Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian is distressed that the agreeable, pleasantly mild weather caused by global warming is undermining efforts to motivate ordinary people to address Climate Change.
A large majority of Americans have enjoyed more pleasant weather due to global warming over the past 40 years, research has found, but there is set to be an unpleasant sting in the tail as temperatures escalate further this century.
Vast areas of the contiguous US have warmed considerably during winters without becoming unbearably hot during the summers, making the climate generally more agreeable to the public. A new study has found that 80% of the American population lives in areas where the weather has become more “preferable” since 1974.
According to the analysis by Duke University and New York University, 99% of Americans live in places where the average January temperature has increased, with just 60% in locations where the July temperature has risen. Rainfall and humidity changes have also, largely, changed by a favorable degree for many Americans.
This shift to more temperate conditions means that “virtually all Americans are now experiencing the much milder winters that they typically prefer, and these mild winters have not been offset by markedly more uncomfortable summers or other negative changes,” the paper found.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/20/climate-change-weather-changes-us-study
The abstract of the study;
As climate change unfolds, weather systems in the United States have been shifting in patterns that vary across regions and seasons. Climate science research typically assesses these changes by examining individual weather indicators, such as temperature or precipitation, in isolation, and averaging their values across the spatial surface. As a result, little is known about population exposure to changes in weather and how people experience and evaluate these changes considered together. Here we show that in the United States from 1974 to 2013, the weather conditions experienced by the vast majority of the population improved. Using previous research on how weather affects local population growth to develop an index of people’s weather preferences, we find that 80% of Americans live in counties that are experiencing more pleasant weather than they did four decades ago. Virtually all Americans are now experiencing the much milder winters that they typically prefer, and these mild winters have not been offset by markedly more uncomfortable summers or other negative changes. Climate change models predict that this trend is temporary, however, because US summers will eventually warm more than winters. Under a scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions proceed at an unabated rate (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5), we estimate that 88% of the US public will experience weather at the end of the century that is less preferable than weather in the recent past. Our results have implications for the public’s understanding of the climate change problem, which is shaped in part by experiences with local weather. Whereas weather patterns in recent decades have served as a poor source of motivation for Americans to demand a policy response to climate change, public concern may rise once people’s everyday experiences of climate change effects start to become less pleasant.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature17441
Think about it – if this awful trend continues, one day parts of the Southern USA might enjoy the kind of climate you currently have to retire to the Caribbean to experience.
Let us all work together, to ensure that our children’s children are never forced to endure long idyllic Summers and mild winters.
Ba-hahahahaha! It is Ma Nature’s fault that we don’t Believe! That, plus we’re dunderheads to not “see” what they “see” coming – climate catastrophe. All we need do is look at their models, after all. You know, the ones that have been accurate so far. Oh wait.
If weather has improved so much in the last 40 years, tell me why more and more Canadian snowbirds are travelling south every winter to escape the cold? There are now about one million snowbirds from Canada heading for Florida, Arizona, Texas, California, and Mexico when we enter into the colder months, and this happens every year and the numbers are increasing.
Baby boomers retiring – just more people, with more time and more wealth that allow them to join the hordes of the climate refugees.
I too must admit that I have become a snowbird…though not from Canada. But I miss shoveling snow when I’m in the south…like I miss frostbite.
Indeed a whole new airport has just opened down here at Rio Hato, in the middle of nowhere on the coast. No scheduled commercial flights, only charters from Canada. An entire synthetic civilization of shopping malls and condos is springing up to soak up their discretionary income, until recently financed almost entirely by Russians.
Rio Hato is in Panama, for the non-Canuks…
” There are now about one million snowbirds from Canada heading for Florida…”
Tell me about it…the traffic here in Fort Myers in Winter gets worse by the year.
As any fule here in central Virginia kno, in the last forty years winters have remained pretty much the same, except for strong el Nino years, while summers have become noticeably cooler. In recent years we have had many fewer 100+ degree days in summer. Hottest average summer temperatures were all recorded in the 1930s. If there’s warming going on it ain’t going on here.
100 percent correct. I live in NYC and there was a time we would have 10 day 90 plus degrees heat waves. Now if we get two or three straight hot days the media blows it up into a major calamity!! There were many summers back in the 70’s 80’s and 1990’s of 25 days above 90. Since 2000, NYC typically average 7 to 12 days above 90.What happened
Wait a minute! Isn’t CAGW supposed to be increasing heat related death rates and all sorts of allergy and lung problems; not to mention fungal toes and reduced libido due to sweaty women? How could we find this unbearable weather more pleasant?
sarc
Hey it’s been warmer in the Winter but not in the Summer–but wait, that’s Global Warming…um…we mean Climate Chaos….no wait, it’s Climate Change! Yes that’s it, Climate Change…something we need to control. Well “we predicted” that is the crucial tipping point and it’s all downhill from here. So enjoy your mild temps but keep filling those sandbags because the ocean is gunning to take over your cities…….um…..someday. /sarcasm
Seriously. I read the report on Reuters too. Enjoy the milder temps–while you can. What a crock of absolute horse apples. You know I used to think farmers were the pessimists. Too much rain, too much sun, not enough rain, not enough sun but these Apocalyptic Sky Falling Idiots are so much worse.
Of course when the pause continues they’ll be the first to exclaim that is what they predicted and the climate apocalypse was averted because of their due diligence. Remember these people believe correlation is causation and so will justify just about anything other than admit they are selling snake oil.
I said it in the 80’s when this crap popped up in the news and I’ll say it nearly 30 years later–these people need to be run out on a rail.
Do we know of any civilizations throughout human history that collapsed because climate became too warm?
They know this information. All warm ages corresponded with great civilizations and all of these collapsed when it got much colder and barbarians from the north invade to escape the cold.
And I speak as someone who descended from the Norse. Whooboy. We packed the bags and went southwards,
I’m not sure about too warm, but certainly too dry. People seem to really, really need water. Liquid water, at that. The US southwest and Mexico lost several communities due to persistent drought. Mayan, Anasazi, etc.
Others are described at http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/six-civilizations-destroyed-by-climate-change/27723/0/ all done in by lack of liquid water.
Interesting brief overview of past civilizations–I’d classify that as limited at best especially the Indus Valley (which I’m researching right now).
But “all done in by a lack of liquid water” doesn’t exactly cover all the aspects of those lost civilizations. Nor does, CLIMATE CHANGE (cue Jaws music)….as with any society or civilization there are many, many factors that led to its demise. Otherwise the cooling after the peak of the Roman period could be ‘blamed’ for it’s demise–yet we know from existing records there were many factors.
It’s no big secret humans build societies around water, nor is it any secret that extended drought moves people to abandon such societies. But there are always mitigating factors in each case and to lump them all under CLIMATE CHANGE is I think disingenuous to the people that formed and eventually abandoned those civilizations. What we can do though is learn as much about them to understand how to not repeat their mistakes but putting them under the umbrella of the dreaded climate does not further knowledge and IMO seeks to stop inquiry into why those civilizations failed.
Wondering about the peak Mayan civilization … no hurricane warning system … four class lV’s in a period of 3 years and a follow up class “8” wouldn’t really leave a record(?) but would most likely have blown their shutters and doors so far away that they may not have recovered.
The civilisation that thrive in the Central Sahara did so when it was generally warmer, at which time the Sahara was generally cooler and far wetter. The general cooling dried up the rain with the result that the Sahara became an uninhabitable hell of heat and aridity.
Similarly the Nordic settlements in what is now Western China dies of heat and exhaustion during the same global cooling that followed the Minoan thermal optimum.
From the article:
“As climate change unfolds, weather systems in the United States have been shifting in patterns that vary across regions and seasons.”
I’ve been around a long time, and I don’t see any shifts in weather patterns. The weather is pretty much “business as usual” from my location and viewpoint.
Nothing that is occuring concerning the weather is out of the ordinary.
From the article:
“Using previous research on how weather affects local population growth to develop an index of people’s weather preferences, we find that 80% of Americans live in counties that are experiencing more pleasant weather than they did four decades ago.”
Well, that would be because the U.S. has been in a “long-term” cooling trend since the 1930’s. It was less extreme in the 1940’s, than in the 1930’s, and it was less extreme in the 1950’s compared to the 1940’s, and so on. Yes, there is a pattern here. The pattern does NOT point to human-caused global warming/climate change. Just the opposite.
If you lived in the 1950’s, and I did, then you know the weather was more extreme and hotter then than it is today, so today would definitely be more pleasant than the 1950’s, which means not “global warming” but “global cooling” is the driving force today.
It’s more pleasant today because the Earth is cooler today.
Yes. The summers from the mid-50’s to late 60s were nasty in the mid-Appalachians — generally hotter and drier than even the 30s. I remember it well…..
From the article:
“Under a scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions proceed at an unabated rate (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5), we estimate that 88% of the US public will experience weather at the end of the century that is less preferable than weather in the recent past.”
That’s not very definitive, is it.
How much less preferable? How much will that unabated CO2 raise the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere? BTW, you should not rely on the IPCC for your data and numbers. They are *way* off.
From the article:
“Whereas weather patterns in recent decades have served as a poor source of motivation for Americans to demand a policy response to climate change,”
The reason Americans are not motivated to worry about climate change is because they don’t see the climate changing. If the climate really were getting extreme, people would be concerned, but it is not.
And I think the Alarmist community has “cried wolf” too many times about dangerous climate change which causes people to tune you out. All these Alarmist claims of past and approaching climate catastrophe, and people look around and say “what are they talking about?”.
The people on the East Coast didn’t look so cheery with the last two March and April winter storms, nor did Denver. All those cancelled flights, etc. Can’t say I understand why that’s warmer and happier, but I’m just an ordinary person, not an important news writer. Sigh.
“not an ignorant news writer who thinks he’s important”.
There, fixed it for you.
Major snow in Newfoundland. When will Spring arrive in the Atlantic provinces?
There is a story about the underlying paper in the L.A. Times, which points out that the two “researchers” who wrote “Recent improvement and projected worsening of weather in the United States” are a political scientist from NYU and a “professor of environmental politics” at Duke. Further comment hardly seems necessary.
Crustacean,
I made a comment below before I saw yours, but these are the two “researchers.”
Patrick J. Egan
Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy
• Areas of Research/Interest: Public opinion and institutions in American politics; the formation of political attitudes; LGBT issues and politics
Megan Mullin
Associate Professor of Environmental Politics
Primary Appointment
Environmental Science & Policy Division
Seems to confirm your story about the L.A. Times article.
Makes me wonder if climate science is a ‘hard science’. It may turn out to be an ‘impossible science’. That will lead to a whole set of new faculties. Soft sciences where they discuss everything from the observed to the improbable, hard sciences where they discuss what is, and impossible sciences, where they discuss, dissect and advocate the impossible.
This change follows what some have been saying about the real effects of increased CO2. We get warmer nights and winters and cooler days and summers. That reduces extremes. Overall, the effect is small and will not lead to any major SLR. There is no problem to fix.
Hmm, Imwonder what this says about the effect of the water vapor change…
Simply put the effect is negative during the day/summer (convection/clouds) and positive during the night/winter. The fact climate science tries to treat it as a constant says a lot about the science.
Me, I shall not ‘rest’ until all Glaciers are advancing! This should probably give me at least a few thousand more years to live. While the rest of youse hedonists foolishly long to expend your brief time here on Earth in the midst of Palm Trees, surrounded by Mariachi Boys and Girls Gone Wild!
Oh noes, back to the drawing board, I guess. How about we do a better job with “communicating” climate change.
Yes, “Climate Communication”; that’s the ticket.
“…..This shift to more temperate conditions means that “virtually all Americans are now experiencing the much milder winters that they typically prefer,…..”
Virtually all? Really? Who says? Here in Wisconsin, the only ones who might complain about milder winters would be the snowmobilers and skiiers as far as I’m concerned. While a mild winter here would certainly not be good for the ski resorts, they do have sknow making machines don’t they?
No relief for my winter heating bill year on year is NOT something I would “prefer” contrary to the Guardian’s bleatings. If they think otherwise, I invite them to sit outside on a January night when one of those polar vortices goes through here and the wind chill is -20 deg F. Those dim bulbs at the Guardian appear to have forgotten that we humans are warm-blooded creatures.
I have been thinking of spending my winters in Florida, and the idea keeps growing on me with every Wisconsin winter I go through. I can see starting to do it every winter in the not to distant future. The Guardian nitwits need to have their heads examined.
I bet the Siberian
… Russians like the extra warmth, if they are in fact getting it.
CD – I think you’re misreading what the Guardian is saying (it is poorly worded). They are claiming that Americans do prefer warmer winters, but they would not prefer hotter summers.
Just a simple direction for the those to head for the simple life. I have watched weather all my life and have seen patterns and variations of the patterns. all I see is controlled chaos. Dust bowl was an event the lasted 7-11 years. I you look at the parameters starting in 2006 you will see a very similar event. Here in the Houston Galveston area there are multiple variations of patterns. Every 4-7 years we get a cooler than normal winter. Every 7-12 years we get a very cold winter. My oldest sister always said the when see passed it was going to snow Christmas day no matter who complained. Passed in November, Snowed in Houston area that December 25th. So even she can get the weather pattern to change. Patterns of chaos.
We change with the times and adapt to the new reality……. As one latitude becomes less desirable for certain crops another one becomes more desirable…Farmers, like green plants adapt and change….When the climate makes one crop less profitable in an area, the farmer changes….We are not stagnant creatures….The Romans grew grapes and made wine when they ruled Britain…because the climate would allow it then……
40 years of facts and evidence be damned…
What if the next change to more disagreeable weather is to a cold phase?
Ah, we’re back to “warmer winters” again? I wondered how long we’d hear hysteria about the “polar vortex” and the counter-intuitive cries that “global warming causes colder winters”. Don’t newspapers ever look at their own back issues?
Warmists are always distressed whenever their dire Climate Change predictions prove false because that makes it far more difficult to con people into surrendering their rights to central planners.
Yes, it’s very inconvenient for message management.
Patrick J. Egan
Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy
• Areas of Research/Interest: Public opinion and institutions in American politics; the formation of political attitudes; LGBT issues and politics
Megan Mullin
Associate Professor of Environmental Politics
Primary Appointment
Environmental Science & Policy Division
Yep, just as I thought. A couple of highly experienced “climate science” heavyweights! And who says that the coming “climate change” catastrophe is only about politics!
Headline should read: Imperceptible Temperature Increase Assuages Urge to Mitigate Same
One of these days CO2 is going to do something bad.
We swear.