Claim: Our “Boiling Frog” Adaptability Blinds us to the Ongoing Climate Change Apocalypse

Boiling Frog
Frog and Saucepan. James LeeFormerIP at en.wikipedia [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Apparently we’ve all become so used to unusual weather caused by climate change we haven’t noticed the world is ending.

The data is in. Frogs don’t boil. But we might.

By Nick Obradovich and Frances C. Moore February 25

Humans are amazingly adaptable creatures. We can live at the poles, in harsh deserts and even in space.

But sometimes our adaptability can be costly. Unhealthful diets, limited exercise, poor work-life balance, excessive time on social media — we each have bad habits we’ve become accustomed to that end up costing us in the long run. It takes an effort of will to recognize and modify the destructive patterns of behavior we’ve normalized.

However, the pace of our changing climate may also come with a downside. It may be easy for humans to normalize a climate that is, at least on geological-time scales, rapidly and dramatically changing.

Read more (paywalled): https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/02/25/data-are-frogs-dont-boil-we-might/

The abstract of the study;

Rapidly declining remarkability of temperature anomalies may obscure public perception of climate change

Frances C. Moore, Nick Obradovich, Flavio Lehner, and Patrick Baylis

The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions. In an absolute sense, these changing conditions constitute direct evidence of anthropogenic climate change. However, human evaluation of weather as either normal or abnormal will also be influenced by a range of factors including expectations, memory limitations, and cognitive biases. Here we show that experience of weather in recent years—rather than longer historical periods—determines the climatic baseline against which current weather is evaluated, potentially obscuring public recognition of anthropogenic climate change. We employ variation in decadal trends in temperature at weekly and county resolution over the continental United States, combined with discussion of the weather drawn from over 2 billion social media posts. These data indicate that the remarkability of particular temperatures changes rapidly with repeated exposure. Using sentiment analysis tools, we provide evidence for a “boiling frog” effect: The declining noteworthiness of historically extreme temperatures is not accompanied by a decline in the negative sentiment that they induce, indicating that social normalization of extreme conditions rather than adaptation is driving these results. Using climate model projections we show that, despite large increases in absolute temperature, anomalies relative to our empirically estimated shifting baseline are small and not clearly distinguishable from zero throughout the 21st century.

Read more: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/02/15/1816541116

A more positive way of expressing this discovery, if we assume the weather anomalies are real, is that humans are adaptable – we would have no difficulty tolerating a few degrees of global warming.

But if the authors of the study had said something that upbeat, how would they have included their boiling frog metaphor?

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Joel Snider
February 27, 2019 2:06 pm

Ironic – ‘boiling the frog’ was exactly the approach CNN recommended for AOC’s green deal – see, that ten-year push would have caused people to notice.

That’s why they wanted twenty or thirty years to implement it, so they would educated reason out of everyone alive, and those that remembered a better life would be dead.

Vuk
Reply to  Joel Snider
February 27, 2019 2:28 pm

In China they had little red book with a selection of the Chairman Mao’s thoughts.
The Cortez’ little red book (it should be a compulsory reading and memorising for all of her followers) can be found here:
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/alexandria_ocasiocortez?lgm=l

Steve Reddish
Reply to  Vuk
February 27, 2019 2:52 pm

“The biggest hurdle that our communities have is cynicism – saying it’s a done deal, who cares; there’s no point to voting.”

Wasn’t this the attitude that allowed her to win her office? She calls it a problem?
She must think her district voted for her because she is special.

Rocketscientist
Reply to  Steve Reddish
February 27, 2019 4:31 pm

Short bus special.

George Daddis
Reply to  Vuk
February 27, 2019 6:12 pm

I could write a book just itemizing AOC’s non-sequiturs such as:

Healthcare as a human right, it means that every child, no matter where you are born, should have access to a college or trade-school education if they so choose it.

…and of course I could go on from there with every one of her ridiculous assertions (“we have 12 years until climate catastrophe.” ; “we all know that recently it has been much colder and warmer than ever.”)

The best way to counter the GND is not to address things that could be excused as vague long range goals (as her apologists are wont to do) but rather to address the impracticality of the basics:
– rebuilding even many (vs all) of the structures in the US
– reducing (not necessarily eliminating), air travel in continental US by High Speed Rail
– replacing fossil fuel with wind or solar in any/b> time frame, while at the same time
eliminating nuclear sources of energy
We have to ignore “cow farts”.
We also have to emphasise that the “social justice” recommendations have nothing to do with Climate Change.

The amazing thing is that the “AOC Little Red Book” is based on only 2 months as a “politician” in the MSM lens.

Vuk
Reply to  George Daddis
February 28, 2019 4:28 am

It’s OK as long as AOC is not joined by other semi-clones in the near future, but that can not be excluded. Millions of new, the ‘facebook’ educated of life experience short youngsters are getting voting rights, might find such empty rhetoric attractive.

MarkW
Reply to  George Daddis
February 28, 2019 12:03 pm

Everyone has a right to health care. They do not have a right to force someone else to pay for it.

Phil R
Reply to  Vuk
February 28, 2019 7:29 am

Weapons-grade stupid.

Latitude
February 27, 2019 2:07 pm

…using a lot of big fancy words….to flat out lie

Charles Higley
Reply to  Latitude
February 27, 2019 5:20 pm

” It may be easy for humans to normalize a climate that is, at least on geological-time scales, rapidly and dramatically changing”

As nothing is rapidly and dramatically changing, just their vacuous claims, this is complete and total propaganda.

John Bell
February 27, 2019 2:15 pm

The way in which the Left obsesses about climate, the myriad ways they twist the narrative, but of course none are willing to give up their many pet luxuries, oh no, that would beneath their stations in life, but they bleat like sheep for someone to “do something” and tell them that their lives and energy are somehow “green”, well their fossil fuel use is green, the C02 is plant food.

Bryan A
Reply to  John Bell
February 27, 2019 2:20 pm

No, no nooooo…
My CO2 is Green, Their CO2 is BAAAAAD

February 27, 2019 2:15 pm

This could easily pass as a spoof article. It’s such total BS that I can smell it through my computer monitor.

The things some people do for grant funding and academic grades!

Bryan A
February 27, 2019 2:18 pm

The declining noteworthiness of historically extreme temperatures is not accompanied by a decline in the negative sentiment that they induce, indicating that social normalization of extreme conditions rather than adaptation is driving these results.

Doesn’t “Social Normalization” refer to “Becoming Accustomed to”?
Doesn’t “Becomming Accustomed to” indicate “Adaptation”?
Wouldn’t Social Normalization actually be just another form of Adaptation?

SMC
Reply to  Bryan A
February 27, 2019 2:22 pm

Oh come on now. It sounds like you’re trying to split frog hairs. 😄

Reply to  Bryan A
February 27, 2019 2:25 pm

Bryan A,

… my thought exactly.

Wouldn’t “social normalization” be an INDICATOR of such physical adaptation? Otherwise, “social normalization” would NOT occur! Rather, large-scale survival stress and suffering would be detected.

Rocketscientist
Reply to  Bryan A
February 27, 2019 4:37 pm

Damn good thing we keep normalizing (adapting) our social advancements otherwise we’d still be grunting and painting on cave walls.
Is this a progressive actually arguing against progress, and wanting to remain inflexibly conservative?
Is there nothing CO2 can’t do?

billtoo
February 27, 2019 2:20 pm

so, don’t trust your senses and memory. why would they want that?

February 27, 2019 2:23 pm

The minor little problem is that the disasters are not happening at any higher rate, indeed a lower rate. And the mild warming is thus far beneficial in total.
Total chutzpah is a requirement for an employee of the WaPost.

Bryan A
Reply to  Tom Halla
February 27, 2019 2:30 pm

the only real indication that the populace has that things are getting worse is the MSM pushing them to believe and fear that it is. The MSM does a real good job upsetting the Sheeple

Jeff Mitchell
February 27, 2019 2:27 pm

Please remind me what the correct temperature of the world is.

Joe Wagner
Reply to  Jeff Mitchell
February 27, 2019 5:10 pm

Colder than what I feel in summer; warmer than what I feel in winter..

Commodore model 3 Robotic Assembly Device
February 27, 2019 2:34 pm

72° farenheit

Joe - The non climate scientist
Reply to  Commodore model 3 Robotic Assembly Device
February 27, 2019 2:41 pm

Not 72 F – I cant snow ski at that temp. – And the beach should be 78 F. Geez

John Bell
Reply to  Commodore model 3 Robotic Assembly Device
February 27, 2019 2:44 pm

I prefer upper 80s so I can run nekkid thru the woods…okay a loin cloth.

ferd berple
Reply to  Commodore model 3 Robotic Assembly Device
February 27, 2019 3:22 pm

This could easily pass as a spoof article
==========
By Nick Obradovich and Frances C. Moore Butts.

Mr.
February 27, 2019 2:38 pm

I’m thinking of writing a dissertation on the similarities between the contemporary mass loss of rationality by sections of the western world when it comes to perspectives on how climate(s) operate and affect humanity, and the madness that was “spiritualism” that pervaded societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

I think the mass brain fizz that underpinned both these episodes has never been psychiatrically explained, but the behaviours are cannily alike –
based on nothing more than an ephemeral notion;
unquestioning reliance on self-appointed “guides”;
lots of meetings of sects to compare observances of expected supportive phenomena;
‘pay-to-play’ fee schedules in accordance with capacity & willingness to pay;
eager unskeptical reportage of the experiences of participating “leaders”;
once captured by the ‘movement’, disciples never recant, despite rationality continuously presenting them with the fallacy of their dogma.

I would welcome suggestions as to where I should submit my draft dissertation for publication.

Mr.
Reply to  Mr.
February 27, 2019 4:13 pm

Update –
I was just reading that many card-carrying followers of spiritualism were “reformers” and “socialists”.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you to discover that such people would be taken in by a flawed movement like spiritualism.

John Tillman
Reply to  Mr.
February 27, 2019 4:31 pm

Yes. Marxism is a 19th century kookie fad, like phrenology and spirit rapping.

Phil R
Reply to  John Tillman
February 28, 2019 7:39 am

I remember Spirit, and they certainly weren’t rappers! 🙂

MarkW
Reply to  Phil R
February 28, 2019 12:07 pm

What about the Crypt Kicker 5?

WXcycles
Reply to  Mr.
February 27, 2019 8:32 pm

Don’t forget all the advocates and groups for the various ‘Utopias’ within that time-window, and their separatist retreat-ism, into perfected communes of equality, which regularly went belly-up (with horrible to fatal consequences) when the ideology of total human perfectionism was revealed to be out of step with the ground-truths of everyday human life needs and interaction. We still see people advocating for radical anarchism or socialism today, when all that conservatism is even interested in, is what works in the ground-truthed world of everyday human life and needs.

You’ve got to wonder why they have been taught to detest what actually works? lol

troe
February 27, 2019 2:38 pm

At this point it’s pretty clear that low IQ and poor moral character are prerequisites for participating in the climate scare. They’re simply yapping at each other.

George Daddis
Reply to  troe
February 27, 2019 6:22 pm

But “they” are a majority in the House of Congress, a few seats short of a majority in the Senate, and an election away from possibly holding POTUS.

I’m sure there are a few folks in Venezuela who thought the Socialists were just “yapping at each other”.
We need to wake up!

David Chappell
Reply to  troe
February 27, 2019 8:20 pm

At this point it’s pretty clear that low IQ and poor moral character are prerequisites for members of Congress. They’re simply yapping at each other.

FIFY
Actually, I think that applies to politicians worldwide.

Ron Long
February 27, 2019 2:41 pm

Somebody that could notice climate change on geological time scales would be really old. Not just grandfather, or even great-grandfather old, but like thousands of years old at least. Like before people wrote things down. Gonna have to call BS on that claim.

Gary
February 27, 2019 2:42 pm

…we each have bad habits we’ve become accustomed to that end up costing us in the long run.

Oh. Sort of like making alarming predictions based on bad data and worse analysis. And then screaming about looming disaster if we don’t do immensely foolish things to fend off the calamity.

You mean like that?

February 27, 2019 2:46 pm

Ok, the record high temp where I am (north of Atlanta) was set in 2012 (106 degrees F), edging out the previous record of 105, set in 1980. Since then, the high for each year has been 92, 95, 97, 100, 94 and 95. In fact, the yearly high temperature has been in the 90s or low 100s going back to at least 1930 (when it was 103).

There have been no higher temps to adapt to where I am, slow, fast, or whatever. Just where have temps risen to force adaptation to a hotter environment?

“The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions.” WHERE??? Unless they can point to a place where the weather has been consistently out of the bounds of its normal climatic range, then no place is experiencing a climate change requiring adaptation.

Those who believe the manmade, catastrophic climate change crap may eat this stuff up, but everytime someone publishes a nonsense piece like this, it just further reinforces my opinion that they have no evidence of, much less proof for, any significant climate change. That means man is responsible for nothing wrt climate, and there will be no *unusual* catastrophes, just the same old stuff mother nature has been throwing at us since the start of time.

George Daddis
Reply to  jtom
February 27, 2019 4:38 pm

The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions.

I think this is a “soft spot”, a chink in the alarmists armor; a concept that “every day folk” can get their heads around. No models, no talk of the troposphere; forget Arrhenius and Callander – just push back on kitchen table statements like this, that they’ve very successfully gotten the public to believe, through repetition, is gospel; to the point that “everyone” bends their memory to align with this meme.

A great example is AOC’s latest rant where she says in effect “…we have all seen that it is much warmer and colder than ever before” based on her 29 year lifetime. (She must be very sensitive to temperature to notice 10ths of a degree change.)

My problem though is HOW to introduce real data in a way that would reach the public!
Drs Christie, Pielke, Curry can produce solid observational data at a recent congressional hearing and the alarmists (Democrats) bring on a former NFL player who experienced trauma from repeated concussions which he claims was made worse by “Climate Change” (I’m not making this up); and which story do you think the MSM ran with? A “Climate Social Justice” witness also appeared with a cap with “12” on it which he said summarized his testimony that we only had 12 years before climate catastrophe.

I continue to believe that Happer’s committee has to be non-confrontational (no Red Team/Blue Team mission) but rather address specific national security issues as they arise objectively, and when their conclusion on a specific aspect of the topic differs from the “13 US Agency Report” show the observational data they used to make their recommendation, and how it differs from that report.

If DJT were then to enact a policy or an action based on the report, extreme MSM and activist alarmists would come out of the woodwork to object. The chess master could then immediately say “I’m listening; give me the historical data that backs your position.” This would freeze the legitimate scientists that have used ad hominems to counter skeptics, and leave the MSM and activists hanging in the wind.

Or so I would hope.

Reply to  jtom
February 27, 2019 7:18 pm

jtom:

“Unless they can point to a place where the weather has been consistently out of bounds of its normal climatic range, then no place is experiencing a climate change requiring adaptation”

Another way to look at the effect of rising temperatures is to examine the incidence of weather-related natural disasters.

The Wikipedia list of natural disasters in the United States, 1816-2017 lists 37 weather-related disasters between 2000 and 2017, with 14 of them occurring during the very strong 2014-2016 El Nino. For the prior 17 years, there were only 16, and for the 17 years before then, only 7.

In Great Britain, there were 24 between 2000 and 2017, and only 4 in the prior 17 years.

It does look as if increasing temperatures are the cause of the large increase in weather-related natural disasters, and that relief could be obtained if temperatures were to be lowered.

(However, I would hurry to maintain that the temperature increases are NOT due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere).

Reply to  Burl Henry
February 28, 2019 1:45 am

More ‘disasters’ being the result of more people, with more to lose, living in more vulnerable locations in a more connected world with more capacity to register and record them, with more data (with more spatial and more temporal resolution) and more sensitivity to human loss. No change in ‘extreme natural events’, just our ability to identify their impacts.

Reply to  Eric Huxter
February 28, 2019 4:08 am

Eric Hunter:

What you say is partially true. However, during the 19 months of the Oct 2014-2016 El Nino (the warmest on record), there were 10 weather-related disasters, the most ever recorded in that short period of time.

None of your objections would have applied to those disasters. The only variable was the elevated temperatures.

Reply to  Burl Henry
February 28, 2019 6:49 am

Mr Henry,
That does mean that such a high frequency of similar magnitude events has never happened before, merely that they went unrecorded. Past warming periods would exhibit similar events, albeit with less evidence.

MarkW
Reply to  Burl Henry
February 28, 2019 12:11 pm

Elevated temperatures, or more likely, random chance.
Your time frame is way too short to draw any meaningful conclusions from

MarkW
Reply to  Burl Henry
February 28, 2019 12:12 pm

Another possibility is that El Nino’s change the weather, no need to invoke temperature increases.

A C Osborn
Reply to  Burl Henry
February 28, 2019 1:51 am

More Natural Disasters?
Don’t you mean “More Reported Weather Events” that cost money?
Including Wild Fires, which are not just weather related?
I suggest you look at a different Wiki page for your Natural Disaster, try just US Hurricanes and then tell us 2000-2017 have more than the other periods, in fact why aren’t all those Hurricanes listed under the natural disasters?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurricanes

Reply to  Burl Henry
February 28, 2019 4:28 am

Burl:
“It does look as if increasing temperatures are the cause of the large increase in weather-related natural disasters, and that relief could be obtained if temperatures were to be lowered.”

The 1870’s were wetter in the UK, including a highly similar analogue of the Jan-Feb 2014 floods in the winter of 1876-77. Cold winters are definitely not caused by warming. The heatwaves are purely products of short term solar variability as the cold winters are, and were lesser than the 1976 heatwave. The AMO influences UK weather patterns, and that is normally in its warm phase during a solar minimum.

Reply to  Ulric Lyons
February 28, 2019 10:03 am

Ulrich Lyons:

There was a very strong El Nino in 1878-79, with anomalous average global temperatures spiking to (+)0 .40 deg C (per Hadcrut4 data), a temperature not seen again until 1997, during the 1997-98 El Nino, ~ 120 years later.

There was a great hurricane in England in 1878, a great Tornado breakout on Aug. 9, in the US. and the great gale (hurricane) of 1878, on Oct. 23. Somewhere I had read that it was also a period of starvation around the world due to failing crops.

Just some rather weak support for my comments.

You state “cold winters are definitely not caused by warming”

Actually, they can be, due to changed weather patterns caused by El Ninos or El Nino-like temperatures ” See “El Nino in history”, by C.N. Caviedes (2001)

Reply to  Burl Henry
March 1, 2019 8:05 am

El Nino is not forced warming, it is a response to low solar or stratospheric aerosols.

WXcycles
Reply to  jtom
February 27, 2019 8:36 pm

“There have been no higher temps to adapt to where I am, slow, fast, or whatever. Just where have temps risen to force adaptation to a hotter environment?”

I think PNAS are referring to climate-change induced higher electricity bill adaptation.

PS: ‘PNAS’ is properly pronounced ‘Penis’.

Justin McCarthy
Reply to  jtom
February 27, 2019 10:26 pm

Temperature anomalies are everywhere; when compared to the pre-industrial age commonly known as the Little Ice Age. Global Warming is the left’s Universal Tool. It panics the herd, justifies redistribution in the name of justice or fairness; and, its solution via carbon taxes and the west’s accelerated adoption of expensive energy both redistribute wealth locally and globally. What is not to like.

Timo Soren
February 27, 2019 2:51 pm

4 more names to go in the Hall of the (We’re smarted than you) Deluded

Peter Morris
February 27, 2019 2:53 pm

Man these people are bound and determined to get their apocalypse. How sad that their religious devotion will most likely eventually see them on the street begging.

Linda Goodman
February 27, 2019 2:55 pm

Yup, the eco-fascist apocalypse.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Atom-its-nucleus-and-surrounding-electrons-The-protons-and-electrons-of-an-atom-are-a_fig11_303309704
“Every atom of carbon has 6 protons, 6 electrons, and 6 neutrons.”

I’m no bible thumper, but about that dual meaning…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body
“Carbon is the basic building block to most cells in the body.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903266.html
Carbon Chastity
“Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe. There’s no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.” – Charles Krauthammer, May 2008

Talk of replacing cash with a carbon card [then a chip] cooled down after Climategate, but the Green New Deal is Crazy staring us in the face.

Only the Truth shall set us Free.

DHR
Reply to  Linda Goodman
February 27, 2019 3:06 pm

Nasty as it is, rationing is to me a far far better approach than taxation. If CO2 is really, and I mean really, a problem, then ration it so that everyone is affected equally. With taxation, only the lower half suffer.

Reply to  DHR
February 27, 2019 6:36 pm

Do you think Gore, Di Caprio, Suzuki, et al will have the same ration as us lowly peons?

How large a black market in ration cards do you think there would be?

Who would set the limits for how much ‘carbon’ we are allowed?

This would end motor sports and air travel, for example, or would there be ‘indulgences’?

Rationing as a “better approach” is like preferring to be hit over the head with a brick rather than a hammer.

Rhoda R
Reply to  DHR
February 27, 2019 6:38 pm

So how are you going to get the termites to quit generating CO2 or the ocean to keep from expelling CO2 or the forests from rotting their vegitation or ….

Steve Reddish
Reply to  Linda Goodman
February 27, 2019 7:39 pm

The number of the beast is not 6,6,6 (carbon numbers), but 666 : “the number of a man”. Some speculate 666 represents mankind maximized since Man, and only Man, was created on Day 6. In any case, carbon being an essential element of all life makes it hard to connect it to a particular man.

SR

Crispin in Waterloo
Reply to  Linda Goodman
February 27, 2019 8:33 pm

Basic building block of the human body:

>90% of the molecules in a baby’s body are H2O.

Water molecules are 75% of the weight, but they are light.

It is fair to say that water is the main building block of the human body. Water contributes a huge proportion of the total GHG effect. There is also a lot of carbon in the human body.

Ergo we are comprised largely of greenhouse gases.

I can also prove my body contains permafrost and methane hydrates, if you give me a few minutes of your attention.

Sweet Old Bob
February 27, 2019 3:01 pm

Where I live , the frogs are more concerned about freezing to death ….
this month looks to be about 8deg F below average , next month forecast to be 11 or 12 deg F below avg …
( high temps )

Hugs
Reply to  Sweet Old Bob
February 28, 2019 11:37 am

We’ll have -10C tomorrow. The dear frogs are not exactly boiling to death anytime soon. Mooreis welcome here to enjoy a swim. I’ll make an opening to ice, and offer a hot sauna for revigorating any blueish toes.

DHR
February 27, 2019 3:02 pm

Moore et. al have, perhaps mistakenly, placed their finger on the problem. It’s not climate and weather data
that drives our “knowledge” of global warming, it’s billions of social media posts. And they should have added millions of news articles and talking TV heads. In the rare instances when someone looks into actual records of storms, floods, fires, snowfall, polar ice and so forth, not weather models but actual records, it can be quickly understood that what is going on today, weather wise, is no different than what has ever gone on as far back as the written record extends.

The greatest danger we face today is not global warming, or Russia, or China, it’s the web.

George Daddis
Reply to  DHR
February 27, 2019 6:32 pm

The web is not the problem; it is our inability to use the web to get the real data, the reality of climate change (in BOTH a current and historical context) across to the general public.

The web (in contrast to the MSM) could be our friend; the question is how can we use that tool.
I do not have an answer.

Hugs
Reply to  DHR
February 28, 2019 11:50 am

Well, Russia and China know how to weaponize the web.

Social media is in a very dangerous position in controlling who hears what.I’m afraid we’re seeing a revolution which is not technological but a political one.

Rud Istvan
February 27, 2019 3:04 pm

My opinion is that the more this nonsense gets published (think GND, think Santer 5 sigma, think warming=>cooling and polar vortex, all just this month), the faster the whole CAGW scam fails.

Filmed set up children in Sen. Feinstein’s office saying ‘we did not vote for you to ignore GND…How old are you…16…Well, you didn’t vote…’ is comedy gold.
Ridicule is a very effective ‘sunlight disinfectant’.

MarkW
February 27, 2019 3:08 pm

Oh noes, we’ve become adapted to something that isn’t happening.

Robert in Busan
February 27, 2019 3:16 pm

Humans crossed an ice bridge to colonize the Americas. Extreme weather, maybe, but no BOILING! Ha, gotcha there. 😉

John Tillman
Reply to  Robert in Busan
February 27, 2019 4:35 pm

It was a land bridge, largely lacking ice, due to the loe lrvel, windiness and dryness of Beringia, the continental shelf floor of the northern Bering and southern Chukchi Seas, exposed by low sea levels, thanks to so much ice on the land in vast sheets.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  John Tillman
February 27, 2019 6:15 pm

Aha, climate refugees!

Greg F
February 27, 2019 3:23 pm

The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions.

Not according to what they say further down where they say they used “decadal trends in temperature at weekly and county resolution”. The weather only comes into play from the 2 billion or so social media comments. Assuming of course they didn’t find some long lost archive of social media posts from preindustrial America they are not comparing weather. Then to top it off they used climate model projections.

The boiling frog myth is appropriate. It shows if you increasingly publish papers that are drifting further and further from science nobody will notice when the papers become completely devoid of science.

Aussiebear
Reply to  Greg F
February 27, 2019 5:25 pm

Greg,

Your last paragraph is a keeper!!

February 27, 2019 3:41 pm

I live in Tucson exactly because it is warmer here than anywhere else I have ever lived.
Come Saturday and Sunday the temps here are supposed to be about 78 F both days, about average for eaely March. Meanwhile most of the rest of the country will be 30 degrees F below average.

And then these moronic toads have the utter cluelessness to write:
“In an absolute sense, these changing conditions constitute direct evidence of anthropogenic climate change. ”
Apparently those toads skipped critical thinking on the way to their university degrees. They clearly have no idea what constitutes direct evidence of weather extremes compared to the past.

This is the Lake Wobegon Syndrome. In Garrison Keeler’s Lake Wobegon tales, every parent just knew their children were Above Average. Which of course defies the logic of an average.
Similarly, every generation wants to believe they (we) are living, struggling, and surviving through Exceptional Times (worse than average). Because by doing so implies they too (we too) are exceptional for managing to get by.
We all want to feel like the struggle of everyday life has meaning. We all want to be exceptional.
Nick and Frances (the authors here) clearly lack historical perspective as well as critical thought. They want to be exceptional. They clearly are not.

Bob Vislocky
February 27, 2019 3:45 pm

I think the authors need more funding to investigate this topic further, LOL.

Reply to  Bob Vislocky
February 27, 2019 4:04 pm

I’m sure they’d love for you to write them a big fat check from your 401K/IRA acct to continue their research if socialmedia hysteria.
Otherwise, these toads are just looking for grants on the taxpayers dime.

MeMyselfAndI
February 27, 2019 3:54 pm

In the parable of the boiled frog, the frog placed in cool water is boiled alive because it is unable to recognize the gradual increase in temperature as the water is heated. Fortunately, most people are smarter than frogs. As the authors note, “Humans are amazingly adaptable creatures. We can live at the poles, in harsh deserts and even in space.”

Editor
Reply to  MeMyselfAndI
February 27, 2019 4:47 pm

The parable of the boiling frog is also a fable. Numerous studies show the amphibian tries to escape.

From Snopes:

Like a fable, the “”boiled frog”” anecdote serves its purpose whether or not it’s based upon something that is literally true. But it is literally true? Not according to Dr. Victor Hutchison, a Research Professor Emeritus from the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Zoology, whose research interests include “”the physiological ecology of thermal relations of amphibians and reptiles to include determinations of the factors which influence lethal temperatures, critical thermal maxima and minima, thermal selection, and thermoregulatory behavior””:
The legend is entirely incorrect! The ‘critical thermal maxima’ of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.

More here.
http://www.ou.edu/cas/zoology/Hutchison.htm

Toto
Reply to  Les Johnson
February 28, 2019 4:49 pm

The “boiled frog” anecdote is false.
The human analogy is also false. Think of humans in a hot tub. They are there because it is hot. When it’s too hot they get out. Or adjust the temperature setting. But generally speaking, we don’t adjust the setting because some crazy says it’s going to be too hot in 100 years.

Chris Hanley
February 27, 2019 3:54 pm

“The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions. In an absolute sense, these changing conditions constitute direct evidence of anthropogenic climate change …”.
The fundamental premise of the paper is demonstrably false, how can such nonsense pass peer review⸮

Reply to  Chris Hanley
February 27, 2019 4:09 pm

That was their genuflection to dogma so they could get published.

icisil
February 27, 2019 4:17 pm

It’s too late, the world is already boiling. (this guy is actually college educated)

It’s sure weird how depression and anxiety are huge problems for young people in a society where everything costs more every year and every single human act gets monetized, on a planet that is boiling alive, must be a coincidence

https://twitter.com/ryanaboyd/status/1100578488044576768

Chris Hanley
February 27, 2019 4:20 pm

“The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions …”.
It was preindustrial conditions that were “unusual”:
comment image

Reply to  Chris Hanley
February 27, 2019 6:42 pm

Is this the ‘normal’ pre-industrial weather he is referring to?

This from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia

THROUGH FIRE AND WATER.
GREAT FLOODS ON THE BREMER.
STOCK. CROPS, AND ROADS DESTROYED.
NEAR ESCAPES OF DROWNING.
In this issue are published graphic records of the ordeals by fire and water through which the Nairne and Callington districts have passed within one short week. On Christmas Day “heat like the mouth of a hell” was over all, and a fierce grass fire spread desolation across thousands of acres in the neighbourhood (sic).
On New Year’s Day “a deluge of cataract skies ” turned a still larger area into roaring and devastating water-floods which boiling against the bridges, “hurled down in swift career battlement and plank and pier,” while, in less-contracted channels it swept away trees, destroyed fences, invaded houses, injured roads, desolated crops, and drowned cattle.
Remembering too the havoc wrought by the fire-fiend a short seven days before, and looking on the railway line as a red-handed accomplice, the other strong element wreaked its fury on this also, so that State money was lost and State passengers delayed.
The Mt Barker Courier and Onkaparinga and Gumeracha Advertiser Friday Jan 4 1880

CO2 = 291ppm (www.sealevel.info/co2_and_ch4.html)

Bruce Cobb
February 27, 2019 4:27 pm

Nah, I think it’s more that we’re suffering from “the boy who cried wolf” syndrome, and also the “liar liar, pants on fire effect”. But, the horse has left the barnyard, and the climate chickens are coming home to roost.

Toto
February 27, 2019 4:29 pm

“Humans are amazingly adaptable creatures. We can live at the poles, in harsh deserts and even in space.”

If they have enough energy sources (and water, etc). Cut off those resources and see if they if they “adjust” the rulers.

DocSiders
Reply to  Toto
February 27, 2019 4:37 pm

It surely is time to “adjust” the would be rulers. I’d rather not wait ’till energy prices quadruple while temperatures drop over the next 20 years.

Personally… I’m having trouble adapting…I really miss freezing my a$$ off like we did back in the 70’s.

Craig from Oz
February 27, 2019 4:37 pm

Okay, so if I have this correct, because humans can adapt to ‘Climate Change(tm)’ we are at greater risk of ‘Climate Change(tm)’.

Okay…

DocSiders
February 27, 2019 4:50 pm

I’m really getting tired of this whole scam.

These lefties think they are smarter than the rest of us. They really make me ill. Media and Academia and Government have managed to generate this propaganda machine for their illegitimate power/money gains. It’s all just a peer pressure chorus.

I’m starting to lose my revulsion for public hangings… which I’m starting to hope commence after the earth begins some obvious cooling over the next decade or so.

Kevin A
February 27, 2019 5:06 pm

“Nobody ever wins the first time they run for office.” Alexandria_Ocasio Cortez
Unless you’re bank rolled into office with help from Justice Democrats:
Cenk Uygur and Kyle Kulinski founded Justice Democrats with ten others, including former staffers from the Sanders campaign such as its Director of Organizing Technology, Saikat Chakrabarti, and MoveOn.org fundraiser Zack Exley.
Saikat Chakrabarti is now Chief of Staff for AOC. This group would do anything to see America fail.

February 27, 2019 5:07 pm

According to a quote in the above article: “However, the pace of our changing climate may also come with a downside. It may be easy for humans to normalize a climate that is, at least on geological-time scales, rapidly and dramatically changing.”

The stupidity . . . it burns!

Today, I can travel from a location will little precipitation and sustained day/night temperatures of about 80 °F/60 °F and easily with 6 hours be at a location with heavy precipitation and sustained day/night temperatures of 30°F /15 °F. It’s commonly known as going on a snow skiing vacation.
Note only that, but I don’t suffer any ill effects from this sudden change in environment conditions if I elect to stay in appropriate housing and wear appropriate clothes.

Furthermore, humans living year round at both the location I left and the location of my skiing vacation have reliably demonstrated that life–and making a livelihood–are sustainable at both environmental conditions for hundreds of years. Flora and fauna indicate the same thing.

The rate of temperature change that I experience on my skiing vacation is equivalent to about 50 °F over 6 hours, or a rate of about 7,300,000 °F/100 years. Compare this to the IPCC’s Paris Accord target of not exceeding a global temperature increase rate equivalent to 1.4°F/100 years (0.8°C/100 years).

n.n
February 27, 2019 5:12 pm

Ah, the carbon conundrum. It’s not over until the last baby… fetus is drawn and sequestered.

that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

SAMURAI
February 27, 2019 5:45 pm

The reason people don’t realize “the ravages of CAGW” is because there hasn’t been any based on the empircal evidence…

Even IPCC’s AR5 report admits there hasn’t been any increasing frequency/severity trends for 100 years in: hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tornadoes, floods, droughts, thunderstorms, rainfall, tropical storms, subtropical storms and hail.

Ocean Sea Levels have also been stuck at around 8”/century since the 1800’s, regardless of changes of CO2 levels…

About the only thing that has changed is a 20% increase in global greening and a 15% increase in crop yields due to higher CO2 levels, which are good things…

We little froggies are kicking back in the jacuzzi, sipping margaritas, listening to Queen’s “We’re the Champions of the World”, while enjoy the highest living standards and longest lifespans in human history, and wondering why Leftists have completely lost their minds….

Hocus Locus
February 27, 2019 5:59 pm

I think the Boiling Frog is the PERFECT AGW hype metaphor… but not for the reason you might think. We all know the old saw that Al Gore and your annoying neighbor and countless other people, mostly under dodgy circumstances involving psychology and politics, repeat as gospel. Since this is ‘science’ we can claim that so long as ~97% of the people who cite the B.S. are scientists, it must be true. But among the remaining 3% are people who’ve tried the experiment… and those who study reptiles.

[Dr. Victor Hutchison of the University of Oklahoma] “The legend is entirely incorrect! The `critical thermal maxima’ of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.” Naturally, if the frog were not allowed to escape it would eventually begin to show signs of heat stress, muscular spasms, heat rigor, and death.'”

The takeaway phrase here is, “become more and more active in attempts to escape”. Let’s shorten this to “attempts”. Does it sound ominous yet? The old saw implies there is no barrier to escape. But in order to perform reproducible Science, barriers must be introduced. The frog jumps out for the Nth time. “Stupid frog!” they say and chase it around the room. They are getting the feeling that the frog might just be bored or uncooperative. In order to avoid touching it (and getting warts) they’ll Modify the experiment. A barrier is introduced. They form a Committee Of One whose purpose is to monitor and decide whether each jump against the barrier was from willful disobedience OR a bona fide attempt to escape.

The Experiment begins again. At ~8 minutes the water is almost 40degC and the frog jumps. “We’re feeling perky today,” the Experimenter comments, putting a mark under NOPE. Then the phone rings. Later the frog is found dead.

1. WE are the frog.
2. AGW ALARMISTS are those who are placing barriers and have declared themselves as arbiters of moral judgement, for their own selfish purposes. Our repeated attempts to avoid adversity or unwarranted austerity are to them, willful disobedience.
3. Unsolicited sales calls must become unlawful with severe penalties.

Gary Pearse
February 27, 2019 6:26 pm

The changing unusual climate is producing increasingly hysterical totes and troughers who found it hard to forget that nearly all the warming since 1850 occurred before 1940.

Donald Kasper
February 27, 2019 8:24 pm

The magnitude of social cost/reaction is proportional to the evidence. If you want to reorganized civilization in your own image, you need absolute, dramatic, and irrefutable proof including millions already dead, and tens of millions dying. Screaming when nothing is going on with climate is otherwise a mental disorder or a demand for attention.

Greg
February 27, 2019 9:11 pm

Wow, you people are dumb.

The whole world believes in this thing called science…only the Republican Party does not. You know, the same people that invented vaccines and got us to the moon. All 12,000 climatologists and the whole world believes in climate change and that the impacts are here and now. Even 70% of Americans now believe. So, you are a tiny minority of idiots on a global scale.

Keep watching Fox while I pray for the future of yours and my children.

MarkW
Reply to  Greg
February 28, 2019 12:20 pm

Please, list these weather events that are conclusively proven to have been caused by more CO2 in the atmosphere.

12K people who’s livelihood depends on the scam continuing, believe in the scam. That’s solid proof right thar.

If the alarmists couldn’t appeal to authority, they’d look as dumb as they believe everyone else to be.

John Dilks
Reply to  Greg
February 28, 2019 1:13 pm

Greg, you are the idiot. You are following rumors and lies, not facts. My children will be fine.

michael hart
February 27, 2019 9:16 pm

However, the pace of our changing climate may also come with a downside. It may be easy for humans to normalize a climate that is, at least on geological-time scales, rapidly and dramatically changing.

lol. So what they are really saying is that it is the rocks that should be worried, not the humans?

Garland Lowe
February 27, 2019 9:25 pm

Using climate model projections we show that, despite large increases in absolute temperature.

The only place you will find large increases in absolute temperature is in climate models.
Observed data, not so much.

Reply to  Garland Lowe
February 27, 2019 9:38 pm

We employ variation in decadal trends in temperature at weekly and county resolution over the continental United States, combined with discussion of the weather drawn from over 2 billion social media posts.

This seems to be yet another example of mixing datasets. The resolution of recent data is incomparable to decades ago. Also Twitter breeds extreme views to acquire attention.

I’m skeptical.

James Schrumpf
Reply to  TimTheToolMan
February 28, 2019 10:22 am

The resolution of current datasets is 0.1C+/- 0.05 C, for all practical purposes. Not such a big change, actually.

February 27, 2019 9:45 pm

The Storm Channel is presenting a couple of cold fronts moving in as if it is somehow “different” for cold fronts to come in this time year. (I’m talking about the US.)
There are numerous recurring weather patterns that have occurred often enough to have acquired a name or a “saying” over time.
Santa Anna Wind
Nor’easter
Polar Express
Indian Summer (…er…Native American Summer)

Another saying for this time of year, “March: In like a lion, out like a lamb.”

There’s nothing “unusual” going on with the weather. Some of us remember the “new and unusual” events happening before. (Our parents just didn’t buy us cell phones back then. They didn’t exist.)

Was this an unprecedented winter for the Midwest or the Northeast? Do a search for “The great blizzard of ’78” and “The blizzard of ’78”. (Two different events)

The uptick in the hype about Man’s CO2 causing warming and cooling and changeling etc is the only “boiling frog” scenario going on.
(The Green New Deal ring a bell?)

Reply to  Gunga Din
February 28, 2019 11:38 am

Don’t forget another weather-related descriptive term:

“Blowhard.”

BTW, I’ve just about finished my analysis of 2015 temps at Phoenix Sky Harbor AP. I haven’t run the numbers for the 30-year baseline yet, but I have finished the monthly average temps for the year. I also haven’t gone back over the numbers looking for egregious math or logic errors, but this is what I got .

2015
Jan 14.8 +/- 0.6 °C
Feb 18.7 +/-0.3 °C
Mar 22.4 +/-0.7 °C
Apr 23.5 +/- 0.5 °C
May 26.0 +/-0.7 °C
Jun 34.5 +/- 0.6 °C
Jul 34.8 +/-0.3 °C
Aug 35.9 +/- 0.4 °C
Sep 32.2 +/- 0.3 °C
Oct 26.4 +/- 0.6 °C
Nov 16.7 +/ – 0.7 °C
Dec 12.3 +/- 0.6 °C

I fudged up some numbers for a baseline that gave me a standard deviation of 2.7, which is about a third of that for the averages of the months. I simulated a set of anomalies that ended up with a standard deviation of 1.0, which I think is pretty generous. Take the average of the anomalies : 0.1 °C and the SD/sqrt(N=12) and I got -0.1°C +/- 0.3 °C. Pretty brutal numbers.

This is why I think the Law of Large Numbers is a red herring. Say we used 5000 stations and got the same numbers, -0.1°C for the anomaly and 1.0 for the standard deviation. dividing 1.0/sqrt(5000) = 0.014°C., and the average anomaly for the year would still have as much uncertainty as is pretended there is precision.

griff
February 28, 2019 1:18 am
Serge Wright
February 28, 2019 3:02 am

The boiling frog analogy needs a bit more thought.

Frog Scenario:
You place a frog in a ~20 degree C pot of water and raise the temperature by ~80 degrees C over a period of a few hours. The frog dies.

AGW Scenario:
You place a human being in an environment that varies in temperature by around 10 degrees C each day and up to 40 degrees C each year. You then raise the average temperature by 2 degrees over a period of 100 years. The human dies.

Bryan A
Reply to  Serge Wright
February 28, 2019 9:56 am

Obviously the Human Psyche is far more fragile and susceptible to temperature change than the average frog.

old construction worker
February 28, 2019 4:57 am

According to the weatherman: This last week higher than “normal temps”. Forecast for the next two week: Lower than “normal temps”. Growing up back in the 50’s, 60,s & 70’s I don’t remember weathermen referring to “Normal Temperature”. It was just “Temperature”

Steve O
February 28, 2019 6:14 am

I’ve never tried to boil a live frog, because I’m not an a-hole. But I suspect it’s a myth that the frog would stay in the pot. When it becomes uncomfortable, why wouldn’t the frog will jump out?

But as long as we’re playing with this analogy, raising the water temperate by 3C, will not result in any need to jump, especially if the expected negative consequences of jumping are much worse than the expected consequences of staying put.

Reacher51
February 28, 2019 7:12 am

Think how many extreme and unprecedented climate changes must have been lost to history, just because the people who lived through it would have failed to notice after a while. It must mean that the thousands of written observations of visible climate change during the MWP and LIA were even more extreme than what scholars had previously thought.

SLC Dave
February 28, 2019 7:29 am

Easter Island comes to mind here. When people settled the island it was a paradise, but after several hundred years they had reduced it to a barren rock. The people did manage to adapt and survive but wouldn’t life have been better if they could have used some foresight and saved their paradise?

Reply to  SLC Dave
February 28, 2019 9:13 am

Comparing Easter Island and its once-upon-a-time maximum population density to the disparate land surfaces of Earth today is . . . well . . .

MarkW
Reply to  SLC Dave
February 28, 2019 12:22 pm

The myth that Easter Island was destroyed by over population has been refuted over and over again.
It was still a “paradise” when it was visited by Cook in the 1800’s.

Anna Keppa
February 28, 2019 10:17 am

First sentences:

“The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions.

Oh yeah? Where are the global weather records for the preindustrial world that are used to make a comparison?

” In an absolute sense, these changing conditions constitute direct evidence of anthropogenic climate change. “

Oh yeah? Absolute sense?

Changing weather is per se “direct evidence” that humans are causing the change?

No chance that the Sun has anything to do with it?

Hugs
Reply to  Anna Keppa
February 28, 2019 12:02 pm

There are good reasons to think CO2s doing stuff and that the Sun is not directly causing anything of similar size during the last 70 years. For me it s not a question if it ‘is the Sun’. It is a question of proving relative effect sizes.

‘The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions.’

That was just total bonkers. In my opinion, we have good enough weather now, and past weather 200 years ago was not better. End of this worser and worser shit. Prove me it is not merely improving at long term, we don’t have any reason to be alarmed on weather as it is now. I don’t want the effing glaciation back, this is a good direction to go.

February 28, 2019 6:20 pm

MarkW

“Elevated temperatures, or more likely, random chance. Your time frame is way too short to draw any meaningful conclusions from”

The time frame examined was for the years 1816-2017.

“Another possibility is that El Ninos change the weather, no need to invoke temperature increases”

??El Ninos ARE periods of increased temperatures, and have always been associated with adverse weather events.

Since approx. 2000, our average global temperatures are equivalent to those seen only during prior El Nino events, so that we are currently living within El Nino-like conditions.

Expect more global weather-related disasters throughout this year, even if no El Nino develops.