Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, WolfStock1 said:

 

O....K....

Sorry, but lots of really wacked out stuff here. 

I'll happily buy land near sea level from anyone who happens to own it and shares your viewpoint.   I kinda like the beach - good sunsets and waves and all that (to answer your "why" point).

I won't, however, be investing in any boreal farmland futures.

Well if you dont know science you'd consider it whacked out. 

Putin has openly stated he's preparing for Siberia to become the world's new bread basket and he's quite excited about it and if you'd look at a map of what parts of the world are warming the fastest you'd definitely agree. And you don't think Trump wants Greenland only for military reasons do you?

As far as sunsets are concerned I've lived in many parts of the world and there is nothing like the colors you see in a desert sunset bar none. As far as locations one might want to live are concerned my main interest is astronomy and for that you want to get away from the ocean, water vapor is nothing more than an air pollutant that traps other air pollutants close to the ground and creates annoying and unhealthy haze. I spent decades living by the ocean so I know. The best place to live for low air pollution and the clearest skies is up in the mountains why do you think that's where the world's greatest and largest observatories are located and where the lowest asthma rates are?

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

It's always hard to break record, but Summer 2027 has the potential to be warm, being post-El Nino (one that will break the post-1948 record by 15-20%). This has nothing do with global warming:

 

I've been saying this for a long time I'm quite excited for the next two summers, my analogs are 1966, 1983, 1999 and 2010 for quite obvious reasons.  If the el nino is as strong as the one in 1998 it may actually take two years for all that extra heat to be released so our extra hot summers goals might not be fully realized until 2028.

On top of this we are also cycling back to a drier climate like we had in the 1980s and 1990s, when we had some of our most extreme summers and longest heatwaves, something I saw coming from a few years ago. The El Nino will only be a minor speed bump in that trend no matter how historic it is.

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

In the early release of data, July 2026 has dethroned July 1936 as the hottest month on record for the United States.

With July warming about 0.51° per decade since 1980, the longstanding Dust Bowl era record was bound to fall. July 2012 narrowly fell short of the mark. July 2026 surpassed it by more than 0.10°.

I really dont rank summers by average temperatures, summers should be ranked by extreme temperatures, length of heat waves and number of heat related deaths.

With that said I offer up my own list and 1936 is definitely near the top but there are several other extreme summers right up there with it. I'll do mine in chronological order.

1896

1911

1914

1936

1944

1948

1953

1955

1966

1977

1980

1983

1988

1991

1993

1995

1999

2002

2010

2011

 

Special mention needs to be given to the 11 year cycle which often include the hottest summers of their decade (1911, 1944, 1955, 1966, 1977, 1988, 1999, 2010).

[Stormchaserchuck1]

3 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

I've been saying this for a long time I'm quite excited for the next two summers, my analogs are 1966, 1983, 1999 and 2010 for quite obvious reasons.  If the el nino is as strong as the one in 1998 it may actually take two years for all that extra heat to be released so our extra hot summers goals might not be fully realized until 2028.

On top of this we are also cycling back to a drier climate like we had in the 1980s and 1990s, when we had some of our most extreme summers and longest heatwaves, something I saw coming from a few years ago. The El Nino will only be a minor speed bump in that trend no matter how historic it is.

Year 2 has lower correlation numbers, but is still generally mild

[GaWx]

Week 31 of worldwide YTD cumulative burnt area by wildfires: 2026 is still by a good margin lowest of comparable weeks of 2012-26:


 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-area-burnt-by-wildfires-by-week?time=1..52&tab=line

[donsutherland1]

The Dust Bowl occupies an almost sacred place in the mythology of American climate-change denial.

For decades, July 1936 was treated as something more than an old weather record. It was a relic. It was a supposedly untouchable reminder that extreme heat had happened long before modern greenhouse-gas concentrations reached today’s levels. Whenever evidence of warming accumulated, the response could be summoned: What about 1936? If the climate is warming, why hasn’t that record been broken?

For ninety years, it wasn’t. Even July 2012 fell short. Then came July 2026.

NOAA reported that July 2026 averaged 76.89°F across the contiguous United States, surpassing July 1936 and becoming the hottest month in the nation’s instrumental record. The seemingly unbreakable record had fallen.

One monthly record does not prove climate change. Science does not rest on a single heat wave, drought, hurricane, or thermometer. The case for human-caused warming rests on something far larger: rising global temperatures, increasing ocean heat, retreating ice, rising seas, changing extremes, and the well-established physics of greenhouse gases.

But the fall of July 1936 matters enormously as a symbol. For years, climate-change deniers used the endurance of that record as evidence that modern warming was exaggerated or nonexistent. Now the record they had elevated into an argument no longer supports them.

And that creates a problem. If 1936 mattered when it stood unbeaten, it cannot suddenly become meaningless the moment it falls.

The initial response from parts of the denial movement has been predictable. Denial, excuses, and insinuations that NOAA’s measurements somehow are not the “real” measurements. A CFACT policy analyst, for example, appealed to supposedly superior “real measured thermometer data.”

But where is the analysis? Where is the methodology? Where is the reproducible evidence demonstrating that NOAA is wrong? Where is the paper with all that information? There is nothing. Just a hollow claim on social media. 

Without those things, “I have the real data” is not a scientific argument. It is an appeal to belief. It is a hallucination of an alternate reality that is as unreal as it is irrelevant to science.

Science works differently. Produce the data. Explain the method. Show the calculations. Allow others to test them. If the evidence survives scrutiny, scientific understanding changes. Those rules may not hold in the policy world where ideology holds enormous power and interests influence thinking. But the scientific world is a whole different place. Pursuit of truth, even if that pursuit requires discarding earlier understanding, is of paramount importance.

Ideological denial works in reverse of science. When evidence threatens the conclusion, the evidence itself becomes suspect. Beliefs, ideology, and interests must be defended, even at the cost of truth.

The above rejection of the reality that July 2026 was hotter than July 1936 recalls opponents of Galileo who resisted observations that threatened the universe they already believed in. Rather than see for themselves through Galileo's telescope, the turned down his invitation. Sometimes it is easier to distrust the telescope than to rebuild one's understanding of the cosmos. To those timid souls, maintaining error is far more comforting than accepting that one's belief was wrong. Courage allows one to revise one's thinking when the evidence suggests such change is needed. 

The NOAA has confirmed that July 2026 is now the hottest month on record in the United States. A longstanding record has not merely been surpassed. One of the denial movement’s most durable rhetorical monuments has been toppled.

Climate-change denial will not disappear because of a single record. New excuses will arise. Goalposts will be moved. But something important has changed.

For ninety years, July 1936 stood as the great American heat record. It survived generation after generation. It survived 2012. It survived decades of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Then, in July 2026, it fell.

Science has no sacred records. It has evidence. 1936 was evidence. 2026 is evidence.

The thermometer has now rendered its verdict. Pretense that it has not cannot affect reality.  Pretense can only undermine the credibility of those who choose not to accept reality.