Every Month This Year Has Been the Hottest In Recorded History (vice.com)

Slashdot reader iONiUM quotes an article from Vice that calls attention to the fact that record-setting temperatures in July are just part of the story: On Wednesday, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July was the hottest month ever recorded on our planet, since modern record-keeping began in 1880. NASA has reached the same conclusion. July smashed all previous records... "We should be absolutely concerned," [NOAA climatologist] Sanchez-Lugo said. "We need to look at ways to adapt and mitigate. If we don't, temperatures will continue to increase"...

But the truth is that record-breaking temperatures, month after month, year after year, are starting to look less like an exception, more like the norm.
In fact, CityLab reports that the earth has now experienced 14 consecutive months of unprecedented hotness. Although July stands out, Vice notes that "each consecutive month in 2016 has broken its own previous record (May was the hottest May, April the hottest April, etc.)..."

Comments

Re:This is the year of the extreme climate claims

[haruchai]

The people who believe in human-influenced global warming are usually NOT the same who believe in the sky-fairies and the Great Spirit.

"To think that man could be capable of effecting change on such an enormously huge scale is the height of arrogance. Sounds like you need to lay off the weed and granola"

Man? A single man probably doesn't stand a chance but millions, hundred of millions, billions?
I'm afraid so. It takes a long time but once there's enough heat built-up and stored, the effects will persist for decades, perhaps even longer.

"a whole solar system's worth of evidence to suggest that it's a natural occurrence"
the processes are natural and the Sun is the single biggest driver - but think of Old Sol as a nuclear plant, delivering steady, predictable baseload.
Once the plant is in operation, it just keeps humming along, provided there's enough cooling but if that diminishes, it quickly spins out of control.

So the GHGs, natural and man-made, are retaining more of the solar heat and storing it in the oceans and at some point, that stored heat is going to be released and we'll have a very bad couple of decades at best.

Re:This is the year of the extreme climate claims

[Ol Olsoc]

The people who believe in human-influenced global warming are usually NOT the same who believe in the sky-fairies and the Great Spirit.

"To think that man could be capable of effecting change on such an enormously huge scale is the height of arrogance. Sounds like you need to lay off the weed and granola"

Man? A single man probably doesn't stand a chance but millions, hundred of millions, billions?

They need to head off to West Virginia to see the Terraforming we've done. Looks like a reshaping of the land of biblical proportions. Entire mountains now reside in what used to be valleys.

I'm afraid so. It takes a long time but once there's enough heat built-up and stored, the effects will persist for decades, perhaps even longer.

"a whole solar system's worth of evidence to suggest that it's a natural occurrence"

We have a couple different things going on. Carbon Dioxide is a fairly long term greenhouse gas. Methane is much more powerful in effect, fortunately shorter lived in action. A few "anti-greenhouse gases are also short lived, like Sulfur Dioxide, which can cool the planet for a time after large volcanic eruptions.

My biggest concern is that as methane is released as is happening now, we'll be going through a special kind of hell for a hundred years or so.

the processes are natural and the Sun is the single biggest driver - but think of Old Sol as a nuclear plant, delivering steady, predictable baseload. Once the plant is in operation, it just keeps humming along, provided there's enough cooling but if that diminishes, it quickly spins out of control.

So the GHGs, natural and man-made, are retaining more of the solar heat and storing it in the oceans and at some point, that stored heat is going to be released and we'll have a very bad couple of decades at best.

It is such an odd thing that the deniers deny the simple chemical process that without which, life as we know cwouldn't exist, or in a seeming miracle of divine intervention, somehow keep the situation exactly the same, and that the Greenhouse effect is only happening for non-human greenhouse gas injection.

800 Terawatts of radiative forcing is nothing to sneeze at.