Broke the highest heat records … to date
Things are only going to get hotter
Until they don’t and some idiot will say it’s proof climate change (poorly named global warming earlier on) is fake, meanwhile a hurricane destroys his Florida home for the third time this year.
I wouldn’t take that approach. The extremes here are partially the result of El Nino–which was particularly strong this time. While the broader upward warming trend is clearly related to human-induced climate change, the extremes of the last nine months are not likely to be repeated next year.
If you make it seem like this is the new normal, when we revert to a non-Nino year, which will still be warmer than average but not as extreme as this last year, people will think things are OK.
That’s a fair argument, yet at the same time it’s correct that this is the new high water mark, to be exceeded by the next high (ominous analogy intended). Both the audience that took basic science in the US and the audience that actually passed it are both needed to understand the amount of bad, in different ways.
I fucking hate all the people going on about how they love the weather we’re having.
It’s like the scene in The Core where Aaron Eckhart’s character is out with his friend and colleague, they are seeing a bunch of people marvel at the aurora overhead in (DC or California?) and they all think it’s neat and pretty, but he knows why the aurora is visible all over the world, and says “I hate the sky”
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
Water? Like from the toilet?
Carl’s Jr FUCK YOU I’m eating
Don’t look up!
Yeah… Crazy how such an insane comedy captured the gravity of the situation far too well, but there is zero indication the species will do what’s necessary until it’s far too late for us to stop or reverse the worst of the damage (may already be there) — mass famine, water shortages and resource wars, deadly heat waves, collapse of global supply chains and civilisation as we know it.
Yay, we broke the planet 🙃🙃🙃🥴
Go team humans!
So, what did February look like in the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900?
We do have weather data back to the 1870s in the U.S. and can look at Minneapolis to compare:
Check out the cold outlier months of Feb 1875 and Feb 1936 w/average high temperature below 8°F
Feb 1877 and 1878: 41°F and 40°F Feb 2024: 43°F
Taking into account 150-years of global warming of about 2°F, we can see 2024 and 1877 and 1878 are equivalent.
What was happening in 1877 and 1878? A very strong El Niño, just like this recent February.
Also, 1882 was very war, also over 40°F.
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/1765769878009418021
In other words, the ongoing global weather patterns and warmth are exactly what a climate scientist who understands variability would expect. It is easily explainable.
