India Records Its Hottest Day Ever As Temperature Hits 51C (123.8F) (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A city in northern India has shattered the national heat record, registering a searing 51C -- the highest since records began -- amid a nationwide heatwave. The new record was set in Phalodi, a city in the desert state of Rajasthan, and is the equivalent of 123.8F. It tops a previous record of 50.6C set in 1956."Yesterday (Thursday) was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country... 51C in Phalodi," said BP Yadav, a director of India's meteorological department, on Friday.

Comments

Re:The man in the mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Personal change is of course an important place to start, butwhat we seem to have forgotten since the civil rights movements of the 60's and 70's is that systematic change at the level which is needed to address the causes and effects of climate change can only come about through an organized movement.

The Bill Moyers interview linked below discusses the difference between consumer focused change where we can "go green" by changing our own habits and citizen focused change which involves exercising our collective political power to effect change at the policy level.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/01/04/citizens-not-consumers-are-key-to-solving-climate-crisis/

Excerpt:

Each of us has two different roles we play in society, almost like two muscles: a consumer muscle and a citizen muscle. Our consumer muscle is spoken to and validated constantly. We’re called upon to use it every day and, as a result, we’re really good at it. It’s overdeveloped so much that being a consumer is our primary role in society so much that the words “consumer” and “person” are used interchangeably. At the same time, our citizen muscle has atrophied. So when we’re faced with problems as gigantic as disruption of the global climate, we stick with the familiar consumer muscle. We buy green products, switch our lightbulbs, reject bottled water, carry a reusable bag to the store. Now, don’t get me wrong – those are all very good things to do. But those are not about making transformative change like we need right now. To do this, we need to step out of our consumer role and into our citizen role and work together, through our democratic structures, to achieve big bold change. Perfecting our day to day eco-choices can be a step in the right direction, or it can be a distraction if we’re deluded into thinking that we’ve done our part since we shopped at Whole Foods. That’s why the subtitle of our last movie is “Why citizens, not shoppers, hold the key to a better world.” We need to start exercising our citizen muscles again.

Re:The man in the mirror

[cayenne8]

Each of us has two different roles we play in society, almost like two muscles: a consumer muscle and a citizen muscle. Our consumer muscle is spoken to and validated constantly. Weâ(TM)re called upon to use it every day and, as a result, weâ(TM)re really good at it. Itâ(TM)s overdeveloped so much that being a consumer is our primary role in society so much that the words âoeconsumerâ and âoepersonâ are used interchangeably. At the same time, our citizen muscle has atrophied. So when weâ(TM)re faced with problems as gigantic as disruption of the global climate, we stick with the familiar consumer muscle.

Then there are some of us...and I have to guess NOT an insignificant number, that just plain don't give a fuck.

I know my lifetime is short on this planet, so I'm here to have as much fun, have as good a life with as little inconvenience and down or bad time as I can while I'm here.....

Anything with the global warming consequences, or other nature disasters will come LONG after I'm cold and dead i the ground, and no one will in that time even know my name to curse it....so, really what do I care and why should I put myself out or deny myself the pleasures of this modern world since I'm here such a short time?

I have no problem with those that do, but I personally can't see the upside in it for me....

Re:Hide the decline

[mi]

You would expect that most records would be broken in the early years of registration.

And, maybe, they were — but no one would profit from emphasizing the fact, so we do not know about it.

Over the last 20-25 years, we've seen a disproportionate amounts of records being broken

We have also seen a large number of people profiting from the idea of AGW during the same period.

average temperature of 1 or 2 degrees is massive on a global scale

We don't even know, if that's true — for example, satellite observations disagree (until "adjusted") on this with ground-based thermometers. And no wonder:

we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source

The AGW-proponents acknowledge the problems, but claim, they are properly addressed by "adjustments":

when processing their data, the organizations which collect the readings take into account any local heating or cooling effects, such as might be caused by a weather station being located near buildings or large areas of tarmac. This is done, for instance, by weighting (adjusting) readings after comparing them against those from more rural weather stations nearby.

Who is doing the weighting (adjusting) and how? What #define-s do they use in their code? Would they not stop "adjusting" before the results show the trend, which they sincerely believe must be there? See, what is "sold" to the public as objective recordings of scientific instruments are, in fact, results of "adjustments" by unknown programs using unspecified parameters...

And the raw — unadjusted — data sometimes go to sleep with Hillary Clinton's emails... But not to worry, the "scientists" tell us — it was processed correctly, trust us... So much for reproducibility being a requirement for scientific method — these guys are frauds, not "scientists"...

But even if it really is true, that temperatures rose 1 degree since 1850 — so what? 10 thousands years ago Tasmania was attached to mainland Australia. It was also possible for bears to cross from mainland Alaska to the islands of Kodiak archipelago (either over land or ice-fields). Then something substantial enough happened to isolate these lands. Whatever it was, it was not the humans discovering fire, was it?