WolfStock1

Thanks guys!   Both of those are great.

17 hours ago, bdgwx said:

 

I want to touch the concept of consensus for a moment. Consensus in science works a bit different than what you may be thinking. It's not a majority opinion of people. Instead it is the position most likely to be true based on the aggregation of multiple lines of evidence. An example that might resonate best with the audience here is weather forecasting. Model ensembling (like intensity and track forecasts of tropical cyclones with IVCN and TVCN) incorporate multiple lines of evidence. They are often referred to as consensus forecasts. It has nothing to do with people's opinions or even people at all. And as long as there are 2 or more lines of evidence then a consensus exists. It turns out that consensus forecasts have superior skill vs utilizing only one line of evidence. It doesn't matter if a majority of people accept it or not. In reality you do find that majority opinion tends to rally around the scientific consensus at least eventually. It is important to mention the concept of consilience as well since "consensus" and "consilience" are sometimes used interchangeably though they are subtly different. But that's a topic for another time. My point is that when many of use the word "consensus" to describe our understanding of climate change we aren't necessarily invoking the opinions of people, but instead the consilience of evidence.

You're missing the point and whole picture here though.   The scope of the original point wasn't actually about consensus on science.   Allow me to re-quote what I was addressing:

"The scientific consensus is that the long list of CO2/warming debits far outweigh a couple of benefits. "

That's a misleading statement.   Note that it's NOT specifically addressing the *science* of CO2/warming, but rather it's addressing the *whole* of pros vs cons - generally this is going to refer more to the societal pros and cons (economic, social, and political) than it is to the scientific.   

One could have complete 100% consensus (if one found some way to reasonably measure it) on the science of AGW (if that were possible), but still not have any consensus on the other aspects, vis a vis the policy prescriptions.   And of course the debits vs benefits very much includes the non-scientific aspects.

Stated in the form of a question:  Is it scientific consensus that mankind, as a whole, would have been better off - through all of time, both historic and future - if we never emitted any CO2?    I have see no such claim made by anyone, let alone any documentation of "consensus" of such a claim.   If such a thing exists - please show the measurements, given that this is a scientific thing.

19 hours ago, chubbs said:

 

The scientific consensus is that the long list of CO2/warming debits far outweigh a couple of benefits. 

 

Sorry but the notion that *any* person or organization could have enough information to make such a judgment - let alone there be "consensus" on it, is laughable.   This kind of judgment requires essentially omniscience - a full and complete view of the long lists of benefits and drawbacks, with appropriate weighting, and timescales, applied to each.   This is some that people and organizations - even collectively - don't have.   Let alone on an individual basis, such as what would be required for "consensus".

In case you're wondering why there's so much pushback - this is why.   People don't like baseless statements like this.

1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

 

Given that the greater Kyoto area has a population of 3.6 million people (with I'm sure a similar but upward-sloping curve), and is thus subject to UHI effect - I'd say yeah you could adjust that.

Not saying UHI accounts for that - just saying that it can account for some portion of it.

I'll reiterate what I have often before - IMO the only fully valid datasets with regards to MMGW are ones from truly remote areas.  Sea ice, ocean temps, and fully-rural sensors - thumbs up.  City-based or even suburban sensor data - not so much.

On 3/31/2026 at 7:58 PM, GaWx said:

 From outspoken pro met. Chris Martz fwiw:

 Any comments?

That's broad temperatures over a long timeframe and a large area - i.e. climate.   This thread is about the recent weather in one city, not general climate.

Don't forget - Artemis II launches this evening!   First time mankind has been beyond Earth's orbit since 1974.

Where to watch:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-to-watch-artemis-ii-launch/

(in addition to NASA channel of course)

Hope you all don't me me starting a thread on this.  As a layman weather enthusiast, and a "visual person", one of my go-to things for getting a good feel for the weather coming was a "radar forecast" loop that was created from the NAM, and posted here:

http://hp5-dev.wright-weather.com/nam-conus-radar-loop_1hour.gif

As of February it stopped being updated though - the last one was Feb 24th.   That website doesn't even exist as a site anymore - my guess is the creation and posting of that gif had been automated many years ago and it just wasn't being maintained, and something along the chain of automation was taken offline or broke on that day.

Anyone know if such a thing is created and posted anywhere?

(I'm sure the pros on here view that as an amateurish thing, but it actually seemed to be fairly accurate from what I could tell; certainly more useful than not having anything, and more useful to me at least than static maps)

45 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

The SST chart comes from here: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2

Thanks.

On 3/25/2026 at 7:14 AM, chubbs said:

Daily oisst has moved into record territory, continuing to track 2023; but 0.1 - 0.2C warmer. It is likely that SST will continue to set daily records until the developing nino fades sometime in 2027.

A general request for everyone.   Whenever you post a chart - can you post a link to the source?

(I get into discussions with others and often want to point them to the data; or in some case I want to look at subsets / variations of the data - e.g. this case it's not clear which year is the record year that we're contending with.)

Thanks.

So a big *wow* at that super-strike the other night.   Talking with a Leesburg FD person in church this morning - they got a bunch of calls from people reporting "a big explosion".   And this is 15 miles from where the strike happened.  I can't image how loud it must have been in Brunswick.   Anyone happen to have any direct reports or pictures of where it struck?

10 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

 

50 states x 12 months = 600 records for "highest temperature for state X during month Y".

To be honest - breaking one of those every now and then seems like not so much of a big deal, and would be expected regardless of whether the planet is warming or not.

Point being - perhaps showing trendlines of more broad data would be a lot more meaningful and poignant that touting a given broken single-state record for a given month.   As it is these posts with their desert graphics, and the obvious troll phrasing, seem very... tabloidish (or perhaps clickbait-ish being the modern equivalent), especially on a forum that thrives on deep data analysis.

22 minutes ago, chubbs said:

No the big difference in my EV chart and yours, is the US vs global. The final numbers aren't in yet, but global EV sales grew by roughly 20% last year, held down by slowing sales in the US. The US is a laggard in both EVs and solar with costs higher than the rest of the world due to tariffs and other factors. Expect the global EV ramp to continue in 2026 spurred by the current oil crisis.

https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/international-issues/ev-sales-grew-20-globally-in-2025/

That's fine, except the rest of the world is generally in a different situation than the US.   And the switch to renewables has been painful in many places.   Germany has been the poster child, but their electricity prices have been skyrocketing, and their economy is struggling as a result.    But even with that - most of their energy use is still fossil - well over 70%:

So again - what is the scale of those charts you posted?   It's not there, for a reason.   All they show is "up", but they don't show how *much* up, relative to actual fossil usage.

China has indeed been going full-bore to renewables, but they're still mostly fossil:

They're at about 10% wind and solar.   Again - low-hanging fruit; not baseline power.   And they generally have zero respect for the environment; doing big projects that just aren't feasible in the US.

With regards to EV sales - apples to oranges situation-wise.   They're still heavily subsidized in most places.   If they're a slam-dunk - then why are they so heavily subsidized?

China's EV sales have been doing great - and that's great - but Chinese workers are paid about 1/3 the salary of the US; they can afford to do everything cheaper.  Low hanging fruit, as they try to catch up with the developed work economy-wise.   If they had our level of prosperity they would not be able to do this.   China is also building tons of new coal power plants BTW, along with their renewables growth.    

Look - I'm not trying to argue that renewable energy isn't a good thing, and that it's use is not growing.   I'm just saying that the over/under on benefits vs costs are generally way overblown and propagandized; that the reality is that it's harder than people such as yourself think it is, in particular when it's applied on a universal scale of all energy.

14 hours ago, chubbs said:

Most of the misleading information I see comes from fossil fuel and utility incumbents. For instance, per top link below, the "expense" of additional baseline power to backstop renewables is a fossil fuel fallacy. Renewables are becoming cheaper. Not everywhere and in every application; but, the long term trend is clear. In the future fossil fuels will be less competitive than they are today. Its not only renewables. A number of key energy technologies are on long-term improvement curves: batteries, EV, heat pumps etc. They work together to make energy generation, storage, transmission and use cheaper and more efficient. Meanwhile fossil fuel use is a mature technology; that uses a diminishing resource; and, that carries geopolitical and climate risk that isn't baked into the price. 

https://www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/renewables-allow-us-to-pay-less-not

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

https://www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/what-is-electrotech-and-what-will

Except that data is old.   And there's no scale.  And it's obviously cumulative, not showing actual new deployments over time.   In short - it's fluff propaganda, not reflecting reality.

E.g. EV sales are now on the decline - e.g. see CA and NY who have detailed trackers on sales, due to their mandate (which will clearly not be met at this point)

As I've maintained - much of renewable energy has been "low hanging fruit" so far, in particular in the U.S.   Specifically - nearly all of our wind-based electricity and our solar-based electricity in the US is generated in places that have... lots of wind and lots of sun.   But - not coincidentally - that tends to be places where there aren't as many people living.  The fraction of renewable generation and use that happens in states that don't get as much sun is much smaller.   The problem is that the highest population concentrations in the US live in those areas - in particular the NE population corridor.

On 3/14/2026 at 6:29 AM, chubbs said:

... renewables are cheaper ....

Making a blanket statement like that shows how how much you've been influenced by the propaganda machine, and generally ill-informed.   In general no - renewables are not cheaper in most circumstances, when all factors are considered (inclusion of additional baseline power sources for when the wind and sun don't cooperate, additional transmission infrastructure, higher land use, etc.).   They can be cheaper only in specific circumstances when the stars align; they are not cheaper in a broad-use infrastructure sense.  

If they were cheaper, then power companies wouldn't need the much-higher-level of subsidies to incentivize their use.

5 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

I mean, you made the point for me here. If we had hedged off w/nuclear (on a scientific, rational basis) we'd be in a much better spot today. But fear won and so did the campaign to offload responsibility onto the individual (e.g. "carbon footprint", "carbon offset" nonsense) and away from capital interests. Label the individual as the "junkie" (Purdue Pharma style, just nicer words) while perpetrating fraud. Sell the fix as cheap and easy and ultimately again, as up to the individual. Ignore the obvious ideological holes. And by god, never ever talk honestly about the tail risk. It was and continues to be a systemic, collective action and thermodynamic problem.

Presuming that you're talking about nuclear - the problem is that there has always been *too much* talk about the tail risk; i.e. blowing out of proportion.

13 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

RE will continue to get more expensive on a PPA basis so long as we continue to ignore the issues plaguing transmission, distribution and direct competition between industrial scale AI/DC buildout and the insane lack of investment in upstream base materials supply (like spinning up mining and refining). I maintain that negative prices on the spot market are a sign of market failure, not something that should be cheered.

These prices certainly are not going to get better this year: 

 

The correct take is that *all energy* will continue to get more expensive in the world we've built for ourselves now. (Disclosure that I am long ICLN -- because yes, most of these companies will try and expand their margins off the backs of the ratepayer and externalizing the grid cost -- my PNL tells me if I'm right or not, so far, so good.)

Interesting.   Got a link for that?   I didn't realize wind and solar prices had been going up like that.   You hear about prices going down, though generally it doesn't include the transmission aspect; which is generally much higher because wind and solar are prevalent in areas where people that use the energy *aren't* as prevalent.   

As such I've maintained that we're about done picking the solar and wind "low hanging fruit"; this chart appears to show evidence of that.

3 hours ago, chubbs said:

Not sure what "physics" you are referring to. Sure fossil fuels easily beat all comers for a long time; but, the day of clear advantage has passed, and fossil fuels continue to slip relative to competition. The combustion of fossil fuels is: inefficient, technically mature, and uses a diminishing natural resource. Meanwhile renewable energy and batteries continue on steady cost improvement curves. 

The current crisis only makes fossil fuels more costly and highlights the geopolitical risk. It isn't easy to replace fossil infrastructure; but, long-term costs are lower without the disruption risk. This will become more apparent as some countries move away from fossil fuels and flourish. Even the US with pro-fossil and anti-renewable policies isn't ramping fossil fuel use, only slowing the transition away. Linked a blog article that discusses India. 

Climate change is only the cherry on the non-fossil cake. 

https://www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/indias-electrotech-fast-track

 

The physics I was referring to is simply energy density.  Fossil simply has much, much higher energy density than solar, wind, or hydro.   (though a lot less than uranium)

As an example of that - the county that I live in has two interestingly-comparable new power plants:

1.  A natural gas plant that produces 780 MW of power, on 100 acres of land

2.  A solar farm (being built) that will produce 100 MW of power (when the sun peaks), on 800 acres of land

When accounting for base load levels - the solar farm will produce roughly 1/250th the amount as the natural gas plant, on a per-acre basis.

That's what I mean.

(Obviously there's more to it than just acreage-used; that's one example facet)

With regards to India - I don't see any "fast track" in that chart you posted.   It looks like they're behind to me.

They are, however, rapidly catching up in regards to how much CO2 they are emitting, at least compared with the US:

9 hours ago, csnavywx said:

We win when we hedge the risk properly. The phenomenon you're describing is literally us discarding that tendency to hedge out the window, right as volatility ramps. Yeah, policy prescription has sucked to this point and the shilling about the "low cost of transition" has turned out to be damaging and wrong (if you have doubts, look at PPA prices and virtually every base metal in the past couple of years) It was always going to be costly (a significant % of GDP). The balking at the cost is understandable and the damage costs *to this point* have been mostly a "freebie" since it's a) mostly indirect, b) have not pushed us outside historical ranges except at/very near the equator, c) non-linear change tends to be slow at first, and d) tech/econ growth rate has been enough to offset. Problem is, if you wait until forward economic growth is meaningfully impacted, much slowing towards zero, then you are already too late.

Hedging 20 years ago would've been much cheaper.

Hedging now is fairly expensive.

Hedging 20 years from now will be extraordinarily expensive.

You hedge when it's cheap, not when you have to. But until we do hedge this risk properly and start really taking it seriously, the doomers will be right. You are literally short selling a temp graph that is accelerating up.

It was *never* going to be anywhere close to "cheap" to hedge, at any point.   You're fighting not only physics, but politics and human nature.   It would require not only taking a huge hit to our prosperity - but convincing all the other countries in the world to take that same hit.  Good luck with that.  I don't think you understand just *how* much of our prosperity is based on the foundation of fossil fuel use.   It's literally been the basis for the industrial revolution.   The big inflection point was 150 years ago - not 20 years ago.   But if we somehow had managed to avoid that inflection point - we wouldn't have anything close to the prosperity we do today.

We perhaps had a smidgen of a chance decades ago, with the advent of nuclear power.   But then the clueless anti-nuke lobby, led by the likes of Ralph Nader, ensured that wasn't going to happen*.    Even still that would have only gotten us so far; even with all-nuclear electricity we still would have other fossil fuel uses in transportation and industry to deal with.

(*Edit: In his defense - he didn't know about MMGW back then.   He might have a difference stance today if so.   Nevertheless - he and others like him were responsible for the extreme over-reactive risk aversion that killed nuclear.)

SW of Leesburg:

Big drop yesterday was storm line.   Now down to 32.7 and snowing hard.

On 3/8/2026 at 6:04 PM, Typhoon Tip said:

+That bold statement of yours is the very reason the world should be very afraid.   

It still does not resonate enough with people that enormity of raising an entire planetary system, air, sea and air-sea coupled, unilaterally, by a whole degree C, over span of time that is virtually instant in geological scales - but frankly, disturbingly fast even for the single life span of a human being. 

If that can happen without warning and those zero extrapolated expectation, ... good luck

Sorry but the FUD approach is just getting tiresome.   I think you vastly underestimate both the adaptability of humans and the durability of planet Earth.

People hear what Chicken Littles have been saying for decades - and then they look at the *actual* impacts that are happening - and the two just don't match.   E.g. Weather-related deaths continue to decline, mass die-offs of species like polar bears isn't happening, coastal areas aren't becoming inhabitable due to being underwater, the polar regions still have year-round ice, etc.

As a result the general population seems to be souring on the climate change hysteria, realizing that we aren't in fact in an existential crisis, with many even questioning the veracity of the predictions wholesale.   Maybe it would behoove to be more pragmatic in the approach - something other than "the world should be very afraid" stance.

IMO trying to use/apply a single decade's worth of data is a fool's errand.   There's too much background noise there in the ENSO and solar cycles.   IMO anything meaningful with regards to changes in the rate of increase would need to be over at least a 20-year period, or even 30.

That said "meaningful" here I equate with "strong evidence".   10-year data isn't totally meaningless - it's worth at least eyebrow-furrowing when it indicates something unusual.  I just wouldn't use it to make a statement to the effect of "this shows that the rate of warming is increasing".

I believe UHI effect, while a thing, is overblown as well.   My point though is - deniers like to point to UHI as tainting the data and general claims of trends, so in order to remove all doubt it would be good to have a data set (more than a single station, but rather hundreds of stations) that are truly remote.   It appears the USCRN is a mix of some remote and some not-so-remote sites.    Doing a filter of the USCRN data and weeding out the not-so-remote sites and presenting an average would seem like the thing to do.

The Lake Erie thing actually brings something else to mind.  Has anyone done studies on how much water warming (mainly rivers and lakes) is due to general industrialization vs greenhouse effect?    It seems like it could be quite significant actually.    I mention this because I was looking into water usage recently (context was discussion on data centers) and found that actually one of the biggest water consumers in the US is power plants - used for cooling.   There's more water used for cooling power plants than there is for irrigation, believe it or not.  Much of this is evaporative but much ends up back in rivers and lakes, raising their temperature.   Much is used for other industrial things as well, which certainly raises the temperature some.   

11 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 

1) Cumberland is certainly rural: https://www.nps.gov/cuis/planyourvisit/staffordbeach.htm

2)-3) Ichauway appears quite rural, too:

https://www.jonesctr.org/about-us/

4) Colham Ferry appears to be a burb of Watkinsville, a town with only ~3K:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watkinsville,_Georgia#:~:text=Watkinsville is the largest city,County%2C Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area.

 ————

 What do you think of these 4 as far as not having UHI to worry about?

Yes unlike many of the others Georgia appears to have done a good job picking truly remote sites.  Ideally you'd like to see all the sites be like that, since it's usually an average of all sites that's shown (e.g. in the X post).

I haven't looked for it, but was just noticing that a lot of the references in this thread to records / high trends are in areas that may be subject to UHI effect.   Would be nice to see some for remote sites instead, since IMO that's much more meaningful.

2 hours ago, GaWx said:

Blairsville, GA

Here are the Georgia sites: