The Press Democrat, the newspaper of record for Santa Rosa California, published an op-ed in the Sunday August 18th edition titled, “Golis: For climate change deniers, the heat is on.”
In addition to the reprehensible reference to climate change skeptics, the article is flat wrong on many counts. The writer, Peter Golis makes the classic mistake of conflating short-term weather timescales with long term climate time scales and then wrongly holding it up as proof of long term climate change.
Here are some of the claims made by Golis in the article:
July was the hottest month in the history of California.
We’re not surprised. July became the month when temperatures in the 80s became a break from the heat, and the morning fog typical of a summer day turned up missing.
“July’s heat was remarkable not only for its sheer intensity … but also for its duration,” wrote UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain on his Weather West blog.
“Temperatures,” he added, “remained extremely elevated for weeks on end and did not substantially cool off at night …”
The article goes on to mention several temperature records in California cities:
Ukiah broke a century-old mark when it recorded a high temperature of 117 degrees, and temperatures over 100 degrees were commonplace.
Palm Springs, no stranger to hot weather, recorded its hottest day ever, a scorching 124. Two hundred and forty-nine miles to the north, Redding recorded a high temperature of 119. Even Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth, set mind-melting new records. Temperatures exceeded 120 degrees on 24 separate days in July — including 129 degrees on July 7.
So, in the traditionally hot places of California, some new high temperature records were set. That’s not news in the context of climate change.
It is important to note that we only have about 150 years of accurate temperature records for California. We have no idea what the highest temperatures in California for the month of July were 200 years ago or more. It’s no surprise that in the short data we have compared to the long term geological existence of California, new records would occur.
In fact, the official temperature records for California begin in Sacramento in 1877, and according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento, while there have been a number of hot days in summer 2024, the data has not exceeded historical measurements overall, as seen in their analysis below:
All this handwaving by Golis is proof of nothing related to climate change.
Climate change acts on long time scales of 30 years or more whereas weather acts on short time scales from hours to days, sometimes lasting weeks. That’s what we have here. A high-pressure heat dome pattern, centered over California, caused temperatures to rise and because it was slow to move it caused sustained periods of high temperature. This is a weather pattern, nothing more.
Just a few days after Golis claimed climate change was responsible for the hottest month ever in California, the weather pattern has shifted, and now most of California is experiencing cooler than normal temperatures along with increased chances of rain as seen in the graphic below:
Compare the maps below from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from July to August. Note how California went from “above normal” to “below normal.”
Clearly, a weather pattern shift occurred between July and August. That’s not “climate change” that’s just normal weather.
Golis simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He makes this abundantly clear because the remainder of the article he wrote was mostly a political rant against the Republican Party and it’s energy policies. He suggests those policies are the root cause of the hot weather, plus literally everything but the kitchen sink:
Death and destruction caused by heat and fire, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, torrential rains, the frequency of horrendous storms — climate change, the scientists say, will be defined by extremes of weather more destructive than what came before.
Fortunately, Mother Nature changed the weather patterns to cooler than normal, and Golis ended up looking like a fool. It’s unfortunate that the editors and fact checkers of The Press Democrat didn’t bother to look at the cooler weather in progress on that Sunday when the Golis climate rant was published. Had they, the op-ed might have been more balanced and sensible.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
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Thought it might be fun to see what other nonsense Peter Golis has provided to the Press Democrat northern California (Sonoma) paper. In just the past year, additional gems like:
California is not sending its best and brightest to virtue signaling journalism school.
Given what journalism schools are teaching these days I’d say that Golis was an excellent student.
Given what journalism schools are teaching these days I’d say that they turn out lousy journalists unworthyof the title.
Except it is not longer objective journalism that is taught. It is advocacy journalism. in other words, opinions published as fact. Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Just a little factoid. Schools of Journalism changed their curriculum from just the facts ma’am to we’ll interpret the facts ma’am so you’ll come to the proper conclusion in 1963. Objective Journalism hasn’t been taught for 60 years.
I think the new correct title is “urinalist” or “presstitute”.
Even 30 years of weather isn’t very long. “Climate” meant thousands to millions a few years ago and there were five different climates, Arctic, Tropical, Temperate, Desert and Rain forest.
I guess 30 years was all the UN/IPCC models could hope to forecast so they got the UN/WMO to redefine the word “climate” to mean only 30 years of weather, which few people know.
30 years was the definition of “micro climate” which was the average weather in a region or local that would give potential residence an idea of what kind of weather they would encounter should the move there.
The UN hijacked that, repurposed it and altered the definition when the 30 year interval included satellites.
All this handwaving by Golis is proof of nothing related to climate change.
well its not about climate change its about all the people who argue
climate change doesnt need proof, scetics are alwas reminding us that the climate is always changing! so proof of climate change is pointless.
whats not pointless, cataloguing the slow march of records upwards.
daily records fall, monthly records fall, decadel records fall century records fall.
50 years from now when california has its hottest summer in 200 years of records
i can already guess the argument.
but we only have records for 200 years.
thats not much of a argument.
look in dec 2023 250,000 border crossings ere recorded.
that was a te highest in 25 years o record keeping.
but wait!!!!! theres only 25 years of records, LIKE that fact changes anthing
That’s got to be one of the dumbest and nonsensical of all your dumb and nonsensical posts. For long-term processes you need long-term records. To compare illegal border crossings of potential human traffickers, drug traffickers and sexual predators with climate records is ridiculous. And my back yard was damn cool today for the middle of August.
No, no: remember how 6 months (at best) of testing guaranteed that the covid ‘vaccines’ were safe for all for any future period? Do it right and a week or two is ample to determine the entire future course of the Earth’s future!
Scectics? Pour another glass of whatever you’re having.
He coined a word- short for SCience skEpTICSs? Actually, I read a lot of science – and I find that the people here, those supposed scectics, know more about science than anything I might read or see in the MSM. What they are skeptical about is bad science.
I, too, come here to learn and to share.
Unfortunately we all too often find flame wars.
If the earth is burning it is only burning in comment sections.
1… It was warmer in the USA in the 1930,40s. when we did have records.
2… It was certainly warmer globally during the RWP, Holocene optimum etc.
3… Show us the warming in the UAH data that is not associated with El Ninos.
….. (you do know that the current El Nino effect is still lingering , don’t you)
4… yes, it probably was, unless you live in a crowded inner-city urban ghetto with only a brick courtyard.
The rest of your post in incomprehensible gibberish.. as usual.
Failed Eng-Lit did you?… by the looks of it. !
posted in error
you’re referring to all your past posts here? 🙂
Thanks for the suggestion.
Actually no, but on second thoughts that you would think so means that I have been exactly on target.
And rattling the cages of denial.
too bad you don’t understand that most people aren’t denying anything other than bad science and propaganda from the renewables industries, with full support of the Democrats- most people here will agree that there has been a slight warming in recent years, which proves nothing about the long term climate- and most do not agree that there are more hurricanes, fires, floods, droughts, etc. and whichever do happen aren’t due to our use of fossil fuels
but you reduce that all to “denial”- such a simplistic view is not enlightening
Only thing rattling is the shrunken degenerated brain inside your little bobble-head.
Tonga, according to NASA is also still lingering.
It was certainly fine when Death Valley was named in 1849.
1849? People must have been freezing to death, hence the name. 😎
Illegal immigration is a national security issue and is a direct threat to people in their backyards. How long climate records should be or, even worse, their model projections are meaningless academic issues that should be open to discussion and differing ideas, but are essentially meaningless to people in their backyards. They’re only meaningful to people who make their bread and butter off of scary projections.
For an inglish mager you dont rite so good mosh
A little bit warmer, and a lot less drought—there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
Wow. Did you type that during a 9.0 quake? In a bowl of jello?
You used to be as skeptical as the rest of us. Then you got paid not to be. You know what that makes you? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with w and ends in hore.
He was skeptical? I wish I was reading this site at that time.
Mosher wrote this book, Joseph.
It’s a good book.
I don’t know why Mosher turned to the darkside.
Climategate: The CRUTape Letters by Steven Mosher and Thomas W. Fuller
https://www.amazon.com/Climategate-Crutape-Letters-Steven-Mosher/dp/1450512437
Maybe he’ll explain his conversion.
“it was warmer in the past when we didnt have records!”
It was warmer in the past and we DO have records. Hansen 1999, for example:
That graph ends in 1999, how can you say it was warmer in the past unless you include the last quarter century of data?
USA was much warmer than now in the 1930,40s.
This one only goes up to 2020, but USCRN shows that has been very little warming since then
“That graph ends in 1999, how can you say it was warmer in the past unless you include the last quarter century of data?”
Because I can do math.
The UAH chart is continuous with the Hansen 1999 chart from 1979, so for any temperature after 1999, I just look at the UAH chart as an extension of the Hansen 1999 chart.
Why don’t I use NASA charts dated later than 1999? Because NASA bastardizes their temperature charts now, and the 1999 chart is about as close to reality as you are going tp get out of current-day NASA.
So I use Hansen 1999 to show the temperatures before 1979, and use the UAH satellite chart for years after 1999.
Hansen said 1934 was 0.5C warmer than 1998, so that would make 1934 warmer than 2016 and 2024, since both years are just barely warmer than 1998.
See how that works?
The UAH series shows global temperature, while your graph from Hansen, 1999 shows US-only temperature. Here is the series for global temperature from Hansen, 1999:
Here is the Hansen, 1999 series overlaid with the UAH series for easy comparison:
Does this factor into your thinking at all?
“50 years from now when california has its hottest summer in 200 years of records”
50 years from now when California is in an ice age…. or 50 years from now when California has broken off from CONUS…. or or or…
We have geological and paleontological records that go back hundreds of millions of years.
One cannot prove climate change. Climate change is precisely a definition, not a physical process.
Climate change is change in long term weather patterns. If there are fewer storms, less rain, cooler temperatures, that is, by definition climate change, especially give climate is the 30 year average of weather. If the weather today is not exactly the same weather exactly 30 years ago, bingo. Climate changed and the 30 year interval is a running average.
Climate is not a physical process. Weather and weather patterns are what are of interest and all of that is caused by Nature trying to reach, unsuccessfully, energy equilibrium is an system that is dynamic, chaotic, and constantly changing (ex. earth rotates).
If the warming was global there would have been records set in central Washington State.
Didn’t happen. See the “
climate” weather plots here: Climate Plot (weather.gov)Climates may change ever so slowly. Repeat slowly. Weather changes frequently. Who doesn’t know this?
Only in climate science can the world be getting warmer while everybody’s backyards (where it really matters) are getting cooler.
Yeah, a global average temperature has no meaning on the regional level.
California had a high pressure system hovering over it, and when that happens, the temperatures climb and the temperatures get hotter, the longer the high pressure system sits on top of them. And when the high pressure system moves it takes the heat with it.
There is no correlation between CO2 levels and how a high pressure system behaves. Attributing the behavior of a high pressure system to human-caused, CO2-derived climate change has no basis in fact.
I just heard a weather forecaster breathlessly say that one city in Texas just hit its highest temperature yesterday. It’s the same situation in Texas that it was in California a few days ago, the high pressure system over California has now moved eastward and is over Texas and is causing high temperatures as a result. It happens every year under every high pressure system.
There is no established connection between the behavior of high pressure systems and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Btw, that high pressure system is heading my way and we are expecting temperatures up around 100F for a few days, although that’s not even close to record heat around here. Try 118 to 120F.
It will warm up for a few days but the temperatures are on the downtrend now as fall gets closer. All in all, not a bad summer around here. Not too hot, and good, timely rains. About the time the grass around here was starting to brown, a few weeks ago, and then we got over seven inches of rain in a matter of about three days! Everything has turned back to green now.
It’s been a heck of a lot worse around here in the past during the summer. Our records were set way back when.
No records west of the cascades either.
“Looking like?” If it walks like a duck…
I am absolutely certain that Mother Nature and Her random weather patterns have absolutely no awareness or regard of human beings’ search and hunt for patterns of any kind or of any length to give them clues as to what happens next. Randomness has forever baffled humanity and will continue to do so leading to precisely the huge and costly mistakes that solar and wind believers require in payment for their inferior products.
We should all be more careful about where our money goes because Heaven has a great betting office in the sky filled with the sleeping and dreaming spirits of life’s many victims who thought their punt was the most worthy yet.
Mother Nature hasn’t time to be amused about human failings and has seen all this stupidity many, many, many times before. She’ll drop us big-big hints but do we see them, no of course we do not lost as we are in our silly conceits.
It is precisely due to randomness that humans created statistics. That math is the only means we have to wrap our brains around randomness.
Yep, and guess what the warmest 30-years on record were?
You mean the current El Nino event, NOT caused by humans.
Or do you mean the bulk of the Holocene that was at least three or more C warmer than now.
And we’re lucky to live in such warm times!
A “record” that starts during The Little Ice Age, the coldest period “on record” during modern human civilization and a period of MISERY AND SUFFERING for humanity.
So let’s give it the correct context; the BEST 30 years on record. A warmer climate is BETTER, not worse.
The much warmer, and warmest, period during the current epoch, the Holocene, was called The Holocene Climate OPTIMUM for a reason.
And ZERO empirical evidence that atmospheric CO2 is the cause of it.
But if human activities had anything to do with it, humans should be dislocating their shoulders patting themselves on the back about that, not flogging themselves as if they have created a “problem.”
Your own hero, Arrhenius, put it best, when he said that IF humans could manage to do it (warm the climate by adding CO2 to the atmosphere), that we would IMPROVE the climate.
Thereby recognizing two key points: 1., that the notion that the climate might be warmed by adding CO2 to the atmosphere was HYPOTHETICAL (“IF”); and 2., that WARMER IS BETTER – NOT something to “worry” about.
It was the hottest July in Wokeachusetts in my 74 years, in my opinion, without having looked at any records. If not, it must have been close. Uncomfortable for humans, but the ecosystem loves it. It’s greener now that usual for summer- because of all the rain. So, it’s more subtropical. My trees, shrubs, gardens, flower beds and lawns have never looked so happy.
You must have gotten our heat. Purely anecdotal but here in southeast VA I think we had a relatively mild July, and August so far. It was 57° in my backyard this morning (Dang, I just fell into Mosher’s local temp. fallacy trap).
Maryland broke a 20 year record for morning temperatures, multiple times this week.
We anticipate that heat dome this weekend. A 40 degree change in a matter of hours.
We will weather this heat wave just fine.
Just wait until Indian Summer hits this fall (oops, probably not politically correct to say that any more).
The name of the newspaper says it all.
Might as well call it The Press Propaganda.
Here in Maryland we broke a 20 year record for lowest morning temperatures with a string of record breaking days. 20 years ago it was only 1 day.
Global warming at its finest! /s
Has anyone else noticed the complete absence of John Effing Kerry and AlGore from the DNC (Democrat nondemocratic coronation) of Cumala Harris?
Perhaps Barry Soetoro was right in 2008:
“this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …”~~Barack Obama upon winning the Democratic nomination for presidency conveys his thinking of what that means ….for the world, Tuesday, JUNE 03, 2008”