Guest sarcasm by David Middleton
From the It Must Be Climate Change Files of the The Los Angeles Times via Real Clear Energy (WTF does this have to do with energy?):
Climate change is helping crank up the temperatures of California’s heat waves
By BETTINA BOXALL
AUG 17, 2018California suffered through its hottest July on record, while August has pushed sea-surface temperatures off the San Diego coast to all-time highs.
Are these punishing summer heat waves the consequences of global warming or the result of familiar weather patterns?
The answer, scientists say, is both.
Climate change is amplifying natural variations in the weather. So when California roasts under a stubborn high-pressure system, the thermometer climbs higher than it would in the past.
[…]
Art Miller, a research oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, pointed to the high-pressure system as the immediate cause of the record-shattering sea surface temperatures recorded this month off Scripps Pier, where researchers have been taking daily temperature measurements since 1916.
On Aug. 1, a thermometer plunged into a bucket of sea water hit 78.6 degrees, breaking a 1931 record. On Aug. 9, the water temperature was 79.5 degrees.
[…]
Some climate scientists have suggested that global warming is promoting atmospheric changes that favor the formation of the kind of persistent high-pressure system that has driven up temperatures this summer.
But Williams said climate change models have yet to confirm that. Researchers have also failed to detect a global trend of more prolonged ridging patterns, he added.
“I personally don’t think the current ridge is a function of climate change,” [Park] Williams [an associate research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory] said. “The atmosphere has a mind of its own.”
[…]
“There is little indication El Niño will be more than weak or modest,” said Nick Bond, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington.
El Niño can deliver a wet winter to Southern California, but Bond said this year’s would probably be too meek to do that.
The climate center’s three-month forecast predicts above-average temperatures for most of the country, including California. The Southland has gotten a break from blistering temperatures this week, but a high-pressure ridge is expected to return.
“It looks like August is going to be a hot month,” Bond said.
“California suffered through its hottest July on record…”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Wednesday that July was California’s hottest month ever observed. The state’s average temperature of 79.7 degrees edged past the previous record of 79.5 degrees in July 1931 and was five degrees warmer than normal.
- 79.7 °F = 26.5 °C
- 79.5 °F = 26.4 °C
0.1 °C??? That’s like 5.9 degrees less than Kevin Bacon. That’s like 0.1 degrees more than Dean Vernon Wormer’s most memorable line from Animal House…
There you have it… Climate change has cranked up the temperatures of California’s heat waves by 0.1 °C and “it looks like August is going to be a hot month.”
And, it’s all due to this:
Well… at least half of it since 1950 is due to the above. The rest of the insignificant warming must be due to natural variability.
I was born in Connecticut and lived there from 1958-1980. My Dad’s family was from Florida and I spent a couple of summers there. Since 1981, I’ve lived in Texas. As far as I can recall, August has almost always been a hot month… quite often the hottest month of the year… in the Northern Hemisphere.
I’m a big fan of the whole “Real Clear” compendium. I routinely read Real Clear Politics, Energy and Science… But, there are days when many, if not most, of the Real Clear Energy headlines have jack schist to do with energy:
Monday, August 20
Reports of the Death of Oil’s ICE Are Greatly Exaggerated Jude Clemente, Forbes
NAFTA to Bolster US-Mexican Natural Gas Trade Jude Clemente, Forbes
Trump: Conserving Oil Not Economic Imperative Staff, MPR News
Saudi Arabia’s Oil Figures Drawing Scrutiny David Sheppard, Financial Times
Trade Fears Throw US Natural Gas Into Question S. Yang & T. Puko, WSJ
Environmentalists Sue Federal Government to Protect Orcas Asia Fields, ST
What Is Saudi Arabia’s Interest in Tesla? Ben Geman, Axios
Hurricane Harvey Impact on Health, Environment Still a Concern Jeff Mosier, DN
Trees Migrating West to Escape Climate Change Marlene Cimons, Popular Science
World Is Finally Waking Up to Climate Change Jonathan Watts, The Guardian
Economic Forecasts Have Climate Change Blind Spot Lydia DePillis, CNN Money
Climate Change Crank Up Temps of CA Heat Waves Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
Red headlines have nothing to do with energy… and at least half the energy-relevant headlines are more related to politics than to energy. Now… I’m not complaining. I find plenty of skewer-worthy Gorebal Warming articles on Real Clear Energy… It’s just “funny” that most of the Gorebal Warming articles are on Real Clear Energy and not on Real Clear Science.
Note: The thread title was intentionally sarcastic. Comments like this: “The article does not say that climate change causes August to be hot”… will be ignored or ridiculed, depending on how much spare time I have.
David Middleton
From the It Must Be Climate Change Files of the The Los Angeles Times via Real Clear Energy (WTF does this have to do with energy?):
Maybe “don’t forget to remember me”, your good ol’ climate change alarm.
“That’s like 5.9 degrees less than Kevin Bacon.” I’m going to repeat that, giving David credit. I love it!!
I think Josh should do a cartoon on the trees migrating west. I can see thousands of trees pulling their roots out of the ground and start walking west!
“On Aug. 1, a thermometer plunged into a bucket of sea water hit 78.6 degrees, breaking a 1931 record. On Aug. 9, the water temperature was 79.5 degrees.”
How many little kids were swimming in that area? The kiddy pool where I live approaches 98.6 F frequently.
Maybe they’ve had the bucket covered up and standing in the sun in (what is now) the parking lot since 1931…..
Most of the world didn’t have its hottest July because of climate change.
“The answer, scientists say, is both.”
sarcasm of course is just another way to avoid the science.
There was an LIA
It is getting warmer
In a warming world more records will be set ( kinda trivial fact)
Man has contributed to that warming
By emitting c02 we will continue to warm the planet.
Warming the planet is not without risk
Probably a good idea to find economically viable ways to abate that risk
The article avoided the science… That’s why it was such an easy target for sarcasm.
Yep… Sort of like an interglacial stadial. They have happened every 1,000 years or so throughout the Holocene.
It’s been getting warmer since the coldest part of the LIA, ~500 years. The LIA was bad.
Records get set in random walks… There’s even an equation for this.
So has Mann.
By about 1 C per doubling… BFD.
Every time I start my Jeep up to drive somewhere, I run a risk assessment. I still drive because the benefits of getting to where I’m going outweigh the risks… By like eleventy gazillion to 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001. 99.999999999999999999999999% of that risk is in the area of traffic accidents. CO2 emissions are a small fraction of the remaining 0.000000000000000000000000001% (the number of zeroes is probably wrong).
The first step in finding *economically viable ways* to abate (or mitigate) the risk, is to properly analyze the potential costs of both the risk and the mitigation. And a proper analysis requires that a realistic discount rate be used when assessing any potential economic benefits of mitigation.
Oops…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/15/discounting-away-the-social-cost-of-carbon-the-fast-lane-to-undoing-obamas-climate-regulations/
We’d be better of socking the $40 trillion away in 30-yr Treasuries; so we can pay for whatever the weather is doing in 2100.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/24/gao-report-cost-of-climate-change-damage-far-less-than-cost-of-decarbonization/
OT
What kind of Jeep do you have Dave?
2013 Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon
I have a 2014….a hardy Jeep wave to you
I’m restoring an ’83 CJ-7 body and frame, with an early ’70’s 304 and drive train from a CJ-5. (Punched out with torque cam, Edelbrock 4bbl, and headers.) It was built from junkyard components by a hillbilly in southern MO to run riverbed races.
A *real* Jeep… 😎
We have a big camp-and-play park in Otterville, IL called “Hillbilly Ranch” where you see restored and modified military Jeeps that are what the locals call “real Jeeps”.
“Man has contributed to that warming
So has Mann.”
That was funny! 🙂
1C per doubling?
you seem pretty certain of your science.
I doubt you can make that argument convincingly enough.
but go ahead, write it up put it on an open archive and let folks review your work
or stick with sarcasm, there is a nobel for that right?
Obama got a Nobel peace prize for not being George W. Bush… a Nobel prize for sarcasm.
1 C of warming per doubling is about what you get without feedbacks… it’s fairly common knowledge.
David,
Noble you didn’t mention their ‘unprecedented reverberating tipping points’
‘never happened but wait and see!’
It’s the same shtick as Malthus… ‘never happened but wait and see!’
Steven Mosher
1C per doubling?
you seem pretty certain of your science.
I doubt you can make that argument convincingly enough.
________________________________________________
Mosher,
Would you please show the history of your
convincingly arguments.
Sarcasm, I beg to differ, is the only way to endure the pseudoscience.
Mosh Pit,
The viable approach hasn’t changed since our progenitors were drawing on cave walls – live with it. Adapt or die.
Cmon ppl. 10th is warm. 0 is an insignificant number so it is #1 warmest.
“August currently 10th warmest in “pause” era. Notice the fierce red over antarctic contributing to tipping the temp to warm ( .244C above) north of 60 south tho, globally looks to be a wash, cold and warm balancing each other,”Bastardi wrote on Twitter.
August is going to be hot? Uh-oh! The heat death of the universe can’t be far behind.
Well, in 1969, Neil Diamond wrote about a ‘hot August night’. Was there still a cooling scare then… or hadn’t they thought that one up yet?
Just ten years later…
https://www.mrc.org/special-reports/fire-and-ice-0
While we’re sporting sarcasm here, what kind of rhyme is ‘fear’ and ‘river’ anyway? You can only invoke poetic license for that one.
Punk era in the UK then…lots of things didn’t make sense.
True. Flying in the face of “establishment” normality, I guess.
They reported that it was -1 C in Jasper AB the night before last. It’s only a little past the middle of August so there’s not much global warming there.
Soon it will be time to fly with the Canadian Snowbirds and spend the winter in Arizona. The only real climate fugitives hang out in the south US during the winters.
Yeah, it will be soon be cool enough to go there. You can just about feel fall in the air around here in the Edmonton area already.
Okay, I went to my records on weather, which I record because I sometimes find odd changes from what was recorded at the time by the weather service and what they now show. And to NO surprise on my part, the temperature was 80F on 8/9/2018, a prefectly NORMAL summer day in the Corn Belt.
What IS it that these people are looking for, anyway? 79F seems like a pleasant, sunny day on the Left Coast.
What did I miss?
Right now, on August 20, 2018, the temperature I’ve recorded at 3:52PM CDT is 74F, a bit below normal but we’re having a nice, slow, soaking rain that will keep my lawn nice and green, which is what I want.
So I repeat: what IS it that these people are looking for? Do they even have a clue?
“I went to my records on weather”
There should be alot of people out there that are constantly watching the weather. May I suggest looking at the plasma temperature being recorded by NOAA/NWS. At the time I am writing this, it is running about 1000 Kevins. It just started doing this around 15:00 GMT. All indicators in my yard shows it to be true.
You aint seen nothing yet.
Great dust bowl drought coming up
Like 1932-1939.
Google it.
Gotta love BTO…
https://youtu.be/99lyU5N–f8
These Catastrophic AGW agitators are Null Hypothesis deniers, plain and simple.
I would like to warn people to stay away from my latest 2 posts. You are NOT allowed to read them. They are:
1) Closed Mind
https://agree-to-disagree.com/closed-mind
2) AndThenTheresPhizzics
https://agree-to-disagree.com/andthentheresphizzics/
Meanwhile here in the Southern Hemisphere around Canberra its bl**dy cold with the best snowfalls in years in our Snowy Mountains. Maybe its just that variable thing called the weather. As well our resident idiot PM Turnbull is feeling the heat of a stupid National Energy Guarantee (NEG) policy which he has changed for about the 6th time in a week all in an attempt to survive himself. To heck with any form of sensible policy for the people he supposedly represents. He thinks he is the smartest man in the room (having read the book about Enron, the parallels are scary) but has the political nous of a jam jar. And our heating bills go though the roof and many pensioners cannot afford heating. If only we could charge our politicians with negligence causing death when its a result of stupid public policy.
“Climate change is amplifying natural variations in the weather.”
This is illogical. Climate is the sum of weather. A natural variation in the weather is not caused by the ‘climate’ it is the other way round. Amplifying natural variations in the weather might or might not be caused by anthropogenic carbon-dioxide. Either way, climate change is not causing any amplification any more that the total in a spreadsheet cell causes the numbers being summed to increase. Increasing the number in the total cell does not cause one of the numbers being added to increase.
The concept is stupid. Climate cannot cause a change in the weather.
But, but climate is the hand of God! When The Climate God is displeased with how many people are polluting Gaia with “carbon”, your local weather goes crazy, just to send you a message about your responsibility to sacrifice something to good ol’ Mamma Terra before she strikes you down or bakes yer ass. 😉
Send the heat my way. Here in Australia’s Kimberley temperatures are below average, with August nights at the Broome Airport recording a record low average of 10.5C.
This is almost 5C below average!
Only once before was August colder at the old Post Office site in 1896.
Is it possible to see the Fahrenheit measures used at that station in 1931? I am pretty sure that, at least here in Oz, temperatures were measured to the half degree F, and this would be visible in the daily records. If so, this would make x.07 F (now, using an electronic thermometer) and x.05 F (then) equivalent. In which case it may have been equally hot then as now – we can’t know.
Does anyone else have a problem with ‘scientists’ using ‘normal’ where they mean ‘average’? There are no ‘normal’ weather readings.
There is also the statement that “climate change models have yet to confirm that“.
How does a model confirm reality when they are a projection/prediction/WAG into the future. Real data confirms the model, not vice versa, although there seems to be a lot of data manipulation when it does not agree with a model.
Read this … science denial = climate scepticism: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/20/opinions/populist-skeptics-science-opinion-intl/index.html
The warming since 1988 most closely matches Scenario C, in which humans essentially undiscovered fire in 1999.
>95% of the models predicted more warming since 1998.
The warming has been less than RCP4.5, a strong mitigation scenario, despite very little mitigation.