From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass
Some records are more significant than others.
And some records are being used to hype normal temperature variability in unfortunate ways.
Consider yesterday (Sunday). SeaTac Airport beat its daily record (77F0 for that specific date, reaching 81°F.
The Seattle Times puts the 81°F day on the FRONT PAGE! Must be a slow news day.
The Seattle Times story was heavy on hype, with several unfounded statements (see below).
Temperatures scorched past their record high.
Foreshadowing the inevitable summer of drought. (This is total nonsense, by the way).
Should you worry about the RECORD high temperature yesterday? Read on.
Why Monday’s record did not mean much.
Monday’s record high was a daily record.
Daily records are frequently broken because there are so many opportunities to do so (365 chances each year!). Breaking an annual record (the warmest day of the year) is much more significant.
Breaking the daily high-temperature record yesterday was particularly lame.
Why? Because the previous high temperature on that date (77F) was particularly low.
You can see this by looking at the plot (at SeaTac) of observed temperatures (blue lines) and record highs (red shading). The previous record high temperature on that day (77F) was anomalously COLD. The coldest daily high for ANY DAY IN MAY. Even the end of April had warmer record highs.
By the luck of the draw, May 3 never got above 77°F, and thus this was a record ready to be broken. Low-hanging meteorological fruit.
The 81F record is still a low record high in May at SeaTac, cooler than ALL the other record highs for the month.
Breaking this wimply record has little meaning and does not foretell an inevitable summer drought as stated by the Seattle Times reporter (Conrad Swanson).
The latest forecasts are emphatic that there will be a cool down, with light precipitation returning.
The latest European Center Forecast has SeaTac temperatures dropping to normal (highs in the 60s).
Showers will return on Friday and Saturday (see below).
The kind of hype and exaggeration of heat and drought found in the Seattle Times and several amateur YouTube channels is unfortunate.
People are being misinformed and made to worry without cause. Hyping climate change and exaggerating normal climate variability may get more clicks and revenue, but the costs of such misinformation are substantial.
Numbskull reporters and editors of two-bit mass media outlets are low hanging fruit and share the mass delusion from Al Gore and the neurodiverse teenage girl.
The main architects must be outed and disgraced.
The main architects aren’t even at the Seattle Times, or any media outlet. They’re overseas.
In Ellensburg {KELN}, 85 miles east of SeaTac, the records for the 3rd (Sun.) and 4th (Mon.) are 86 & 83. Sunday the observed was 83°. Monday the record was passed with an 85°. Monday was a glancing 83°, but 82° & 81° filled the space from 2PM to 6:30; multiple readings.
It’s time to panic, jump up and down, spin about, fall down. 🙂
It must be an early cherry season in Seattle.
The pickers are out already.
Good work as usual, Cliff.
“People are being misinformed and made to worry without cause.”
Cliff, The Cause is all the cause they need.
Conrad Swanson CV watch: it is a little unclear, but he appears to a have a degree in journalism and economics, from Iowa University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if that means he is trained to write “content”, or to understand things.
If he has a degree in “economics” then he should be able to see the grift in the proposed “solutions” to the imaginary “crisis.”
Then again AOC has a degree in economics and believes money can simply be printed without consequences.
Perhaps the issue is that the “degrees” being issued these days are as valuable as toilet paper. AFTER it has been used.
From the article: “The kind of hype and exaggeration of heat and drought found in the Seattle Times and several amateur YouTube channels is unfortunate.
People are being misinformed and made to worry without cause.”
I would say it is more than unfortunate, it is a deliberate lie, meant to frighten people into action.
These kinds of lies really do adversely effect the easily influenced.
Looking at the graph, it shows no record temperatures today, they are all in the past. It’s cooler now.
This Climate Reporter is a Liar! Like most of them.
Lies, damned lies and statistics!
You mean, no you can’t mean, you mean there is no global average temperature? 😉
When I want a quick guide to whether or not a current local temperature is unusual, I just go to a paper publication in my magazine rack entitled “Temperature and Precipitation Probabilities in Wyoming.” Admittedly the data is 1931 to 1960, but the world was doing fine in that 30-year interval and we survived to the present, and more to the point it was a time unpolluted by excessive CO2.
The “unusual warmth” during March, days of 58F highs, the publication shows as having a probability of achieving or exceeding as 30%. Since there are 31 days in March what this probability tells us is that the expection is each March would have 9 days 58F or warmer. Hardly unexpected.
Then, last night we dropped to 19F. The probability of reaching that temperature or lower in May is around 1%.
The interesting thing involving these observations is that people have become so primed to notice warmth, and to freak out over it, that they will speak widely (and “knowingly”) about this not so unusual warmth, but the truly unusual cold slips right by them. It’s sort of pathetic.
Today is also “unpolluted by excessive CO2,” since:
I put what I did in quotes.That is a signal that I am merely saying what others may believe, but I don’t share in those beliefs.
The State of Washington is under a legislated mandate from the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) to achieve these carbon emission reduction goals:
By 2020, reduction to 90,500,000 metric tons (1990 levels)
By 2030, reduction to 50,000,000 metric tons (45 percent below 1990 levels)
By 2040, reduction to 27,000,000 metric tons (70 percent below 1990 levels)
By 2050, reduction to 5,000,000 metric tons (95 percent below 1990 levels)
These targets are unambiguous mandates codified into law. They are not in any way aspirational.
The Alleged Adverse Impacts are also Codified into Law:
One feature of the CCA is that the alleged adverse impacts of climate change on the state are written directly into the law; i.e., that the state is now experiencing devastating wildfires, drought, lack of snowpack, increases in ocean acidification, plus a long litany of other alleged adverse effects.
Good luck challenging the science behind the Climate Commitment Act in a court of law. Because the law directly states that the adverse effects are happening; then as far as the our legislature is concerned, these impacts truly are occurring. A state court in Washington is highly unlikely to overturn the legislation in response to a science-based lawsuit.
Power Generation Carbon Intensity:
The state also has a target to reduce the carbon intensity of electric generation from 85 grams per kilowatt-hour as of 2020 to just 6.5 grams per kilowatt-hour by 2030.
On paper, the near-term reduction in carbon emissions from power generation is to be accomplished by building huge windfarms in Montana and Wyoming, plus a transmission corridor across Idaho to bring the power into our state.
No Progress since 2020:
Washington has been relying on a Cap and Invest scheme, which is essentially a tax on carbon, to achieve the mandated reduction targets. However, since 2020, very little reduction in our carbon emissions has actually been achieved, leaving a huge gap to be filled between 2026 and 2030.
The only possible means of achieving the mandated reductions by 2030 is through an aggressive state program of direct carbon fuel rationing. In the year 2030, an energy consumer in Washington State would get only so much gasoline, so much diesel, and so much natural gas.
Forced Compliance with the Law:
A lawsuit was filed against the State of New York in 2025 which is intended to force that state to comply with its own legislated mandate to greatly reduce its carbon emissions. The judge in the case sided with the litigants and ordered the state government to comply. The State of New York then appealed, and so the question of New York’s compliance remains up in the air. For now.
What would be fun and exciting to see would be to witness a lawsuit being filed in our own state courts to force the State of Washington to comply with its own mandated reduction targets. The CCA law says what its says. Its mandates are clearly stated and leave no room for interpretation.
Let’s see what the west-siders who passed the CCA think when the State of Washington forces the closure by 2030 of some good portion of the state’s 4,000 MW of gas-fired power generation capacity, most of it located west of the Cascades.
Or to force all those cars and trucks driving hither and yon around the Puget Sound region to get by on only so much gasoline and diesel every day.
I lived in Washington State for 8 years or so beginning in the 1990s. It wasn’t such a crazy place then. I have theories about what happened — To wit: Californians found it inexpensive and moved there en masse. However, beyond the craziness it looks like people there no longer understand numbers. Five million tons? How can they think this?