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2016 Was Second Hottest Year For US In More Than 120 Years of Record Keeping (climatecentral.org)
Last year was the second hottest year for the United States in more than 120 years of record keeping, according to the National Climatic Data Center, marking 20 above-average years in a row. While Georgia and Alaska recorded their hottest year, every state had a temperature ranking at least in the top seven. Climate Central reports: The announcement comes a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the U.S. data, and NASA are expected to announce that 2016 set the record for the hottest year globally. Both the global record and the U.S. near-record are largely attributable to greenhouse gas-driven warming of the planet. In addition to the pervasive warmth over the last year, the U.S. also had to deal with 15 weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damage. Together, they totaled more than $46 billion in losses and included several disastrous rain-driven flooding events. These events, along with continued drought, lay bare the challenge for the country to learn how to cope with and prepare for a changing climate, said Deke Arndt, the climate monitoring chief of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. The temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average for 2016, displacing 2015 and ranking only behind 2012, when searing heat waves hit the middle of the country. More notable than the back-to-back second place years, Arndt said, was that 2016 was the 20th consecutive warmer-than-normal year for the U.S. and that the five hottest years for the country have all happened since 1998. Those streaks mirror global trends, with 15 of the 16 hottest years on record occurring in the 21st century and no record cold year globally since 1911.
Yeah we should just ignore all the "facts" and just keep destroying our own habitat so we can have shiny useless garbage. There's nothing idiotic about that.
The earth is in a mini ice age. There's no know method of extracting temperature rates from the geologic record, which is what leads to the scary xckd graph. It is inevitable that we return to a warmer earth. It's also inevitable that people reliant on government^H^H^H^H^H corporate funding publish what their government^H^H^H^H^H^H corporate overlords expect.
Of the 4 billion, how many supported human life? What's the maths on how long your grandkids live when the planet can only support a small percentage of the current human population?
I once read someplace that if a great sudden disaster occurred that wiped out 85% or so of the population, well, once they got over the shock, the rest would find themselves relatively well-off. As long as the disaster wasn't all-out nuclear war or something else that would bring long-term devastation. If it was something like an epedemic plague, well then the survivors would find themselves resource-rich with plenty of real estate. Wars of resources would no longer be necessary unless we later overpopulate again.
The people who would survive would tend to be those who keep emergency supplies of food/water stocked up so they can hold out a while while they try to find new sources. That includes those who understand things like just how fragile the power grid really is (a single "Carrington Event"-style X-flare away from total destruction, not "if" but "when"), or the fact that populous areas like NYC only have 2-3 days of food on hand at any given time. Y'know, the ones who are called "nutters" by the current mainstream, just like those who suspected massive government surveillance until the whole Snowden debacle made it undeniable.
I mean you wear your seatbelt and (presumably) carry insurance, though you have no intention of getting into a severe car crash. Why are other important things treated so differently? Because they imply a world unlike the one you know now? That makes them impossible how, exactly? Ideally, your insurance premiums are wasted money and you never need to file a claim. Ideally the cost of putting away some extra food and water, maybe investing in things like water filters and off-grid power, ideally those things are wasted money too. It's like a weapon - you sure hope you don't need it at all, ever, but if you do need one, you need it RIGHT NOW.
Of the 4 billion, how many supported human life? What's the maths on how long your grandkids live when the planet can only support a small percentage of the current human population?
I once read someplace that if a great sudden disaster occurred that wiped out 85% or so of the population, well, once they got over the shock, the rest would find themselves relatively well-off. As long as the disaster wasn't all-out nuclear war or something else that would bring long-term devastation. If it was something like an epedemic plague, well then the survivors would find themselves resource-rich with plenty of real estate. Wars of resources would no longer be necessary unless we later overpopulate again.
The people who would survive would tend to be those who keep emergency supplies of food/water stocked up so they can hold out a while while they try to find new sources. That includes those who understand things like just how fragile the power grid really is (a single "Carrington Event"-style X-flare away from total destruction, not "if" but "when"), or the fact that populous areas like NYC only have 2-3 days of food on hand at any given time. Y'know, the ones who are called "nutters" by the current mainstream, just like those who suspected massive government surveillance until the whole Snowden debacle made it undeniable.
I mean you wear your seatbelt and (presumably) carry insurance, though you have no intention of getting into a severe car crash. Why are other important things treated so differently? Because they imply a world unlike the one you know now? That makes them impossible how, exactly? Ideally, your insurance premiums are wasted money and you never need to file a claim. Ideally the cost of putting away some extra food and water, maybe investing in things like water filters and off-grid power, ideally those things are wasted money too. It's like a weapon - you sure hope you don't need it at all, ever, but if you do need one, you need it RIGHT NOW.
Funny you mention this now. Here on the East Coast, we just had a major snowstorm. The roads were icy and very dangerous, with multiple advisories warning people not to drive unless strictly necessary. Lots of crashed cars, emergency services deployed, injuries, even a few deaths, etc. I asked around about the grocery stores - they were just plain madhouses. It's amazing there wasn't violence and people being trampled. Shelves emptied, long check-out lines formed, people waited for long times to buy gas etc. I wouldn't know, myself. Snow during winter is a regular occurrence here. Sometimes it's severe, sometimes not. I started thinking "what about winter time?" during late May and early June. When it was hot, summertime, humid, and sticky, that's what I started putting away storable food and water.
I have a modest income, but with months of lead time I can still take care of things. After all, I do have a family to think about. You can get good prices on freeze-dried food that stores for 10 or 20 years. If you hang onto it for 9 or 19 years, you can always cook it up and still get your money's worth. Treat and store water correctly, and it'll keep for five years or more. I have plenty of batteries, plus enough solar panels to recharge them. I'm far from rich, but with patience you can accumulate things over time and make arrangements piecemeal, and if you're the handy sort, or willing to learn, you can save money by doing the work yourself.
So when the area gets snowed-in and power goes out, I hunker down. I don't rush to the grocery stores to deal with traffic, dangerous driving conditions, unruly crowds, long check-out lines, possibly higher prices, shortages, etc. Why the hell would I want to do that?? If you are inclined to be lazy, rejoice! My way is actually less effort and stress. Aesop wrote thousands of years ago of the parable of The Ant and the Grasshopper. I heard that one a long time ago and took it to heart. I consider that planning f
Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?!?
With the aid of swallows.
But take your typical sugar maple tree. The wings they spin off don't make it very far from the parent. They spread slowly, generation by generation. That's good enough when temperatures overall change slowly. Then they die off in one direction and thrive in another, and the forests move, even if the individual trees don't.
But the temperature rise right now happens too quickly for the maple forests to be able to keep up the tempo. With the result that maple forests are dying out, and the species that depend on them can't follow a slow migration, because there is no slow migration.
Or look at pines and firs. After the last ice age, most of Scandinavia was covered largely by pine trees. As temperatures slowly rose, fir trees took over as the dominant species, except at higher altitudes. It happened so slowly that the forests and their habitats could move. Not so now. Neither pine nor fir forests are endangered yet, but the trends say that they soon will be.
All of that is based on the premise that the economy will tank if do anything to address global warming. But that is the same argument that has been leveled at every attempt to fix an environmental or social problem, like banning CFCs to stop destroying the ozone layer, or stopping the dumping harmful chemicals in any old place without a care for the health effects, or improving safety in factories to prevent workers dying from the chemicals they use, or the abolition of slavery, etc.
And yet here were are after all those changes. The economy wasn't destroyed, and scientific research is still being funded. That is because the economy adapted, as it always does. In this case we might have some short-term pain with the cost of converting to cleaner energy sources and technologies, but that will get forgotten once we find that we can save money by being smart about taking the energy from the air and sunlight around us. While coal miners won't be happy about the reduction of coal use, solar panel manufacturers will delight as their industry booms. While some things might cost us more as we have to find environmentally friendly ways of manufacturing goods, the work we do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have the effect of lowering levels of all pollutions. This will lead to a reduction in pollution-related diseases lowering the health care costs.
We will soon forget about what we had to do to fix climate change just as we have with all the other changes that I mentioned above. Eventually, some other problem will occur and nay-sayers will predict the ruin of the economy yet again.
And I mean the whole climate debate.
There's a river running through the town I live in. For centuries, the river banks have been devoid of settlements. Why? Because the river has that nasty tendency to rise past its bed every now and then. Doesn't happen often, only every, say, 30 years or so. The periods are apparently long enough, though, that people don't remember it. And hence people did build houses right inside that flooding zone. Some older people have been warning them, telling them that it's not a good idea and that they're going to regret it. They have been rebuffed, damn luddites, we have the technology to tame the river, no problem there, put it in a fast moving bed and let the flood go downstream.
Guess what: They did the same upstream.
Now, last year it was 30ish years since the last flood and now a few people have a new swimming pool in their basement. And instead of now going "Fuck, we should've known better" the same people that ridiculed those that told them that this is going to happen are now lamenting that nobody could foresee that and how they now want to get disaster aid.
And I have a hunch that exactly the same is going to happen when disaster strikes those that now ignore any warnings, build at the beach front and then suddenly stand in 20 feet of water. Then suddenly they'll lament and complain how nobody could have foreseen that and then those that told them for ages are suddenly expected to aid them.
And it will be my pleasure to just shoot to kill when they try to climb my hill to get out of the water.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There was a statistically insignificant difference between 2016 and 1998 (0.02C). Both of these years were very strong El Nino years, fyi. In other words, after 18 years of "global warming" the El Nino years have the same temperature.
Please can we stop the tsunami of bollocks about global warming? It's fucking tiresome.
That's just the start. One of the worst outcomes is greatly increasing the range of disease carrying insects - meaning things like Zika and Malaria can hit a LOT more people than it does now.
And lets put that in context. Malaria is now basically confined to a single continent - and even there, just 25% of the continent lies within the range of the single mosquito that spreads it.
Even so, that mosquito is the deadliest living creature on the planet- killing millions of people every year.
Imagine what happens if it's range is increased by just 5% ? If we double it - millions could easily become hundreds of millions.
Imagine if North America was getting as many Malaria cases as Africa is ? Don't imagine the death toll would be any lower - the higher availability of drugs would simply favour the extreme drug-resistant strains, so EVERY infection would be deadly.
I've had Malaria, I was one of the lucky ones who lived through it (mostly because I could afford good medical care and it wasn't an extreme drug resistant strain)... BELIEVE me - you do not want to experience it. It's hell on earth. It may well be somewhere near the top of the list of worst possible ways to die. And climate deniers are basically people who want their kids to die that horrible death.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *