Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Atlantic is worried that a few pleasantly warm days at the end of winter may be prompting “anxiety and unease” amongst the climate obsessed.
Is It Okay to Enjoy the Warm Winters of Climate Change?
The weather is nice, but it reminds us of the problems to come.
ROBINSON MEYER 10:45 AM ET
From D.C. to Denver, from Charlotte to Chicago, towns and cities across the United States have posted strings of record-breaking summery days in what is normally the final month of winter. Wednesday was only the third time since 1880 that Green Bay, Wisconsin, cracked 60 degrees Fahrenheit in February. Ice on the Great Lakes covers only a quarter of its normal surface area. And parts of Oklahoma and Texas have both already been scorched by 90-degree afternoons.
All in all, the United States has already set more than 2,800 new record high temperatures this month. It has only set 27 record lows.
Most people handle this weather as the gift it is: an opportunity to get outside, run or bike or play catch, and get an early jump on the spring. But for the two-thirds of Americans who are at least fairly worried about global warming, the weather can also prompt anxiety and unease. As one woman told the Chicago Tribune: “It’s scary, that’s my first thing. Because in all my life I’ve never seen a February this warm.” Or as one viral tweet put it:
Me enjoying this weather but knowing our Earth is danger pic.twitter.com/Jy6bINvZ6C
— Bre (@bre_lliant) February 19, 2017
…
“While we’re hearing over and over again that climate change is something we should fear, most people are experiencing it in a way that’s really quite comfortable,” says Megan Mullin, a political scientist at Duke University and one of the authors of the study. “What I take away from this is really a lesson for scientists. My Twitter stream is filled with these maps, over and over again, showing departures from historically average temperatures. In my mind, [that kind of messaging] is not going to motivate the public to treat this as a top priority.”
…
The abstract of the study referenced by the article;
Recent improvement and projected worsening of weather in the United States
Patrick J. Egan & Megan Mullin
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/nature/journal/v532/n7599/abs/nature17441.html
Can you imagine these people lecturing their kids, telling them that instead of playing in the sun, they should feel worried about the end of the world? No wonder they’re all permanently depressed.
I see someone already said it, but these people are insane. Or maybe just borderline psychotic, or as we used to say, “Thet boy jest ain’t right in the haid”.
I was just about to write something similar. It seems like we’re dealing with a form of psychotic breaks or something, brought on by decades of fear-mongering and/or conditioning. Weird.
The authors of this study are, to be charitable, historically illiterate. Additionally they seem unaware of the difference between “climate” and “weather”.
A light winter like this is “weather”. Not “climate”.
But the academics know how to shake the magic science grant tree by genuflecting to the climate apocalypse, so they are imminent scientists, it would seem.
But certainly not eminent or immanent.
I know anecdotal evidence is always dismissed out of hand, but having grown up in the Midwest, in the Corn Belt, I can assure anyone who reads this that there have been winters with warm, sunny days and a Chinook in January or February that was a welcome relief from snow, and winters when the confounded snow and cold were more annoying than some climate geek’s bad breath.
This winter, lovely warm days in February after a beastly cold end of December; it’s been so nice the birds are ignoring my food offerings. Last winter, I stayed up all night in late February to shovel snow off my front steps until 5AM, because I didn’t want to have to dig out for the umpteenth time, and the birds thronged my feeding station. I have pictures and everything, and I make a note of the weather readings (temp, humidity, WC, etc.) several times a day, but I’m not a scientist, so it doesn’t count. I don’t get grants to do it, either, so I don’t have to justify my existence in a world of hoohaa panic attacks over NOTHING.
Someone please let me know if I have to sacrifice a goat cheese and some wine to Shu, the Egyptian god of the Weather/Atmosphere, okay?
Oh, yeah – if the problem is excess CO2 showing up, it would help a lot if the panicky climate fear freaks would just zip their mouths shut. That would cut their carbon load by about 6 billion annual cubic tonnes of carbon dioxide. The air would smell a lot cleaner, too.
Sara,
I suggest that you sacrifice the goat cheese, but sent me the wine. It will be sacrificed, I assure you!
Yesterday, we has Storm Doris. A rather nasty 12 hours, causing one death, about four serious/life threatening injuries, and seriously disrupted trains. It is February.
Auto
This is all so silly. Our human lifespans are like the blink of an eye compared to the Earth’s 4 billion year history. What can we possibly deduce about the climate from such a tiny and meaningless sample?
Weather is lovely and so is the power bill.
no kidding.
So you can sit on the ferry on chicago in the winter sun doing breakfast with
and http://images4.mysupermarket.co.uk/Products/59/293359.jpg?v=4
Now you’re talking!
One wonders how much natural variation in weather it will take for people to understand all is normal. Or maybe they already do understand.
+1000
This has to be the psychosis of the city dweller.
No one but a creature of the urban sprawl could avoid the weather so reliably , flitting from heated building,bus,car or train in the winter and air conditioned boxes all summer.
Without our current population distribution would the Climate Hysteria even be possible?
“This has to be the psychosis of the city dweller.” Excellent observation!
John Robertson I’ve thought this constantly during this climate nonsense. The disconnect between researchers and true believers and the actual environment leaves them with so many misconceptions of how nature operates. They all suffer from thinking nature is fragile and delicate and that man is the center of all things. A perfect backdrop of misinformation to superimpose their confirmation bias.
on the lab
https://www.theatlantic.com/world/
If I might …
“No wonder they’re all permanently depressing“
…I find a strange sense of satisfaction in their depression. By contrast, I’m doing just fine!
Reply: #allschadenfreudematters ~ctm
Dumb. In the Midwest we had record cold and record ice extents just a few years ago. Also, a one degree difference is imperceptible amidst the normal 100 degree annual variance.
These nice warm days in the last month of winter terrify me. No, not because I fear being outside in nice weather. No, not because I fear it is just a sign of the impending doom to be caused by climate change. It is because I fear it will lead to even more intolerable rhetoric that the global warmers will spew because of the nice weather. We recently almost broke a temperature record here – a record that was set in 1915 or so – over 100 years ago. I bet the citizenry and press of that day weren’t worried about a few nice days in February. They just relished in the pleasant weather near the end of winter – like we should!
And 1915 didn’t have the same UHI effect.
This first 3rd of this piece is full of lies and nonsense. 2/3rd of Americans fairly worried about global warming? utter rubbish, maybe they mean 2/3rd of Holthaus’ neighbourhood have been depressed by Eric with patent falsehoods
Record cold records have smashed record warms since 2010, by thousands more records, but lets not let the truth get in the way of a homogenised lie eh
They got the 2/3rds from the same place they got the 97%.
Now let’s see … here on Dec 15 where the average high temp was 36°F, the actual high was only 16°F, or twenty degrees below average; lately here, at the end of February, we’ve been experiencing temps twenty degrees ABOVE average (min-fifties). Now, which would I prefer … gee … that’s a tough one.
Now, for all those critters wringing their hands over climate change, try taking a walk with temps in the teens, then try it with them in the fifties, and try saying with a straight face that you prefer the teens.
Of course, this year it seems that all our snow has gone west to California. Enjoy it while you can … I’m afraid that next year out snow will be back … with a vengeance.
There bis a word for this: Millenarianism. Its a collective madness that comes around every 1000 years. It is exclusively judeo Christian disease. Like the flu it morphs each time it hits. Affects intellectuals each time.
I wonder why they are not extinct by now. Adaptation?
It’s perfectly okay to enjoy the warmth. Global Warming will melt ice, but this notion of the tropics bursting into flames is complete hogwash. Even Al Gore got this point right in his Inconvenient Lies film. The tropics will be barely affected by Global Warming. Most of the “heat” goes to melting the ice.
In the mid-60s, I lived in the DC area and experienced an entire week in February with temps in the 80s. Trees starting sprouting green and then another snow slammed it all shut. That’s called “weather.” It happens.
And since we live in an ongoing Ice Age, warmth is a good thing.
An intellectual is a person who thinks I’m, so so smart!
But so many average people work and live and enjoy life without thinking about the intellectuals at all. That is, until they come up with the next scheme to live off the taxpayers.
DDT, Alar & apples, ozone holes, climate turning cold we will all die, nuclear winter, Global warming,… And, the taxpayers dread the next scheme to unfold; because they know their taxes will always go up to pay for those who are so so smart.
Al Gores al Jazeera still spinning lies:
about european colonisation of Afrika:
The christian kingdom of Alans and Vandals brought civilization to northafrica, their auxiliary numid troops were bound into this developing civilization.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandal_Kingdom
An ideological agressiv islam overturned that early civilization that could have been a first blueprint for development in northafrica.
The Arabs were the first to do slave raids into black africa to fill harems and do domestic work.
It’s laughable that till today that narrative is held upright and cries for ‘reparations’.
You will find that Justinian the Great sent his general Belisarius to bring North Africa back within Byzantine (Greek) Roman rule. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalic_War
Imperial control scarcely reached beyond the old Vandal kingdom, however, and the Moorish tribes of the interior proved unwilling to accept imperial rule and soon rose up in rebellion. The new province was shaken by the wars with the Moors and military rebellions, and it was not until 548 that peace was restored and Roman government firmly established.
I doubt that Gore blimey has even heard of Procopius, Justinian’s biographer, let alone read him.
Claiming that warmer weather will be a disaster, is selling a refrigerator to an eskimo times ten. But it’s been done and in spades.
Mankind hasn’t realized yet that the weather changes incessantly as well as the climate does. Overworried fearmongering pseudo-scientists enjoy heating up the atmosphere, at least verbally. But I am a spoilsport: warmer is better. No reason to worry. Period.
Taint anywhere near over. We can get snow and cold clear into May. And we’re getting payback tonight and tomorrow with a blizzard. Oh – and just think of all the CO2 that wasn’t emitted because we didn’t use as much fuel for heat.
Had a chat with a very educated individual this afternoon about CO2, global warming, the whole gambit. He was of the very clear opinion that. “if 97% of the scientists say that we are doing damage, then we must be doing so.” Believe me, I am attempting to pass as much information as possible through this individual as possible, and allow this individual to formulate an opinion based on all of the information. And personally, I am okay if they chose to believe that we are doing damage. This individual is very educated and if this individual decides that damage is being done, I will respect the opinion of this individual.
I will not agree, but I will respect.
Enough preamble, the message that I am attempting to portray is that mainstream media are painting a picture, and irrespective of your personal opinion on this picture, this is what is being disseminated to the general population and it is an overwhelmingly powerful message! Therefore yes, it comes as no surprise to me that a very large percentage of the population will have angst over ANY unusual “weather” (note: “weather” is over a matter of days/weeks/months; “climate” is over centuries/millennia/millions of years – BUT YOU KNOW THAT).
Up here in the Great White North, some areas of the province of Alberta hit record highs a few days ago, barely surpassing temperatures of 100 years ago. MESSAGE TO THE UNBELIEVERS: the weather was THE SAME AS NOW, 100 years ago!
Heck, I had to shovel snow this morning whereas last year at this time, I was taking my motorcycle out of storage for an early start to the season. My angst is opposite of the majority, I want warmer weather NOW, so I can get out and enjoy life on two wheels.
“if 97% of the scientists say that we are doing damage, then we must be doing so.”
Therefore, since 97% of the scientists (presumably “climate scientists” in this discussion) have not said that we are doing “damage”, then we must not be.
Assuming your friend is “very educated” and reasonably intelligent, he should know that there is no 97% agreement that we are doing “damage”.
It is my opinion that there are a lot of well educated people who truly believe in what mainstream media are publishing on a daily basis. That plus they do not dig into the large body of work that has been done to refute the CAGW nonsense.
I was on the fence for a very long time – hey, if all of the mainstream media are saying it is so ….
It wasn’t until I dug into the information on the Carboniferous period, found the infamous 600 million year plot of CO2 concentration and temperature, saw a video about how Canada is responsible for the eventual drowning of the Marshall Islands, and my blood has been boiling ever since. Did a lot of digging into this topic and am trying to persuade people away from The Dark Side.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/techknow/2016/11/coral-catastrophe-fighting-save-dying-reefs-161103101254532.html
will build super corals so in 40 years al Gores ‘scientists’ will repair the reefs. Nobody told him when to run. For environmental help.
Don’t you mean algoreezza?
The government was worried about unsusual winter warmth in January 1662, at the height of the Little Ice Age. Just to show, short term climate quirks are not at all unsusual:
15 Jan 1662
“… it is a fast day ordered by the Parliament, to pray for more seasonable weather; it having hitherto been summer weather, that it is, both as to warmth and every other thing, just as if it were the middle of May or June, which do threaten a plague …”
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/01/
In contrast, on 1st Jan 1667:
“Lay long, being a bitter, cold, frosty day, the frost being now grown old, and the Thames covered with ice. “