Guest ridicule by David Middleton
A hellish July validates climate change forecasts
The Editorial Board, USA TODAY, July 30, 2018
With the cost of climate change to the U.S. economy averaging $240 billion a year, America can’t afford not to act: Our view
This month’s weather has been downright hellish in parts of the United States and across the globe, providing further evidence that the impact of climate change is no longer relegated to starving polar bears and shrinking ice caps.
In the USA, Americans awoke Monday to images of deadly wildfires scorching California and other Western states. July’s extreme weather stretched from an all-time high of 111 degrees recorded at UCLA to a record 16.4 inches of rain in Baltimore.
The pattern of misery spread across the globe:
[…]
►Africa recorded its highest reliably recorded temperature in modern history: 124.3 degrees in Algeria.
►Torrential rains flooded Japan and collapsed a dam in Laos, killing hundreds.
While no single event can be attributed to human-induced climate change, these are precisely the types of extreme weather that become significantly more likely because of it. “We’re now seeing decades-old scientific predictions being validated in the real world, right before our eyes,” UCLA climate researcher Daniel Swain told Axios.
[…]
The reason for all of this is uncomplicated. Greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, continue to rise. Carbon dioxide levels reached 400 parts per million in 2016, likely higher than the Earth has experienced in millions of years. It exceeded 410 parts per million in April. The atmosphere is operating on steroids.
This can actually provide a few benefits in the United States, as crop yields increase in a handful of northern states and cold-related deaths decline.
Such gains are easily overtaken by downsides: frequent and destructive wildfires, more heat-related deaths in many Sunbelt states, excessive rainfall and rising sea levels along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast, and crop declines across the South and Midwest. It’s costing Americans money, both broadly across the national economy and in terms of household expenses.
A Universal Ecological Fund study last year priced the cost of climate change to the U.S. economy at an average of $240 billion a year.
[…]
Basically, blame everything on climate change and then cite a “study” from an obscure environmental terrorist activist group claiming that it’s costing the U.S. economy a YUGE amount of money.
Before I get to the Universal Ecological Fund study, let’s look at Africa’s new record temperature and the Laotian dam collapse.
Africa recorded its highest reliably recorded temperature in modern history: 124.3 degrees in Algeria…
Africa may have witnessed its all-time hottest temperature Thursday: 124 degrees in Algeria
By Jason Samenow
July 6[…]
The blistering-hot temperature reading, observed in Ouargla, is probably the highest temperature ever reliably measured both in Algeria and in all of Africa. The record was first identified by weather records expert Maximiliano Herrera.
Ouargla, with a population of nearly half a million, is located in north central Algeria, roughly midway between Morocco and Tunisia.
Its 124.3-degree temperature surpassed Africa’s previous highest reliable temperature measurement of 123.3 degrees (50.7 Celsius) set July 13, 1961, in Morocco.
Higher temperatures previously measured in Africa have either been invalidated or climate experts find them dubious:
- The hottest temperature ever measured in Africa and on the planet was once thought to be 136.4 degrees (58 Celsius) observed in El Azizia, Libya, but that record was rejected by the World Meteorological Organization after a committee identified five concerns with its collection.
- A temperature of 131 degrees (55 Celsius) observed in Kebili, Tunisia, on July 7, 1931. is officially considered Africa’s (and the eastern hemisphere’s) hottest measurement. But extreme weather expert Christopher Burt, who has studied the record, calls it “suspicious” because of lack of comparable temperatures in modern times and assigned it a validity score of one out of 10. Etienne Kapikian, a French meteorologist, called the record “a big joke.”
- In his blog post on this latest Africa temperature reading, Jeff Masters includes a run-down of other questionable temperature readings from Africa logged during the colonial period.
In order for Thursday’s temperature in Ouargla to be considered official and a record for Africa, it would need to be certified by the World Meteorological Organization while the previous record from Tunisia would also have to be invalidated.
[…]
I literally couldn’t make this sort of stuff up, if I was trying.
On to the Laotian dam collapse.
Torrential rains flooded Japan and collapsed a dam in Laos, killing hundreds…
A Day Before Laos Dam Failed, Builders Saw Trouble
By Mike Ives
July 26, 2018ATTAPEU TOWN, Laos — The day before this week’s catastrophic dam failure in Laos, the companies building the dam knew that it was deteriorating, and one of them saw a potential trouble sign three days in advance. Yet many people living downstream received no warning of the deadly flood that was about to sweep away villages, farms, livestock and people.
The companies said they had warned Laotian officials of the danger, and some villages were evacuated, but the dam’s collapse killed at least 27 people — many more are still missing — and displaced at least 6,600 others in Laos. On Thursday, state media in Cambodia reported that as many as 25,000 more people in that country were being evacuated from the northern border province of Stung Treng, as the flood surge made its way south.
Now, as rescue workers scramble to find missing villagers and care for others in makeshift shelters, questions are mounting about the speed of the one-party state’s response, the quality of the companies’ work, and whether they could have done more to prevent the accident or alert people to the peril.
[…]
Accounts given by the two South Korean companies differ in several details, and do not answer the crucial question: When did they know, or should they have known, that the dam might be headed toward collapse?
On Friday, engineers noticed a depression, or “settlement,” about four inches deep in the center of the dam, Korea Western Power, one of the companies, said in a report to South Korea’s Parliament.
A company official told lawmakers — one of whom released the report on Thursday — that such sinking was common with the kind of heavy rainfall the region was experiencing, so the engineers decided to monitor it rather than take action.
On Sunday, engineers found 10 “fractured settlements” on the top of the dam and set out to repair them, but they could not get the necessary repair equipment to the scene until Monday afternoon, when it was too late, the company’s report said.
SK Engineering & Construction of South Korea, the main builder of the project, said on Thursday that it had discovered at 9 p.m. on Sunday that part of the dam’s top was missing.
In a statement, the company said it had “immediately” reported the damage to the local authorities and evacuations of the nearest villages began, but it did not alert the provincial government until noon the next day that the dam might deteriorate further.
By 11 a.m. on Monday, Korea Western Power said, there was a depression more than three feet deep in the top of the dam.
[…]
Both South Korean companies mentioned heavy rains in their descriptions of the disaster. But Ian Baird, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who specializes in Laos and has studied the hydropower project, said he believed the problem was either faulty construction or a decision to store too much water in the dam’s reservoir at a time when heavy rain should have been expected.
“When at the end of July do we not get rain in this part of the world?” he asked.
The companies are “trying to play this out as a natural disaster that wasn’t their fault,” he said. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
[…]
The fact that I could refute two of the more idiotic USA Today assertions by citing The Washington Post and The New York Times, speaks volumes to the idiocy of the USA Today Editorial Board.
On to the Universal Ecological Fund study…
$188 billion of the fictitious $240 billion is listed as “health costs due to air pollution caused by fossil fuel energy production.” In 2017, the total cost to treat respiratory diseases in the US was estimated to be $161 billion… So, it’s kind of hard to believe that “health costs due to air pollution caused by fossil fuel energy production” could have been $188 billion, Even if that number was valid… So what?
Value Added by Industry
[Billions of dollars]
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Release Date: April 19, 2018
| 2017 | Fossil Fuels Minimum | |||
| Gross domestic product | $19,390.60 | |||
| Fossil Fuel-related GDP | ||||
| Farms | $ 131.40 | |||
| Oil and gas extraction | $ 209.20 | $ 209.20 | ||
| Mining, except oil and gas | $ 72.50 | |||
| Support activities for mining | $ 48.30 | |||
| Utilities | $ 295.00 | |||
| Petroleum and coal products | $ 139.30 | $ 139.30 | ||
| Chemical products | $ 397.10 | |||
| Plastics and rubber products | $ 84.10 | $1,376.90 | $ 348.50 | |
| Health Care | ||||
| Ambulatory health care services | $ 692.70 | |||
| Hospitals | $ 440.40 | Claimed Fossil Fuels Cost | ||
| Nursing and residential care facilities | $ 150.10 | $1,283.20 | $ 188.00 | 15% |
Just using the direct added value of Oil and gas extraction and Petroleum and coal products, I get $348.5 billion. The value added by coal extraction would be part of Mining, except oil and gas and Support activities for mining. Fossil fuel production also contributes to the value added by utilities, chemical products and plastics and rubber products. And, since about 25% of US natural gas production is used as a feedstock for fertilizer production, fossil fuels contribute to the value added to our economy by farming. The Haber-Bosch process feeds nearly half of the world population.
Reference
Erisman, J. W., Sutton, M. A., Galloway, J., Klimont, Z. & Winiwarter, W. How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world. Nat. Geosci.1,636–639 (2008)
I just finished talking with my daughter via Facetime. She lives in Trelleborg, Sweden and called to tell me it was 90F there today wit 71% humidity. They do not have A/C as that high a temp is very unusual. It has also been very, very dry there.
Tell her to watch Joe Bastardi’s updates on weatherbell.com. The SSTs in the N Atlantic are a repeat of the northern Europe heat wave of 2003.
No need to run out and buy central A/C, just keep a portable one in the attic.
You can buy a 5000 BTU window unit these days for $100.
.
Tell her to watch out for staving polar bears, they can be very dangeous. They will soon be invading Scandinavia as they desperately search for new hunting grounds due to the lack of Arctic sea ice.
OH wait. The sea ice is well above 2012 extent and the polar bears are thriving.
But what is this? Surely USA TODAY would not lie to us?
Actually I did mention looking into the SST’s for the heat and the dry weather patterns. Her being a liberal she knows better than to bring up climate change or any other politics with me.
2003! Blame it on the Martians, those little ‘Green Devils!’ Mars is closer to earth right now than it has been since the Grand Opposition of 2003! It has to be Mars. We haven’t paid any rent or road taxes since we first started landing there back in the 70’s, so they are getting mighty peeved. Every time they get this close to us the Martians whip up a global dust storm there that obviously impacts our northern hemisphere at the height of summer. See, correlation is causation! / Sarc off.
BTW, we in New Zealand enjoyed/endured our hottest summer on record since the mid 1930’s, earlier this year thanks to a weak La Nina which has since departed. This summer beat 1934-35 by 0.1C. My dad was two and a half years old for the first one and nearly 86 for the last one. He doesn’t remember the first, & if pushed can’t recall the latter. Even if they happened in consecutive years who would be able to tell the difference?
Just checked the weather for Tuesday and the forecast for Wednesday for Trelleborg. The official high on Tuesday was 28 C (82.4 F) and for Wednesday they are forecasting 27 C (~80.6).
My God, how can they endure such extremes?
Just remember, extreme is all about what you’re used to and prepared for. I spent a week in Arizona in July back in the ’90s and was suitably impressed by the temperatures (high 90’s, low 100’s). A college chum of mine there remarked that heat stress was a very common cause of collapse for new arrivals who hadn’t a) acclimated and b) learned to drink LOTS of water. The locals knew better, of course.
Where is the “official” temperature taken? This is a good example of placing. In Sarasota FL the official temperature is taken at the airport which is usually higher than just about everywhere else in the area. Check out the daily difference between St Pete and Tampa just a few miles away, especially in the morning. You know very well temperatures can vary several degrees in the same area.
2003 was hotter in Germany. Yesterday we had 97 in Wiesbaden – max. temperature this year to date, however in august 2003 it went as high as 102. But apart of the last two weeks it wasn’t a particularly hot summer at all. And the last summer was quite cold.
Every time I see the weather maps on the OAN Network … Kauai is 87deg.F … then 88deg. … then 87deg … 88 … 87 … 88 … 87 … 88 … 87 … 88 … 87 …
Because there are so few cars in Kauai … and so few factories … there is no Global Warming … right?!
That sounds like the dreaded Global Sameness to my ears.
Mark my words, all hell’s gonna break loose if they ever report 86 degrees.
Oklahoma City weather in July usually can be described as Hellishly hot with mid afternoon temp over 100F a routine occurrence often associated with regional HP systems that cover the SW. On July 20 the mid afternoon T reached 112F. But starting the very next day a cooling trend began throughout theMidwest as a cool air mass moved south from Canada, and it’s been unseasonably cool for about 10 days. OKC Temp now at 4:15PM is 83F, partly cloudy, intermittently sunny, little wind, just a gorgeous day. Mean July temperatures for the Sooner State may be below normal overall although we did hit a few days of near record high temperatures earlier in the month.
‘While no single event can be attributed to human-induced climate change, these are precisely the types of extreme weather that become significantly more likely because of it.’
But still no event can be attributed to it.
We hear the above vacuous pronouncement frequently.
It’s an important element of climate change indoctrination to keep repeating things that concur with the missive. If the media prints it often enough, it becomes accepted truism to the spoon-fed masses. No real proven attribution is needed once the seed is planted that “the bad weather I’m enduring is probably because Gaia is overwhelmed with humans”.
At some point, Hansen and his cohort discovered that humans were not as virtuous as they- we didn’t care if temps rose 4-6 f. in 100 years. Ever since, they have tried to come up with more immediate dangers, like hockey sticks & tipping points, all the while wondering whether we’re worth saving. They’ve desperately searched for an actual effect, hoping it would be dangerous (warming itself wasn’t thought by us puny humans to be a bad thing).
After 2005’s hurricane season, Katrina and such (probably a wildfire or flood someplace, too), do you recall hearing stuff like “you can see climate change out your window”? The IPCC was given the task- “severe weather=man-caused climate change, no need to show your work”. They didn’t issue a report ’til 2009 (I think they hoped for crazy weather in ’06, ’07, ’08 but gaia didn’t cooperate) and found humans hadn’t changed the climate enough to affect the weather. This didn’t even throw Obama and Holdren (new members of the cohort) off stride, they continued to preach the “AGW causes droughts” etc. (not hurricanes for awhile, for some reason) though no single weather event can be attributed yada yada. They still must throw out that last part, while burying it in scary bafflegab. I do not get what the press sees in these folks.
Why is that vacuous? It’s just the truth. Extreme weather events alone aren’t significant, but together they can become part of trends which are evidence of climate change.
What will it take for skeptics to accept that such trends are predicted by AGW theory, and that continuation of the trends could lead to more deaths, negative health effects and economic costs? Well? Serious question.
Except that it’s always “…a brutal July…” that PROVES global warming is real and happening and in your face, but a month-long cold snap, or a Spring that arrives too late to plant crops, that’s just weather. Do you notice the bias there? I sure did.
Is that more deaths than caused by cold; or merely more deaths? Will it mean less deaths from cold? Serious questions.
A recent voluminous report in The Lancet documented some 74 million deaths in 13 countries over the period 1985-2012. Cause of death was noted, and further classified if the cause was due to extreme temperatures. It found that a random person was 17 times more likely to die from extreme cold than from extreme heat.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0
Extreme weather events happen all the time. There is no evidence that weather is any more extreme today than in the past or that CO2 has anything to do with it.
Extreme weather events have decreased.
“together they can become part of trends”
The trend is DOWN.
“which are evidence of climate change.”
Define “climate change.” Serious question.
Kristi clearly hasn’t done her research regarding historical extremes, highs, lows, floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc..
Kristi also clearly has no perspective as she clearly has not researched such extreme events that were, quite often, much more extreme than todays events (but I bet she conveniently missed the downtrend article about tornadoes and hurricanes, but never mind that.)
Kristi, also, most likely younger than I, but not excusable as I’m only 35, hasn’t done research into the history of this narrative. It was GLOBAL COOLING! in the 60’s 70’s then RUNAWAY WARMING circa 1988 (still being parroted endlessly even though…) its now CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!!!! and anyone who says, “yea, its always in changing” is labeled a denier. She is so purposefully obtuse regarding the history and facts that she cannot see how she has been duped. People like you Kristi, are why the globalists refer to us as parasites, and “useless eaters”, and generally despise humanity. It is for this reason. The average human’s capacity to self-deceive is so insidious and pervasive, that it deserves to be rooted out. That is why they’ve chosen CO2 and that is why they love “useful idiots” such as yourself to continue parroting the new eugenics falsehoods. Shame on you. Seriously. Shame on you. You do humanity such disservice with your deceit.
Kristi… please, for once, provide some evidence to support your position. Folks…don’t hold your breath.
What’s vacuous is the FACT that there is nothing unusual about the recent heat wave.
What’s vacuous is the FACT that every time there is a cold wave, it’s dismissed as just weather, but every hot spell is proof positive of global warming.
What’s vacuous are those who pretend that the output of models trumps real world data.
What’s vacuous are those who try to pretend that all the warming seen since the depths of the little ice age is caused by man and is going to kill us.
What’s vacuous are those who fail to recognize the fact that the earth has been warmer than it is today for about 90% of the last 10,00 years.
What’s vacuous are those who actually believe that the tiny bit of warming that the planet has enjoyed over the last 150 years is bad and something to be feared and fought using unlimited amounts of other people’s money.
Kristi Silber,
What will it take for you to accept that man’s contribution to climate is infinitesimal when compared to the sun, the oceans, cosmic rays, the moon, earth’s core, magnetic fields of earth and sun, planetary orbits, etc?
K. S.,
“such trends are predicted by AGW”
Actually, extreme weather events and trends are predicted by activists and those that do not understand the complexity of a dynamic Earth. The media folks sell ads based on scary headlines. “Earth is fine” does not sell ad space.
“Skeptics” are aware that science requires a questioning of all hypotheses and assumptions.
Tony Heller just posted a hilarious set of past headlines with this lead in:
“The UK will have a snow-free, Siberian, Mediterranean, permanent drought, permanent flooded, hot, cold climate.” LINK
Seriously!
He’s great! Yesterday he had a whole raft of old newspaper articles about the thirties and the ‘catastrophic’ global events they were experiencing then, including heat waves and melting glaciers and general doomsaying. Also a great photo of a scorched field in the UK. The headlines seem strangely familiar…
Kristi, I used to be a ‘believer’ in the church of CAGW. Hallelujah! Then I started thinking. Then I started reading and I didn’t let myself be put off by labels like ‘denier’ and ‘crackpot’ and ‘evil’ being applied to those who question the science. Then I started worrying – not about CAGW anymore, but about the lies and the manipulation of the public. So now I tell everybody that CAGW is a scam. They think I’ve turned into a ‘right-wing nut job’. I don’t care. It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Because, Kristi,
When I check the data, I find the scare stories are false.
Example. Nearly half of Australian people live in Sydney and Melbourne.
These cities are claimed by fibbing alarmists to suffer from heat waves becoming hotter, longer and more frequent.
This is not so.
Graph the official data yourself, like I did.
It is a disturbing, dishonest set of lies to scare people this way.
Geoff
“What will it take for skeptics to accept that such trends …. blah…..”
What will it take for AGW apostles to accept that is well within natural variability?
Where is the evidence that these natural cyclic trends will suddenly change and not continue to cycle ?
Where is the evidence of more deaths, negative health effects. ????
The MAJOR economic cost is the ridiculous response to the non-problem of CO2 non-warming.
Hi Kristi,
Just my half-pfennig on this:
When you use this phrase, ” … but together they can become part of trends which are evidence of climate change.”, would you be willing to specify the length of the ‘trend’ you are tracking?
I ask, due to the consistency of alarmist claims (that I have seen) that these ‘trends’ are specific to a small part of the Holocene Epoch, say, a few hundred years, or, perhaps maybe a few thousand (seriously, I’m not sure what temporal trend I should be looking at). It would be helpful if you could specify what length of time you are looking at.
When I look at ‘climate change’ and trends, I usually start in the middle Cryogenian, and consider the “whole enchilada”. Despite what you may have been told (or think you know about paleoclimatology), the geological community has been studying, and learned a great deal about, past climates, climate changes, and related subjects, for well over two centuries (ref, Chas. Lyell, Wm. Smith, J. Hutton, … ), so I’m struck with incredulity at a claim that a few centuries of ‘climate change’ are unusual.
From what I can see, the only ‘trend’ is that climate has always changed, there have always been “extreme” events (of all types) somewhere, and there always will be “extreme” events happening somewhere.
As our old friend, Charlie Farquharson told us on the KORN news reports, “The same things are happening to different people.”
Or, as we say in 21st Century North America, “SSDD” — same stuff, different day.*
Regards,
Vlad
*(I actually started that, back in the early 1960’s … … … … … )
Congrats to Kristi, her vacuous comment drew a couple dozen replies. Mr. Soros is proud of you! And your math is at its usual level- if an extreme weather event is not attributable to AGW, then that’s one zero. Kristi strings together zeroes and finds a trend! And the trend is somehow NOT ZERO!! What will it take for skeptics yada yada? You have to pay us more than big oil and big coal (alot cheaper than you think).
‘Can’t afford not to act’.
And do what, exactly? Bilk the tax-payers because THEY can afford it?
For results of exactly zero.
All – one more time – on the premise that we can regulate the climate.
The premise that we can regulate the climate is merely an artifact of current mortal hubris now manifested on a global scale.
The premise is not that we can regulate the climate, but that we can change it. The tax payers contribute to the problem, so why shouldn’t they contribute to mitigation and adaptation? Or why shouldn’t they voluntarily contribute to the solution by conserving energy and using it more efficiently?
Kristi, think about what you wrote. You have answered your own question. In a free democratic society the people decide what they are going to do and what they are not. There are few, if any, people in the West that have not heard about AGW. They have decided either it is just another overblown gloom and doom story, of which if they are adults they have heard hundreds in their lives most of which failed to come true, e.g., population bomb, “Silent Spring”, etc Or they know that no matter how they change their lives they personally cannot “fix” the problem.
Of course there are folks on your side of the aisle that have decided that a free democratic society is no longer the appropriate way to government the peons and riff-raff. Maybe socialism will work better. Environmentally it did so well in USSR and China (sac).
Kristi talks of voluntarily, but in her world voluntarily means people doing what she wants them to do and if they don’t then force them through the government.
Kristi, the people have been fed the CAGW lies and half-truths for decades now, and despite all that they’ve voluntarily made their choice not to consider it a problem worth their efforts to address (see every poll that shows AGW ranks at the bottom of the list of concerns of the people), you just don’t like that they chose sanity and reason over the insanity and lies that you support.
Objection! Supposes facts not in evidence! Climate models are not facts. Now, please present your facts, if you have them. I’ll wait.
You’ll have a very long wait indeed.
Sustained!
I conserve energy all the time. I never run when I can walk. I never walk when I can drive a car. I never stand when I can sit. I never sit when I can lie down.
I never met a nap I didn’t like.
How exactly do tax payers contribute to the non-existent problem?
Or are you just whining that you aren’t get enough of the cash?
PS: As is typical of Kristi, she assumes that those who don’t worship as she does can’t possibly be doing anything good. In this instance she assumes that only her fellow congregants care about efficiency and saving money.
Perhaps when she grows up and finally gets a job off campus, she will discover that the real world is nothing like the stereotypes she has been conditioned to believe in.
“ worship as she does ”
Maybe she is a member of a cult, and her friends and relatives need to intervene.
K. S. and other cult members should read this:
Cargo Cult Science
by Richard Feynman
Re Kristi:
What problem are you speaking about?
Most of “climate change” is not caused by people, so there is no problem to mitigate. The only problem I see is mitigation of the fiction.
Kristi Silber,
I do contribute to helping the earth. Every chance that I get, I cut down a tree that is in the wrong place and burn it. The CO2 returned to mother earth is better than than anything that I could have made from it. The ashes that remain go into the ground. You keep dreaming about changing the climate, but you stay away from my bank account. Your ideas are just plain stupid.
Can you clarify the distinction between regulating and changing in this context please?
“Or why shouldn’t they voluntarily contribute to the solution by conserving energy and using it more efficiently”
I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word “voluntarily”. Government force/taxes is not a part of the definition.
There is no ‘mitigation’. ‘Change’ is not ‘change’ – it’s influence to some small degree. One of the millions of little butterflies that ‘influence’ the system. That’s the point – there is almost zero effect from any of these ‘mitigations’ as far as climate is concerned but the effects on people are real and immediate. Where’s all this misplaced compassion for the real-world damage to life and lifestyle?
I don’t hear any concern over ‘natural’ sources of C02 – that other 95%.
And why not contribute to the solution? Because there IS no ‘solution’ – certainly not from this idiotic ‘no-footprint’ rule – an absolute impossibility, in the first place.
The ‘why’ is no gain, all pain on a ‘problem’ that only exists in the mind.
Addition of C02 to the system is probably the LEAST destructive thing any species can do – and probably the most positive.
And no one is asking for ‘voluntary’ contribution, are they?
AND we are already conserving energy at a quite efficient rate, thank you. All we are seeing here is the ratcheting effect of ‘well, we need to cut down to half emissions – than half-again – than half-again – and then ban any product/activity, that raises a wild hair on some greenie’s ass.
So, no, we are not going back to this vague ‘contribute to the solution’ line. We’ve spent enough time and angst on the Emperor’s clothes.
Then there’s that whole attitude that ANY effect on the natural world caused by humans is somehow ‘unnatural’ and by definition a bad thing.
So we are apparently supposed to walk around our planet on eggshells for fear of activating some half-assed Hollywood-bastardization of the butterfly-effect destroying our planet… all in direct opposition to the Heisenberg principle.
WHAT “problem?!” What is laughingly referred to as “climate science “ has failed to establish the existence of any such “problem “ – you know, scientifically.
“While no single event can be attributed to human-induced climate change, these are precisely the types of extreme weather that become significantly more likely because of it. ”
If you cannot establish a cause for any single event then even if you have a correlation of multiple events that does not give you the logical right to establish the cause. There has been no valid statistical study that says there are more extreme weather events than there ever was. Not to mention any statistical study tying the 2 together(Extreme event and CO2). THIS IS THE BIG LIE OF CLIMATE CHANGE. When it was shown there wasnt really any global warming that could be attributed to CO2, the climate fraudsters told the media to change the term to CLIMATE CHANGE. Now since no one can show that the melting of any ice cap is not just a cyclical pattern (we won’t drown); the only thing that the climate fraudsters have left is extreme weather events. Skeptics can’t stop extreme weather events from happening but we can point out that there is nothing anyone could do to stop them. CO2 doesnt cause them. No one knows the causes. All we know is there is no increase in any extreme weather event. Even Nick Stokes doesn’t dare argue against this.
Hi Alan, it is hard for me to imagine how sea-ice extent dosn’t oscillate because of the long time between cause and effect. At the bottom of the ice cycle (now), the increased deep water production has taken over ten years to cool the AMO or if you prefer the increased latent heat of sea-ice production has taken just as long by its affect to weaken the polar vortex and thus the NAO thereby slowing the North Atlantic drift. Then at the top of the reverse happens, cooler water entering the arctic (from a cold AMO) takes a long time to warm from a reverse of the deep water\ latent heat situation. Hence both ends overshoot equilibrium. BTW, I suspect the little ice age resulted from a locking of the NAO in its negative phase from a top down vortex affect. The resulting cold AMO lasted until solar activity picked up again. see
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226173907_Long-Term_Correlation_Between_the_Nao_and_Solar_Activity
It is not stupidity on the part of the USA Today editorial board. It is outright lying, an intentional deception on their part. They are merely playing their part in the propaganda campaign to support the Democratic party and the Left’s push impose socialism. To them, truth is what they say it is.
+1 But I don’t think the masses are falling for it like the MSM would have you believe. They’ve over played their hand considerably and continue to do so.
I’m starting to agree, but that is for us adults. I’m not sure about the children, especially those such as Kristi
Pretty much covers it …
The editorial board excels in creative accounting.
Speaking as a holder of an MS in Accounting, that would be considered very “intellectual.”
We can’t link any of these events to humans, but by golly they’re responsible!!!!!
Actually we can link one of these events to humans. The wild fires in California were all started by humans. I lived in Mariposa for 10 years. Every year the forestry service would stage controlled burns to get rid of dry brush. The entire 10 years I lived there we never had a wild fire. Just before I moved some econuts demanded that they stop because it was disrupting the wild life in the area. They got their way and look what happens….
I get that, but on the other hand…aren’t these wildfires good for the long term health of the forest?
It seems to be a paradox because we have such short lifespans, but this is just natural (aside from when humans light them purposefully or because of neglect) and so I suppose its the consequence of living in a dynamic world.
I wouldn’t want to suffer losing everything, but in Colorado, I do want to move to the mountains or south central rolling hills high mountain desert. I’m aware the risks and I’ll mitigate them to the best of my abilities. It is all a risk and the Earth will do what it will
honest l,
Search on “firewise” and “fire adapted communities”, and go to the local agencies and learn from them. The State of Washington provides grants to local county conservation districts to help residents that live in the WUI (wildland–urban interface). Search on that phrase, also.
Fire adapted communities? That’s an intelligent way to go and we’ve been trying for years. Trouble is, our local councils are such rapacious bullies, they won’t let you build even a tiny underground fire bunker or clear brush near your house unless you pay them enormous tithes to get “licences”, but they continue to spout useless pointers when summer approaches such as “keep your gutters clean” etc.
One can only hope their reckless mismanagement comes back to haunt them in a big way.
Honest, you are correct there are few temperate forest where fire doesn’t naturally play a significant ecological roll in health, diversity, etc, etc. Problem is humans believing they knew what was best at the time excluded fire for long periods of time.
I was in Colorado visiting my daughter and her family. We toured an old silver mine. In the miner’s shack they had pictures taken when the mine still operated. At the time we were there trees were growing all over the sides of the mountains. When the pictures were taken way back when there were no trees. I asked our tour guide what happened. He said they had chopped them all down for the mines. He said in fact at one point they were traveling out of state to get trees big enough to use. He also pointed out that the trees we saw that day on the mountain were a different species than what had historically been there, a pioneering species, very susceptible to fire.
I lived in a naturally bushy part of Australia for 16 years. Frequent controlled burns were a part of everyone’s safety. Then the ecoloons came. Nobody was allowed to even gather firewood off the ground for themselves.
Years later, a bushfire came through and wiped out everything. The ground was just ash and bare dirt, the trees were blackened sticks poking out of the ground. Without controlled burns, the place pretty much exploded and the only option was to run.
(google images “black saturday”)
The ecoloons should have paid for the damage, including the political hacks that kowtowed to these fools, much of it thanks to the Kyoto Protocol.
Since when, in the history of human civilization, has it NOT been hot in July in the northern hemisphere? We had a very normal summer here. July was hot and humid some days, and others, not so much. The first two weeks of July were consistently hot, humid and required that I water my lawn to keep it green and not let it die.
This is perfectly normal stuff! (I wish I could put that in italics for emphasis.)
Is this the ‘climate change because I say it is” stuff again?
The most polite term I can up with for this nonsense is bilgewater. If they keep doing this, people will stop listening to them, and see everything they do and say as a money-grab, because that is how I view it now.
So it’s 120 in Phoenix in July … meh. Just like it has been throughout my 62 years. Sometimes, I believe all this hysteria is aimed at people under the age of 25 … or people who just moved here from Japasia … who don’t know any better. Who can be manipulated to “believe” that 120 in Phoenix is some RARE, EXTREME event.
And BTW … in 1989 I drove my 3yo VW Vanagon with my 3-kids to see their greatgrandmother in Sun City Phoenix … it was 123 deg. … and my idiotically-designed Vanagon AC system (condenser in the front, compressor in the rear with LOTS of pipe/hose length to fail) … FAILED. Drove through Phoenix with 3 roasted children and no AC. Yep. It was BRUTAL. But then again, Air was ALL my fault for … driving.
That was the day I left town, on my way to start a new job in Houston. At the end of the day when I called my wife from my hotel room, she related how hot it had been, Sky Harbor had to close down because either the airplanes didn’t carry the charts for that high of a temperature, or there wasn’t enough runway, or LAST possibility, with the air that hot those engines would NEVER build up enough thrust to get the planes off the ground, whatever… So probably, your A/C reached it’s limit… Heat can only move from a higher temperature to a lower temperature. If your AC was designed with a 122 degree condensing temperature, then the minute it reached 123 at the coil, guess what…? In real terms, with radiant heat off the asphalt and a limited airflow over your condenser coil and etc., it may well have been a lot hotter than that, but the point remains the same, the ambient conditions at the coil exceeded the system’s condensing temperature, and all heat flow stopped. That was also reported to me, a lot of A/C systems “failed” because it was too hot. That’s the real answer. Once the sun went down and the temperature came down, they resumed working. Provided they hadn’t wrecked the compressor with some liquid line slugging, or something.
A few decades ago, I left Las Vegas for Iowa for a new job. It was mid November. The day we packed, the temperature broke 100F. When we arrived in Iowa, it was snowing.
Sara,
” (I wish I could put that in italics for emphasis.)” This is perfectly normal stuff!
On the right side of WUWT, find Ric Werme’s Guide: white letters on a blue rectangle
Scroll down about 2/3 of the way. Look for: Formatting in comments
Rick’s guide is a start. You can learn more by searching,
for exmple, try: html code for italics
“providing further evidence” So just because things are a little hotter this month than in the past is proof positive that global warming is real. That is the level of proof that constitutes scientific analysis in today’s world. Using that format you could prove anything your mind could dream up. Isn’t science fun and wonderful?
But they didn’t even provide any proof that this July was any hotter than any other July. Just that it “feels” like it.
Somebody save this link for this winter when the usual trolls assure us that cold snaps are weather, not climate.
Q: How many $trillions in direct and indirect cost will be incurred to actually invent a magical global thermostat, then employ it to control global temperature? Show your work. (Note: “But, but … we have to do something!” is not an answer.)
Yet more cynical, opportunistic agitprop from the swivel-eyed null hypothesis deniers (aka global warming hoaxers).
The MSM over here in the UK is full of this sort of codswallop at the moment, and people seem to be sucking it in.
The culprits ought to be held to account, as and when this appalling baseless scare finally unravels.
Hell, we should be able to hold them to account right now. Can the weather sue for defamation of character? i.e., libel? Cuz this rag is certainly telling lies about it with the intent to destroy its reputation.
Hot in July!? … in Phoenix!!?? OMG!! The Global Warming is so awful … that I heard many people who live in Phoenix … ACTUALLY purchase!! … homes in Northern States to escape the HEAT!! Ohhhhhh mammmmaaaa … I had NEVER heard of THAT ever happening ever before!!
Feigning my “shocked” face.
I’m trying to picture Anthony’s Kenji, with the undershot bite, showing a “shocked” face! I almost sprayed Modelo Negra on the monitor!!!
If fossil fuels are such a problem, I’ll set up a company that will come to your house and cut your power, water, and natural gas lines. We’ll also repo your car for you so you won’t be tempted by the evil.
It’s like when I learned what a clown Thoreau was. These guys are no different.
Every day all over the world thousands of cities and towns experience normal weather. Some places on every continent have not set a daily record for heat or cold or precipitation or wind strength, or blooming date since 1902. Can it be postulated that rising CO2 causes normality more often than it causes extremes? If so the science is telling us to get on with our lives and ignore the urge to act impulsively and irrationally.
Agreed, the USA Today article was dumb. But what do you expect? It’s USA Today. At least they said, “While no single event can be attributed to human-induced climate change” …but I think they have a point that, “these are precisely the types of extreme weather that become significantly more likely because of it.”
“In 2017, the total cost to treat respiratory diseases in the US was estimated to be $161 billion… So, it’s kind of hard to believe that ‘health costs due to air pollution caused by fossil fuel energy production’ could have been $188 billion, Even if that number was valid… So what?”
So, David, you are looking at people’s health and lives in terms of the health care costs, and comparing that with the money added to the economy by fossil fuels? Isn’t that a little crass? I could understand if you included the benefits to health of using fossil fuels, but that would be a much more complicated calculation, especially if you figure in the alternative costs/benefits of renewables. You should have quit while you were ahead.
(Air pollution causes cardiovascular problems and cancer as well as respiratory illness; “Maternal exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with adverse birth outcomes, such as low birth weight, pre-term birth and small gestational age births.” http://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health-impacts/en/
Not sure how much of this can be directly attributable to fossil fuel production and use, though.)
Again you imply environmentalists are terrorists, which in the vast majority of cases is absurd. Your strike-throughs are propaganda, and make your arguments less credible.
Great comment Kristi… But, please tell me that you understand that the strike-throughs aren’t actually the manner in which I correct typos.
I liberally employ hyperbole and sarcasm because I think it’s fracking hilarious.
So… If “in the vast majority of cases [it] is absurd” to refer to environmental activists as terrorists… Wouldn’t that mean that a finite minority are terrorists? 😎
David Middleton
Our green brethren ARE adopting terrorist tactics.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/30/boy-14-referred-to-anti-extremism-scheme-over-fracking-activism
Kristi”
“Again you imply environmentalists are terrorists, which in the vast majority of cases is absurd. Your strike-throughs are propaganda, and make your arguments less credible”
No, Kristi, it is not absurd’
Environmentalists, such as yourself, are the ones actually CAUSING global warming, and, as such, ARE terrorists.
The mechanism is simple:
Reduction in the amount of dimming anthropogenic SO2 aerosol emissions in the atmosphere because of global Clean Air efforts.
This is an unfortunate side effect of improving air quality for health reasons, but it IS the cause of global warming.
Warming due to their removal completely accounts for all of the anomalous warming that has occurred to date; there is no additional warming due to greenhouse gasses!
If it were not for the burning of fossil fuels, with their sulfurous emissions, the climate today would be MUCH hotter than it presently is!
While there are a few environmentalists who care about the environment, most of them these days hate people more than they love the environment.
Kristi, before you can declare that the current heat waves have been made worse by global warming, it would help if you could actually demonstrate that global warming is actually happening.
Finally, the pollution from power plants was mostly gotten rid over 30 years ago.
As always, you pick and chose the data you care to use, and ignore anything that doesn’t fit the narrative you are trying to preach.
First, Kristi, you have to realize that CO2 is NOT pollution. Once you learn that, we can start a discussion.
Kristi;
Man IS causing global warming, but only by adjusting historic temperatures. Why? To make money.
In reality, nothing’s changed much at all. So what’s your panic? Don’t swallow any more of their lies.
K. S.,
“these are precisely the types of extreme weather that become significantly more likely because of it.” quote from someone
Actually, KS, when global warming was first presented, the theme was that the polar regions would warm first and more. This would lessen the temperature and pressure gradients, thereby decreasing the extreme weather events. That did not sell well so they came up with the reverse.
It is hard to keep up.
Example, on the BBC site from 2007, we get such as this:
Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’
Five years later, how did that work out?
Here is the level of “science” we are being spoonfed: “A single event is a singularity. Two such events are a coincidence. Three describe a trend.” Sounds so innocuous and reasonable, doesn’t it?
A hellish 55F at noon today in San Francisco.
The coldest winter I ever experienced … was a summer in San Francisco. Gertrude Stein? However, here in the nice, comfy Suburb of Lafayette … the 55deg. in SF means that MY natural air conditioning has kicked-in so that yesterday’s 100+ deg. temps have moderated to a lovely 85deg. THANKS SF! And BTW … please STAY in the city! Too many urban-dwellers have moved into my beautiful town and are wrecking the place with their leftist politics of envy and NIMBYism. Stay in your Leftist enclaves … and go back to mocking suburbia … from a safe distance It’s amusing to me.
That was Mark Twain, paraphrased.
Here in south australia, gawler near adelaide it cab reach 49 c. Its a retirement village, no one died of heat strokes because we knew to drink lots of water, & to take tjhings easy.
Nothinng unusual in having hot weather, get used to it.
Its the cold which kills.
Mje
I hear you citizens of South Australia are frantically setting up trusts for your grandchildren so they can be assisted to afford that 100% renewable electricity your government has sentenced you all to come 2030?
that date coincides with another agenda doesn’t it?
nothing to see here folks… its all tinfoil s/
Memo to USA Today,
See you in January for record cold and snowfall… But it will also be blamed on climate change.
No, no, no,… That’s just “weather”!
Here in Socal (Ventura County) it’s been amazingly cool…. Yeah, we’ve had one hot week, and a few days of heat, but mostly it’s been in the upper 60s to low 70s. Quite mild, with no real “heat” like we had in the first part of this millennium.
On my motorcycle ride up to SF today, it was cloudy, foggy, and even a bit of drizzle from Buellton to Salinas, and SF was (as usual) cloudy and cold all day.
So much for “teh heatz!”
Here in the sunny south it’s been a normal summer.
One week brutally hot, the next week 20 degrees cooler.
Then it gets brutally hot again.
Of course the usual suspects try to declare that only the hot weeks are caused by global warming.
Depends where in SoCal. It is hot in the Inland Empire and I am glad when October rolls around.
Here’s what’s causing the high heat and fires in the western U.S.: A persistent high-pressure system sitting over the western third of the U.S.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-96.05,41.81,401/loc=-114.477,30.617
The jet stream goes up and over this high pressure system and pushes rain into Oklahoma and the central U.S.. Usually, the high pressure is sitting over Texas and Oklahoma and we get the hot, dry weather that California is getting now. Sometimes it sits over the eastern third of the U.S.
This is not unusual. It happens periodically. CO2 has nothing to do with the placement of high pressure systems.
A little wobble is entering the picture at the coast of Washington State. Such that, inland east of the Cascades, the Friday temp is expected to be 75°F. while Tuesday afternoon it went to 104°F. Readings are from KLEN — a small airport at Ellensburg, WA.
Early next week, the mid-80s are called for. A degree or two above normal climo.
What drives me nuts about USA Today is that they went out of their way this past winter to let people know that even though the winter was really bad that didn’t mean we were not experiencing climate change/global warming. Ignore the cold winter but don’t ignore the hot summer. sure. great journalism.
These events cannot be indicators of climate change because they are unusual. Climate on the other hand is derived by tracking long term trends for any and all of the characteristics that make up what we think is climate. To blame climate one must first show evidence of long term (topic here) and that is not something that happens infrequently. These events are weather variability – all the things that can happen within the limitations of a current climate are possible. An ice age is not currently possible, for example. All the freakish things we’re seeing are possible but they are not a trend.
Speaking of climate – look up some of the definitions of what climate is and the problem becomes even more interesting.
. . . climates are . . .
https://iowaclimate.org/2018/07/07/ouargla-africa-washington-post-promotes-another-potentially-bogus-all-time-high-temperature-record/
“The pattern of misery spread across the globe” No, it has been lovely in the UK.
Anyway, record heat in 1931, in North Africa, a decade that saw record heat in the US? Entirely possible. In fact probably. Plenty of corroborating data from the other side of the atlantic.
Here we have also enjoyed a great summer (though a bit on the dry side), and last years dreadfully cold and wet summer is mostly forgotten. At least by Climate ‘scientists’ who are of course whining about how this is ‘evidence’ for human AGW/CC.
The highest official temperature in Norway is still 35,6C from 1970……
Good job refuting the amazingly inaccurate screed published by a ship of fools known as the “USAToday editorial board”!
“This month’s weather has been downright hellish in parts of the United States and across the globe, providing further evidence that the impact of climate change is no longer relegated to starving polar bears and shrinking ice caps.”
So I guess the mild July experienced in OTHER parts of the United States (i.e., for us in Oklahoma) is counter-evidence of the LACK of impact of climate change … by the same logic. We’ve had a mild July here.
Imagine if you will, that we are back several centuries ago in the days when “witches” got blamed for everything bad, especially weather. Some enterprising, and devious fellows come up with the idea of “global witching change”, based on the idea that more and more, people are turning away from the Church and its teachings, and this is causing all sorts of bad things to happen, even worts. Unless people started returning to the Church, and giving all their money to it, and fast, the earth would be destroyed in first, a gigantic flood, and then fire and brimestone would rain down. An official, self-appointed council would write great treatises about how all this was true, and you’d best not speak against it as they will kill you (or worse) and you’ll go straight to hell. Then, they’d get creative and cunning, saying that, while there is no guarrantee that any one incident was indeed caused by witches, that still, the incidents are and will continue to increase in both number and severity. They have this all worked out in papers, painstakingly printed out by them, the experts, so their truth cannot be argued with, nor should it, under pain of death.
Gee, why didn’t they think of that?
USA Today is a worthless rag that has espoused ridiculous left-wing ideologies on its editorial board for the past several years. It’s only use is birdcage lining.
How Dare you…… subject those poor birds to that rag. USA Today isn’t even fit for catching birdpoop.
“With the cost of climate change to the U.S. economy averaging $240 billion a year, …” “At long last, [they have] no sense of decency.” The only cost of climate change is in the study of it and in measures raken to combat it. To date, everything is all normal or improved weather.
“With the cost of climate change to the U.S. economy averaging $240 billion a year . .”
vs . .
“$188 billion of the fictitious $240 billion is listed as “health costs due to air pollution caused by fossil fuel energy production.”
Yes, a lot of pollution is dirty and dangerous. CO2 is not dirty. CO2 is not causing health issues. So, is the ed board suggesting that all fossil fuel pollution is CO2? And then stretching that to say that all climate change is man-made? Even if some of the GW since the 1970’s has a human footprint in it, a few tenths of a degree (worst case) warmer does not cause health issues. If so, every time someone traveled even a few hundred miles to the south, they’d be experiencing health issues. Think of all of those elderly New Yorkers spending their winters in Florida. Yikes – in January it’s on average 39 F. warmer in Palm Beach than in New York City. They’d all died, if the USA ed board was correct.
The entire presentation is bunk. I doubt that there’s a climate scientist in the world that would put their name on such a lie.
Oh, somehow I’m sure Mann would put his gerbil face on the front page with his arrogant version of “I approve this message “ if they asked him.
When USA Today entered the news arena (I believe Gannett-Fleming company) it was innovating to gain a foothold in the market. Perhaps their most outstanding attribute was that they actually took a contra position to the “old guard” news of the day. Where the old news reported the tragedy of 100
+ dead in a major airline crash, USA Today reported the miracle of +100 surviving the crash. This made the paper worth reading because it tended to create a positive news experience when it could. That was refreshing and worth reading. However, USA Today, like so many media sources today, are in the business of “forming” the news rather than reporting it.
When you go to the USA link – and linked to the LAT’s – UCLA record 111 thing — the downtown temp chart jumped out at me. This was in the LAT’s on July 6 – shrilling about the 108 setting a record high for the 5th of July; for that one day. But July has had hotter record breaking 3-day long (seems to be a standard thing) heat waves, which surpass the one that they were shrilling about. Take for example, this from the record books – these are all still standing:
July 24, 1891 – 103
July 25, 1891 – 109 – Still standing as the all time record high for the month of July.
July 26, 1891 – 102
And, when Aug gets here, this one is still on the books:
Aug 17, 1885 – 104
Aug 18, 1885 – 102
Aug 19, 1885 – 106 – Still standing as the all time record high for the month of Aug.
All with no UHI effect.
I spent about 10 minutes trying to find out who funds the Universal Ecological Fund. Couldn’t find anything, usually I can…