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.
All the studies done with RCP8.5 can be trashed, the world’s energy system doesn’t have the means to deliver the fossil fuels they assume will be burned. The continued use of RCP8.5 and similar pathways and their representation as “Business as usual” borders on scientific fraud.
Its a pig to visualise but, I think we’ve got that the wrong way round – Oh the joys of feedback systems and in this case, positive or self-reinforcing feedback.
They are depressed in the sense that a big part of their cognitive processing has been switched off/disabled, Its not like classic depression when you’re sad about divorce, poor health, death of a spouse or the like. Its a chemical depression exactly like alcohol does, especially to folks driving cars. airplanes or machinery.
Of course, alcohol (seems to) clear the system fairly quickly, but does it? No matter that.
The depression here is brought on by eating sugar in all its forms, from dextrose, sucrose, fructose and not least glucose as obtained from digesting processed (cooked) starch.
This would clear also like the alcohol but we insist on eating ‘3 square meals per day’ All of them based around sugar. We are *never* clear of the stuff.
A ,little understood part of any depression, but what it actually is, is the loss of the person’s self-confidence. And of course, alcohol *appears* to do the exact opposite – long term it does not,
Self confidence is the ability to think and act quickly, especially to new or rapidly changing situations.
Now you see what’s happening, depressed people do not like ‘change’ – in its broadest sense. They cannot handle it exactly because it requires some sort of response from them, it is something to learn and the switching off of their cognitions has quite effectively reverted them to children. They hate learning.
You want ‘children’?
See what Karl did, publishing that BS he did then immediately retiring.
Just a childish prank of running up someone’s driveway, ringing the doorbell then running away to hide. Pure childishness from a supposed educated man with a lifetime of work and experience behind him.
More childishness is the new faze in the UK of naming weather systems – children give inanimate things names. And we see it all the time in the debating tactics of (especially) alarmists.
And so it is with what is perceived to be a change in the weather, it is a change in ‘something’ that they cannot figure a way through it and haven’t the mental energy to do so either.
So it frightens them.
They also want to pass-the-buck -pure childishness yet again. It takes guts (self confidence) to admit a mistake.
Hence they are alarmed.
Now, in steps all this fancy new technology (that is going to save us all ‘in the future’ according to warmists and skeptics alike) and the tech is used to assemble spread/disseminate and invariably expand upon this alarm.
See the positive feedback?
What a mess
The UK just started naming storms and thing? Gee whiz, Pete, the weather services here in the US have been naming snowstorms and thunderstorms for about 10 years now. They’ve had this ridiculous and desperate need to ID everything instead of just saying ‘It’s a thunderstorm’.
I think they named the February 2011 blizzard, too. That one shut down Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive northbound, because a bus broke down and blocked traffic, leaving everyone behind it stranded in gale force winds coming off Lake Michigan. It was supposed to be about 2 inches of snow, and turned out to be 20 inches instead. I’ve never seen worse forecasting, EVER.
I was so glad I was retired and didn’t have to put up with that, although finding 4.5 feet (1.36M) of snow drifted up against my front door was annoying until one of my neighbors dug me out. I have pictures. ALWAYS, ALWAYS ALWAYS get pictures.
“Wednesday was only the third time since 1880 that Green Bay, Wisconsin, cracked 60 degrees Fahrenheit in February”
.
So no need to worry, these temperatures are not a record, they’ve reached these levels a couple of times in the last 137 years!
With all of the previous times occurring when there was a lot less CO2 in the atmosphere.
As at 1000UTC today the temperature differential in recorded reporting stations in the world is 96C. In the Northern Hemisphere summer the differential is around 130-150C. In Hong Kong (a relatively small place) right now the difference between the coldest place and the warmest is 8.7C. Who the hell is going to notice a 2C difference in annual average temperature?
A political scientist? Rather says it all!
This February has been unusually warm in Virginia, so far slightly over 5 degrees F above the “long-term” average. Two years ago, February 2015 was 12.43 degrees F BELOW average! The mean temp for that month was 28.5 degrees, compared to the long-term average of 40.9. So averaging 2015 and 2017, the two months were still over three degrees below average. Didn’t hear much about global warming in Feb 2015. . . Now these figures are for Mechanicsville, 12 miles outside of Richmond, not for Richmond itself.
Its been warm lately in the eastern US but this is coming to end this weekend with temps going 7F below normal.
Then a huge cold-front will move through in the first week of March with temps going down to 10F-15F below normal by the end of the first week of March.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs/2017022406/gfs_T2ma_us_46.png
It must be great to have nothing else to worry about than climate change that may or may not be natural/beneficial. I guess everything else in their lives are sorted.
There’s a boogy man inside the closet. Better pull the covers over your head and shiver in the dark. Apparently readers of The Atlantic have a four year olds mentality.
Or you could start a website or two claiming there are no such things as boogy men… scientists invented them to justify their spending on closets.
Or even better still you could start a heterodox website irritating the crap out of the high priests who demand more virgins to keep the boogy man at bay. You know old saw Griff “the more things change the more they stay the same” easy to see once you know the players.
Have you apologised to Dr. Cockcroft for lying about her professional credentials yet, skanky?
Tell us, are you indemnified by your handlers against legal action taken against you for slander or – more likely – will they just hang you out to dry?
“The Atlantic: Is it OK to enjoy Warm Winter Weather?” Maybe The Atlantic should send their “journalists” out to sleep with homeless, and ask them what they think while they are about it.
Great comment on the Atlantic page that will have the greenies in a strop:
“As a result, little is known about population exposure to changes in weather and how people experience and evaluate these changes considered together.”
I’m pretty sure that from September/October until April/May, that a rather large migration occurs. People from the Northeastern part of North America, aka ‘snowbirds’, travel by car and plane to Florida in order to avoid cold weather.
Really? From the northeast to Florida? Well, what about all those people who migrate from flyover country to ski resorts in the mountains of New England? I haven’t checked anything in the Sugarbush, VT area, yet, but without a lot of snow, they don’t get the seasonal ski business they count on every year.
So, the Atlantic staff would prefer this scene from earlier this winter in NYC:
?v=at&w=320&h=180&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiF8-347qjSAhWJPpAKHXqtBRcQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fweather.com%2Fstorms%2Fwinter%2Fnews%2Fwinter-outlook-2016-2017-twc&psig=AFQjCNGHCo2ds003_lblNjlxwywm4RWPjw&ust=1488030254035018
When you are having an early warmspell you are always worried the apple and peach blooms will be destroyed. This is just weather and has nothing to do with climate change.
Why not further explain the point to the ignorant masses that you are saying perpetually strong El Nino conditions projected with a straight edge into the future? And then go on to dare a graph or two depicting the ludicrousness of the verbal warning. Education in America, at least among technical majors, has not deteriorated to the point yet that reading a key graph or two is not helpful.
Did anyone ask the Arctic?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Much higher than average Arctic air temperatures with below average sea ice. CACA shot down yet again.
Oops. Sorry. Meant to post alleged Arctic sea ice extent:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
And say accidental coincidence.
There are cold winters and there are warm winters. The eastern half of the US is experiencing a warm winter and the western half has been cold and wet. Nature always tries to strive to reach a balance but in an attempt to do so, it ironically creates imbalances in temperatures and moisture. Two years ago Texas came out of a major drought and now California is doing the same. Nothing stays the same. Average temperatures are not something we normally experience but is used as a measure of average conditions. If you put one foot in an ice bucket and the other foot in hot water, on average your feet should feel fine.
I’m sure there are parts of the world that are much colder than normal. The winter of 2014-215 was very cold in the east. For the month of February, the average temperature in NYC was 8 degrees below normal and everybody was using the displacement of the Polar Vortex further south as the cause. Usually, a 3-degree departure would be significant for NYC. Eight degrees is unheard of. People have short memories. I remember winters in 1980’s that were warmer than this year in the east.
I disagree with this, “…Nature always tries to strive to reach a balance but in an attempt to do so,..”. In my view, nature is always shifting and that is to the benefit of all of nature. There is no balance per se, but every region/area eventually gets what it needs in rainfall amounts as well as in healthy freezes which aid in controlling insect populations. Insects could otherwise burst out of control except for natural mitigation. That is how the balance of nature works.
These people worried about the warm, enjoyable weather are experiencing classic cognitive dissonance. The unusually warm weather is good now, but ultimately “bad” for the planet, and “bad” for the children (they think). The way out of their dilemma would be to educate themselves about climate, but they have a belief system to protect, so they don’t. I call these people climatards.
Was it not Duke where medical science was faked and caught?
I checked out the twitter feed of the person who tweeted “the earth is in danger.” While it’s unfair of me to judge them without knowing them, their feed leaves me to believe they are uneducated, incredibly shallow and numbingly superficial. Why anyone would care what her opinion is especially of a scientific nature is beyond me. It shows the level of journalism in the Atlantic that they would vault this person’s opinion to relevancy regardless of the number of people that re-tweeted it. The tweet author appears to spend the bulk of her daily mental energy on celebrities and make-up rather than taking personal action on the issue that supposedly worries her so much. For the Atlantic to project a “fake opinion” as representing the opinion of the general population is either lying, lazy or incompetent.
A pox not just on bad journalism, but all journalists who allow the bad ones to drag down their entire profession to a laughing stock. That’s what journalists are now, a pathetic profession of idiots, fools, and enablers who remain silent.
People forget so quickly that just a few years ago the entire great lakes were 90%+ frozen in February and didn’t thaw completely until June. There is a huge wobble in the Jet Stream due to the Rockies, Greenland and other mountain ranges. So one region can be toasty (like Chicago right now) and another can be frozen solid. That is just how it works.
Anxiety and unease about weather. Yesterday kids were anxious about Trump, last year kids were anxious that police would come and kill them. Some parents are totally unfit for the role. So is Mr. Meyer.
Mild winter weather in the past would always have been celebrated, welcomed, and a relief.
The incessant socialist-initiated fear-mongering & brain-washing has produced a kind of cultural psychosis.
Delightful! Worthy of archiving for historians to look back and chuckle at the MSM inspired pessimism of the present.
Oh, wait! that’s a poem by John O’Brien…
We had a touch of ground frost the other day. Should I start to worry about global cooling?