While I will personally enjoy a cooler than average July, it’s annoying that just about the only place in the world where it’s colder than normal is the area between New York and Washington DC where the people live who make our policy decisions.
Remember that “polar vortex” that hit the U.S. in January, the one that the Obama administration linked to climate change? Well, it might be back.
A blast of chilly air is expected to hit the northern and northeastern United States next week, during what is typically the peak of summer, The Washington Post reports.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a pool of cold air from Alaska’s gulf will move to the Great Lakes region early next week and then slowly slide to the East Coast.
While the sweep of cold weather will take the edge off the summer sun, the cold snap won’t compare to what was seen in January. Temperatures should be about 10 to 30 degrees below average for the month of July.
Then again, even in Texas, where they’re experiencing a horrible drought, climate change is denied by millions. So, maybe direct experience isn’t even enough to overcome the science denial industry.
Since I’m not a brain-dead moron, I accept science and go along with it. It seems very convincing to me that man-made climate change is real and a very critical concern for all of humanity.
That said, if I had to guess why so many non-brain-dead Americans don’t worry/care/”believe in” global warming/climate change is that any and all weather “events” are now instantly categorized as just another example of global warming/climate change.
Not that a polar vortex in the winter OR the summer isn’t evidence that something odd is going on…but a part of it is that every single hurricane/tornado/warm front/cold front/drought/fire is attributed to it.
After awhile, people who’ve seen these things their entire lives are going to assume that global warming/climate change is just a bunch of libruuuuuls warning everyone that the sky is falling.
I’d just sit back and relax and learn how to grow your own food, start your own fire, hunt, and find/make clean water. You can do it on youtube for free and it’s much better than wasting time watching TV.
At this point, the PigPeopleTM know that libruuuuls hate Amurica, that they lie and cheat and steal elections, that they are attacking Christianity, and that they’re perpetuating the climate change hoax to redistribute wealth and bring about communism.
There aren’t any people left who are going to be swayed regardless of weather/climate events. I almost believe the more it is brought up, the more cognitive dissonance turns their minds off/against science.
Maybe because some of us remember freaky weather in the ’50s and the conventional wisdom that “it’s all them bombs”.
Not denying climate change. Not denying it’s man-made. Just saying that I’ve seen those graphs in Sci Am and elsewhere, not the projections, the historical graphs, and I wouldn’t bet money in the stock market on such a noisy signal. So non-scientists that aren’t sure aren’t so dumb as you think. They’re just cautious. After all, you are asking them to give up private automobiles and move back into the stinking noisy crowded cities and give up air conditioning to boot. All on a signal that isn’t distinguishable from noise without sophisticated computational analysis that only a fraction of 1% are qualified to make.
When you say you accept science,m did you verify the analysis independently yourself, or did you just blindly accept authority?
I don’t think I’m blindly accepting authority.
I’m not a climate scientist, but I’ve spent hours reading information from this site:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
I can’t fathom that humanity isn’t affecting the climate with all of the carbon and other GHGs we pump into the atmosphere, never mind the positive feedback loops that result in methane and other super GHGs like water going into the atmosphere.
My base level of arguing for clean/renewable energy is devoid of climate change. I try to make the point that we need clean/renewable energy because Coal, Oil and Gas are not infinite here on Earth and will eventually be too expensive to dig up. I also argue that we have to pollute the soil, water, and air in order to extract/refine/use fossil fuels. i.e. we’re poisoning ourselves with fossil fuels.
I don’t think that we have to argue starting with climate change when there are many reasons why we should have been moving to clean/renewable energy decades ago. Sure, throw climate change on top and say, “And…if climate change is real, this should ultimately mitigate some of it” as a bonus…rather than as a starting point.
If you’re not blindly accepting (or denying) science, why wouldn’t you take the time to come to grips with it, understand the hypotheses being tested and why the researchers have come to the conclusions that they have?
Because it’s a lot of time that I don’t have. Because I believe (yes, it’s faith) that the official position of the scientific community is most probably correct.
When one doubts scientists it should be because of outlier results. Like the recent claim to have discovered a tachyon. Sure enough on checking a rechecking, an error was found. On the other hand, I can confidently say that non-scientists claiming the the theory of relativity is a fraud are crackpots like evolution deniers. In a hundred years we will know with a certainty the physicists have in relativity whether global warming exists and is largely man-made. Of course, by then it will be too late, so I agree to err on the side of caution. My objection was to branding the general public as hopelessly stupid for denying the obvious, because it’s not obvious.
One can accuse the general public for being hopelessly stupid for believing in the separate creation of Man, divine creation at all, believing that praying to a statue or a long dead religious leader executed by the Romans, praying to his virgin mother, believing television ads, or voting Republican.
Indeed, when you take the time it is all really rather simple. And it really doesn’t take all that much time. Not taking the time to pay attention to what is going on all around you [learn about your environment] is a bit like walking out in front of a moving vehicle; like not coming in out of the cold rain and snow; is like buying a bottle of snake oil.
I failed at War
No fear.
This is how I think it goes:
If it’s warmer than usual, that doesn’t mean anything, the weather always fluctuates.
If it’s cooler than usual, that means climate change is a hoax, because see how cool it is?
It’s colder than normal in Chicago too and getting colder next week. I was going to do some summer budding of plum trees on Sunday, mid-July being the normal time, but I fear it will be too cold, just like the Spring grafts that froze this year.
Well my observation is gonna be based on the anecdotal example that here on the west coast it’s going to be a scorcher (we’re already 98 today and looking at 101 Sunday) for the next week so if my friends in Western WA can say that it was a cold Jan thus disproving climate change/warming I’m gonna say that because it’s a scorcher here that climate change/warming is proven! Don’t care that the middle and right side are cooler, my neighborhood is hot, therefore global warming exists.
Re my comments above, we here in Chicago seem to have swapped climates with you. I like yours. Bet you don’t like mine. It’s OK, neither do I. A local newspaper did a poll recently. “Disregarding economic factors like your job and the difficulty of selling your house, would you stay in Illinois or move?” They claim over half would move citing weather and taxes (disclosure: includes me, on both counts).
We seem to have large influx lately of NM, AZ & Cali folks looking to escape heat and water issues. That’s almost laughable in eastern WA since much of it is desert complete with ornery rattlers.
The extent of my visits to Illinois were several trips to Chicago in spring. brrr. Come on west, the welcome mat is always out!
Here in ultra-liberal Western Washington, we’re in the midst of at least two weeks (and counting, the forecast through next week shows no end in sight) of abnormally warm weather – over 85 each of the next eight days, in an area where a lot of buildings aren’t air conditioned because why bother for four days of hot weather a year! I’ve been here 25 years and never seen a weather stretch like this. It’s highly abnormal. The only summer that was even remotely like this was…last year.
And yet local news does not – not once – mention climate change in its coverage – even though it’s a widespread topic of conversation. (“Is this going to be the new normal?”) It’s all about kids and puppies cooling themselves off in the park etc. The lack of mainstream media acknowledgement of climate change being tied to the escalating worldwide number of unusual weather changes, let alone the long-term implications, is one of the biggest political problems we have. That lack allowed, and still allows, all the moronic denialist propaganda to go unchallenged. But maybe more importantly, it allows most people who do believe the science to shrug their shoulders, because it’s just another political football and there’s no urgency.
People should be rioting in the streets demanding that everyone – Congress, the Executive Branch, corporate America – treat this like a Manhattan Project on steroids. They’re not, and the denialists aren’t even the worst problem. It’s the fatalists, the “science will find a solution” types, the couldn’t care less folks, but most of all the corporations that only care about short term profit and lobby to protect those profits. And a media system that lets them all skate.
Come south. It was so cold at my July 4th gathering that some left early because they were shivering and others wrapped themselves in blankets.
Did you see the meterologists talking about the effect of the Japanese typhoon Neoguri on the Jetstream and that is explaining the heat we’re getting in Wash? We’re up to 70% chance now of El Nino late summer. We have dry lightning set for Sunday night, that’s gonna be notfun.
Gotta break out the mittens for the coming early winter.
Why does anyone think the only effects of climate change will be horrible?