Thursday, May 24, 2012

Rising C's


How much more news like this before the permanent party of full-time factlessness will find it too much even for them to deny?

Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday.

The announcement came as NOAA reported that the U.S. also just experienced its third-warmest April on record.

“These temperatures, when added with the first quarter and previous 11 months, calculate to the warmest year-to-date and 12-month periods since recordkeeping began in 1895,” the agency reported.

NOAA said that for the period from May 2011 to April 2012, the nationally averaged temperature was 55.7 degrees, 2.8 degrees higher than the 20th century average. The national average temperature for April was 55 degrees, 3.6 degrees above average.

You'd think there'd be an end-point, a line beyond which it'd be impossible to follow, even when a major political party exclusively counts on and spreads denialism and lies; that eventually there'd be a collective up-wising. And I'm not just talking about climate-change denial: It's everything they say.

But why stop, when it's working so well? When they're cruising comfortably, counting on a carefully created and callously curried crop of clueless contradictors, clearly not capable of calculating the chaos that's coming countrywide; clashing continuously with common sense, countering cogency with calumny. Conservatives? Contrarily. The converse.


9 comments:

  1. OMFG!!! 55.7 Degrees!!!!!!!!!!!
    Lets see, F= 9/5 C + 32...
    Hey Wait a Minute.............
    You mean the average was 55.7 FAHRENHEIT??
    Thats like, umm Comfortable.
    OK, maybe even a little chilly for my Sunbelt taste.
    Seriously, Sid, after the miserably soul-draining rain soaked soggy spring you've had, you're(happy?)still pushing that global warming farce?
    And if I can remember the same thing being said about the "New Ice Age" in the early 70's I know you do to..
    My Prediction, next month, June, in Georgia, it's gonna be hot.
    In December, it'll be cold.
    In October, it'll be in between.
    Where you live, you'll be wet.

    Frank

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's so bizarre to me, Frank, that a person who understands science (well, I'm assuming you do; but then, it's not as if you're a real doctor) accepts so much that it's produced and so easily rejects other stuff selectively.

    As I've said more than a few times, the predictions of the ice age in the 70s just emphasize how much things have changed in the last 40 years, as anthropogenic carbon increases exponentially in the atmosphere, in amounts no one foresaw. In the 70s, it was enormously less and scientists hadn't really tumbled to the problem.

    Back then, people thought DDT was going to save the world. Things change. People learn stuff. Well, some people do. They address the new info and deal with it. Others put their heads up their asses and figure since it's dark in there, it's time to go to bed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The studies in the 70's had to do with increasing airborne particulates. Much touted in the press, but not really much extant in the actual scientific literature. If particulates hadn't stopped increasing, I suppose that might have indeed led to cooler temperatures than would have otherwise occurred, but it would also have made breathing much more problematic as well.

    Ask any smoke jumper how the job has changed over the past 20 years or so, and you'll get a taste of the reality and consequences of climate change.

    Cognitive dissonance will make guys like Frank cling to four decades old copies of Time and Newsweek as proof that the world isn't really on fire around them. Face it, doc, as a group, the human race is too stupid to save itself.

    Painless

    ReplyDelete
  4. What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s?

    "1970s ice age predictions were predominantly media-based. The majority of peer-reviewed research at the time predicted warming due to increasing CO2."

    Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No

    Contains links to just about everything that was said and written back then about an "imminent" Ice Age.

    ReplyDelete
  5. not a "Real" doctor??
    Oh, sharper than a Sea Horses Tongue,
    Or something, I'm even worse with proverbs than I am with contractions.
    Thats how the Lawyers work, Sid, they get one specialty against another, before you know it, it's Beirut in the OR...
    Lets save our enmity for those REAL Charlatans, PhDs, Chiropractors, Psychiatrists...
    Ahh that wasn't quite fair.
    My Chiropractor's great...
    I don't care if there aren't any double blinded studies, when she walks on my back with those Stilletoes, my back feels better...

    Frank

    ReplyDelete
  6. OMB, Pieter. You mean to say George Will has been lying to us?

    ReplyDelete
  7. OK, not that I'm accepting your premise that man-made global warming is any more real than Big Foot.(IT'S A GUY IN A MONKEY SUIT!!!)
    I will admit that with there being some 4 billion more Peoples around in 2012 compared to 1972, and as the average(non AlGore sized) Homonid exhales some 15liters of CO2/hr x 168 hrs/week/52weeks/year...
    Thats alot more CO2 even if everybody just walked everywhere, like they do in those Green-Eco-paradises of Haiti and Bangladesh..
    So shouldn't it be like 150 gazillion degrees, instead of 55.7??

    Frank

    ReplyDelete
  8. Frank,

    Then please do your part and cease exhaling.

    And if you can't manage that, please stop typing.

    And if you can't manage that, type "carbon sequestration" into the Google.

    On second thought, have someone show you how to cut and paste. Spelling does not seem to be your strong suit.

    Painless

    ReplyDelete
  9. Forgive the OT, but speaking of NOAA--you know how the US Public Health Service has a uniformed branch with military-type rank and all that? Turns out NOAA does too. Who knew?

    Molly, NYC

    ReplyDelete

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