WolfStock1

Bunk. The world has solved lots of problems, without having solved all of them. The notion that if you can't solve one problem then you can't solve any problem is ludicrous.

Your level of understanding of worldwide systems, and your worldview, is made pretty clear from that last sentence. The rest just naturally follows, and isn't even worth addressing. We'll just leave it at that.

Boy you hit about all the MMGW scapegoat talking points there, didn't you? You forgot about rape though. (Yes, it's a thing) I'll just hit one of the scaries for now - crop failures - the rest can be inferred. The sky-is-falling narrative tends to fall apart when you look at the actual data, and not individual anecdotes. (ironically - much like looking at a weather event and claiming that it's an indicator of climate trends)

Well there's also the fact that it's lot harder to survive in extreme cold than it is in extreme heat, which is why so many more people die each year from cold weather. Human comfort / survivability is not one of the negative effects of MMGW. Sea level rise and increase in storms, yes. But not the temperature itself. IMO areas becoming "difficult to survive in" is a non-issue for MMGW. Any slight increase in storm activity is just noise in the overall background of improved infrastructure and weather prediction. A *lot* fewer people die these days from hurricanes and floods than they did in years past. (Sea level rise of course is a non-issue w/regards to survivability; the creep is way slower than natural human birth/death cycles. I always have to laugh when I hear of literal human "danger" proposed as being due to sea level rise.)

Are you sure? Why is it that the Wikipedia page on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outgoing_longwave_radiation doesn't discuss ENSO? The chart that's there doesn't seem to follow ENSO cycles: Keep in mind we're not talking about radiation *into* the atmosphere here (what I think is most affected by ENSO), we're talking about radiation from all earth elements (including the atmosphere) out into space (outgoing longwave radiation). Though I haven't attempted any kind of mathematical correlation - I thought ENSO cycles were generally much longer duration than what's in that chart.

So here's a question. Given that "the planet" is generally a self-contained system with very little (essentially no) variance in externalities with regards to energy inputs (mainly solar irradiance - generally near-constant) and output (terrestrial radiation - generally near-constant) - shouldn't the warming of the planet just be essentially a straight (or curved) line with an always-upwards slope, such that a new record should be set *every* year? Or is it the case that it's really just these records are just really just referring to "the places we are measuring" and not "the planet" as a whole? Yes - question is somewhat rhetorical, but is intended to trigger some thought. If one presumes that the planet as a whole is warming continually, then what are the "holes" in the data? Are there significant areas of the ocean for instance that we're just not measuring, and the reason we don't see a new record every year is because of the non-existent data that would offset the data we do have? Or perhaps is it the case that we are in fact measuring the whole "surface" (including the oceans), but the surface temperature as a whole actually does go up and down based on something - e.g. subterranean effects e.g. "bubbles" in mantle convection, or perhaps solar cycles?

Never seen in person but would very much *love* to see - sprites:

What's SUM? (assuming it's an acronym) Looks like it trended down until the 1950's, and has generally been flat since then, aside from the past couple of years. Doesn't seem like it would be an indicator of climate change; if that's what you're thinking.

Wasn't there a big sleet-fest in '86 or '87? I was in Raleigh area, and I seem to recall us getting about 6" of sleet.

See that a lot here. Not an expert but pretty sure it's a radar artifact. I believe the algorithm increases the sensitivity at further distances, at certain wavelengths. Light precip or things fog or drizzle mess with that algorithm, making it look like there's a hole in the middle when there really isn't. Something like that. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Anyone know why Apple weather is so different than NWS forecasts? I don't use it but my wife does, and here's what hers shows this morning for Leesburg area for Sunday: Umm.. what? 24" of snow? Only 70% max chance of precip? Totally different than legit forecasts. Only thing I can figure is that the app doesn't have the ability to account for wintry mix / sleet, so it just does some kind of "snow equivalent" or something (?). No clue why chance of precip is only 70%.

You sure you're reading those charts right? That's not what I'm seeing. E.g. in the 1950-1995 period it looks like the average number of record highs was about 2,000 or maybe 2,200, whereas the average number of record lows was around 2,500, before they diverged starting around 1995. Not sure how you're asserting a big ratio like that at any point the 20th century, aside from *only* a few peaks in the 1930's. The key thing seems to be the divergence after 1995, with record highs increasingly outpacing record lows. That trend doesn't go back as much as you describe though.

Cripes man - not sure you really need to delve into the details of semantics with all your posts like that. From a scientific standpoint, there's no such thing as a "tie" when it comes to records. Temperatures are analog, with infinite granularity, and no two daily peaks are ever actually equal Perhaps there could be a tie from a measurement-device standpoint because no measurement device has infinite granularity - e.g. a given device may measure both 98.8 degrees and 99.2 degrees as "99" and consider it a tie. So thus how often one would expect a tie depends on the granularity of the measurement, and the units (F vs C). That's not mentioned in the OP. The main point I want to make though is - IT DOESN'T MATTER, because even in a "tie is considered another instance of a record" scenario - one would *still* expect a downward slope in the number of records over time. As you say - that's the nature of random number generation. Any new time an extreme peak is seen it means there's a lower possibility that peak (the record - be it a tie or not) will be achieved at any given point in the future, for any given sensor. As such - no I don't think the data presented could be considered "rigged". In part this is because the units and granularity of measurement aren't indicated, but also just the fact that the data trend is flat, and not downward-sloping (for daily record highs) indicates a general warming trend over the period. A rigged data set (e.g. if someone wanted to claim that warming wasn't going on) would show a downward-sloping trend.

Well - that's kind of the definition of "record" is not? The 2nd through Nth time you see a given temperature, it's no longer a record. (Presumably the left end of the data is truncated; e.g. any given station would have 365 record highs and 365 record lows in its first year; assuming non-leap-year)

Seems about right, and is consistent with a slow shift upwards in temperatures. In a no-change scenario one would expect both the number of record highs and the number of record lows to be decreasing over time. In a shifting-upwards scenario one would expect the number of record highs to be remaining about constant while the number of record lows decrease over time; those are apparent in those charts.