the atmosphere for their own development, something itself still mired in sludge for other reasons that were also our fault.
This made absolute logical sense in terms of science and economics and any sense of international justice. But the immediate response by exactly the kind of WSJ crowd you’re talking about is that this was an attempt to use climate change to smuggle in a, ya know, ‘socialist’ type agenda.
At the time I thought, well, it’s both things. It absolutely is an attempt to tie this planetary emergency to the situation of those who in so many senses are already in an emergency situation. But not by ‘smuggling’. Simply because the two things are ACTUALLY tied. It’s not that some illegitimate agenda is piggy backing on climate change. It’s that climate change is now taking down to an even worse level of hell a situation that should ALREADY have been considered unacceptable by the international community.
Thank you for the concise explanation. Very well defined.
It was a July 7 op-ed by Steve Milloy, “lawyer, lobbyist, author and former Fox News commentator” and inveterate climate change denier. Same old same old disinformation.
My usual response to “there’s no such thing as a global average temperature!” is, “Which planet is hotter at the surface, Venus or Earth?”
Good one, in fact I don’t think you can do better than that.
I’ve just come across this question: “Do you really think either NASA or the IPCC are thruthful?” My usual response to loaded questions is: “When did you stop beating your wife?” but it’s too personal. Do you have any better?
I’d go with “Yes, I do, and the evidentiary record supports me.”
Not particularly witty, but there’s something to be said for directness.
Your explanation why the N Hemisphere is hotter in summer than the austral summer temperatures suggests largely a radiative cause, whereas there also may be a convective component why the NH summer is hotter than the SH summer. A ms by Kang and Seager (Columbia-Lamont ) revives the old Croll hypothesis that there is net convective heat transport from the SH to the NH, making those NH summers warmer.
The latest I’m seeing from the more literate side of those who got their degree in search engines is a desire to cool the planet by bringing back pollution. They’ve also rediscovered water vapor is a greenhouse gases, without regard to the actual mechanics of the heat trapping effect (please forgive any layperson semantic issues). The whack-a-mole effect is powerful, especially now that people who give their lives, work, and considerable intelligence to understanding science are part of the deep state and must be ignored. Here, however, is one brief answer I dredged up in case it comes in handy.
The Hidden Dangers of Aerosol Dimming
https://www.scientistswarning.org/2020/06/04/dimming-dilemma/
Bring Back Pollution! Save us from ourselves!!
“increasingly juiced by the growing El Niño event in the tropical Pacific”
Caution that we will be seeing many folks using the just released Code Interpreter from Chat GPT to fit ENSO time series models. That’s because it’s so convenient to use, and many professionals are finding that you don’t have to be a software developer to produce “results”. I experimented with it myself the last 2 days and what you really have to challenge is that anybody that shows results, ask them for a cross-validation of an interval outside of training. ChatGPT knows all about this because cross-validation is how machine-leaning algorithms such as ChatGPT are tested.
https://github.com/orgs/azimuth-project/discussions/1#discussioncomment-6397038
The other interesting aspect of the Code Interpreter is that it can read a paper or book that you upload and you can ask it to generate plots, charts, etc based on the algorithms or models within. This is amazing:
https://twitter.com/WHUT/status/1677776303989092354
“by how many fields of science they have to trash to try and have people not see what’s happening”
This AI info technology will be used for good and bad. Have to remain alert.
The last graph is very impressive!
The legend with the example dates shows the essence of the warming problem.
Integrating a subgraph with the annual average over time, based on the same data set, would make it even better.
What about the median value instead of the mean/average value of temperatures? I would expect to also go up. Can it also be used, or does the mean make more sense for physcis related issues/effects?
On the mathematical analysis of the temp. data for many places on earth over time, I wonder, if the spatial temp. distribution is beoming wider over time, because most regions are heating up (but not all the same pace), and some regions are even becoming colder on average (not sure if this is empirical shown already, or if this was only from model runs for the future, but there was a cold blob in the atlantic ocean, as I remember from an image I have seen in a presentation by St. Rahmstorf).
But maybe to the contrary and counterintuitively, the distribution narrows somehow, as the temperatures rather tend to a common (and too high) value, which is limited by a max. possible temperature (but at a level extremely hostile to current lifeforms on earth).
“I know why the WSJ doesn’t want you to realise this, but it’s not hard to see past their obfuscation.”
Not hard for people who have learned something about it and accept physics. Very hard for the distracted majority though.
That’s the problem. Most people are easily led by determined liars for hire. People who should know better, but choose to deceive for their own profit motive. It’s really unconscionable of them. Very cynical people. Maybe when things get obvious…
Warning: following is controversial :/
A big issue that’s not really discussed: climate change is NOT, and should NOT (sorry for the caps) be a partisan issue! Only the “leftists” accepting it. A lot of people, maybe most I’d venture, are turned off by the official ultra liberal attitudes of the left. It’s a BIG TENT where everything is OK and ACCEPTABLE (but really just an attempt to maximize numbers so that they can overthrow their enemies in the next election). So it’s become everything or nothing for them. But people have varying feelings. Celebrating difference means alsoaccepting that some people, again I think most, are just naturally repelled by certain things (things like the Folsom Street Parade, for instance), and they resent being brow-beat, forced or subtly manipulated into accepting (not talking science here) those things.
Even some other animal species have a moral code.
I’m not talking being unjust or unfair to anyone. Of course not. I’m just saying that maybe we should take the extremism out of the left, the political correctness, (again, which the ultra rich on the right have been quietly trying to cultivate so as to turn people off (remember, as an example, transgender bathrooms? Why do you think places like Fix, I mean Fox News trumps these things out right before every election??) and the partisanship out of climate change and more will accept it.
RR: [take] the partisanship out of climate change and more will accept it.
BPL: The left didn’t put the partisanship into this issue. The right did, and does.
Mostly true. But in truth BOTH dealing or not dealing with pollution and dealing or not dealing with climate change require committed actions on the part of national-sized populations which is inherently political if only at the local/regional level.
I don’t see any way around this.
Ron, what the science tells us is that there is a human psychological condition called Authoritarian Personality. It is not genetic in any significant way; it is produced by early conditioning. There is plenty of research and writing on it you can look up; it has been studied for a long time just like climate science… longer, probably.
There is nothing “the leftists” can do to change how people with this condition strongly expressed will vote on any topic; these people just do what they are told in order to maintain their group identity, motivated by the need to have some hierarchical structure where they are not “at the bottom”.
For them, as individuals, science is an abomination… their greatest reward is not to win an argument or competition on its merits, but to emulate their parents, who answered any question “why?” with “because I said so”.
As I said, there is plenty of information on this topic if you want further details. But the point is that a large percentage of the population is in this group at the extreme, and even more with some level of the condition… perhaps you are one of them.
So there is no benefit in “the left” being hypocritical and saying “this kinky stuff is OK but that kinky stuff isn’t”, (as long as no individuals are actually harmed by the kink itself)…. it isn’t going to get the Authoritarian population to vote for anything the left wants, because “owning” the left is what matters, not the actual policies. If the left wanted to drill-baby-drill, the R’s would gladly vote for solar power, if they were told to by their hierarchy.
Sorry, just reread that. Sounded a bit more strident than I intended when I wrote it.
I just mean let’s take the politics out of climate change. It’s non-partisan. I’m tired of seeing it cleverly besmirched by those with hidden agendas by associating it with a political party which they hope to turn people off from by trotting out these other peripheral issues at every single election. Tired of seeing it appropriated by one political party. It’s hurting us. Again, climate change should be NON-partisan.
Of course it “shouldn’t.”. But you’re preaching to the choir here.
Just ask Bob Inglis–or maybe senior officials from the 2008 McCain campaign.
Hi Ron R.,
Climate certainly is a partisan issue, as surveys from Pew and elsewhere confirm (https://www.axios.com/2021/01/29/climate-change-partisan-democrats-republicans), and certainly it shouldn’t be one, since it’s a matter of physical science. But you seem to have some idea that “leftists” (hi, I’m a leftist) are to blame for the political polarization of climate. Yet climate denial is correlated straightforwardly with political conservatism, and there is no mystery about how this came to be: right-wing pundits and political figures, often backed by fossil fuel money, have been pushing climate denial for decades, and the conservative base has largely bought the lie. This process has been documented in numerous articles about the history of how climate got politicized. For example, in a piece titled “Climate Change Became Politicized in the 1990s. It Didn’t Have To Be That Way” (April 22, 2022), Time Magazine states, “With the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, fossil fuel and allied interests poured large amounts of money into campaigns linking climate change action to the liberal agenda” (https://time.com/6169294/climate-change-politicized-in-1990s/). And now here we are.
It’s simple: the right wing politicized climate change, systematically, overtly, over many years. Self-righteous individuals on the left-liberal spectrum — whose prevalence and power have, by the way, been greatly exaggerated by the same right-wing media that polarized climate change itself — are now no doubt waxing self-righteous on the subject. But to the extent that lefty self-righteousness on climate is a thing, it’s parasitic on the polarization. It’s not the reason it exists.
As for the Folsom Street Parade, put it out of your mind if it bothers you. Nobody is required by all-powerful Left Woke forces to pay it any attention. But if it’s going to be cited as having something to do with the prevalence of climate denial in US society, well then, I’d like to see some evidence of that effect. Otherwise, such citation just comes across as an attempt to elevate personal squeamishness to the level of insight into problems of mass belief formation. And that’s one of the things that I’m “naturally repelled by.”
Regards,
Larry
Btw, I know, of course, that anti-environmentalism is almost an official Republican plank position, including CC (which is strange when you consider how lovingly they will speak of ‘Gods Glorious Creation’ when trying to push creationism into public schools. I’m talking about the rank and file here.
To most ask of them homosexuality is immoral. Period. That’s just a fact. I’m not arguing about what I think. That’s of no consequence.
Again, climate change should be non-partisan.
The notion of climate change should not be partisan, that’s a matter of evidence.
I think clear eyed conservatives accept the basic science. The problem with the far left is now they are advocating more openly for notions like “degrowth” which is another word for energy rationing and redistributive measures against wealthy individuals and countries. “Loss and damage” is “climate reparations.” So if you fundamentally believe free markets and individual liberty is the fundamental prerequisite for human flourishing then it’s not surprising to see a lot of skepticism.
The left is also obsessed with making oil companies the boogie man, as if in an alternative universe they didn’t put money into disinformation that somehow there’d be mass political support for decarbonization or degrowth. That’s fantasy.
Ron R
Regarding your comments on the polticisation of science. I agree its an absolutely diabolical problem. I have a few comments on the issue and how to best approach it. Firstly you said:
“If you can get people to believe your enemy is immoral you win!……Climate change is like that. It’s linked to the Democratic party by the right wing press and by the fact that individuals who accept CC speak at their conventions, and thus besmirched by association in the mind of the average voter. Why people on the left haven’t figured this subtle and cynical tactic out by now is beyond me”
I’m sure people on the left / liberal end of the spectrum understand the right wing tactic but countering it is quite difficult. The leftists / liberals (Democrats) see climate change as a threat and weakening that to appease people probably wont achieve much (not that you suggested that) . At best it might attract a few middle / swing voters but there is the risk that you end up winning the election but have no meaningful policy. The same might be the weakening of views and laws designed to protect / support the LBGT community. Zebras comments on the authoritarian personaility are very relevant to those issues.
That said its important to appeal to middle America to get enough votes to win, and doing stupid stuff certainly wont help like exaggerating risks of climate change or coming up with bad mitigation ideas, but the Democrats climate position and policies seems well grounded overall to me. Except that linking the climate change issue to other social issues is where the left get into some trouble. This has been well discussed.
“On the left, we are told that people should accept differences (within reason) in others. That’s true, of course. …Yet It should also be that people are allowed to think differently as well…..Homosexuality is natural across a few other species as well. But it should also be allowed that others, again, I think the majority, are naturally repelled by the thought of it ”
You are right about this homoseuality issue and its symbolic of a wider problem on the left. There is pretty compelling evidence homsexuality is innate and its not really harming other people so no reason to ban it, but that doesnt mean we have to like it. I lean towards the Democrats because they stand up for minority rights and against bigotry and racism, but sometimes they see every criticism of anyone as bigotry and racism. They have become a bit “oversensitive”, and it probably alienates a few swing voters and elections are often won and lost on the swing votes. I dont know if Im explaining this very well. But the solution is to stick to their policies and just be careful about tone and how things are portrayed and opponents dealt with.
“Both sides can be dictatorial.”
Yes. Left / liberal and right / conservative have both become a bit dictatorial and intolerant of dissenting views in their own group. Its all become very tribal and polarised. A lot of the trouble started with Ronald Reagon as below:
https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environmentalism
Basically summarising the link, Reagon demonised both environmentalism and “big government” and while big government can do stupid stuff sometimes Reagon really over stated the problem and poisoned everything. The Democrats naturally reacted against this, and the Republicans reacted against the Democrats. Its become very polarised and tribal and a self reinforcing cycle, and its hard unwinding this.
But the left of politics cant fix the problem by weakening their position on issues where they are strongly supported by the science. At best they have to make sure all their policies are practical and sensible. For example although I personally support immigration and multi culturalism countries do have a right to protect their borders from huge influxes of people. Sometimes the Democrats are so eager to be nice to the world they want to let everyone in, which does create practical problems!
This digresses from the climate issue but its important to ensure policies are practical, and sometimes that gets lost with the left of politics. The rights policies have their own sets of failings and they are very weak on environmental issues and even a basic , practical sense of social justice.
You said it well Nigel. Basically if people are, and they should be imo, required to allow diversity of behavior in others (so long as no one is but be them), those others should also allow diversity of thinking about them without guilting or pressure to think otherwise. If name calling by one side is wrong, so it is by the other side. If one is natural and should be respected, the other should as well.
Anyway,I’m not just talking about the behaviors of some individuals and they’re ramifications. Being actual or perceived as soft on crime is another issue. I won’t get into that though.
The two big political parties have engineered their policies so as to be as different from the other as possible. It’s all about politics. They don’t really believe everything they are championing, but they will defend them tooth and nail as if God himself wrote them. They are, though, actually reacting to the other.
Again, It’s all politics, which is a big reason why I am not of either party. I’m no party. I hate politics with a passion. Though, like you, I lean left for environmental and support of the poor reasons. But I’ve never voted Republican. When I vote it’s always been Democratic because for the most part they are the lesser of two evils it seems to me.
But again, CC should be perceived by all as non-partisan because it IS non-partisan. It will strike everyone the same in time. It should not be appropriated by one political party because it will be them criticized by the other.
“So long as no one is but by them” should have been “so long as no one is hurt by them”.
The trials of typing on a tiny phone screen with auto-wrong.
– “As long as no one is being harmed (e.g. slavery), no one should feel forced, or guilted, into accepting things they innately feel is morally wrong.”
Hmmm. The issue is that when people feel something is morally wrong, they tend to make laws restricting or “discouraging” it. “Think of the children!”, they say, or, “think of the effect on the family unit”. Much of our country actively approves of such social engineering by government. Because of this, we do really have to either collectively hash out whether these behaviors *are* immoral, or we have to get people to be more permissive of “morally wrong'” behaviors.
(I’ll add: homosexuality is not natural in a *few* other animal species, but literally hundreds of other animal species!)
But we digress. Back to climate change:
– “Whatever. My basic point is that CC should be perceived as a non-partisan issue, not linked to one political party. More people would accept it if so.”
Sure. Do you have any good ideas about how to go about making ACC be perceived as a non-partisan issue?
Er. Saying that issues of climate should be nonpartisan is a bit like saying war is bad… Well yeah.
There are a lot of ways to examine why this is so politically intractable: psychological, political, historical, biological, sociological, all have been discussed here over the years; but simply not being “politically correct” (which I’d argue isn’t the thing it once was except in the minds of the far right) isn’t in and of itself sufficient to make certain powerful actors suddenly start dealing in good faith.
And please don’t try to get me started about all the manufactured outrage and b***s**t over ‘woke ideology’ which, if you take the time to drill down on it, is simply a cynical and racist dogwhistle, not to mention CRT…
If you’re interested in communication about climate, I’d seriously suggest that one place to start would include becoming fundamentally canny about framing, bothsiderism, false balance, and the Overton Window. I’d also direct you to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
The science of climate is difficult and constructive, and if there’s one thing we see from political science, it’s the devolution of the political right which is largely an internal problem. Bottom line: It’s a whole lot easier to “burn the house down” than to build it, and apparently a whole lot more satisfying to some.
“Folsom Street Parade” – for the record, based on the very little I read, I believe this is entirely orthogonal to LGBTQ issues/rights/etc. … It has at least as much to do with heterosexual cisgender people as with anyone else, AFAIK. But I only read a little bit, so correct me if I’m wrong. I would agree that children should be kept away from this.
But it seems like a local issue – I wouldn’t want it on my street, but if it’s okay with the people who use that street… – it’s not like eyesores can spread regionally; it’s a localized externality.
There are many different ways to be different: a person may be gay, a person may put spinach in their chocolate cake, a person may be a serial killer. Is there correlation among these variations? I’m guessing no. There is a problematic, annoying/maddening history of conflating homosexuality with other things.
I agree that people shouldn’t be made to feel bad about not liking something. I don’t have to find the beauty in everything (or know/understand all truths)- that’s what other people are for (ie., “God”). So long as people can realize that personal discomfort needn’t be moral judgement – ie/eg., it may be wrong for me to put spinach on my chocolate cake (because that would destroy beauty for me) but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong for everyone. Of course, if someone is eating one of those ‘stinky fruits’, there may be a violation of others’ rights if they insist on bringing it into a enclosed (or crowded?) public space – and therein it makes sense to have some regulations. Because we can’t easily avert our noses, and smells travel around corners. (and some scents can actually be tasted in the air. This is why I don’t like to be around fragrant roses when I eat, or even in general for too long – they make the air taste soapy). As far as PDA’s go, it is much easier to ignore them if they bother some people. Of course, there are limits (gay or strait/etc.). Cultures vary but in any given culture and context, there is some threshold of modesty that may be required by law, and I’m generally okay with that (but there are exceptions).
One person’s right to swing their fist may end at another’s face (or a bit before that). With some issues like global warming, we’re discovering our arms have grown very long.
As far as socialism/communism/capitalism are concerned, I’m for all three, properly regulated, up to the point that they make sense. Eg., do you support public parks, public schools, and public roads, etc.? Then you’re socialist – or maybe even communist (no one privately owns them). Do you like the way supply and demand meet each other in a market economy to optimize use of resources, etc.? Do you like being able to have some things you can call your own? Then you’re a capitalist(?) And a supporter of property rights, and thus maybe policing??. Do you like the government regulating the market to smooth boom/bust cycles? Then you’re a socialist. Do you like putting a price on net CO2 emissions? Then you’re a socialist who thinks like a capitalist, or a capitalist who realizes that … Well, whatever. Do you think racism is bad? Then you’re a good person.
There are many different ways to be different: a person may be gay, a person may put spinach in their chocolate cake, a person may be a serial killer. Is there correlation among these variations? I’m guessing no.
– oops, correlation or lack thereof was besides the point. The point is they are different things. Even if there were high positive correlation, unless it’s fixed at 100% (ie/eg by causal relation), you have to recognize individual combinations. (Coffee may be correlated with smoking; doesn’t mean coffee can cause lung cancer. Also not all lung cancer is caused by smoking, but anyway…)
Do you like the way supply and demand meet each other in a market economy to optimize use of resources, etc.? Do you like being able to have some things you can call your own? Then you’re a capitalist(?) And a supporter of property rights, and thus maybe policing??.
I forgot freedom of choice. We don’t all have to buy the same stuff. (although there is a “paradox of choice”, from what I’ve heard. Also, I’ve noticed I’m less likely to listen to my favorite songs when I know I can listem to them whenever I want to via CD or youtube; vs. on the radio, when I have to listen to it when it’s on.)
Also, the police are public employees so that’s socialism/communism (setting aside they evolved from … well I’m not an expert in that, but I will note that our mandibles evolved from gills (right?) and we don’t still use them to breathe, so…). Without property right protections… imagine if businesses could be based on theft and it was legal. Imagine if murder were legal. Evolution wasn’t regulated except by physics, and now we have pathogens and parasites.
Also, sexism is bad. And I think olives taste obnoxious (weirdest juxtaposition ever). And I believe the extant GOP is not interested in fiscal soundness or protecting capitalism (protectionists – don’t want to compete with immigrants or other countries – interesting. There are good reasons for limits/regulation on trade: variations in protections of consumers, labor, the environment, etc.). I like the idea of limited government – but it shouldn’t be so limited that it can’t do what we need/want it to do. It should be big enough and not bigger. Also, my support of public schools is partly me being a conservative – it was good enough for me when I was growing up; if it ain’t broke… (remember when we walked to and from school, uphill both ways through the snow? – well, except in Florida; they don’t have hills.) But our environment is breaking. And some other things are broken. Does simply knowing that make one a liberal?
Also, my support of public schools is partly me being a conservative
You are a inspiration then. Smart enough to rise above the right wing party and it’s dictates. Smart enough to think for yourself, and to care for the future of the planet. Would that other conservatives could be as well.
No, actually I am pretty much a Democrat; position ranging from near centrist to progressive depending on the issue. My point was that some positions which may be seen as left can also be justified or motivated by a conservative principle: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – of course, when they refuse to fix it when it is broken, or acknowledge it is broken, there’s a problem. On schools, one broken part is funding (being tied to local property taxes) (U.S.).
I do like to think for myself, and on that point [I’ll keep this quick; original didn’t get through moderation] – I am critical of some things coming from some on the Left, interestingly, on race in particular
– still, I don’t see Democrats on the whole, generally, being the lesser of two evils but rather an imperfect good. Racism (white supremacy in particular) remains a big problem and the GOP seems to want to ignore it or even embrace racism right now.
I dare say, were it not for racism in the U.S., I believe we’d be in a better position on taxes, guns, abortion, healthcare, infrastructure spending, and maybe even climate change.
“And I think olives taste obnoxious”
Olives are an acquired taste.
Changing the subject since the other was so heated. I once ate a green olive from a tree. I didn’t know about curing it. OMG! I couldn’t hurl it out of my mouth fast enough! Worst thing I ever tasted.
Try it sometime. ;)
Patrick, I agree overall. You certainly covered a lot of ground there and in your related comments. .
Your final paragraph says that that parts of the economy are capitalist and parts socialist and parts even communist. This is a situation that doesn’t worry me, because the capitalist part seems to work well for the farming and industrialised sector, and the public ownership part seems to work better for things like roads and basic healthcare and education. It also ensures people and their kids can access these basic things regardless of their income level. There is nothing to suggest capitalism is going to be optimal for everything or socialism is optimal for everything.
The mixed economy is not perfect of course – but economics is called the dismal science for a reason in that perfection is probably just a utopian fantasy. What troubles me is the libertarian utopian view that almost everything should be privately owned. Some of these guys even suggest private police and army. with “user pays” principle. Its like they ignore the obvious problems of this due to an obsession with purity of ideas. But a few diehard leftists believe the the entire industrial sector should be publicly owned despite repeated failures in the past. This is the opposite form of stupidity to the libertarians
Olives are an acquired taste.
Ron R.,
Sorry, but the truth doesn’t compromise to please the politics of the denialists. The basic problem is that the Republican party is fundamentally undemocratic. The core policies they support only benefit billionaires, and there aren’t enough billionaires to win a democratic election. This forces the party to form alliances with ever nuttier fringe groups and suppress voting to the greatest extent possible in the hopes of cobbling together enough votes to steal another election.
The Republican alliance with the religious right, and the fact that they can get funding from the fossil fuel industry has pushed the party toward an anti-environment position. The religious nuts are convince the world will end next Thursday, and the fossil fuel interests are committed to fulfilling that prophecy while raking in the Ching-Ching. It’s a devil’s bargain made in Heaven.
There is no possible gain in trying to appease these nutjobs. We have to beat them back to pits of hell from which they oozed to begin with.
And for the record, keep the homophobic bullshit where it belongs: nowhere.
Ray, and everyone else, I understand all your comments. All I’m saying is that, again, if there are people on the right who might wonder if climate change is real or not, people who might otherwise support doing something about it, they should not have to feel that they are also having to buy into the rest of the Democratic agenda if they do so! That issue, and the rest of environmentalism, has been appropriated by the left, at least in the minds of most on the right. They are told it’s a Democratic thing, and so to reject it. But Democrats don’t own them. Morality has been appropriated (also erroneously) by those on the right.
My opinion is that if someone demands that everyone think the same as them, they might belong to the wrong political party.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=large+group+Cowboy+Line+Dance&&view=detail&mid=C020CF04C8A8A76A7406C020CF04C8A8A76A7406&&FORM=VRDGAR
Just being facetious, but group think is a characteristic of the right. Independence of thought, at least on non-scientific issues, ought to be a trait of those who are a bit more thoughtful. Diversity, you know. If homosexuality is natural, do is repulsion of it. And no amount of guilting will force people to think otherwise. It’s just the was we are made.
If people here don’t want to accept that, then that’s their choice. I won’t press the point further.
Hi Ron,
I really think you are in fact missing what people are saying, and at the same time underestimating their understanding of the situation
First, for the sake of clarity, the whole homosexuality tangent is a complete non sequitur, so let’s just drop it.
On the off chance that it may have something to do with the turn you’ve taken on this subject, I’ll start back at the video I posted for you on the unforced variations thread
Some students who have a really polished take on hypocrisy (at 3;20 ) while dunking on climate denial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9zZZDARQ7s
The student is using interesting language here about guilt tripping. On the one hand it applies to everyone, but having monitored a lot of discussions and a whole lot of trolling for many years now, and given the context of the interview, I can say it’s very much about denialist behavior– i.e., trying to shut down discussions with accusations like, “Al Gore [or whoever] flys on airplanes [or does whatever], so they’re a hypocrite and therefore anthropogenic climate change isn’t real.”
If I had a nickel for every thread I’ve seen bombarded by armies of soul sucking, denialist, ditto-headed trolls posing as modern Galileos …
Moving on. You said:
Why would they feel that way? They’ve bought into a rightwing platform. That’s how the issues are presented to them: by the right (not the left), as a culture war issue. But it’s a moneyed interest group issue promoted by the fossil fuel industry among others. Do you really want to blame the left for making the right act like anti-science jerks? Come on, where’s the personal responsibility in that equation?
I’m telling you that there’s a whole lot more going on here than your simple explanation would suggest. Don’t just double down on it.
Radge, “I’m telling you that there’s a whole lot more going on here than your simple explanation would suggest.”
A lot, maybe most of the people on the right are simple people. Not complicated. Don’t think of scientific issues in detail. Believe what they are told by Fix News and their rich Republican overlords. It’s a simple thing for them. They are primitively instinctual. Not all, but most. Go to work. Come home. Think about basic things. Are not consumed by scientific issues. It’s too bad we have to be though. I’m a perfect world would never have to give the subject of CC any thought (who wouldwant to). But we are living at a time where more thoughtful people have to.
I’ve live long enough to learn that, as the song Ebony and Ivory says,.”people are the same wherever you go. There’s good and bad in everyone”.
As I’ve said so many times before, if someone is truly gay (and not because they’ve been guilted or fadded into it) then it’s natural. I don’t judge them. An comfortable around them. It’s fine. But I’ve also learned that, while physical violence is more right wing, bullies come in both red and blue. I’ve seen both.
Again, I’m just saying that true homosexuality is natural, but so is repulsion of it. That’s just the way it is. No amount of force is going to make either group feel differently. They need to be both understood and tolerated.
Given that we know that, disrespecting one groups natural feelings by being “in your face” about it (perhaps Act Up was an example) is not going to get you liked. There are two views and they BOTH deserve respect. If the “right” won’t, at least the left can be grown up about it, not schoolyardly childish about it. Not authoritarian and dictatorial.
Again, CC should not be perceived as a partisan issue. The right wing overlords want to tie it to the Democratic party and all of it’s big tent issues, so come Every election they do so. It doesn’t help when people who care about it help that by being partisan about it too. IMO, scientists should refuse to speak at Democratic conventions or anything else that makes it look like they are Democrats. They should state unequivocally that CC (and the environment for that matter) is a non-partisan issue.
My dad was a conservative from the South (my mother a liberal from the West). He used to be big on the environment. Then the left appropriated the issue and he stopped.
I’m the minds of conservatives, and actually most of the rest of us as well, there are moral boundaries that we won’t cross. We won’t kill another because feel it’s wrong, for example. Don’t lie or cheat (or feel wrong if we do). There are others. Sexuality is one of those basic things in the minds of many. Don’t be promiscuous if we are married. We feel it’s wrong.
Many, again probably most, feel that heterosexuality is obvious and are turned off by homosexuality. Should they me made to feel guilty for that by a minority interest group (actually a small intolerant portion of that group)? No they should not. But it they insist anyway then they should not appear to others to have the support of all of the left. The Koch’s and Mercers and others on the right want to tie the issue to the Dems. They will still try. Let’s not give them fodder.
CC is an important issue. We are at a late date. We can’t afford to mess around with partisan issues.
Sorry this is so long.
I agree with much of what Ray and the previous two commenters say–I am a (very) liberal Democrat and proudly so, despite the sometimes…. interesting antics of my fellow Dems.
I do want to call your attention to one fact that we Dems seem to forget too often–that many (most?) Republicans are decent and hardworking people who want the best for their family and country. We just disagree too often on how to get there.
Yes, yes, MAGA idiots, etc. But they are a recurring phenomenon in American history–Trump is a trigger and a symptom, not a cause. From Know Nothings to Birchers, they are the mud that we never succeed in scraping off our shoes.
I know many Republicans that match my description. I know precisely zero (apart from blog acquaintances) who are MAGA heads.
Perhaps you should re-read the WSJ article Gavin and try and address the main point rather than the “furthermore” component.
It is truly ludicrous to compare daily satellite averages with multi-proxy reconstructions from 8,000 years ago, let alone 120,000 years.
The Murdock mumbo-jumbo that inspired this RC OP is a curious composition.
I wouldn’t entirely disagree with its initial criticism of the view that for the July 3rd/4th 2023 global temperature – “The reported average global temperature on those days was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit, supposedly the hottest in 125,000 years.” But the cited Washington Post article that proclaimed these daily temperature to be the hottest only says this was so within a record 1979-to-date. The WP article tells us the 125,000 years relies on proxy data and everybody surely knows such proxy data doesn’t record daily temperatures. So the WP quote that “These (proxy) data tell us that it hasn’t been this warm since at least 125,000 years ago, which was the previous interglacial,” cannot be talking about “daily.” Mind, the Washington Post article does say “some scientists believe July 4 may have been one of the hottest days on Earth in about 125,000 years” which isn’t actually saying 4/7/23 was “Scorchyisimo Day”
So despite its best efforts, in my assessment the Murdock mumbo-jumbo isn’t initially entirely crazy.
But as the mumbo-jumbo continues, this position changes.
The next grand assertion is that the July 4th global average SAT was not +62.6ºF but “more likely … something around 57.5ºF.” Now, for an estimate of absolute global average SAT, a difference of just 0.51ºF=0.28ºC is pretty accurate so splitting hairs on the difference is puerile nonsense. And to add to the mix of mumbo-jumbo, the sourced 57.5ºF figure isn’t a daily figure but allegedly a 12-month average although the denialist website that produces this figure is evidently away with the fairies. (It has a graphic showing some measure for Feb 2015, presumably their 12-monthly average anomaly, at -2.009ºC and then Aug 2016 at +1.554ºC. Make of that what you will.)
The Murdock mumbo-jumbo then asserts that an average global temperature is “meaningless” because “no place is meaningfully average.” I do love the smell of classical mumbo-jumbo with my breakfast.
And to reinforce this, the annual cycle of the “meaningless” average global temperature is then invoked (which is actually quite big, more than 5ºF peak-to-peak), apparently this year’s maximum skewed high by the high Antarctic temperature anomalies which are locally enormous. And “this” is suggested as “likely the explanation for the difference between the 62.6-degree and 57.5-degree estimates.”
And let’s be sure not to forget the demented ranting of Willard/Heartland who only last year found “96% of U.S. temperature stations produce corrupted data.” And then there’s the margin of error of measurement, and that measurements “tend to be limited to populated areas” and “much of the Earth’s surface isn’t measured at all.” Yet those too-clever-by-half scientific records are presented back into the 1800s when we humans hadn’t even reached either pole, let alone gotten out of bed to take a thermometer reading there.
So there you have it. “It isn’t plausible to characterize Earth’s warming in a single average number,” this all the understanding of a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute called Steve Milloy who is himself clever enough to have been awarded his very own page at Desmog Blog.
Re: MARodger JUL10 – Good analysis, you may want to correct what seems to me a typo in one of the points:
MAR:”July 4th global average SAT was not +62.6ºF but “more likely … something around 57.5ºF.” Now, for an estimate of absolute global average SAT, a difference of just 0.51ºF=0.28ºC is pretty accurate.”
That should read 5.1ºF=2.8ºC – so I don’t know whether the pretty accurate still stands. Since this is minor point, and nothing else relies on that, the rest of your arguments is unaffected. But for the sake of these arguments, you might want to correct that one, not to give deniers a chance to throw the baby with the bathwater,
Piotr,
My error was a little more than a “typo” and correcting it does significantly change the situation (so, yes, the baby has gone down the plughole!!). The usual spread quoted for those “elusive” absolute mean global SATs is +/- 0.5ºC but I think this is for annual mean. It would be a bigger spread for monthly values (adding perhaps 20% more) but not nearly enough to justify describing a difference of 2.8ºC as being “pretty accurate.”.
I see there was an RC post on ‘Observations, Reanalyses and the Elusive Absolute Global Mean Temperature’ back in 2017.
Hi Gavin,
You state that “we are increasingly seeing the impacts”. Perhaps you could elucidate exactly what impacts are increasing by using real world observational studies. I am truly curious, as my exhaustive review of google scholar has yet to reveal these. Heat related deaths? Heat related hospitalizations? Death from disease? Crop failures? Coral reef bleaching? dengue/malaria deaths? Undernutrition/malnutrition? Fire intensity/number/land mass?
We can, of course, debate ad nauseum of the warming climate. But unless these “impacts” are acknowledged and placed into historical context, We’re all just doing a lot of hand wringing. Reminder that ad hominems do nothing for anyone on either side of the aisle.
Scott Hastings: – “Perhaps you could elucidate exactly what impacts are increasing by using real world observational studies. I am truly curious, as my exhaustive review of google scholar has yet to reveal these.”
It seems to me perhaps, either:
* You haven’t really tried an “exhaustive review of google scholar”, or
* Your search engine algorithm is so biased towards seeking out climate denier websites?
I’d suggest you start with:
1. A Discussion Paper published by Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration in Mar 2023, written by David Spratt titled Faster, Higher, Hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022, which provides some key observations drawn from research and data published in 2022. See the section headed by NEW CLIMATE EXTREMES RECORDED IN 2022, on page 10.
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/papers
2. An article published by Nature Medicine on 10 Jul 2023, by Joan Ballester et. al. titled Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z
3. An article published by Nature Communications on 4 Jul 2023, by Kai Kornhuber et. al. titled Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38906-7
4. An article published by Nature Sustainability on 22 May 2023, by Timothy M. Lenton et. al. titled Quantifying the human cost of global warming.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf tweeted May 25:
The tweet included a gif animation showing areas of the globe (in purple) that would be considered no longer habitable (MATs ≥ 29 °C) at various global mean surface temperatures, ranging from +1.5 to +4.4 °C warming levels.
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661450321766371329/photo/1
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf then followed with this tweet (twitter translation from German to English):
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661680905813893121
5. A paper published by Futures journal in Jun 2023, by C.E. Richards, H.L. Gauch and J.M. Allwood titled International risk of food insecurity and mass mortality in a runaway global warming scenario.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103173
6. A pre-print paper submitted for peer-review to Oxford Open Climate Change last revised 23 May 2023 (version 3), by James E. Hansen et. al. titled Global warming in the pipeline, available at arXiv.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.04474
Scott Hastings: – “But unless these “impacts” are acknowledged and placed into historical context, We’re all just doing a lot of hand wringing.”
Properties at risk from worsening climate-related impacts are already experiencing ‘insurance stress’. Increasingly more properties are either becoming uninsurable or unaffordable to insure.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-17/how-climate-change-is-pushing-insurance-stress-to-new-extremes/101336302
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/07/climate-change-is-making-some-homes-too-costly-to-insure.html
Scott asks for some indication that “we are increasingly seeing the impacts”. So he wants historical context of a change in these impacts. To which he gets a long list of
Geoff….
1. Change in extremes – no impacts
2. One event in one location – no historical comparison, and a one sided analysis that doesn’t look at cold deaths that are typically 6 times heat deaths
3. Crop yield predictions despite the fact that they are increasing
4. Predictions on where people can live in the future
1. 4A. A tweet saying people can’t survive even now in areas where they are currently thriving
5. Another prediction
6. Another prediction
CCHolley
Why do we need to prove it, don’t you trust us?
And Steven.
1. See Geoff’s 2
2. See Geoff’s 2
3. See Geoff’s 2
Scott’s point is my entire concern with the alarmist religion. Everything is getting better, but we know it is going to get worse
Keith Woollard: – “1. Change in extremes – no impacts”
From Faster, Higher, Hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022, on page 10:
Etc. etc. Impacts galore, with historical contexts; but it seems to me you remain blind to these. It seems to me it doesn’t fit with your climate science denier narrative.
Keith Woollard: – “2. One event in one location – no historical comparison, and a one sided analysis that doesn’t look at cold deaths that are typically 6 times heat deaths”
I’d suggest Europe is a big place – 823 contiguous regions in 35 European countries, representing the whole population of over 543 million people was assessed in the study. An estimated 61,672 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 37,643–86,807) heat-related deaths in Europe were observed between 30 May and 4 September 2022.
Impacts and historical contexts included; but it seems to me you haven’t bothered to read/understand the same paper – too inconvenient for your narrative so best to dismiss it, aye Keith?
Keith, where’s the data/evidence to support your statement: “cold deaths that are typically 6 times heat deaths“? Or did you just make that up?
Keith Woollard: – “3. Crop yield predictions despite the fact that they are increasing”
Where’s your data/evidence that crop yields are increasing? Deepak Ray, senior scientist at the University of Minnesota, for example, suggests otherwise:
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-affecting-crop-yields-and-reducing-global-food-supplies-118897
Keith Woollard: – “1. 4A. A tweet saying people can’t survive even now in areas where they are currently thriving”
Um… Who’s “thriving” in areas currently with mean annual temperatures (MATs) ≥ 29 °C? Evidence/data?
Keith, do you think the people living in Mali, with the dubious distinction of being the hottest country in the world on average, with a MAT of 28.83 °C / 83.89 °F, are thriving?
And I see you conveniently ignore the issue of the already worsening ‘insurance stress’.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Mr. Miell, can’t speak to the rest of the argument between you two, but cold deaths do outnumber heat deaths in Europe, as in most of the world. By a considerable margin, close to what Mr. Woollard writes.
Thomas W Fuller: – “…but cold deaths do outnumber heat deaths in Europe, as in most of the world. By a considerable margin, close to what Mr. Woollard writes.”
Then please provide data/evidence to support your claims…
Thomas W Fuller: “Mr. Miell, can’t speak to the rest of the argument, but cold deaths do outnumber heat deaths in Europe”
But that wasn’t the argument, was it? The argument is about the climate change i.e. today and future vs. the past (a.k.a. “historical context”). Let’s imagine (since we won’t have the data) that in the preindustrial times cold deaths exceeded heat deaths by 20 times , and today, say, 9 times, then implying that all is hunky dory and that we have nothing to worry in the future because today 9 times as many people die of cold than of heat is at best disingenuous.
Then there is the quality of the source. This one probably was a Lancet Planet Health 2021;5: e415–25 paper.
It models the excess mortality data from 2000-2019: cold causing =8.52% excess death, and heat causing =0.92%. However, I question how they assigned the excess deaths to cold or heat, and how they failed to address non-climatic confounding factors.
To illustrate the point – in the Lancet study, Eastern Europe, had the lowest mean temperatures out of all regions and with winters that famously defeated both Napoleon and Hitler – had …. heat-associated-mortality 5 x global average, while the subSaharan Africa, with its oppressive heat and humidity has …2x the global average for deaths from … cold.
Unless I missed something, the authors didn’t even attempt to explain this paradox. For one thing, they didn’t identify the heat or cold-related death based on any etiology of diseases – they simply fitted the temperature changes against the local mortality. This is akin of an economist using a correlation to lecture climatologists on climate, without any knowledge of underlying physics.
Here they presented “precisely-looking “results, e.g.:
“cold-related excess deaths: 4 594 098 (3 337 222–5 640 617 for 95% eCIs), i.e. when you have the 95% confidence interval of +/- well over MILLION , and yet you give your results down to a SINGLE person …;-)
. All this “precision” hides the fact that you don’t know what the results mean – is it a cause, an effect, or a correlation with some other variables. Then there is a big issues an issue of extrapolating the past onto the future…. Becaus eo fo it, I don’t have too much faith in purely statistical studies – more often than not, that’s the tale of a statistician, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
That’s why much more relevant to me is a combination of modelled temperature (and humidity?) – with the physiologically-feasible mechanisms/limits – as in the Lenton et al Nature 2023 and Stefan Rahmstorf animation, both referenced in Geoff’s post.
Piotr: – “. All this “precision” hides the fact that you don’t know what the results mean – is it a cause, an effect, or a correlation with some other variables.”
Thanks for your Lancet paper reference and comments about it. I think you raise an important point about: “they didn’t identify the heat or cold-related death based on any etiology of diseases – they simply fitted the temperature changes against the local mortality.”
Piotr: – “Then there is … an issue of extrapolating the past onto the future…”
It’s already well understood what the heat limitations are for the human body:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/10/1028172/climate-change-human-body-extreme-heat-survival/
The heat index, also known as the apparent temperature, is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature.
https://www.weather.gov/ama/heatindex
A Heat Index Calculator is available at: https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/heatindex.shtml
Locations that have recorded wet-bulb temperatures of 35 °C (95 °F) or higher include:
36.3 °C, Ras Al Khaimah City, UAE
36.2 °C, Jacobabad, Pakistan
36.0 °C, Mecca, Saudi Arabia
35.8 °C, Hisar, India
35.6 °C, Yannarie, Australia
35.4 °C, Villahermosa, Mexico
35.1 °C, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan
35.0 °C, Maracaibo, Venezuela
35.0 °C, Matlapa, Mexico
35.0 °C, Choix, Mexico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
Colin Raymond of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggests extreme levels of heat stress have more than doubled over the past 40 years, and that trend is expected to continue.
https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-handle-how-climate-change-may-make-some-places-too-hot-to-live/
I think the Nature Sustainability Lenton et. al. (2023) paper is a very important contribution towards understanding the emerging human cost of global warming.
The animation included in the referenced tweet by Professor Stefan Rahmstorf was sourced from the paper’s authors. I think the animation provides far more detail than Figure 4 in the Nature Sustainability paper.
Earth’s sixth mass extinction is underway. Can we/humanity still stop this process getting much worse?
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1704949114
OK, let’s look at this another way regarding hot and cold.
From Gavin’s first graph, the world average temperature has just broken the 17 degree mark for a few days, with the annual being about 14.5 (just an eyeball, don’t quote me).
Here is a map of annual temperature across the globe
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annual_Average_Temperature_Map.png
So where do people live? The huge majority of the world’s population live in areas significantly warmer than the global average. If 17 degrees is a problem, maybe you should tell the 80% of the world that live in at least that temperature that they are wrong to choose that. And those that live in the 14.5 to 17 range that they are wrong to want to holiday elsewhere
We like warmth
Keith Woollard: – “From Gavin’s first graph, the world average temperature has just broken the 17 degree mark for a few days…”
The daily 2 m air mean Temperature World (90°S–90°N, 0–360°E) has been at record highs for more than two weeks (up to and including Mon, 17 Jul 2023), and perhaps within reach of exceeding the 17.23 °C record for Thu, 6 Jul 2023 in the next few days.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
But it’s not the average temperatures that people need to worry about. It’s the shifting distribution of the temperature ‘bell curve’ increasing the likelihood of progressively hotter temperatures in summer seasons and longer duration & more intense heatwaves over the coming years/decades. See Figure 1: The shifting bell curve for Northern Hemisphere land in the summer.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/ClimateDice.13July2023.pdf
Keith Woollard: – “We like warmth”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being ‘cooked’ by extreme temperatures/humidity.
Do you want to spend your summers living in an air-conditioned box all day, Keith? I’d suggest your food supply (i.e. crops/livestock) likely won’t have that luxury. So what are you going to eat in the years to come? Will you be able to afford enough food with increasingly likely heat/storm-induced crop failures that may lead to a global food famine?
35 °C (95 °F) at 100% relative humidity (i.e. a heat index of 161 °F / 72 °C) “is pretty much the absolute limit of human tolerance,” and that’s in full shade. A higher heat index means likely death. As indicated above in an earlier comment, some locations are already occasionally experiencing these conditions.
https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/heatindex.shtml
As the planet warms, more locations will become unlivable (MATs ≥ 29 °C) and millions, then tens of millions, then hundreds of millions, then billions of people will be on the move, all jostling/competing for a habitable space/home in a progressively shrinking habitable world.
Geoff,
what a ridiculous argument. By the same logic no one can live in a place with an average temperature of zero….. but they do
OK, let’s look at this another way regarding hot and cold.
.
.
.
So where do people live? The huge majority of the world’s population live in areas significantly warmer than the global average. If 17 degrees is a problem, maybe you should tell the 80% of the world that live in at least that temperature that they are wrong to choose that. And those that live in the 14.5 to 17 range that they are wrong to want to holiday elsewhere
We like warmth
Eighty seven million people in the United States or 29% of the population live in coastal counties. We like the coast.
As of 2003, worldwide 3 billion people live within 200 kilometers of the ocean.
Ripple effects: Population and cCoastal Regions
https://www.prb.org/resources/ripple-effects-population-and-coastal-regions/
Now, about that sea level rise and where people like to live.
Which areas of the world will be most affected by sea-level rise over the next century, and after that?
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/faq/17/which-areas-of-the-world-will-be-most-affected-by-sea-level-rise-over-the-next-century-and-after-that/
Just stop.
Keith Woollard: – “what a ridiculous argument. By the same logic no one can live in a place with an average temperature of zero….. but they do”
IMO, that’s a strawman, diverting attention away from your ludicrous statement earlier:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/back-to-basics/#comment-813122
Planet Earth has been for the last 16 consecutive days (up to and including Tue, 18 Jul 2023) at record global mean surface air temperatures, perhaps the hottest 16 consecutive days in the last 100,000+ years.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1681623905621147649
It seems increasingly likely this month (Jul 2023) could breach the +1.5 °C warming threshold as a monthly mean average. Perhaps that may extend into August 2023?
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1681259309127307266
And next year (2024) looks increasingly likely to breach the +1.5 °C warming threshold as an annual mean average. Even if it doesn’t quite get there in 2024, I’d suggest it will be a foretaste of worse to come…
Evidence/data I see indicates the Earth System is currently on a trajectory towards breaching the +1.5 °C (longer-term) warming threshold (relative to 1880-1920 mean temperature baseline), likely before the end of this decade, and +2 °C by mid-century.
Keith, I’d suggest humanity will likely soon have direct experiences to confirm the validity of your assertion that “A planet 2 degrees warmer is far superior for mankind…”
I concur with Chuck Hughes’ suggestion:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/back-to-basics/#comment-813238
Summer 2022 was extreme in Europe, it was the first time 40C was exceeded in the UK so it wouldn’t be surprising if heat deaths exceeded cold deaths that year. For the UK, winter mortality due to cold well exceeds summer mortality due to heat on average.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2022/both-heat-and-cold-increase-risk-death-england-and-wales-rates-vary-across
This is for the UK, the situation will be different for other European countries which have different climates and/or better domestic buildings.
CCHolley
Why do we need to prove it, don’t you trust us?
Not what I said at all. Any idiot should be able to understand what many of the consequences of a warming planet will be. Most are glaringly obvious. The proof is all around us. Sea level rise is a prime example. Does anyone really need to prove to you that ice melts at temperatures above 32 degrees F (0 degrees C) and that as the planet warms more ice will be exposed to these warmer temperatures and melt? Does anyone have to prove to you that rising sea levels will eventually displace people? Of course not, don’t be silly.
Anyone who wants to can confirm the simple facts on their own and not have to trust “us”.
CCHolley,
You have totally missed the point of Scott’s original question and my response.
Scott didn’t ask what is going to happen in the future, he said what are the impacts we are increasingly seeing now. Remember we are more than half-way towards doubling the CO2 level (in effect) so bad things should already be evident. Sea levels have gone (maybe, depending on your model) from 3mm/y to 3.5mm/y. You don’t think society can deal with that? Or even double that? Still trivial compared with the changes within the last 20,000 years.
What concrete negative impacts have we already seen, and any you point out make sure you show the reciprocal case (i.e. increase heat effects, also show decrease cold effects).
A planet 2 degrees warmer is far superior for mankind than one 2 degrees cooler. And, independently of that, a planet with 560ppm CO2 is far superior for all life than one with 140ppm
It has been said a few times on this site that due to our emissions we will not have another ice age. surely this is the best possible thing for life on our planet. My personal belief is that without mankind unlocking the stored carbon, there would have only been one or two more interglacials before CO2 dropped below a level to support plant life
Keith Woollard: – “Remember we are more than half-way towards doubling the CO2 level (in effect) so bad things should already be evident.”
Have you forgotten about these, Keith? –
* New York City in a blanket of smoke in Jun 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUId48hPzfE
* San Francisco in a blanket of smoke in Sep 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk_OWabJUys
* Los Angeles in a blanket of smoke in Sep 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6ZmNDtfhYY
* Sydney in a blanket of smoke in Dec 2019
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/12/10/smoke-from-australia-bushfires-blanketed-sydney-unhealthy-air-quality-lc-lon-orig.cnn
Keith Woollard: – “Sea levels have gone (maybe, depending on your model) from 3mm/y to 3.5mm/y.”
Per NASA’s satellite record (NOT a model) of sea level rise (SLR) for the period 1993-2022:
* 91 mm SLR since 1993
* current rate of SLR is 4.4 mm/year
https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/2649/sea_level_graph.jpeg
Keith Woollard: – “You don’t think society can deal with that? Or even double that?”
Tell that to the Fijians…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-06/the-villages-in-paradise-being-swallowed-by-the-sea/102198268
Tell that to the Bangladeshis…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-23/bangladesh-water-farms-rising-sea-levels/101567122
Tell that to the people of the Mekong River delta…
https://asianews.network/mekong-delta-region-adapts-to-climate-change-sustainable-development/
Per NOAA’s report titled Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States: Updated Mean Projections and Extreme Water Level Probabilities Along U.S. Coastlines, published Feb 2022, includes Table 2.3: Global mean sea level and contiguous United States scenarios, in meters, relative to a 2000 baseline.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Global Mean Sea Level _ _ Contiguous United States
Scenario _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2050 _ _ 2100 _ _ 2150 _ _ _ 2050 _ _ 2100 _ _ 2150
Low: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 0.15 _ _ _ 0.3 _ _ _0.4 _ _ _ _ 0.31 _ _ _0.6 _ _ _ 0.8
Intermediate-Low: _ _ 0.20 _ _ _0.5 _ _ _0.8 _ _ _ _0.36 _ _ _0.7 _ _ _ 1.2
Intermediate: _ _ _ _ _ 0.28 _ _ _1.0 _ _ _ 1.9 _ _ _ _ 0.40 _ _ _1.2 _ _ _ 2.2
Intermediate-High: _ _0.37 _ _ _1.5 _ _ _ 2.7 _ _ _ _ 0.46 _ _ _1.7 _ _ _ 2.8
High: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 0.43 _ _ _2.0 _ _ _3.7 _ _ _ _ 0.52 _ _ _2.2 _ _ _ 3.9
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report-sections.html
Keith Woollard: – “A planet 2 degrees warmer is far superior for mankind than one 2 degrees cooler.”
I’d suggest both are bad for human civilisation (that developed during the climate stable Holocene period). At +2 °C warming level the equatorial regions of the planet become unlivable. See the animation: https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661450321766371329
Also, the Earth System likely won’t just ‘park’ itself at the +2 °C warming level – it will continue to get hotter as climate feedbacks kick-in.
Keith Woollard: – “…a planet with 560ppm CO2 is far superior for all life than one with 140ppm”
Um… When have atmospheric CO₂ concentrations been at 140 ppm? Certainly not within the last 800,000 years. You’re presenting a red herring.
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/
I’d suggest a planet with a 560ppm atmospheric CO₂ concentration may be superior for some life, but not for the vast majority of species that have adapted to substantially lower concentrations over the Holocene period (last circa 11,700 years), including humanity.
You have totally missed the point of Scott’s original question and my response. Scott didn’t ask what is going to happen in the future, he said what are the impacts we are increasingly seeing now.
No, I simply asked why Scott was asking that particular question and hypothesized my own reasons he might ask them. Scott has failed to respond so I still do not have an answer. You are assuming you know, but you know no more than I do why he asked the question.
Remember we are more than half-way towards doubling the CO2 level (in effect) so bad things should already be evident.
That’s simply your opinion. Both that bad things should already be evident and that they are not already evident. And, Gavin never responded as to what impacts he was referring to.
Sea levels have gone (maybe, depending on your model) from 3mm/y to 3.5mm/y. You don’t think society can deal with that? Or even double that?
Sea level rise rate accelerated to 4.62 mm/yr for the decade 2013–2022.* The rate of acceleration is currently about 1mm every ten years. At that rate, sea level rise would be at a rate of 12 mm/yr by the end of the century. Can society deal with that rate?
Absolutely not.
Just as an example. I live in southwest Florida. The state is already spending huge sums of money replenishing beach sand as a result of sea level rise. Also, building sea walls to keep rising seas out is not possible because the state rests on porous limestone—water will just go under any man made barriers. Sunny day flooding in south Florida is already an ever increasing problem. As a result, Miami Beach is raising its streets by two feet. How long can that go on? Already our ground water supply which floats on top of salt water is being diminished by rising seas. Complete loss of fresh water supply will occur long before we are underwater, which by the way is already inevitable due to the delayed time for ice to melt after any temperature increase. And, my insurance costs have tripled in the last eight years and will continue to go up. The insurance companies know what is happening and its not good.
A planet 2 degrees warmer is far superior for mankind than one 2 degrees cooler. And, independently of that, a planet with 560ppm CO2 is far superior for all life than one with 140ppm.
Purely an opinion not supported by the evidence. Both conditions would be bad for mankind and all life. At 560 ppm ocean acidification and the resulting decrease in dissolved oxygen levels will severely effect ocean life. Most likely all Greenland and Antarctic ice will melt raising sea levels by about 230 feet. That certainly isn’t superior to mankind in any way. Arable lands—the current breadbaskets of the world—will likely no longer support agriculture at the level needed to feed the world’s people while there is limited fertile land at higher latitudes to grow crops and replace these losses.
It has been said a few times on this site that due to our emissions we will not have another ice age. surely this is the best possible thing for life on our planet. My personal belief is that without mankind unlocking the stored carbon, there would have only been one or two more interglacials before CO2 dropped below a level to support plant life.
Moot. We are long past the point where levels were enough to prevent the next glaciation. Also, that CO2 would ever drop below the point of supporting life life without man’s intervention s unlikely and not supported by any science. And certainly not relevant to the need to take action now.
Claiming that increases in CO2 are ultimately good for both mankind and life in general and that we need to ”see” more evidence of its negative impacts before taking action is simply a fools game and is just silly. It simply isn’t supported by any science, regardless of what level negative impacts are currently observable.
*WMO Annual Report Highlights Continuous Advance of Climate Change
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-annual-report-highlights-continuous-advance-of-climate-change
Woolard is the sort who, as he plummeted down from the top of the Empire State Building would be heard to say as he passed the 70th floor, “So far, so good.”
Keith Woolard
“2. One event in one location – no historical comparison, and a one sided analysis that doesn’t look at cold deaths that are typically 6 times heat deaths”
Here is a related analysis based on a scientific study. It might not fit Keith Woolards narrative:
“Global warming is unlikely to mean that fewer people in northern latitudes will die from cold during the winter, according to a study by scientists in the US.
“Despite arguments that an increase in death rates caused by global warming and increased summertime temperatures will be offset by a matching drop in mortality as winter temperatures also rise, the study cautions against assuming any such link as research suggests otherwise.”
“The study, carried out over several years, looked at temperature-related seasonal mortality rates, particularly among elder people, in a total of 39 cities – the majority in the US, and three in France.”
“It concludes: “Our findings suggest that reductions in cold-related mortality rates under a warming climate may be much smaller than some have assumed.”
The research, carried out by a team led by Professor Patrick Kinney, a specialist in public health at the Columbia University Earth Institute in the US, is published in the Environmental Research Letters journal……..(goes on to discuss methodology)…..”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/26/prospect-of-warmer-winters-does-not-mean-fewer-deaths-study-finds
Keith Woolard “And, independently of that, a planet with 560ppm CO2 is far superior for all life than one with 140ppm”
Aaa, the old good denier “Co2 is good for you” trope, with a cherry-pick with a touch of “reductio at absurdum” – discussing the ecological effects of industrialization that have started from 280ppm, with a world having Co2 of … 140 ppm (ice planet Hoth?)
The honest comparison would have been – whether “all life” on Earth and humanity be better of at 560ppm than it was at 280ppm. In such a case, some organisms would be better off at higher CO2 – say, mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus and malaria, toxic bloom organisms in the ocean, mountain pine beetle that decimates boreal forest in Canada – with the killed tree stands combined with heat waves – driving massive forest fires in Canada (and in an instant returning tree carbon content back into the atmosphere).
Most of the things we do care about – not so much. It was NOT a coincidence, the human civilization happened, in the last several thousand years, in the window of unusually moderate and stable climate. The foundation for our civilization, agriculture that can produce surplus food for those who do other things than gathering food, requires moderate climate (extremes kill your crops) and stable, predictable climate – you have to know what to sow and when to sow – if you sow too early a spring frost can kill your plants, if you sow too late – the crops won’t be ready before the fall frosts.
Wollard’s preference – 560ppm – takes away both: more heat waves, more unexpected late cold snaps (due to a more wavy Jet Stream). more droughts in some places and more floods in others, with many of the current worlds bread-basket regions on the drying out tendency. Even seasonal availability of water is compromised – with less of ice and snow in mountains that moderate seasonal river flow – your cropland is first water-logged by spring floods, and then dried out to dust during hotter summers and lower river flows in summer.
Many of the major staple food on which humanity relies – have been domesticated in the colder climates – and they don’t do well in hot climates. Even rice – requires a period of colder temps to germinate, and winters warm more then global average, and land temps grow more than global average.
The optimum temperature for most of the rice seeds to grow into seedlings are between 15 and 30 ºC
Not enough food => civilization falls apart: when your children die of hunger – the economy, law, morality – fall by the wayside – you take your gun and get the grain from those who may still have it – e.g. the farmer who kept it for seed for the next year. Then again- if there is no law defending private property,
meaning his next year crops can be easily stolen at a gun point, and there is no economy, where you can sell your crops and buy fertilizers or tractors that are no longer produced – the farmer may not sow the seeds anyway – keeping it as is food base for his family. One way or another – with field not sown, the next year the food production crashes even further.
Your 560 ppm won’t be good also for most animals either. First, they may be
physically hunted down by the starving 8 billion people having to switching back to hunting/gathering – ecosystem are adapted to the previous conditions.
Then ability of animals and biological communities they belong to – to migrate toward higher latitudes is limited – it takes time, does not apply to sedentary organisms or those can’t cross the geographical barriers, and may be futile if the non-temperature physical conditions in the new place do not support given species/community.
Some organism may evolve adaptations to new climate, but those take time –
bacteria and archaea with short generation time may do it – the more complex organisms probably won’t.
And you might need to kiss good-bye places with highest diversity and biological productivity like – tropical rain forests (if the precipitation supporting them declines) and almost certainly coral reefs ecosystems – with corals killed by the heat-waves AND acidification (corals make their shells from the more prone to dissolution aragonite). Plus depending on the rate of SLR – possibly drowned – if after being impaired by heat and acidification they can’t grow upward fast enough to keep up with SLR.
Coastal human and biological communities will be ravaged by stronger hurricanes (that gain more energy and/or or lose less strength, when moving over warmer ocean) that also move slower – thus maximizing the coastal flooding (with each storm surge riding on top of a higher background SL)
So no, Mr Woollard – doubling preindustrial atm. CO2 to 560ppm is not
“far superior for all life” .
Thank you, Mr Woolard, for linking your name to Austrsalian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s 2020 warning thar without Net Zero, our: “‘Planet will be uninhabitable for billions of people’ by 2050 ”
Who could be so philistine as to question the statesman who first told the world that
” Coal is now an essential part of our zero carbon future”?I
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com
Keith Woollard says
13 JUL 2023 AT 9:08 PM
Keith, you’re getting your butt kicked all over the web. I think you should quit embarrassing yourself.
“butt Kicked all over the web” You really think that?
Scott, and then I, asked a simple question following on from Gavin’s clearly false claim and no one has yet answered it.
Show something that is clearly getting worse. Shouldn’t be that hard???
Simply pointing out bad things does not in any way say they are getting worse. For example if weather extremes are killing more people, show me a graph, but don’t trim the dataset to what you want to show.
Do not show another prediction, I want a clear historical trend in some variable that is demonstrably having a net negative impact on us
Do not tell me what mankind will have to do in 100 years
Do not say Scott should not ask the question!!!!!!
I don’t believe you all understand that pointing out that, for example, that Europe has had record breaking temperatures and people have died doesn’t show ANYTHING about impacts getting worse. Pointing out there has been smoke across a big chunk of the US does not show things are getting worse,
Please, someone answer the question properly
Keith,
These are inflation-adjusted weather disasters, and they’re getting worse.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series
Thank you Chuck, Finally someone actually trying to answer the question.
And I have no doubt the figures are correct and I don’t think I can refute them to any real degree. that you will be happy with.
What I can say is that Insurance cost over time is not a great metric even when you adjust for inflation. We are a far more litigious society than 40 years ago. For example the boat club I am in has had it’s insurance premiums increase 3 fold in 20 years even after adjusting for inflation, and despite significant safety improvements and stricter rules.
Perhaps cost as a percentage of GDP is a better metric
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/natural-disasters?facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&hideControls=true&Disaster+Type=All+disasters&Impact=Economic+damages+%28%25+GDP%29&Timespan=Annual&Per+capita=false
Do not show another prediction, I want a clear historical trend in some variable that is demonstrably having a net negative impact on us.
Sea level rise is not a just prediction…it is a projection of what is actually happening. No matter how you spin it, it WILL result in a net negative impact. A very severe negative impact.
Do not tell me what mankind will have to do in 100 years
Right, who cares about future generations. It’s all about me.
Thus, the correct mental model is not one of impacts slowly getting worse over decades. Rather, the correct way to understand climate change is that things are fine until they’re not, at which point they’re really terrible. And the system can go from “fine” to “terrible” in the blink of an eye.—Andrew Dressler
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/why-are-climate-impacts-escalating
Are the impacts of climate change non-linear?
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2023/07/20/are-the-impacts-of-climate-change-non-linear/
Scott, we can also “debate ad nauseam” (correct spelling) what “impacts” should be counted as significant… that’s called the No True Scotsman fallacy.
The point is that our climate system is a complex non-linear system (“chaotic”), and if you increase the energy in such a system, it will go through changes from it’s original equilibrium state.
To validate the science, we don’t need to predict things at some impossible level of granularity; e.g. established physics tells us that a very hot ocean is going to cause rapid intensification of hurricanes; it isn’t necessary to predict the exact date of landfall.
I’ve always liked this animated graph:
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/266/watching-the-land-temperature-bell-curve-heat-up-1950-2020/
So, we also have data that shows increases in what are termed “heat waves” for a large number of location. Do you think that heat waves are not an “impact”, or that they are not reflected in that graph?
Zebra,
Please direct me to a peer reviewed article that shows whatever you’re trying to measure, like heatwaves, that shows a trendline back several decades. If it shows an increase, then I’ll concede that heatwaves are indeed increasing over time. NO MODELS. I’m personally tired of them.
Scott, from your other responses, I think you don’t understand how science works, particularly physics-derived. Here’s some data, which you will probably say is part of a conspiracy, but anyway:
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-waves
The discussion is pretty thorough; it mentions urban heat island and variations and so on.
But the point, as I said, is that your approach is a logical fallacy and it is also not scientific.
I gave you the other reference
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/266/watching-the-land-temperature-bell-curve-heat-up-1950-2020/
which shows that there is an increase in extremes.
So, we have certain information:
1. Increased CO2 has caused an increase in the energy in the climate system.
2. Extreme high temps have increased.
3. There is a record of heat waves increasing in urban areas in various characteristics.
So, when we observe very intense worldwide events as we have just this year, it is perfectly correct to say “things are getting worse”, because we take all these things into account, and even if we don’t do actual attribution studies, it is absurd to suggest that any particular event is not affected by the underlying physics. (This applies to other things like intense rainfalls as well.)
Is it your “scientific” contention that increased energy in the climate system has no effect on temperatures?
Is it your “scientific” contention that increased water vapor in the atmosphere has no effect on rainfall?
Personally, I am tired of people who don’t know or follow the basics of logic, reason, and physics, who think they are being clever with simplistic rhetorical games.
Hi Zebra, you said: “Scott, from your other responses, I think you don’t understand how science works, particularly physics-derived…”
PLEASE don’t stop thinking that. It makes it so much more fun for me. The more of you who gather ’round the echo chamber, the better. Ah, yes, so much easier (but admittedly so predictable) to FIRST: Use ad hominem (If I tell Scott he is stupid, then I’ll look superior). SECOND: Throw in an accusation of a logical fallacy (like straw man, gish galloping, sea-lioning, or no true scotsman etc. etc. etc. –If I sound like I know what I’m doing, then distract with accusations, I’ll win the round!)
Whatever you do, DON”T think that I or any other “denialist” has any wit or wisdom about us at all. It makes it oh, so much more fun.
Go back and read everything I have written. I’ve never said the globe is not warming over time. But that is not the same thing as heatwaves. We have a way of defining heatwaves in a language that we can all understand. It’s called the heatwave index. Go back to the link you just shared with me and instead of looking at figure 1, now look at figure 3 “heat wave index”. THAT is more instructive than heat wave characteristics (BTW they use “2020’s” decade with only 2 year of data–LOL) What about the 1930’s eh?
There is no clear, consistent trend with heat wave index. I hate to be the one to break it to you. The fact that Gavin never answered my original question about actual outcome trends speaks volumes. You can tell me all day long how things are warming up, but until you can show me OBSERVATIONAL OUTCOME STUDIES, NOT MODEL PREDICTIONS, THEN YOU ARE NOT SCIENTIFIC. The ad hominem attacks are just so old. But still funny.
Sincerely,
“But that is not the same thing as heatwaves. We have a way of defining heatwaves in a language that we can all understand. It’s called the heatwave index.”
Scott, who is “we”?
From wiki=p:
“No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect their generalized statement from a falsifying counterexample by excluding the counterexample improperly”
So, your entire argument relies on ignoring all the evidence presented about heatwaves having increasing negative impacts, and informing us that “we” (meaning Scott) have decided that fig. 3 is “more instructive”. Got it.
And I know this will not change anything in your universe, but ad hominem, again from wiki-p:
“Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.”
But that’s not what I did… you might want to claim that I was “trash-talking” you a bit, but that came as an introduction to an actual substantive argument, which you failed to answer.
Showing someone that they are wrong does not make them a victim; it is the foundation of a good education… for those wishing to acquire one.
Scott
“There is no clear, consistent trend with heat wave index”
Heat Wave Index in the United States between 1895 and 2020
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293872/us-heat-wave-index/
The graph is flat early to mid last century, and shows an increasing trend in the heatwave index after the 1970s to 2020. This is the modern warming period and this is the period we are most interested in. Its a clear and fairly consistent rising trend after the 1970s. This is what we would expect given the anthropogenic warming trend became strongest after the 1970s.
Obviously the large spike in the 1930s is a statistical outlier value so should be ignored. The strong heatwaves in the 1930s period were a result of both pacific and atlantic ocean cycles being in a warming phase at the same time and other weather related and geographical factors. It was a rare coincidence of conditions.
But the graph relates to America. This is not a global analysis. The IPCC has looked at the GLOBAL evidence, and determined that heatwaves have been increasing in frequency and intensity globally in recent decades. Download their reports, they are free, and read the references to the related research.
I don’t know if there is an associated increase in mortality. It may be that mortality rate per 1000 people has stayed the same due to better medical treatments, so far. But there are obviously likely to be limits to this process. Heatwaves in the tropics can sometimes combine very lethal levels of heat and humidity. As the climate warms these will become more commonplace, possibly making whole regions unlivable. And it will happen quite suddenly as the thresholds are reached.
All this material is easily googled.
Your reasoning on the issue is incredibly shallow and narrow. You remind me of Victor. Maybe you are Victor. Clever enough, but stubborn and cranky and a sad old troll.
Perhaps you could elucidate exactly what impacts are increasing by using real world observational studies. I am truly curious, as my exhaustive review of google scholar has yet to reveal these. Heat related deaths? Heat related hospitalizations? Death from disease? Crop failures? Coral reef bleaching? dengue/malaria deaths? Undernutrition/malnutrition? Fire intensity/number/land mass?
Why does one need to see observational studies of these particular impacts?
Is there a belief that a warming climate won’t cause any of these concerns to increase? That’s just silly, it should be glaringly obvious that warming will cause increases in these particular things to happen. It’s not just the science that tells us that, it’s common sense. As such, there is most certainly no reason to wait action until these particular predicted impacts increase to the point where they are measurably obvious.
Or is it that one is just looking for evidence that warming is actually occurring and observational studies of these impacts are needed to confirm that the warming is actually happening? That would also be silly. There is already significant evidence of a warming planet well beyond the temperature records e.g. melting glaciers, rising sea levels, longer growing seasons, etc. etc. Google that.
We can, of course, debate ad nauseum of the warming climate. But unless these “impacts” are acknowledged and placed into historical context, We’re all just doing a lot of hand wringing.
I respectfully disagree. It is simply an excuse to ignore the science and delay action. There is plenty of reason to be concerned, we’re all NOT just doing a lot of hand wringing.
Consider the last time CO2 levels were above 400 ppm. Sea levels were somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 feet higher give or take. So significant sea level rise is already likely a given. Knowing that, aren’t many worried about migration of impoverished people into their wealthy countries now? Just wait, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But hey, let’s wait because we don’t have observational studies showing an increase in the impacts of mass migration, let’s just wait a few more years until we actually have to relocate those fifty million people from Bangladesh to your county.
Hi CC Holley, I didn’t come back because I honestly thought that realclimate would not post my question. To their credit, they did.
You ask: “Why does one need to see observational studies of these particular impacts?”
Well because, that’s science. If you do not require observational studies, then you are not doing science. Period.
Why don’ t you ask Gavin that question, he’s the one who stated that we are starting to feel the impacts. Short term heat waves in the US and fires and Canada do nothing to advance your cause unless there is a positive trend over time. There isn’t.
Well because, that’s science. If you do not require observational studies, then you are not doing science. Period.
That doesn’t really answer my question.
Not saying that studies on impacts wouldn’t be interesting science rather why does one need such studies? Most of the impacts that will occur as the planet continues to warm should be obvious whether or not many of them can currently be observed out of the noisy data. The question is simply a distraction and excuse for avoiding action because the science is quite strong for what most of the impacts will be–whether currently observable or not. For example, I certainly don’t need scientific studies of the current negative impacts of the sea level rise that has occurred to date to recognize that rising seas will not be good for mankind–it will eventually be catastrophic. Sea level rise most certainly is a driving reason for action while increases in heat waves and fires are not. Just don’t need them to make a case. Period.
Scott, you’re making an invalid argument from the specific to the general.
Also, your assertions that we’re not seeing the impacts of AGW and that there is no trend is inconsistent with the evidence. See .
If you disagree, then please provide references to the peer-reviewed literature.
LMGTFY:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajim.23024
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20486291?seq=1
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2022
Took me 5 minutes to find these.
Hi Steve,
1st reference refers to construction workers in the US using n=285 with highly questionable R value. But I appreciate the effort.
Unfortunately, GLOBAL studies show decreasing heat sensitivity.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab214
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27503399/
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0102-7
https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to produce studies that show a global trend over time. Meta analyses are usually a good way to do this.
Your 2nd article is completely irrelevant to global heat related deaths. I’m sorry.
3rd article concerns Stockholm Sweden. Yeah, one city.
Scott, try this, then .
Scott Hastings sounds a man determined not to find information, or to deliberately not understand what he is reading. Perhaps he has heard about what is happening with the climate, but doesnt like the implications of climate science for whatever reason (vested interests, political ideologies) so he avoids knowledge of what is happening to the climate and how it affects humans , so as not to feel uncomfortable. Cognitive dissonance might lead people to do this:
“In When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world.[1] A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance.[1][2] They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization) or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias).[1][2][3]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Hi nigelj
Perhaps you can point me to the uncomfortable science rooted in real world observations and lay off the self righteous indignation. This is a science blog. Show me the science. You know trends over time for pick one: (fires, heat deaths, chronic disease, malnutrition, infectious disease, etc etc etc) HINT: You’ll be looking for a long time
Scott: “You’ll be looking for a long time”
Hardly. See .
Hi Nigel,
Sorry to piggyback on your post, but I replied several times to Scott and forgot that anything in angle brackets gets discarded — and there appears to be no way to edit a submitted post. My bad.
The posts all reference this URL: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series, which displays a very nice time-series graphic of billion-dollar weather disasters in the US since 1980 — adjusted for inflation, of course.
Ah, yes–insurance losses–the only actual observational study that can (and is–frequently–) produced to show how things are getting worse. I won’t bore you with insignificant confounders like population growth, population growth along coastal waters, inflation, cost of living increases, etc. etc. etc.
I wonder what would happen if we completely eliminated all infrastructure going back to 1980 and kept everything at 1980 levels. Then we could get an accurate picture.
Don’t you think infrastructure growth is a pretty gosh darn big compounding variable? Drat.
Sincerely,
S: Don’t you think infrastructure growth is a pretty gosh darn big compounding variable?
BPL: Why don’t you do a multiple regression including infrastructure as an independent variable and see how much of the variance is attributable to each factor?
Until you do that, you have no case. Do the math or shut up.
Scott, please provide references to the peer-reviewed, scientific literature supporting your assertion that there is no trend in harmful weather events consistent with AGW.
Steven:
Indubitably.
Claim: IPCC-5 Page 713 states, “Until mid-century climate change will act mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist (very high confidence).”
Observation: Heart attack incidence rates in Norway have decreased and heart disease deaths in Peru both have decreased over time. Heart disease events in Norwegian RA patients have decreased over time. Heart disease hospitalization rates in England and Australia have decreased as well.
Observation: Although heart disease incidence is increasing worldwide, it is actually decreasing after adjusting for age (just means we’re all living longer = more heart disease due to age).
Observation: Diabetes complications have decreased over time.
Observation: No difference in asthma burden over 25 years, and a significant decrease in asthma related deaths.
Observation: While global colorectal cancer incidence is slightly increasing, we have no idea that any of it is because of climate change, especially due to the fact that gastric cancer incidence and mortality is decreasing, and other cancers are both increasing and decreasing, depending on which area of the world is being investigated.
Observation: Global pneumonia mortality rates have decreased, in both adults and children.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29808757/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35742296/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35272584/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32742886/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34837505/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/alr.22464
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1936523321001662
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34309666/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2020.00171/full
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34399040/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35964613/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X1830408X
Where are the exacerbations of health problems?
Claim: “Existing diseases (e.g., food-borne infections) may extend their range into areas that are presently unaffected (high confidence).”
Observation: While existing diseases may be extending their geographic ranges, it is almost impossible to attribute this to climate change without including globalization of trade routes. Infectious disease mortality rates may act as a surrogate, as existing diseases that are expanding to new areas should generally show increasing mortality rates of such defined disease. Fortunately, global malaria incidence and mortality is decreasing, dengue incidence and mortality is decreasing, cholera incidence is variable and mortality generally decreasing, and salmonella incidence and mortality is decreasing.
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/malaria/world-malaria-reports/world-malaria-report-2022-regional-briefing-kit-eng.pdf?sfvrsn=7cb400ed_6&download=true
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-021-00470-2
https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON426#:~:text=The%20global%20burden%20of%20cholera,and%2095%2C000%20deaths%20occur%20annually.&text=*%20In%202017%20and%202019%2C%20Yemen,Epidemiological%20Report%202018%2C%202020).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128363/
Where is the direct, observational evidence that these diseases are extending their range into areas that are presently unaffected other than obvious effects of commercial trade route changes?
Claim: “It is expected that health losses due to climate change-induced undernutrition will occur mainly in areas that are already food-insecure.”
Observation: Deaths due to malnutrition are down very significantly, especially in Africa.
Observation: Growth stunting in Africa continues to decrease.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/13/2592
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0194821
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25937927/
https://globalnutritionreport.org/reports/global-nutrition-report-2018/burden-malnutrition/
Where are the health losses due to undernutrition caused by climate change? Ironically, the most “food insecure” nations in Africa are the countries having substantial improvements in nutrition to the point that obesity is now becoming prevalent.
Claim: “Rising temperatures have increased the risk of heat-related death and illness (likely)”
Observation: Overall, we are having less heat related deaths and illness over time, not more.
Observation: There are decreasing heat stroke hospitalizations, decreasing susceptibility to heat waves, and decreasing heat wave deaths.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab214
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35583101/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27503399/
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0102-7
https://dspace.uevora.pt/rdpc/bitstream/10174/13340/1/Alcoforado%20et_2015_AppGeo_Franzini-1nb.pdf
Claim: “Greater risk of injury, disease, and death due to more intense heat waves and fires (very high confidence)”
Observation: Global fire incidence, severity, and loss trends are all decreasing.
Observation: Global burn area has decreased.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aal4108
How can there be more intense heat waves if there are fewer diseases and deaths from those heat waves? How can there be a greater incidence of injury, disease, and death due to fires that are happening less often, and lower severity? If the IPCC claims “very high confidence”, shouldn’t this start showing up in the literature by now? Why hasn’t it?
Uh oh.
@ scott
My interpretation of CC impacts studies on issues of food and health etc is that they typically design their research question based on a hypothetical counterfactual scenario of “no climate change.”
Often this causes confusion in reporting. Overall wellness is improving, but perhaps at a slower rate than otherwise might have been.
Scott, your subsequent assertions and URLs are irrelevant because the issue is trends in catastrophic weather and not trends in health care.
Please post references to the peer-reviewed, scientific literature supporting your assertion that there are no trends in catastrophic weather. Be aware that surface temperature is weather. And the scientific consensus is that it’s global average is increasing. And it’s a reasonable abduction that this will cause more problems than if it didn’t occur (we’ve seen evidence of this in the recent heat waves).
Hr Schmidt
We have been out on a pilgrim / research journey in the climate, from Oslo up Hemsedal and over the mountains and down again to Lærdal & further with tunnels and an electric ferryboat to Sogndal ( Sognefjord) and back again the same way
So I could not interfere and disturb the situation here for all that time.
But we saw a lot of lapserate and climate. And climate history, and I could tell and show to the flora all the way.
People think in terms of laptop computers and cannot see it.
I see it as soon as I come out from my office. They must learn to think rather in terms of possible bathing waters and dewpoints and strawberries along with that in the open system. .
In the pre-Murdoch era, when , like The New York Times, , The Wall Street Journal had a weekly Science Section and a full time Science Editor, I wrote and reviewed books for the paper on a fairly regular basis.
Many of my pieces touched on geophysical triumphs and disasters, from the Hubble space telescope and Mars probes, to earthquakes , tsunamis, and the Challenger crack-up. But while the Editorial Board was happy to run pieces by a New England Republican challenging the common wisdom of ,b> The Guardian on climate policy it did not want to hear about the growing predictive power of General Circulation Models or the increasing volue and quality of satellite data. preferring to cling to mantras left over from the 80’s like GIGO, and continued running whatever Fred Singer had to say. :— the Science section had already folded ,an the new management included many more attuned to the press releases of the Discovery Institute than NCAR.
Things came to a head in August of 2005 when , with real-time seas surface temperature satellite maps and models, running on my screen ,it became horribly apparent that Hurricane Katrina’s all too predictable course across the superheated Gulf of Mexico could end in a disaster rivaling 9-11.
So I turned off Saturday Night Live and, having some credibility left over from alerting him that the death toll from previous year’s tsunami might rival Hiroshima, called the Editor, Paul Gigot, whom I’d first met in Hong Kong in 1986.
Less than amused by the hour of the call, Paul reacted to my telling him it look like New Orleans was ” going to go glug-glug” by going back to bed..
I’m tempted to write Paul inviting him to explain, as Moderator of the WSJ”s Fox TV public affairs show, Journal Editorial Report , how he would react to a WSJ op-ed with the lede:
Hottest Dow Ever? Don’t Believe It
‘Average share indexes are a meaningless measure,
and comparisons to 1929 are preposterous.!
These two comments are amazing, informative, brilliant. There’s a lot there. Thanks for the story. I hope everyone will read it right through.
As a fellow human who went through the Tohoku tsunami and also found it all too easy to predict Katrina (as you say, as lethal as 9/11, and people claiming ignorance weren’t paying attention) and events since then, I thank you for your grace, humor, open mind, and intelligence.
So disgusted: New York Times has a bad habit of closing comments on denialist screeds. Because this is ‘first up’ when comments are opened, it will get more than its share of views. Even in a world of falsehood prevailing over truth, this is shocking. Unfortunately a quick search pulls up a veritable rogues gallery of fake skeptics.
Charles Best, England July 11
About half of climate alarmism comes from Mike Mann with his ludicrous graphs.
In 2019 he was told to give Dr. Tim Ball 700 thousand dollars.
Tim ,a truly great climatologist for 50 years , died September last year.
Mike Mann had not given him one dollar.
Tim died quite poor. The nine year court case had taken all his money.
I won’t link to the comment, which can easily be found on ‘top’ as noted, on this article:
Climate Disasters Daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal.’ Around the United States, dangerous floods, heat and storms are happening more frequently.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/climate/climate-change-extreme-weather.html
I gave up on the Times during their whole Cletus Safari phase. At this point, I wouldn’t train a puppy on the times, and I wouldn’t wipe my posterior with the Wall Street Urinal.
The Urinal is a malicious, pr0-Putin propaganda organ, while the Times is just lazy and stupid.
I usually agree with you, but their climate reporting has been both thorough and excellent, as has WaPo’s. They are in no way equivalent to the WSJ. This was a comment, not an article. My shock was at their comment moderation giving in to the tricky Bell/Ball pos.
Exactly, why would I read the both-sidesing Times when I can get reporting that is just as good or better in the Post. In my opinion, the “Old Grey Lady” is grey because she died a couple of decades ago,.
Any paper who thinks that David Brooks is the voice of reason has totally lost thread.
The Post also bothsides (see George Will). And Brooks is “Opinion”. I repeat, NYTimes climate reporting is excellent. As for comment monitoring, that’s just a quibble. I was complaining about the Bell/Ball garbage in a reply. We get nonsense here at RC as well.
Dismissing of the NY Times in favor of the WaPo is rather silly.
Susan Anderson Jul. 12, Quoting: Charles Best, England July 11 Dr. Tim Ball, a truly great climatologist for 50 years
Well, Mr. Best. We shouldn’t speak unkindly about the recently departed, but since you started – let’s evaluate your claim. Let’s try a typical writing of Dr. Ball, in his role as a “Senior Fellow” at Frontier Centre for Public Policy:
FCPP, Backgrounder No. 64 • AUGUST 2008
I use this example in my class to illustrate some of the manipulations used by climate change denialists. To compare the claims by Dr. Ball with reality, I open the source he refers to:
<a href= http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2021/08/Figure3-350×270.png" the NSIDC map of annual Arctic Ice area in July
with Dr. Tim Ball stating:“The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports a continuation of the [Arctic] sea ice recovery.
The trick here is to substitute relevant time-scales and then cherry-pick short term data that support the denialist narrative. Climate has typical time-scales of several decades – so the climate trends should cover at least similar timescale. Ice satellite data already available at the time: 1979-2008; certainly meet this requirement.
Enter our “truly great climatologist” who … ignores everything that happened in 1979-2006, in favour of a single year – 2007. Why? Because 2007 was a massive negative anomaly : the then all-time RECORD LOW Arctic ice cover.
So Tim Ball cherry-picks this record year, as the reference point to claim in his 2008 paper: “a continuation of the Arctic sea ice recovery“.
If there were still any questions about the intellectual honesty of using a single year data, as the reference point to make claims about CLIMATE:
– every single year between 1979-2005 had MORE ice in July than 2008, and
– every year since had LESS ice in July than 2008
So much for Dr. Tim Ball’s … “continued sea ice recovery“.
After “disproving” the 3-decade declining trend in sea-ice cover, with a rebound in July 2008 from the record low in 2007, Dr. Tim Ball, moves on to… disprove global warming itself.
At this point I usually post the global temperature graph like that… and ask students:
– If you were a climate change denier – which year would you cherry-pick as the year in which “global warming stopped/paused/ended“. And then I disclose the answer:
“ Global warming” paused in 1998” Dr. Tim Ball, 2008.
The reason for picking 1998? A massive, positive, temperature anomaly, caused by one of the strongest El Nino’s in recorded history. After a big heat wave, everything feels like cooling, right?
Not fully satisfied with the “pause”, Dr. Ball then cheery-picks several years to claim: “ global cooling 0.4C/per decade” -see his graph on p.13 of the above FCPP, Backgrounder No. 64).
P.S. It’s a ….seriously confusing graph. If I find time, I’ll discuss details – as examples of Dr. Ball professional standards.
@ Dr Schmidt and everyone.
The last argument ” there is no such thing as the global mean temperature” and Falsification of the same, is a quite important one.
Not everyone is aquainted to that discussion.
I was also quite surprized first time I heard it, brougt up to the belief that “Temperature, is what we measure with a thermometer”
It suddenly came a problem stated by prof. Arne Næss for examen philosophicum. But that problem was never given for EXAMEN, probably because it would take 2-3 lectures extra to get properly into it. And I only heard “Temperature is a macroscopic thing!” So later had to think it better over for my own practical purposes.
To make it all short:
there aint no temperature in a point.
I repeat….!
The validity of the temperature conscept vanishes when the thing gets small enough and down to zero. It frurther dissolves and vanishes in vacuum.
But the conscept oftemperature is, as good as I could understand, coined by Robert Boyle and later more precisely in French by M. & M.me Lavoisier who called it Tangperatyrøøøøø…. in French. That becomes Temmpreschæææææ in England .and “Die Temperatur in German.
Lavoisier discussed ” Le chaleur..”, “Wärme…” in German, “Heat” in English. And in French ææææ Caloriøøøø! meaning the quantity of heat. That is to be measred and understood.
I had that problem for Artium of Physics. A dewar Thermos- flask with 3/4 liter of water at 60 Celsius, and a 50 g piece of ice at 0 celsius dropped into that,…… and what will then be the end Tempreschææææææ after a while? That is rational and can be calculated if you also have measured the heat capacity of that flask with thermometer. That is the normal and scientific conscept of temperature if you are able to f0llow the Lavoisier and later Lord Kelvin school of it. Who states it in Newtometers and Kelvins today.
Thus it seems believeable in that context and school that also the very earth with all its heat capacities and input and output heats can have one and rather only one temperature at any time. It can be calculated like the tripple walled Rokoko- copper barrel of Lavoisier 178o, the so called “Calorimeter”,…. at least. And represents a meaningful and appliciable critical, rather calorimetric conscept.
For me, the body temperature of the snowmann represents my conscept of zero celsius where thermometers are to be calibrated for Zero. And boiling pure water at sea level f0r 100 celsius Def!. .
A hot strong cup of “schaaaah” is in between that.
In the high mountains at easter, a Thermos flask that was filled up with boiling coffee or bouillion ….. is way too hot for drinking..
So how much coffee must be poured carefrully out into the cups and how large snowball into that Dewar- Thermos flask again to make the very coffee consumeable? and smaller snowballs into the allready filled up cups also?..
That is Tempreschææææææ and Calorimetrie along with Lavoisier. It is one calorie per gram per deg. And 80 calories per gram for melting ice. That proportion 1 : 80 is universal and to be remembered.
For training and exercise, what is the bathing temperature at Vippetangen Oslo S? or at Costa?,… or at Florida Beach?, how is that to be taken and judged and discussed the critical way?
Comfortable balanced skin temperature of humans and fur animals is frappingly constant at any time at 32 celsius. That is proper bathing water for babies, that neither feels hot nor schill. Piss warm is 37 celsius. A hot, strong cup of schhhaaaaahhh is about 55.
One better keeps and learns natural, practical signals for it also, because one cannot fly around with a thermometer discussing calories all the time..
Never forget that , in pre electric and pre- thermometric days they only had the cat and the sun and a burning stick of pitchpine / Aladdins lamp for reference, and still managed. baking and brewing and serving and everything.
As an ultramontane commenter asks:”
<i."For training and exercise, what is the bathing temperature at Vippetangen Oslo S? or at Costa?,… or at Florida Beach?,how is that to be taken and judged and discussed the critical way? "
I have a duty to answer that there is presently no bathing, at the Echt Florida beach nearest me because the onshore SST is in excess of 90F., and you might well perish of hyperthermia if you wore a wetsuit..
Donations of plane tickets to Maine or Lofoten are invited.
Yes.
And I can add that I heard it said at the surreaist meeting that “there aint no such thing as the global mean temperature”
So I declared on the spot that there aint no temperatures in the universe exept for mean temeratures.
The surrealists got quite upset and began denying that also.
But I told around of the bathing temperature at Vippetangen,… obviously a big and dubious thing because the water there is quite dirty. And that my best conscept of temperature is a big and heavy, glacier in the summer warmth. And further temperature references, the candleflame, the cat, and the sun.
It is also a limnological entity to be known and discussed, , when freshwater lakes and pools are freezing and thawing. The very complex nature of ice and water.
I once thought I had secure temperature reference in an ice bath in a high cylindric glass with the thermocoupple allways sinking down to the bottom after a while.. And checked up by a glass termometer. It showed +4 celsius quite exactly at 20C room temperature.
Thus once again ERRARE HVMANVM EST,
I shall never forget it. I had made days of measurements with rather +4 C refrerence.
Wherefore I also allways repeat and enjoin that of the bodytemperature of the snowman.
.
Fun fact: People who crow about the Global Mean not being measured but the result of a model often bring up troposphere temperature records (usually notorious RSS-UAH 6.x) because these do not show so much warming.
Aside from the fact that these are temperatures in thousands of meters altitude and not on the ground where we live (cheers WSJ!), they usually do not realize that those temperatures are the result of a model themselves.
Bring that up and enjoy the reaction… :)
Please regard what Climat Reanalyzer writes below the graph that is shown here:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
“Special Notice, 8 July 2023
Climate Reanalyzer is a data visualization website for climate and weather models and gridded datasets. Climate Reanalyzer is NOT a model. This “Daily 2-meter Air Temperature” page shows area-weighted daily means calculated from the 2-meter air temperature variable from the Climate Forecast System version 2 and Climate Forecast System Reanalysis, which are publically available products of the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The purpose of the interactive chart and maps on this page is to view daily snapshots of temperature as estimated from the Climate Forecast System. The increase in mean global temperature since the start of July, estimated from the Climate Forecast System, should not be taken as an “official” observational record. It is important to note that much of the elevated global mean temperature signal in recent days can be attribute to weather patterns in the Southern Hemisphere that have brought warmer-than-usual air over portions of the Antarctic.
The Copernicus ECMWF has also released preliminary data from the ERA5 dataset showing a rise in global mean daily surface air temperature since the start of July, with apparent records being set on July 3rd and July 4th.
For additional long-term climate context, site users are encouraged to view monthly and annual global mean temperature data for the period 1880 to present from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via Climate at a Glance. “
To those who thoughtlessly question the ramifications of a rapidly warming planet. So what, they say. We people can use air conditioners. Problem solved!
Wildlife can’t, though. Currently, they all exist in their optimal temperature zones. Zones they’ve evolved to. If the temperature gets too warm they’ve traditionally migrated to other areas that they can better survive in. But now with cities, roads and fences they’re stuck. So when it starts to warm, and quickly, they’re stuck. So what’s next geologically speaking? Extinction. A lot of extinctions. And studies show that it can take millions of years for nature to recover. Goodbye polar bear.
“Extinction of a widespread species, or a widespread group of species, requires an environmental shock (physical or biological) which is not normally encountered during the geological lifespans of such species or groups, and the shock must be applied rapidly enough over a broad geographic area to prevent adaptation by natural selection or escape by migration. If the most effective extinction mechanisms are beyond the experience of the victims, a high degree of apparent randomness should be expected…. The most intense episodes of extinction, like the Big Five, produce major restructuring of the biosphere. Three-quarters, or more, of the standing diversity is removed, and diversification of the surviving lineages yields a global bio-sphere very different from that before the extinctions.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/91/15/6758.full.pdf
“Who cares?” they’ll uncaringly say. People will adapt. Ok, let’s take another example. The fruit and nuts you eat everyday. They require a certain number of “chilling hours” per growing season.
http://redwoodbarn.com/images/DE_chillinghours/chillinghoursbyvariety.jpg
What will happen when the climate warms then? Fewer and fewer chilling hours. Translation, goodby fruits and nuts.
Another example, while personally, I don’t eat fish for environmental reasons you might still. But it’s disrupting with climate change.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/feeling-the-heat-warming-oceans-drive-fish-into-cooler-waters
Everything is connected on this planet. They’ve evolved to it. So everything will be affected. Even things we barely understand now. It’s a big experiment with earth. Considering the rarity of living planets, maybe we shouldn’t be experimenting with it.
https://explainingscience.org/2018/04/08/the-rare-earth-hypothesis/
https://midmiocene.wordpress.com/space-or-bust/
My advice to officials in the Democratic Party, for wherever it’s worth: stop letting yourselves be goaded into stupid and extremist positions by a small contingent of weirdos in your midst (talking ultra-liberals here; weirdos that are secretly egged on for political reasons by shadowy forces on the right).
Take morality, integrity and reasonableness back again. Or continue to fight for every election.
Ron:
Well, when has an election not been a fight? Kind of the nature of the beast.
Based on your claim to be an Independent voter, and your take from inside the Overton window, and your amateur take on political strategy; I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’re speaking for yourself and your own affinity for elements of a right wing platform and the culture wars.
IOW, if it’s all hands on deck, and it came to a vote to prevent the planet from burning, you’d rather let it burn than stand in line in a bucket brigade next to someone you consider icky. (Apparently there are no icky people on the right goading Republicans into stupid and extremist positions by a hard core of potentially very violent weirdos who, according to you, must be appeased by all liberals if they don’t want to be trampled into oblivion by hoards of righteous wackjobs.)
Got it. And I can see how that would be quite the pickle for some, especially if they have trouble sorting out their priorities and some sense of proportion over the make up of the electorate and its dynamics.
But
This is a climate science blog, and all this fuss has pretty much moved well Off Topic, IMO.
Off.
Topic.
If regulars here are under the illusion that climate science and politics are not inextricably intertwined… well, they are. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.
“If” being the operative word, no-one here is under that illusion.
Count yourself lucky if you’ve never had to work in an environment where politicians attempt to interfere with the independent practice of science or data collection to, in effect, “cook the books” in their favor. That’s why it’s generally smart to put a firewall between science and policy in government.
Outside of that, if you really want bipartisan cooperation in good faith on climate change, then the focus should be based on the best climate science and practical policies and solutions, IMO. This whole schtick about homosexuality, etc. is just a red herring, also IMO.
There’s a lot to unpack in the conversation on this thread, but I’ll just point out that any Republican is perfectly capable of standing up and publicly acknowledging the reality of AGW and the need to address it— providing of course that they have an actual spine. For instance here’s conservative Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd:
https://www.willbhurd.com/climate/
He has also said this (on the same site):
“There has been and continues to be a lack of leadership in Washington, D.C. Leaders should inspire not fearmonger. It’s simple. Don’t be a jerk, racist, misogynist or homophobe and work together to accomplish big things.”
If nothing else, I can respect him for not trying to drag the whole country down a far-right extremist rabbit hole, unlike many of his colleagues in congress and elsewhere.
RR: My advice to officials in the Democratic Party, for wherever it’s worth: stop letting yourselves be goaded into stupid and extremist positions by a small contingent of weirdos in your midst
BPL: That’s your advice to the DEMOCRATIC Party???
Seriously?
Look, it’s pretty simple, one person’s natural feelings about that personal matter should not trump another person’s natural feelings. As long as no one is being hurt, ok.. We might be repulsed by it, but I won’t render moral judgement. Life is too short.
For me, and for most people, there are moral boundaries. Anything doesn’t go. But I won’t call someone “zoophobic” or something like that if he doesn’t want to accept people/animal sex.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/zoophilia
Grossly exaggerating here for emphasis, but it gets worse even than that with some people (wish I could un-see those pictures I just saw :( ) That’s a moral boundary he cannot cross, and he shouldn’t be shamed into feeling otherwise. I am not comparing homosexuality and bestiality, of course, just pointing out that most of us have natural moral compasses and boundaries that we can’t and won’t cross.
Heterosexuality only or homosexuality (and all those other acronyms), both basic sides should be understood as normal and tolerated by the other, without calling them names. Why is that so hard to get across?
I swear, sometimes I feel like the iguana. :D
https://m.youtube.com/watch?embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2F&source_ve_path=MTY0OTksMjg2NjQsMTY0NTAz&feature=emb_share&v=el4CQj-TCbA
If somebody else wants to unload on me, feel free. I’m done with this subject.
Ron, 3 words: Informed, enthusiastic consent.
“It should not be a partisan issue”.
Well, it is a partisan issue, and that is as much a fact as the increasing carbon dioxide proportion in the atmosphere. Both are a result of human activities. Both are inescapable things we have to deal with.
America’s Democrats party seem good to me on on economics, climate policies, human rights, supporting minority groups and being anti bigotry and anti racism. I would definitely be voting for them if I lived in America.
However I think what Ron R might be getting at is the Democrats appear to extend their social policies such that ANY criticism of minority groups or “others” is forbidden even sensible, rational criticism, and this is where they are perhaps going wrong, and alienating potential voters. A similar thing happens in New Zealand on the left / liberal end of the spectrum.
Yes Nigel. In a nutshell, except for the bullies, the people themselves are fine. Great! It’s just imagining the act itself that many find repugnant. Just the way it is. Not everyone feels the same.
Politics, Hr Nigelj
The famous GURU Johan Galtung has said repeatedly that he foresaw the fall of the soviet union in 1980 claming to be an expert also on empires.
Further: “I love the american people but I hate the american empire!” And he said about 2005 that the USA will fall in 2020 through a period of NAZI tyranny.
He foresaw Trump in a way, and the USA must see to survive him. That is seemingly up to the republican party now.
My comment is: “Uncle sam is old and sick. Poor him he was such a kind uncle all days. . . Let us pray for him!”
That gets understood..
The federal depts are ….. incureable unpayable to my wiew..
Dr. James Hansen and Al Gore have recommended the best, civil and prophane medication.
Stealing from the future and selling ones personal identity and freedom against hard cash is perverse,
thus administered by SATAN in Hell.
Here is the animated reanalysis data for the last week of surface temperature. It doesn’t show anything out of the ordinary for the northern hemisphere, but news sources are reporting deadly heat in many places around the northern hemisphere. Why doesn’t it show here?
https://psl.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_01a.rnl.anim.html
Martin W Smith: – “Here is the animated reanalysis data for the last week of surface temperature. It doesn’t show anything out of the ordinary for the northern hemisphere…”
You link to an animation of Surface Temperatures (C) 01-Day Anomaly
I’d suggest it’s better to see where the “deadly heat” is with an animation of Surface Temperatures (C) 01-Day Mean, showing 8 frames for the period 11 Jul 2023 through to and including 18 Jul 2023. There are many locations indicated to be experiencing 30+ °C temperatures, and I’d suggest the temperature scale is inadequate & should be extended to include 40 & 50 °C.
https://psl.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01.fnl.anim.html
IMO, Climate Reanalyzer has a more extensive temperature scale range (i.e. -60 °C to +50°C) – scroll down to see the CFSV2 Avg 2m Temperature (°C) map at:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
Click on a data point on the chart above the global map to update the map below for a given day., and toggle between the T2 anomaly (1979-2000 base) map & T2 map.
I guess, by using the 1991-2020 mean, the anomaly animation looks ordinary because we’re only in 2023, so the anomaly is still close to the 1991-2020 mean that was probably skewed towards the extremes of the later years. I didn’t think of that.
While the anomaly base of the PSL’s SAT reanalysis does make a difference, I think the main reason for the NH anomalies (& SH anomalies outside the Antarctic) not apparently showing “anything out of the ordinary” is because of the scale being used. Anything inside the anomaly range +/-2.5ºC doesn’t show while the plotted NH & SH anomalies in the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyser shows us the average anomaly for the NH has only recently crept above +1ºC (and only managed that on a 1979-2000 anomaly base which in the NH is 0.4ºC cooler than 1991-2020 according to GISTEMP). So you would expect the NH on average not to register any deviation on the University of Maine’s plots.
Of course, that is not the same as the talk of record-breaking and dangerously high temperatures hitting Texas and (more familiar to me) southern Europe. Trying to match the numbers from the heat wave with the PSL graphics requires lining up the dates and local anomalies, and it seems also the temperature being quoted.
So ‘Take One’.
We have a match with PSL which is currently showing 12th-19th July with the heat wave numbers. This Sky News video map shows forecasts for 19th-24th July with the highest quoted 19th July temperature of 42ºC at Cagliari.
And the average July high at Cagliari is +31.4ºC according to Wikkithing over 1980-2010. So the 42ºC forcast for 19th July would represent something like a +10ºC anomaly.
The PSL graphic shows Cagliari sitting on the +5ºC contour for 19th July but that is presumably a daily average anomaly not the daily high anomaly.
‘Take Two’
This weather site gives the Cagliari max/min temperatures in 6 hour chunks and the chunks average +32.5ºC for 19th July (and the actual high at 43ºC) when the Wikkithing mean temperature climatology is 25.6ºC over 1980-2000. So the 19th would be about +6.5ºC on a 1991-2020 base which isn’t a million miles from that PSL +5ºC contour.
Thus I would reckon the PSL SAT reanalysis is doing a pretty good job.
Did you account for the area distortion due to the Mercator projection?
Yes
That the earth is cylindric, is hardly better than its being flat.
It is a model conscept in virtual reality for the blind believers and desert walkers in the scriptures on their way to Mecca, Abba Abba.. For holy water. and to salvation and descent into Paradise.
With beach bunnies and datte palms and fountains of spring waters and all that..
With the moving window for the dates in the plot, this post will be out of date soon, but I disagree with your assessment. There are clearly high temperature anomalies (some in excess of 5 degrees C) for at least some of the days between July 10 and 17 for the following parts of the world: parts of China (especially July 10), S. Europe and N. Africa (multiple days) and parts of the S,.W. United States. Those are the parts of the world where I’ve been hearing about excess temperatures.
Also keep in mind that news coverage has emphasized record daytime highs, while the NOAA visualizations are AFAICT based on averages.
Dr Schmidt @ al
Your first sentence deserves a comment.
“You can tell how worried the climate deniers (surrealists) are by how many fields of science they have to trash….”
No! they do not seem worried, at least as I know them. Wny not? They seem highly trained and aquainted, at least as I kinow them. And that puts me on track of who they are , socially esoterically and ideologically.
On how to be right when you are unright, seek out and read Arthur Scdhopenhauers Eristrische Dialekitik
There are traditions of denial, of being rather consequently oppositional and in denial, and quite regardless. Even organized extreeme denialism. and surrealism with eristische Dialektik highly trained.
Schopenhauer wrote about it.
The consequense is pityful, many fields of science are being trashed.
There has even been periods and places where fields of science had to go underground. Or go private, away from the official room.
Further on how many fields of science they have to trash
This should be shown much more interest and studied by everyone because it is symptomatic and central to possible culture, free communication, and possible human understranding.
==========000
It follows from axiomatic deductive thought and the unity of mind and mankind and a universal conscept of reality, reality that can be spoken and written about in an understood way
To which not all and everyone are trained and brought up.
They do not allways get learnt and shown that theory rules in praxis, and praxis should be understood in the light of more general, more widely appliciable theories. That all should be integrated possibly into one and only one theory, the unity of science and the unity of God in anxient days. Namely the idea of LOGOS and that things should possibly be “logical”, thinkable, comprehensible, not just a fingertip game on an electrical ROBOTic device with display..
The same LOGOS and “Logical” conscept is “alian” to many, in our days, as allways .
But it is healthy for our tiny brains that we can understand things and see the further validity and extension of it also, at least now and then so that we do not allways have to give a damn and better have it from the experts..
For instance , as a chemist I should avoid denying and fighting physics if my results extends into that domaine. Quite on the contrary, if my result can be sustained also by physics, then I will have a stronger argument and a better control.
And if not, I must try it agan and again by several methods from my own side before I can tell for sure that mainstream physics is misconsceived on this point and has not yet understood that…….
The same as a medical doctor I should not deny and forbid the veterinarians or the pharmacologist or the butchers, because that all is further necessary extensions & sources for my own learnt profession and faculty. And are due and entitled to look me into my chards and control and correct my trade and facultary business. If they cannot, then I am not of facultary order. But I am entitled to reject the Party with P on criteria.
Proof: The UN declaration of Humann Rights article 20.2.
This entails all in all Dr Schmidt, that if anyone more and more have to trash further civil diciplines languages and learnt orders, it is a general symptom 0f they having not yet learnt any civil, orderly, and well integrated craft or system of thought and behaviours, and that they simply may be in general ERROR.
Errare humanum est, but there must be limits, there must also be law and order and…. CON-SENSVS else no Science.
Not even indifferent which law and order and CON SENSVS. Because, If you can just state your own rules and regulations referring to “common sense” and judge all and everyone along with that, then your shop and business, your tavern withn open doors to the mainstreet and public society is illegal and you better close down your shop. There were rules and regulations on this even under the Emperor, I have seen it. but the alternatives came in and broke it. That was flat bombed after a while, and then business as usual could open again.
.
I could once simply dis- qualify Richard Lindzen exactly on that point at his fameous lecture announced for open doors In DOMVS ACADEMICA, Royal Frederiks.
I had fallen asleep but woke suddenly up by:
“Where there is science there is not consensus, and where there is connsensus, , there is no SCIENCE ….PERIOD!”
Then I went to sleep again and lost nothing.
I heard for myself the fameous Lindzen instructing US- american anti- facultary and anti scientifric order from the high Cateter in DOMVS ACADEMICA., in Christiania. Down over the nægers (?) and aspirands and analphabetes in a remote colony that has not understood yet and who must learn entglishn behaviours first, also.and obey under our professional correcture programs.
Not even Adolf, Quisling, and Stalin could do it better and more convincing.
================000
As for law and legal consensus, we once had our shamans and rainmakers, whitch- and spindoctors, high priests of our con-gregations and royal societies.
But for international trade and business on the free market for open doors, we should submit and aspire under the UN declaration of Human Rights and not fight delete and eradicate that when shown and referred to in original , Dr Schmidt.
especially not on request from the inaugurated “influenzers”.
Because, such behaviours are neither of Catholic nor Hanseatic nor Academic nor Scientific order, regardless of argument and lower tribal national professional alternatives in the provincial taverns and in then harbours.
Quite on tghe contrary, it 8is exactly where Puttler for instance and King Donald Grozny @ al. plunge, and betray that they have not yet studied and understood the principles.
It is LEX SUPERIOR that means DOGMAtic or AXIOMatic at the faculty ofv Law at the Royal Frederiks, under which even The US Precident and the US supreme court is due to aspire,
It is un- toucheable Holy and TABU for Humans worldwide in the climate if it shall have any civil solution.
Different from the way that was displayed on Capitol Hill Jan 6 2021, and in Ukraina 24 feb 2022.
Because, there can be no Paris convention on Climate ifr the participants do not aspire and obey under that declaration of Human Rights. Thast is not to be amputated and censoreds an rabid request and racial bglames.
I further the bgody temperature of the snoman and the barometric pressure 1 atm at sea level and 1AU the distance to the nearest star and the BIG BANG for axiomatic references for climate physics.
The rest is rather my profession, material sciences radiation on dis- continuous spectra aqnd the nature of protonium and carbon nitrogen and oxygen., along wityh Boyles faculty.
Are we really in “uncharted territory”? Nope.
Hottest temperatures ever recorded on the planet occurred in 1913 and 1922, loooong before CO2 levels had increased much above pre-industrial.
https://wmo.asu.edu/content/world-highest-temperature
List of highest temperatures and the date for every state. Holy cow – most of these are OLD:
https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/weather/record-highest-temperatures-by-state
As of 2019, none of the hottest continental records even occurred in the 21st century:
https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/weather/highest-recorded-temperatures
The evidence is in, and is irrefutable, the world is not getting hotter, however it does get hot every summer in many places – as it has always done.
Thomas Sowell on climate change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWvNBnZzdBY
KIA: The evidence is in, and is irrefutable, the world is not getting hotter, however it does get hot every summer in many places – as it has always done.
BPL: That’s not how you tell whether the world is getting warmer or not. You use the AVERAGE temperatures, and you perform a linear regression of those figures against time, and you check whether the slope is significant or not.
Please take an introductory course in statistics. There are free ones on the web I can point you to if you’re interested.
I and others have given him that free course for years. Education is not his purpose, spreading FUD and propaganda is.
BPL, Yes, Please point out free internet statistics courses. Thanks!
Permit me Hr Levenson….
A course of statistics for knowitalls is hardly to the point.
About heat and temperature, some elementary scientific physics quite different from “statistics” must have been had in public school or elsewhere for being qualified or civilized.
It is about basic defititions and understanding of quite common realities first.
Def1: Heat is something that we measure in watts. Or in Newtonmeters per second.
Def2: Temperature is sometyhing that we measure and discuss in celsius or kelvingrades.
Then calorimetry before statistics, is very practical. To be able to understand design and discuss a calorimetric experiment or measuring situationand its http://www.sources/of/error, not “error bars”, such as what can be the bias or the leaks to the experiment?
This is due EXAMEN ARTIUM for scientists first.
Then discuss an electric resistor in R. With volts in U or amperes in i or resistance in R variable.
A common electric oven for instance that can be tuned from 0,to 1, to 2, and to 3. Measure the environment room temperature first. And discuss the temperatures on the surfaces of that resistor array when we turn it on 1, 2 and 3 and wait for a while by each turning step, give it some time to heat up each time. .
Discuss the temperatures and tell us why that is not so linear.
That is for EXAMEN ARTIUM in physics with no statistics at all.
And tell us also, what will happen if we wrap up those resistors in heatproof glasswool? and why. Or give them a larher or a smaller surface.
To my opinion , that is better public school pensum for Mr Knowitall and several others, and the best way to help them.
The easiest construction of that “oven” will be 2 equal resistors R1 and R2.
On 0 is no voltage U connected.
On 1 is R1 and R2 in sereies, with U over.
On 2 is only R1 or R2 connected to U.
On 3 is R1 and R2 connected in paralell to U.
Explain wy that will give successive doubbling of the heat from 1 to 2 to 3 or from zero to 100 to 200 and to 400 watts.
And explain why will the temperatures not go from 0 to 1 to 2 to 3 by successive doubbling but quite a bit less and less than that?
That is elementary science about heating and temperatures that must be grasped first, and no statistics before grasping such elementary things first.
Because without it, it will only be surrealism and probably denialism. also.
KIA: Thomas Sowell on climate change:
BPL: Thomas Sowell isn’t a climate scientist, is he? So his opinion on the subject has no more validity than some five-year-old child’s, and for the same reason.
Shall we apply that ‘logic’ to all that participate in the climate conversation, BPL? I guarantee that your side will end up a net loser if so.
TWF: Shall we apply that ‘logic’ to all that participate in the climate conversation, BPL? I guarantee that your side will end up a net loser if so.
BPL: You must not know much about the participants here. Dr. Schmidt, Dr. Mann, Dr. Benestad, Dr. Pierrehumbert, Dr. Ladbury, tamino, etc., are Ph.D. climate scientists, mathematicians, and physicists. I’m a planetary astronomy and a climate scientist. Carbomontanus is a chemist, I believe. I think K is a botanist of some sort; he can correct me if I have that wrong (and he will, at length).
On the other hand, Victor, Schurle, Kalisz, KIA, etc. have no relevant qualifications that I’m aware of. JDS has no science qualifications and embraces creationism and the Electric Universe theory along with global warming denial. I think JCM is some sort of environmental scientist, although he doesn’t know much about climate science per se. But in any comparison of qualifications, those on the science side on this blog are much more qualified than their opponents.
Dear Barton Paul,
I wondered why do you need to assess my qualification for a discussion in which I do not participate at all?
For some participants who possibly never heard my name, it must.sound as a name of some mythical beast.
When I tried to ask my questions in my first post on Unforced Variations on March 30, I unfortunately had no idea that questions originating from uneducated people may not be allowed.
If so, I am grateful to you for an explanation why nobody has addressed these questions yet.
Greetings
Tom
“…your side…’ ?
There’s no side. This is mother nature’s world and we’re living in it. Politics won’t give you any particular insight into that.
Personally if I don’t know anything about climate change and I want to form an opinion about it, I’ll first look to actual, well cited climate scientists, like say, the people running this site, after that it will be informed people who can successfully break down the real climate science for general consumption– not jibber jabber from random influencers on the Internet.
It’s a simple point of meta-literacy.
Nope.
Hr Knowitall
as far as I can see it, the summers are not getting much warmer but the winters are defini9tely getting milder and the green season longer. That alltogether can be described in a mean temperature.
The same way, the days are not getting so much warmer but the nights clearly a bit warmer That you can see in the flora by signs of frostningts etc. and by classical climate indicators like wild and well adapted termophile vegetation that mooves into formery too cold areas. All in all it can be explained by a rather constant sun but an increasing atmospheric isolation against winter and night chill.
Personally I feel no need then to deny or to fight those global longtime temperature curves as they also show signals of the Enso and of the sunspot periods.
Conclusion:
So it rather looks to me that you are describing and showing your own mentality bottoms here.
Where have you got that bizarre bottoms from?
Your “Holy cow” silly statistics look like an eruption of effervescent equine exhaust from my perspective.
If I want to judge whether warming has put us in uncharted territory, I would look at a large area, and exceedences within the area – rather than the warmest selected points I can easily reference within the area.
I’ll illustrate just how shaky your silly methodology is, starting with the fact that over 70% of the earth’s surface is ocean, and your records are all land-based. So, suppose the ocean has a maximum temperature record in uncharted territory? That’s most of the surface, after all. As it so happens, that occurred just this week when a buoy in Manatee Bay, Florida, recorded 101.1F.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/26/a-hot-tub-florida-sees-record-water-temperatures-raising-alarm
Don’t like that record? The previous record of 99.7F was set in Kuwait Bay in July 2020. Both are recent enough that when you exclude the events of the past few years, you wouldn’t see them.
Speaking of recent events, you were impressed that most of the U.S. state records were old, but you didn’t use the most recent updates listed in Wikipedia. U.S. weather records go back 153 years, to 1871. The most recent 23 years comprise about 15 percent of it. If records were random, with no underlying trend, I would expect to see 3 new state records so far. Instead, I find six hot records broken or tied after 2000, and zero before 1900. If I look at cold records, it’s three and three. Twice as many hot records in this century as cold records, so far. If I look at the continents, it’s a similar picture. Seven continents, one new record since 2020 (Europe) and two ties (Asia and Australia). That doesn’t include this year’s results from Antarctica or the latest heat wave in Europe and Asia.
Re. Mr. Know Nothing
Since the greenhouse effect slows heat loss to space, the greatest effects of warming are on winter temperatures, which are warming faster than summers; night time temperatures, which are warming faster than days: and higher latitudes which are warming faster than low latitudes. Because of this, looking at the high temperature records is interesting, but really doesn’t tell us much about how the planet is actually warming. As BPL states, you look at AVERAGE global temperatures, not high temperatures.
Although new highest ever temperature records may not be recently broken in the United States, since the 1970s, record-setting DAILY high temperatures have become significantly more common than record lows–which IS to be expected.
Many deniers/propagandists are taking this tack. By their “logic” a place where it hits 101F only once a year and averages 80F is “warmer” than a place where it hits 100F for three months and averages 90F..
Pretty stupid, of course, but they count on readers missing that one little detail.
Yes…with extreme value statistics you look at rates of occurrence at the extremes and the shift to warming is very clear there. Which is why deniers/propagandists don’t look there.
Mr. Know It All: – “The evidence is in, and is irrefutable, the world is not getting hotter…”
And yet:
1. The Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) from NASA satellite data reached 1.97 W/m² (12-month mean)!
That’s:
• 15.9 Hiroshima nuclear bomb-magnitude energy equivalent uptake per second;
• 500 million ‘Hiroshimas’ in the last 12 months;
• More than one billion ‘Hiroshimas’ over the last 36 months.
Warming is only going to accelerate while the EEI keeps getting larger.
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1684966795826929666
2. On Wed, 26 Jul 2023, the North Atlantic SST daily mean was at 24.90 °C, exceeding the previous record of 24.89 °C set on 2-4 Sep 2022. And there is still at least another month of North Atlantic ocean warming ahead.
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1684588197399896064
3. On Thu, 27 Jul 2023, the Arctic just hit a modern-day record high 2-metre temperature of 5.813°C (42.46°F), which is 3.33σ above the 1991-2020 mean.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1684908137755856896
4. The streak of record global 2-meter temperatures continues, now at 26 consecutive days (up to & including 28 Jul 2023), likely the hottest run of 26 days in the last 100,000+ years.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1685250960720109568
5. Per World Meteorological Organization (WMO), July 2023 is set to be the hottest month on record.
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/july-2023-set-be-hottest-month-record
6. The daily 2 m air mean Temperature Northern Hemisphere (0–90°N, 0–360°E) reached a record high of 22.62 °C on Tue, 25 Jul 2023.
The daily 2 m air mean Temperature Tropics (23.5°S–23.5°N, 0–360°E) is at record seasonal highs (up to and including Fri, 26 Jul 2023).
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
7. Antarctic sea ice extent for July is extremely low.
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1684827788363046912
8. Glaciologist Professor Jason Box provides another very informative data dive in a YouTube video published on 23 Jul 2023 titled record setting July 2023 Greenland heatwave alert, duration 0:14:53. For the whole of Greenland, year-2023 so far (to 19 Jul 2023) is rivalling year-2012 extreme melting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nagmRzCMEVM
9. South Florida ocean temperature tops 101 °F, potentially a record.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/25/florida-ocean-temp-tops-over-101-degrees-fahrenheit-possible-record.html
Mr. Know It All: – “Are we really in “uncharted territory”? Nope.”
For the Earth System – Nope. The paleo-historical record suggests global mean temperatures now are probably at their hottest level since the Eemian interglacial period (circa 130,000-115,000 years ago).
Human civilisation has only been around since the Holocene period (beginning 11,700 years before 2000, or 9701 BC), so I’d suggest this is uncharted territory for human civilisation.
I love your references to (anything but) the peer reviewed literature. Twitter, youtube, CNBC, oh my!
I LOVE the level of hypocrisy on this website! It is truly SO entertaining!
If all these “500 Hiroshima bomb” equivalents were detonated last year–then WHERE ARE THE DEATHS? Where is the destruction?
Are they heat related deaths? NO
Are they heat related hospitalizations? NO
Are they heat related tornadoes? NO
Are they heat related hurricanes? NO
Are they heat related floods? NO
Are they heat related fires? NO
Are they heat related diseases? NO
Are they heat related starvation? NO
If you can’t find a single NEGATIVE OBSERVATIONAL OUTCOME to explain your “500 Hiroshima bombs” last year, a whole lot of people will laugh. Don’t you think one would look silly if they made a claim that “God answers prayers!” What we be your first question? What is your proof? Right?
Can you see why people might start calling this a religion?
Scott: “ I love your references to (anything but) the peer reviewed literature. Twitter, youtube, CNBC, oh my! I LOVE the level of hypocrisy on this website! It is truly SO entertaining! ”
Chirps the guy, who make 8 quantitative claims – providing … zero references, and his standard of
proof is to should in capital letters: “NO”
“oh my! I LOVE the level of hypocrisy on this website! It is truly SO entertaining!, eh?
Scott reveals himself as another statistical illiterate who doesn’t understand the role of the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis was introduced because statistical significance is only ever comparative rather than absolute. You would NEVER accept a null hypothesis as “true”. The purpose of the analysis is to assess whether the effect treated in the proposed theory has significant explanatory power. To date, all of the statistical analyses performed by those who are not statistical illiterates have shown overwhelming evidence that 1) the planet is warming; 2) that the warming is anthropogenic; 3) that the warming is driving increases in severe weather (drought, flooding, heat waves…); and 4) that these events are having a serious adverse impact on peoples’ lives and health.
Scott; – “I love your references to (anything but) the peer reviewed literature. Twitter, youtube, CNBC, oh my!”
US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2019 said (from time interval 0:00:23, bold text my emphasis):
“So, what’s happening here is there’re people who have cultural; political; religious; economic philosophies that they then invoke when they want to cherry pick one scientific result or another. You can find a scientific paper that says practically anything. … An emergent scientific truth, for it to become an objective truth; a truth that is true, whether or not you believe in it; it requires more than one scientific paper. It requires a whole system of people’s research all leaning in the same direction, all pointing to the same consequences. That’s what we have with climate change, as induced by human conduct. This is a known correspondence. If you want to find the three per cent of the papers, or the one per cent of the papers, that conflicted with this, and build policy on that; that is simply irresponsible! And, what… How else do you establish a scientific truth if not by looking at the consensus of scientific experiment, and scientific observations?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=y1MZ8U8C9c8&t=23s
Scott; – “Are they heat related deaths? NO”
Are there heat related deaths? YES, here’s an example:
An article published by Nature Medicine on 10 Jul 2023, by Joan Ballester et. al. titled Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022, where an estimated 61,672 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 37,643–86,807) heat-related deaths in Europe were observed between 30 May and 4 September 2022, from a population of over 543 million people assessed in the study.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z
Are there heat related fish kills? YES
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/local/2023/06/12/454207/dead-fish-texas-gulf-coast-temperature-rise/
More marine heatwaves, more fish kills, less fish, less food for circa 3 billion people dependent on marine-based protein.
Scott; – “Can you see why people might start calling this a religion?”
Neil deGrasse Tyson said (from time interval 0:03:05):
“I think there’s fifty inches of – I can’t even picture fifty – how many raindrops is that? Fifty inches of rain in Houston! This is, this is a shot across our bow. A hurricane the width of Florida going up the centre of Florida. These are, these are shots across our bow. What will it take for people to recognize that a community of scientists are learning objective truths about the natural world and that you can benefit from knowing about it.”
What will it take for you, Scott?
Hypocrisy (noun): the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.
Climate (noun): the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period.
This website does a great job of making the case for a gradually increasing global temperature over time AKA climate. Global trend lines over time are gradually increasing. It is well documented. GREAT. For trends of outcomes associated with humans and natural events, not so great.
Why did you choose to cite a study from one season from one year in one region (Europe)? What if I used a reference to cast doubt on CC but instead of heating, showed cold related mortality? What would you tell me? You’d pontificate on why “weather” is not climate. Guess what? I’m going to tell you the same thing.
Peer-reviewed literature looking at GLOBAL TRENDS OVER TIME:
Heat related deaths:
Recent Trends in Heat-Related Mortality in the United States: An Update through 2018 in AMS Journal 12/14/2020
FYI this study although done in the US, it references other global studies that heat global deaths are decreasing. “Mortality risk due to heat appeared to decrease over time in SEVERAL COUNTRIES” Temporal Variation in Heat–Mortality Associations: A Multicountry Study, Environmental Health Perspectives, Nov 2015
Temporal trends in human vulnerability to excessive heat in Environmental Research Letters 3/19/18
“Most of the studies utilized mortality data, focused on the DEVELOPED WORLD, and showed a general decrease in heat sensitivity.”
Temporal Trends in Heat-Related Mortality: Implications for Future Projections, Atmosphere 10/18/18
“Recent review papers document a generally decreasing trend over time in heat-related mortality ERFs, particularly in NORTH AMERICAN, with less consistent findings in EUROPE AND ASIA”.
Vizhub health data globally (Global Burden of Disease database):
1.03 deaths per 100K in 1990
0.61 deaths per 100K in 2019
Heat wave hospitalizations:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27503399/
Heat related tornadoes and floods:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9?fbclid=IwAR3CYLniJs0v_Srm9Qe-a4XJ1ozGjpsSPsLg3wVoGHTFXqGYcpHe46xaOSY
Heat related hurricanes:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021GL095774
Just getting started….
Scott: – “Why did you choose to cite a study from one season from one year in one region (Europe)?”
You asked: “…then WHERE ARE THE DEATHS? Where is the destruction?” and: “If you can’t find a single NEGATIVE OBSERVATIONAL OUTCOME…”
I gave you an example of RECENT heat-related deaths. I gave you an example of RECENT heat-related fish kills. I’d suggest these are NEGATIVE OBSERVATIONAL OUTCOMES. It seems you are not satisfied with these examples. It seems to me you will never be satisfied, no matter how many examples I provide, because I’d suggest it doesn’t fit your ideological narrative.
Your link to A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming, published 13 Jan 2022, includes this interesting note:
Oops – that’s inconvenient for your narrative, aye Scott?
Your link to Heat stroke admissions during heat waves in 1,916 US counties for the period from 1999 to 2010 and their effect modifiers, published 8 Aug 2016, is not what I’d call RECENT. I note the results included:
As the climate inevitably warms further, more severe and longer lasting heatwaves will occur, increasing the relative risk (RR). Those without air-con will likely suffer more than those with.
The US is seeing high levels of heat-related illness this year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/26/1190085775/this-cdc-data-shows-where-rates-of-heat-related-illness-are-highest
Oops – that’s inconvenient for your narrative, aye Scott?
Your link to Trends in Global Tropical Cyclone Activity: 1990–2021, published 14 Mar 2022, included these key points:
It might just be a bit different in an emerging strong El Niño year (2023-24)? We’ll see. But the paper indicates data have seen global damage “increase significantly”. Um… Isn’t that a NEGATIVE OBSERVATIONAL OUTCOME?
Oops – that’s inconvenient for your narrative, aye Scott?
IMO (even if perhaps Scott doesn’t think so), it’s worth viewing the YouTube video titled The Brink: Climate disaster or climate solution?, duration 0:52:32. Andrew Dressler talks about non-linear climate impacts (and renewable energy) he gave at NASA Goddard on 8 Mar 2023. Andrew Dressler says from time interval 0:09:03:
“The way to think about climate damage is that you have no damage at all until you hit a threshold, and once you hit a threshold, the damage goes up very rapidly.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgR0xCwVMQs
What will it take for you, Scott?
Geoff,
If I quoted a “recent” cold wave that killed thousands across Europe, what would you say to me? Be serious. You’d accuse me of cherry picking. And you’d be right. Which is why I don’t use one event in time to make a climate change argument. Know your audience. Climate change is long term changes in temperature over a long period of time. Why don’t you find it important to be consistent with this perspective when looking at outcomes? Why is it ok for you to cherry pick but not ok for me? Ask yourself that question please.
The conclusions of “A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming” are being disputed by climate activists who still can’t seem to get this article retracted as of August 2023. I wonder why. It couldn’t possibly be due to the fact that the results of this study pretty much match other independent outcome based research? Like Our World in Data, or Global Burden of Disease databases. Tell me, Geoff, are these sources all climate denialists such as myself, or the authors of the disputed study that largely agrees with their conclusions? Are we all climate denialists now?
https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters
https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/
I will have to say, your reference to the NPR article is intriguing. Let me ask–what if I gave you a reference I got from Fox News? I mean, seriously. Every single one of my references come from peer reviewed journals. Yours came from NPR. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find another similar graph showing increasing heat deaths anywhere in the peer reviewed literature, including the CDC website. Why do you think I would take this graph seriously? Now if you do happen to find the graph on some government website or peer reviewed literature, let me know. But I doubt you will because whoever produced the NPR graph didn’t even bother correcting for population changes (listed as deaths per million or deaths per 100k, etc).
The “Trends in Global Tropical Cyclone Activity” paper revealed that the reason why global damage has increased significantly is because, “Damage increases are largely due to increased coastal assets.” In other words, it has nothing to do with cyclone strength and everything to do with people building more on coasts! Are we seriously debating this?
Lastly, you quote Andrew Dressler discussing how negative climate effects will hit all at once. Well that’s completely different from the picture you just spent all this time trying to paint. Either outcomes are gradually getting worse, or they aren’t but will drop all at once, after we reach some unknown threshold. You are confusing me. Which one is it? It can’t be both. So why are you so confused?
Scott: – “If I quoted a “recent” cold wave that killed thousands across Europe, what would you say to me?”
I’d expect deaths across Europe due to extreme cold would be substantially higher than due to extreme heat, because the current mean annual temperatures (MATs) are substantially below 29 °C. See Figure 3 in the Lancet paper published 16 Mar 2023, titled Excess mortality attributed to heat and cold: a health impact assessment study in 854 cities in Europe.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00023-2/fulltext
I’d expect it would be a different situation (i.e. higher heat-related deaths & lower cold-related deaths) where MATs are closer to (or exceeding) 29 °C, like in equatorial Africa.
And as the Earth System continues to warm more locations will experience MATs that approach and exceed 29 °C. See Figure 4 in:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6
Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research & professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf tweeted on May 25:
The tweet included a gif animation showing areas of the globe (in purple) that would be considered no longer habitable (MATs ≥ 29 °C), sourced from the Nature Sustainability authors.
Scott: – “…are these sources all climate denialists such as myself…”
So you admit that you deny the extensive body of climate science – a whole system of people’s research all leaning in the same direction, all pointing to the same consequences?
Scott: – “I will have to say, your reference to the NPR article is intriguing.”
Did you bother to read the NPR article, or check any of the links in the NPR article? If you had, you may have found the CDC’s Heat & Health Tracker website. Fancy that!
https://ephtracking.cdc.gov/Applications/heatTracker/
I’d suggest you are too busy trying to deny the accumulating overwhelming data that conflicts with your climate science denying narrative.
Scott: – “Lastly, you quote Andrew Dressler discussing how negative climate effects will hit all at once.”
Where does Andrew Dressler say negative climate effects “will hit all at once“? Please quote Dressler’s relevant exact words (to support your assertion) and the time index from the video. Did you actually look at the video, Scott?
What thresholds need to be breached for you, Scott?
For those that do accept the climate science, IMO here’s another excellent explainer from glaciologist Professor Jason Box in his latest YouTube video published 4 Aug 2023 titled 5 factors behind the Global Heatwave 2023, and it’s not just El Niño, duration 0:11:54.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYdvn2pGyOw
Piotr and Geoff,
This will be my final post. It is absolutely fascinating that climate alarmists such as yourself, find it perfectly acceptable to accuse climate realists, such as myself, of the correlation=causation error. I represent the null hypothesis. In other words, nothing outside the normal, natural fluctuations of earth cycles. You represent the AGW hypothesis. Therefore, it is incumbent UPON YOU, NOT ME to show that 1. Not only is global warming occurring, but that 2. the global warming is causing problems. All I have to do is show that global warming is not causing problems. This is so backwards, it defies reality, really. I’m the one who now must prove that global warming is not causing increased deaths because air conditioners are the confounders! Hilarious!
Let me give you an example: I believe that my magic fairy dust has healing powers. The null hypothesis is that my magic fairy dust doesn’t have healing powers. You show me a graph that shows that the rate of mortality outcomes over time is actually increasing, not decreasing, as I believe it is. You show me a study that supports your point. However, I point out that most of these people are also drinking arsenic, a known toxin. I exclaim, “See! BUT FOR the arsenic, the magic fairy dust would save lives! It’s the arsenic that is the problem!”
Do you both see how this is a problem? You tend to both really rely on appeal to authority by standing with the “consensus”. That’s fine until you realize that while there are a lot of climate scientists measuring earth temperature, there aren’t a lot of healthcare professionals who look at climate related outcomes and compare to predications. I’m a medical doctor at this for 15 years now. Appeal to authority? Maybe. But you get to do it to. Why not me?
You referenced the CDC heat tracker website. Am I supposed to be impressed? You don’t think I spent a lot of time trying to recreate the graph in the NPR article? Seriously? Why don’t you personally find this graph and then post it so we can all get to it. Posting a link to the CDC website I have already been on multiple times doesn’t do anything. Really.
Geoff posted Andrew Dressler from youtube: “The way to think about climate damage is that you have no damage at all until you hit a threshold, and once you hit a threshold, the damage goes up very rapidly.” Yep, that sounds like “all at once” to me. Seriously.
In conclusion, if the commenters on this site are all experts in climate science, then the field of climate science is in deep trouble. The level of profound hypocrisy is most fascinating to me. Ad hominem attacks, links to non peer reviewed opinion puff pieces, links to peer reviewed research that only use modeling and not real world observations, assuming that all climate realists are stupid, ignorant, republicans, rampant cognitive biases, the list goes on and on. I recommend that you not stop it. Continue down this path, please. Don’t ask yourselves, “what if we’re wrong”? Don’t be humble. And by all means, please don’t stop believing. We all need religion.
Scott: – “This will be my final post.”
Can I hold you to that?
Scott: – “It is absolutely fascinating that climate alarmists such as yourself, find it perfectly acceptable to accuse climate realists, such as myself, of the correlation=causation error. I represent the null hypothesis.”
You stated earlier: “…climate denialists such as myself…”
I think you deny the extensive body of climate science – a whole system of people’s research all leaning in the same direction, all pointing to the same consequences. I think you are the opposite of a realist – a fantasist, ignoring/denying anything that doesn’t fit with your ideological narrative.
Scott: – “You represent the AGW hypothesis. Therefore, it is incumbent UPON YOU, NOT ME to show that 1. Not only is global warming occurring, but that 2. the global warming is causing problems.”
I don’t claim to be a climate scientist. I’m providing my take on the evidence/data I see.
Scott, you stated earlier: “This website does a great job of making the case for a gradually increasing global temperature over time AKA climate. Global trend lines over time are gradually increasing. It is well documented. GREAT.”
Step 1 accomplished!
Some examples of global warming I see causing problems:
* East African countries including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia experienced their fifth consecutive season of failed rains in 2022, pushing 22 million people to the brink of starvation according to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/20/drought-in-horn-of-africa-places-22m-people-at-risk-of-starvation-says-un
* The heaviest rains Seoul had seen in 115 years fell in August 2022, with 5.6 inches (141.5mm) of downpour per hour. Another catastrophic flood in July 2023 wreaked more havoc.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/heavy-rain-hits-south-korea-causing-power-cuts-evacuations-2023-07-14/
* Homes in Pakistan’s Balochistan province were consumed by floodwaters after a record monsoon season in 2022. The heaviest summer rains in a decade wiped out residential areas, roads and crops, causing never-before-seen destruction.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-floods-force-tens-thousands-homes-overnight-2022-08-27/
* Britain swelters on its hottest day ever as temperatures hit 40C. Train services cancelled due to the heat. Heat fueled a spate of fires across London.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/after-warmest-night-britain-braces-record-temperature-2022-07-19/
* Europe’s driest summer in 500 years in 2022, that ravaged agriculture in countries like France, Italy and Portugal, putting strain on crops and hydropower energy facilities.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/EUROPE-WEATHER/DROUGHT/gdvzyoeoypw/embeds/en/page/
* Western Australia had its worst ever floods in Jan 2023.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2023/jan/06/kimberley-floods-the-worst-flooding-western-australia-has-ever-seen-video
* New Zealand experienced a powerful subtropical storm in mid-Feb 2023, after downgrading from a tropical Cyclone Gabrielle, with damages estimated at around NZ$10 billion.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/485990/niwa-scientist-in-no-doubt-climate-change-behind-cyclone-gabrielle-s-intensity
The list is extensive, but I leave it there… Others may wish to add to the list.
Scott: – “All I have to do is show that global warming is not causing problems.”
Um… How would you prove a negative? Ah, but then you’d have to reply again.
Scott: – “You don’t think I spent a lot of time trying to recreate the graph in the NPR article?”
I don’t know. Did you? Ah, but then you’d have to reply again.
Scott: – “Yep, that sounds like “all at once” to me. Seriously.”
It seems to me you didn’t watch the Andrew Dressler video to understand what he was talking about. I’m not surprised. I expect climate science deniers to willfully misunderstand/misrepresent information that conflicts with their ideological narrative.
Scott: – “…if the commenters on this site are all experts in climate science…”
What makes you think that? Ah, but then you’d have to reply again.
Gavin began his post above with:
IMO, there’s plenty of evidence here in this commentary thread.
Scott, Aug.8: “ I represent the null hypothesis. You represent the AGW hypothesis. Therefore, it is incumbent UPON YOU, NOT ME to show that
It would have been much more convincing, if you thought of it at the start, and NOT after you TRIED TO PROVE 2 of your own 8 … supposedly NULL hypotheses (see Scott, Aug.1). And were quite cocky about it: “Just getting started….”, “Can’t wait for your reply”
And only AFTER your Aug. 1 attempt to PROVE your claims of “NO” negative effects of climate change – BACKFIRED via several opponents pointing to you not understanding the limitations, or even the stated conclusions, of the studies you called upon, and your cherry-picking information to serve your proofs of your hypotheses, only then – you fell-back to the I don’t have to prove anything to YOU, because these are NULL hypotheses” line. Too late –
you can’t first try PROVE your own hypotheses, and when that failed, lecture others that your hypotheses do not need any proof. If lost your virginity on Aug.1 , you can’t find it and have it on Aug.8 …
And with this “being [your] final post” – a piece of advice for the road: you shouldn’t expect your opponents to do your homework for you – as jgnfld put it:
Here is a summary of ALL the recent research, NOT a cherrypicked statement from here and there…https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/
Only AFTER you read through this extensive summary of the current research – only then ask your opponents for possible clarifications/opinions.
Of course this applies to opponents – if you go on to the blogs of fellow climate denialists, I mean: skeptics, damn it, “realists” – they will welcome you with open arms and unconditional acceptance. That’s… unless you question their “climate realism” dogma – see the cautionary tale by Michael Alexander Jul. 27, whose then fellow “climate-realists” “ turned on [him’ for having the temerity to ask that we admit when we’re wrong. [He] started making enemies for asking too many question regarding some of the comments” – see Michael’s post in the parallel thread on AMOC.
Nice hyperbole. Zero actual facts.
ALL of these “impossibles” are addressed in the science literature of which you are obviously unaware. Do you really think that’s true of most readers here?
OK jgnfld,
List them please. I mean the science literature “of which I am obviously unaware”. Oh, you don’t have time? Hmmm.
This will be fun.
YOU made the claims of “zero”. Back them up.
That should be fun.
(Oh, do use actual science sources,)
Please see my response to Geoff above.
Can’t wait for your reply.
Here is a summary of ALL the recent research, NOT a cherrypicked statement from here and there…https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/
Scott, “Just getting started… ”
Maybe before you get all started up, how about checking that those selected by you sources do show what you think they show:
– that you have a CONTROL on non climatic factors,
– that you are correlations are not spurious
– that they offer plausible MECHANISM for the cause and effect.
otherwise you may end up with a climatic version of the nearly PERFECT correlation (r=0.998) between “the US spending on science, space and technology” and
“ the number of suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation ”
Or, in your our exmaple:
“Heat wave hospitalizations”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27503399/
which in its Conclusions states:
Heat stroke hospitalizations associated with heat waves declined dramatically over time, indicating increased resilience to extreme heat among older adults,. Considerable risks, however, still remain through 2010, which could be addressed through public health interventions at a regional scale to further increase central AC and monitoring heat waves.
I.e. it did not prove the deniers thesis that “Global warming is good for us”, NOR that
the heat waves are becoming less severe, but that the affluent society as the US in response to the heat waves increased its “higher central air conditioning (AC) prevalence”. A solution hardly easily transferable to the billions of people living in hot and much poorer than the US countries. And not applicable to the other species at all – since animals in the wild won’t be able to avail themselves of central air conditioning.
And the devil of the epidemiological studies is in the methodology – we have discussed it In this very thread – eg. my post from July 12 https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/back-to-basics/#comment-813103
On the example of the infamous Lancet paper that became the cause célèbre of the climate deniers, who used like Lomborg to “prove” that global warming, or the lack of a better word, is GOOD, for it saves lives!
I’ll repeat here my Jul12 questions about that study. since they probably in one way or other apply to most (all?) your list of sources you just get started with …
=== Lancet Planet Health 2021;5: 415–25 ===
Piotr Jul 12: It models the excess mortality data from 2000-2019: cold causing =8.52% excess death, and heat causing =0.92%. However, I question how they assigned the excess deaths to cold or heat, and how they failed to address non-climatic confounding factors.
To illustrate the point – in the Lancet study, Eastern Europe, had the lowest mean temperatures out of all regions and with winters that famously defeated both Napoleon and Hitler – had …. heat-associated-mortality 5 x global average, while the subSaharan Africa, with its oppressive heat and humidity has …2x the global average for deaths from … cold.
Unless I missed something, the authors didn’t even attempt to explain this paradox. For one thing, they didn’t identify the heat or cold-related death based on any etiology of diseases – they simply fitted the temperature changes against the local mortality. This is akin of an economist using a correlation to lecture climatologists on climate, without any knowledge of underlying physics. […] Then there is a big issues an issue of extrapolating the past onto the future…. Because of it, I don’t have too much faith in purely statistical studies ,/i> – more often than not, that’s the tale of a statistician, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
That’s why much more relevant to me is a combination of modelled temperature (and humidity?) – with the physiologically-feasible mechanisms/limits – as in the Lenton et al Nature 2023 and Stefan Rahmstorf animation, both referenced in Geoff’s post.”
====
For some reason no denier answered it. So maybe you, Scott ?
BTW – if you believe the greatest promoter of this study, Lomborg – it claims it found a global increase in heat-related mortality. How do you reconcile it with your claims of global warming as reducing “ relative health risks” or “showing a general decrease in heat sensitivity.”?
S: I LOVE the level of hypocrisy on this website!
BPL: I LOVE how grossly incompetent laymen with a political axe to grind interpret anything they can’t understand as malice!
Physician, heal thyself.
The point Scott appears to be making is that despite anthropogenic warming leading to more frequent heatwaves and floods etc,etc the related mortality rate per 1000 people hasn’t increased (or not very much). Because of advances in medical care and such like. So everything is just find and dandy.
Its a simplistic and delusional point of view. He cant seem to see that 1) But for global warming the mortality rate might have actually been dropping 2) there is no guarantee that the mortality rate wont increase as the rate and impacts of global warming get ahead of the ability of the systems to reduce the mortality rate, and this could happen abruptly and at scale
.For example a surge in heatwaves with both high heat and humidity above a certain threshold which makes them lethal for huge numbers of people. Serious crop failures. The costs of SLR when it gets up to 1 – 2 M per century.
All these things are very possible the way we are going. This is why the IPCC keeps warning people. But Scott either cant understand or doesnt want to understand.
HI Nigelj
“1) But for global warming the mortality rate might have actually been dropping”
Guess what? It already is:
https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters
https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/#
Ah, the “but for” argument. Try this one: Global flood frequency would not be reported as increasing BUT FOR the advancement of technology over time to observe more flooding events.
See, I can do it too.
Question: Do Ad hominems make someone look smarter? Just curious.
Nigelj
I find it hard in any case to believe that todays gentle warmings should have got much to say for human mortality of heat stroke. It is only 1.5 deg above pre industrial. Daily and annual temperatures are fluctuating much more than that and people can adapt. “What kills people directly and even worse, costs,…… is rather stupidity., by those who cannot or will not adapt to reality.
But what about agriculture and fisheries? There we also see tendency symptoms of climate change, and I believe that is a quite much more an accute threat.
Stupidity being also quite accute but hard to deal with.
Scott, I still think you are missing the point. The mortality rate caused by natural disasters has been dropping, but if not for global warming it may have been dropping more steeply. I assume this is something you would have wanted to see.
Global warming is already causing problems and using up our resources in trying to deal with the problems. IMO people like you who try to desperately downplay the threat are as bad as those who exaggerate the threat – and I have been critical of both on this website.
It’s true that the way we measure various climate phenomena generally has got more advanced and accurate over time, but do you seriously think scientists are unaware of this and how it could influence the documented records? They are aware. They are not the idiots you seem to think.
For example it was known that the way ships measured ocean warming early last century was not very accurate due to the methods used, and it was found that it overstated the warming early last century. So they worked out how much, and the ocean warming record we adjusted downwards to REDUCE the warming early last century so that the record was as accurate as possible. This is the direct opposite of sceptical claims that the warming record is allegedly “biased upwards.”
Carbomantanus.
While I agree that warming of 1.5 degree C wont have huge impact on the strength of heatwaves and on heat stroke, the frequency of heatwaves has also increased. The combination of the two things starts to add up.
Found this on agriculture: “Climate change is affecting crop yields and reducing global food supplies”
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-affecting-crop-yields-and-reducing-global-food-supplies-118897#:~:text=Overall%2C%20however%2C%20climate%20change%20is,in%20food%2Dinsecure%20developing%20countries.
“Climate change has likely already affected global food production”
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217148
The two studies look at the issues in different ways but reach similar numerical conclusions. It does tend to confirm your suspicions.
I wonder if Scott will acknowledge these studies. He keeps claiming he was unable to find anything showing negative climate impacts on food production or crop yeilds. Its almost like he doesn’t want to. . Cognitive dissonance and all that. Took me ten seconds.
Nigelj,
What evidence do you have, outside of modeling studies, prove that “if not for global warming, mortality rates would be a lot lower”. This is pure conjecture, and not rooted in science. It is a belief. It is faith. It is not science. Did you read the PLOS article on crop yields that took you ten seconds to find? Yeah, look at the graphs. They show that in many places crop yields are increasing, so I looked deeper. Basically, they are saying that crop yields are increasing but not as fast, based on historic growth rates, and that that decrease in growth rate is based on climate change. The you quote something from thecovernsation.com. Can I quote something from Fox news then? Meanwhile, in the real world:
https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
Scott
“What evidence do you have, outside of modeling studies, prove that “if not for global warming, mortality rates would be a lot lower”.
So basically you put words in my mouth. Straight away you show your’e deceitful doing that. I said above thread “The mortality rate caused by natural disasters has been dropping, but if not for global warming it may have been dropping more steeply” and “But for global warming the mortality rate might have actually been dropping”.
“This is pure conjecture, and not rooted in science. It is a belief. It is faith. It is not science. ”
Of course the statement “The mortality rate caused by natural disasters has been dropping, but if not for global warming it may have been dropping more steeply” is conjecture, but its highly probable and logical conjecture. Heatwaves and floods kill people, so without global warming exacerbating those its likely the mortality rate would have dropped more steeply than it has. I assume you can work that out.
We could of course have breakthroughs in healthcare in the future that offset even catastrophic warming but it would certainly be the worst kind of conjecture to assume that.
“An Did you read the PLOS article on crop yields that took you ten seconds to find? Yeah, look at the graphs. They show that in many places crop yields are increasing, so I looked deeper. Basically, they are saying that crop yields are increasing but not as fast, based on historic growth rates, and that that decrease in growth rate is based on climate change. ”
Crop yeilds not increasing as fast is ok with you? You cant see this is a negative? Look at population growth. We need the greatest increases in crop yeilds possible.
“The you quote something from thecovernsation.com. Can I quote something from Fox news then?”
The Conversation article deals with a peer reviewed study that you conveniently forgot to mention: This is information related to the study:
“To analyze these questions, a team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment spent four years collecting information on crop productivity from around the world. We focused on the top 10 global crops that provide the bulk of consumable food calories: Maize (corn), rice, wheat, soybeans, oil palm, sugarcane, barley, rapeseed (canola), cassava and sorghum. Roughly 83 percent of consumable food calories come from just these 10 sources. Other than cassava and oil palm, all are important U.S. crops.”
“We found that climate change has affected yields in many places. Not all of the changes are negative: Some crop yields have increased in some locations. Overall, however, climate change is reducing global production of staples such as rice and wheat. And when we translated crop yields into consumable calories – the actual food on people’s plates – we found that climate change is already shrinking food supplies, particularly in food-insecure developing countries.”
Scott,
Just curious, do you have a scenario where increasing heat lowers the death rate due to heat exposure? Other than something like a future date where everybody gets an air conditioner.
Also I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the effects of increasing desertification.
Nigelj
It was at the University in the USA and there was one autentic and experiencede Italian among them. And there was a heatwave.
They suggested: “Let us go over to the Mensa, where there is aircondition!”
But the Italian denied. “No, I sit here in the shadow, I do not go a step in this warmth!”
They were all astonished because unaquainted to the Italian style..
Jorge Begogglio, todays Pope is also 2.nd generation Italian and has spoke: “Aircondition is sinful!”
I have been there in the summer , and soon found out that I must adapt and change my lifestyle. Swarming around under the midday sun in a car in the italian urban traffic is sinful. What they do is to sit down and take a long siesta in the shadow, perhaps with an italian Espresso to wake up again
The moral and efficient italians wake up very early and do it in the morning hours, and then take a very long Siesta. And wake up again in the afternoon when the sun is low, and do the rest of it.
I talked with Ali from Mali. “What about 4 deg warmer in the world?
“No, Warmth is sometyhing that we can. The problem today is that people are so stingy. When all people are so stingy, the whole world will become a desert!”
They probably know it also in Mali. They know how and they adapt and know how to live along with it and not against the warmth and the climate.
I have never been there, but it looks to me that also the arabian autentic style is to live allmost in rock caves and to dig in during the midday sun. See the fameous Petra- monument and early chistian caves in Tyrkia. Also huge and thick white marble urban style in Hellas. Desert animals live in caves and dig in during day and perform and work at night.
The classical arabs were especially fond of Astronomy.
They use Khat, and hot strong Coffea arabica in small cups, and the prophet has adviced against al- kohol.
@ Scott
What clearly looks more like an organized and trained fanatic religious congregational mission Brother Scott….
… is your own obviously inagurated, higly trained, immune behaviours and consequently flawless, professional style.
Why do they call it religion? Because they are ignorant food tubes who understand neither science or religion.
Very amusing! You do recall, don’t you, that your presumptive goal was to dispute whether we are in “uncharted territory” as of July 2023?
Further to which, KIA’s statement was already obsolete 2 years ago, apparently:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/global-temperature-records-continent-n1276715
No, it’s not the proper way to assess whether the world is warming, but as it happens 3 continental record highs are from this century:
Asia: 54C (2017, 2023)
Europe: 48.8C (2021)
Oceania: 52.0C (2020)
We might add as honorable mention the national Canadian record from 2021–49.6C.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records
I’m a physicist turned engineer, and I find the data and theory underpinning the notion of anthroprogenic climate change to be convincing.
From what I’ve seen the recent wave of denialism is driven by a transmogrification of “Climate Change” into “Climate Emergency” and the use of the latter as an excuse by the globalist elite to impose policies that have (at best) negligible impact on greenhouse emissions, but either (a) tighten their control over the plebes, or (b) have disastrous economic/environmental consequences. “Climate Emergency” is the notion that within a decade (or so) climate change will (pick as many as you please) destroy: Civilization As We Know It, Humanity, Life on Earth. Corallary to this is the claim that it is still possible to avoid this apocolypse if only the Little People all pull togehter and make Big Sacrifices (“You will own nothing and be happy”).
People see these proposals and observe that the people pushing them still gad about in private jets emitting more CO2 in one trip than they will in a lifetime, and conclude that the whole thing is a scam. The baby is thrown out with the bathwater.
Mark, this sounds a lot like classic projection/doublespeak propaganda used by the actual global elites/oligarchs. (Oil-igarchs).
Last I heard, Saudi Arabia and Russia and Iran and others, including many FF-bought US politicians and media moguls, were the ones accumulating all the wealth, while promoting dictatorial political structures with repressed populations and devalued subgroups.
Hard to understand how a physicist+engineer can’t see that de-fossilization would act to reduce inequality and promote democratization. (If that’s your goal.)
Yes, I judge them as +pioneering socialists early sovjettic surreaqloists dialectic materialists and inaugurated & doped national socialists (the organized Nazi pioneering groups in charge) and operate on them as that.
They are also called “populists” in our days.
They betray a characteristic lack of the core of higher formation,on facultary level, seemingly brought up rather under isolated and closed studies in special training camps. & institutions.
Conclusion:
Das Kapital, you see, Carl Marx.
But even worse, The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith, on which Carl Marx built his system..
Riddle: Who invented the copper wire?
Correct answere: Two Scots, who found a penny on the street.
And Adam Smith was truly Scotsch!
Re: Mark Janney Aug.5
In the taxonomy of climate change deniers, in which category would place yourself, Mark?
1. No climate change, so let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels.
2. Climate change, but natural, so let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels.
3. Climate change, but CO2 is food for plants/good for us (Lomborg), so let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels.
4. Climate change, but we can easily control it by geoengineering (SO2, latent heat), so let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels.
5. Climate change, but it won’t bad, so let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels.
6. Climate change, but it is like COVID – it won’t be as bad as they tell us and any government response to it would “ a) tighten their control over the plebes, or (b) have disastrous economic consequences.“. So let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels.
7. Climate change, but “ the people pushing the mitigation are in that only for money because as everybody knows – the true money is in … scientific research and mitigation programs – not in $ trillions in the revenue of the global fossil fuel industrial complex
(2022 revenue of Exxon-Mobile alone was 414 $B) and petro-states like Russia and Saudi
Arabia, whose economy and therefore the regime stability and ability to project influence abroad
would collapse if the world stopped using oil and gas. So let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels.
8. Climate change, but its too late to stop it, so we might enjoy the ride while we can – so let’s burn ourselves more fossil fuels. After us, Deluge!
Yes. Tell the 1,170,784 people (as of this week) in the US alone and the total of 6,953,743 dead so far around the globe who died of COVID “it won’t be as bad as they tell us”.
And the argument that scientists are into the specific results for money is simple projection. No more and most certainly no less. But then most “conservative” arguments in the USA and Canada these days amount to no more and certainly no less than simple projection.
Scott
“All I have to do is show that global warming is not causing problems.”
Scott’s argument earlier on these pages was that the increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves, floods etcetera isn’t a problem, because the mortality rate (per 1000 people) hasn’t increased. This is a weak idea because the health system still has to use resources on people with heat stroke or whatever, thus depriving resources for use in other areas. So clearly global warming is already a problem.
Scotts outlook on things is very narrow, yet his ego is certainly very wide. I’m also pretty sure Scott is Victor. Same attributes.
Am I really in so splendid conspirational company in our days?
They should invite me secretly to join them. Then I could teach them how to conspirate more efficiently..
But 9 of 10 of their employees would have to be retired on vodka, kaviar, and salami then as promised by Stalin. Not simply shot down from the air by s-400
Their largest ERROR is to employ systematically trained and inaugurated old surrealists from that background class / race. .
It would be nice if more Americans took more college level physics classes, but we have to work with the hand we are dealt.
Climate Change is not a Democratic vs Republican issue because both parties ultimately serve the donor class, despite their rhetoric.
Last time I checked, membership of either party has declined to below 50% of eligible US voters, so maybe it is time to measure our science outside of the old political dichotomy of right vs left. The old dichotomy is a circus, a distraction from our data and our models.
The donor class will continue to profit from the sale of fossil fuels while they simultaneously profit from climate change disaster capitalism. They play both sides of the battle for profit no matter who survives or dies.
The jet stream cycles are getting longer so each winter the deniers will argue that the extended snowfall or polar vortex proves that Earth is not warming. But they may have lost their Antarctica climate change argument.
This year may be the first year that the warming waters under Antarctica are melting Antarctica faster than the increasing snowfall can buildup the ice there.
How many climate change deniers will admit they probably made a mistake when they argued that the increase in Antarctic ice due to increased snowfall proved that climate change was a fraud? Not one at this site I bet.
The Antarctic ice extent and thickness took a nosedive in 2023. It is enough for me to consider moving to cooler places on Earth, and higher ground.
You can watch the daily evidence by bookmarking this site:
ANTARCTIC: SEA-ICE CONCENTRATION/EXTENT/THICKNESS
https://zacklabe.com/antarctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/
No quarrel with the ‘summer/year of climate change’ perception. But this is at best radically incomplete:
For one thing, “the donor class” is fundamentally an incorrect framing. To be sure, there is clearly a distinguishable group of people who a) care about politics and/or policy enough to donate, for varying reasons, and b) have the resources to do so on a grand scale.
However, they obviously do NOT have identical interests or ideologies. George Soros is not functionally identical to David Koch, and least of all in terms of climate policy.
Moreover, the GOP is now completely in thrall to climate denial, with only politically insignificant exceptions. The Democrats are obviously not perfect in this regard, but have just delivered a very significant climate package in the face of determined opposition. False equivalence on this score is IMHO really feckless, and I regret that you’ve chosen to put this view forward.
By all means, work to improve climate policy–including those proposed by the Democratic Party. Take personal and community steps to improve practices and mitigate emissions. Organize for resilience.
But don’t forget to vote blue every chance you get, because otherwise you are effectively choosing the horrendously awful over the moderately good–once if you don’t vote or take the “Green” route, and twice if you vote R.
The top donors share one quality. An obsession with maximizing profits.
Team blue knows just how many votes are required to secure a loss that secures their true priorities, serving their donors.
Most people don’t see the shared corruption between both parties because the corporate media censors evidence of the shared US political corruption because it is paid to be complicit. The fact that we don’t really have a choice is kept outside of the window of acceptable political debate.
The change in climate policy required to save Earth will require a world war level effort to fight corruption.
The changes in law may be simple, similar to the changes required to control acid rain or repair the hole in the ozone: A carbon tax, switching the fuels and foods we subsidize, investing in renewable infrastructure, etc….
But the global financial interests opposing such changes represent the largest political powers in the world, and they are not above having others commit war crimes to defend their wealth.
They are also willing to spend a few million dollars on social media propaganda to make a few trillion more dollars selling fossil fuels.
So for every post like this one there will always be many more posts saying just the opposite.
I am beyond optimism or cynicism. I’m left to sharing my opinion without the expectation of influencing anyone with the power to make a difference. Everyone has opinions, I see no need to hide mine.
The data and the models still fascinate me. I’m grateful to find them here.
Your first statement is, as you say, opinion. And I’d say it’s both unsubstantiated and dubious, since it appears to rely on assumptions that (inter alia) personal agency is the only determinant of extreme wealth, and that personal perspectives never change, no matter how much individual circumstances do.
Your second strikes me as pure conspiracy theory. I don’t for a moment believe that “team blue” intentionally loses political contests. Water down measures under lobbyist pressure? Sure. Craft compromises that are far less than adequate? We’ve seen it. But the false equivalency you construct rests on your presumption that all donors want the same things, that they are all aligned. And that is demonstrably untrue. See Ray’s excellent comment, as well as the instances I’ve already cited.
You speak of the “donor class” as if it were a monolith. Individuals make their money in different sectors, and different sectors face different risks from climate change. Insurance risks annihilation if the climate shifts too gravely. Commodity traders also face much greater uncertainty. If these individuals were capable of understanding their own self-interests, they’d be shoveling money into the system to try and bury the “Drill, Baby, Drill” crowd. The problem is that the wealthy tend to read the Wall Street Urinal and listen to petulant imbeciles like Elon and his cronies.
And the plutocrats have single-issue voters and well armed stochastic terrorists to do their bidding. The key to not being conquered is to not allow oneself to be divided from those with common interests merely because they do not share one’s singular interests.