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Earth

Highest Temperatures Ever in 2021 Led To Catastrophic Weather (nbcnews.com) 122

Posted by EditorDavid from the having-a-heat-wave dept.
NBC News analyzed data from 8,892 weather stations with records going back at least 30 years. 691 of them recorded their highest temperature ever in 2021.

And there's more cause for concern: Each January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the European Union Earth observation agency Copernicus publish reports on the previous year's temperature data. Copernicus ranked 2021 as the fifth-hottest year since 1850, while NOAA and NASA ranked it as the sixth-hottest since 1880...

In 2021, as Europe recorded its hottest summer, June's weather anomalies in North America were so significant that the continent recorded its hottest June in 171 years, according to the January Copernicus report. The record-breaking heat was even more notable, scientists say, given that 2021 was a La Niña year, in which climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean produce cooler temperatures across the globe.

An August 2021 United Nations International Panel on Climate Change report concluded that climate change caused by humans "is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe." Friederike Otto [senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London who helped write the report] said that last year's weather events proved 2021 was "a year that made the evidence unavoidable." Scientists say damaging spring frosts — such as the one that destroyed winemakers' crops in France last April — are an example of a weather event that is more likely in a warming world. Denis Lesgourgues, co-owner of ChÃteau Haut Selve, a vineyard in southwest France, lost 60 percent of his crop during last year's spring freeze. Warmer winters have caused grapevine buds to grow earlier in the year, leaving them vulnerable to previously harmless early spring frosts. Lesgourgues said that now if the buds are out when the frosts hit, they die and are unable to grow grapes....

In other parts of the world, the increased heat can become a matter of life or death. In Portland, the June heat wave sent temperatures up to 116 degrees, shattering heat records by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) and killing hundreds of people in the region.
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Highest Temperatures Ever in 2021 Led To Catastrophic Weather More

Highest Temperatures Ever in 2021 Led To Catastrophic Weather

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  • An NBC News analysis of global weather stations with data going back for at least 30 years found that 691 weather stations out of 8,892 recorded their highest temperature ever in 2021.

    I'm sure NBC's reporters got this factually right, but I think I'll wait for scientists to tell me what the data mean. Yes, global warming would mean more stations post record extremes, but to go the other way you have to make inferences from the data that need to control for confounding factors like urban sprawl.

    • The researchers do know it exists and I read about a clever way to compensate for it. Use windy days, when the air over the city has just come in from the surroundings.

    • need to control for confounding factors like urban sprawl.

      So you're admitting humans are contributing to a warming planet. Good to know.

      • need to control for confounding factors like urban sprawl.

        So you're admitting humans are contributing to a warming planet. Good to know.

        Or just warming a specific area. Difficult to say for sure. There are so many factors, but if the existence of the cities themselves is a/the problem, then you're solving it with anything we're currently attempting.

        • need to control for confounding factors like urban sprawl.

          So you're admitting humans are contributing to a warming planet. Good to know.

          Or just warming a specific area. Difficult to say for sure. There are so many factors, but if the existence of the cities themselves is a/the problem, then you're solving it with anything we're currently attempting.

          Then perhaps reducing the population might help. Lop off one third of the people on the planet. Large swaths of cities could be demolished and turned into parks close enough for people to walk to instead of having to take the subway, bus, or cab. That would offset some of the heating from the rest of the city while helping to clean the air, not to mention free shade* for people to sit under rather than staying inside and running their a/c. Have you seen [imgur.com] Tokyo [imgur.com]?

          * Temperatures in the shade are ten degrees c

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hey! ( 33014 )

            One prominent environmentalist I know put it this way, in a kind of metaphorical equation: E = P*S/T

            That is to say environmental impact is proportional to population and standard of living but that can be mitigated by technology. I suppose there ought to be a waste factor "W" too.

            If your population grows and everything else remains the same, your environmental impact has to grow. At some point this becomes a constraining factor and standards of living begin to fall. However when new technology allows y

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

        need to control for confounding factors like urban sprawl.

        That's done. Given the wide distribution of stations UHI actually makes little difference, averaged over all stations.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        I unequivocally believe in climate change caused by anthropogenic CO2. But citing weak evidence ginned up by amateurs is a recipe for having to walk that particular claim back later.

    • What was the point of that vacuous FP. Just keeping up with your own vacuous Subject? Do you get some kind of special karma for accumulating FPs? Considering the age of the user ID, I'm back to speculating you're dead and your ancient account has been hacked by an actual troll for its legacy of credibility. (But there's a rude speculation, too...)

      Every story on this topic reminds me of a little poem I saw at least 40 years ago. I'm not sure what kind of store it was, but I'm pretty sure it was on a little s

      • What was the point of that vacuous FP?

        The aim is to distract people from the real issue. The real issue is that wind power provides cheaper and more flexible electricity than most fossil fuels when you build it in large enough quantities spread over a wide enough area. This is a rearguard action by the buggy whip makers trying desperately to stop enough capital getting to wind power because they know their investments will soon be worthless and just want to screw the last few cents out of them whilst they still can.

    • but I think I'll wait for scientists to tell me what the data mean

      It's a catastrophe. It's existential. Look up.

    • In other news, 8,201 weather stations did not record record temperatures at any point in 2021...

      Funny how a small fraction (I'd love to see an analysis of why those few hundred weather stations showed something the other 8,201 did not...

      • Let me guess. You were trying to be funny and it failed?

        NBC News analyzed data from 8,892 weather stations with records going back at least 30 years. 691 of them recorded their highest temperature ever in 2021.

        Let me rephrase the summary for you. NBC News analyzed data from 8,892 weather stations with records going back at least 30 years. All 8,892 weather stations reported higher than average readings, while 691 of them recorded their highest temperature ever in 2021.

        2021 was world’s 6th-warmest year on record [noaa.gov]

      • Yikes. You might want to read the article. Your comment comes off a bit awkward when you understand what it's actually saying and how incongruent your statement is.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 29, 2022 @12:43PM (#62218393)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Scientists have been warning everyone . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday January 29, 2022 @01:10PM (#62218463) Homepage Journal

      I actually believe what people genuinely want to hear is "there's nothing we can do about this." It's not the opportunities that are *past* that irritate them; it's the ones that they still might have to do something about.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          Well, if giving up luxuries and comforts is what you want to avoid, then climate change has got those ready to serve up too. But again I don't think that's the psychology in play here. I think it's FOMO. People don't want to sacrifice if other people aren't being forced to do it too.

          • You bring up some very good points. Personally, I think it's quite obvious we've messed everything up, but not really in the way we're hearing about.
            For example, when I travel to areas that I grew up in, all the forests and fields are now subdivisions. The barely populated coastlines are sectioned off into lakefront property. What was wilderness is just becoming part of the suburbs, and what was suburbs is becoming part of the cities.

            Do you really think we'll do anything about this or anything else?
            I don'

        • We have been told over and over again that we don't have to give up on the comforts and conveniences of modern life by people that talk about how solar power is cheaper than coal, wind power is cheaper than natural gas, and electric cars have a lower TCO than hydrocarbon burners.

          Why should I have to adjust my thermostat to lower my CO2 emissions when I'm told that my utility could lower my CO2 emissions by buying cheaper wind and solar power? I'm being told over and over that we solved global warming throu

          • > The market will continue to lower the CO2 emissions of the willfully ignorant. I

            The market will have nothing to do with that. Physics will. Notice that the physical basis of everything is NOT reflected in the market, starting with the infinity of natural resources and their null cost of their existence.
            CO2 emissions have reduced precisely 4 times in the past century . 1940, 1980, 2008, 2021. Look at what happened those years.

            > People like buying new stuff, and lowering their CO2 emissions while doin

            • The market will have nothing to do with that. Physics will.

              Okay, then we agree that something will lower everyone's CO2 emissions, whether they seek to or not.

              1940, 1980, 2008, 2021. Look at what happened those years.

              You need to help me out, lots of things happened those years. My original guess was "Olympic Games" but then I recalled the 1940 games were cancelled.

              more stuff, less emissions usually implies less cost of usage. That implies more stuff bought. Rebound effect.

              That implies any attempts to lower CO2 emissions will never have any lasting effect. I'm pretty sure you are missing some very important details on how this "rebound effect" works.

              If you're in the top 50% of the world's richest. Reduce your income.

              WTF? How does that work? That's advice the world cannot follow because by defi

              • > You need to help me out, lots of things happened those years.

                1940 - WW2
                1980 - oil shocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
                2008 - great recession
                2021 - covid and ensuing economic troubles

                Common factor: reduction of economic/production activity.

                > That implies any attempts to lower CO2 emissions will never have any lasting effect.

                No, that implies that any efficiency gained in using (in this case) fossil fuels will be quickly offset by an increase of usage.
                Might be a different rebound effect than which

                • That implies any attempts to lower CO2 emissions will never have any lasting effect.

                  No, that implies that any efficiency gained in using (in this case) fossil fuels will be quickly offset by an increase of usage.

                  How is what you wrote any different than what I wrote? It appears you are making the distinction over fossil fuel usage to make your point but that was not clear earlier. There's many ways to increase efficiency beyond more efficient use of fossil fuels. We can use LEDs instead of heating metal inside a glass globe. We can use heat pumps instead of resistance heating. Most of all more efficient use of fossil fuels could mean replacing coal powered electric generation with nuclear power so that coal can

                  • > That's just bullshit. All over the world we saw per capita CO2 emissions get lower

                    Physics doesn't care about per capita.
                    It also just proves the rebound effect: Per unit of consumption we use less, but all together we use more.

                    As for your last paragraph, you'll be surprised to hear I pretty much agree with you. And everything you wrote is precisely why I think we're screwed.

                    • As for your last paragraph, you'll be surprised to hear I pretty much agree with you. And everything you wrote is precisely why I think we're screwed.

                      If you believe we are "screwed" then you don't agree with me. I don't see how my quite clear optimism on humanity's ability to solve problems leaves open any room for being "screwed".

                    • I agree on the technical ability (nukes, zero emission electricity) . I'm on the fence on zero emission transportation though.
                      I don't think that humanity will do it until it is too late given the time constants.

                      I agree that its a luxury to care about global warming.
                      I also think that having to care about it is one of the consequences of that luxury.

                      So yeah, I suppose its a case of I agree on the fundamentals, but not on the projected outcomes.
                      See you in 50 years to know who was optimist, who was pessimist.

    • Re:Scientists have been warning everyone . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Saturday January 29, 2022 @01:53PM (#62218601)

      Since I was a kid back in the 1970's. They warned us that there was a point of no return at around the turn of the century. We passed that mark without noticing it

      You might not have noticed it but plenty of us did. We can all see bits of change that can never be reversed. It normally takes 20 to 50 years after an animal goes extinct to declare it so but with species wiped out by climate change this has already begun eve for mammals [nationalgeographic.co.uk]. Plenty of us remember how, in summer we would drive along and insects covered the front of our cars. The insects are now gone [theguardian.com] and many will never come back. The methane has begun coming out of the sea not only in the arctic [wikipedia.org] but also in the Antarctic [theguardian.com]. There are plenty of personal signs that will not ever reverse. In the UK we started getting squid in our waters that were not there before and the fish that used to be there have gone. There are plenty of signs for people willing to open their eyes. The world our children live in will never be as good as the one we live in but "irreversable change" does not yet mean it will be completely impossible to live a good life.

      Just because change is already irreversible doesn't mean we can't do plenty to slow further change and improve things. Things can still be made lots and lots worse. California may never again have the great forests it used to have but it doesn't have to turn completely to desert. A key thing is cost reduction. There will be massive costs and problems from flooding and drought. Every penny we invest in wind farms today will repay itself hundreds or thousands of times in our descendants future.

    • As arctic and antarctic estimate of ice loss and release of atmospheric heat accumulation gases are regularly revised upwards the pace of climate disasters at a rate that will become a matter of a couple of decades. The use of fossil fuel consumption is still increasing.so that indicates that the problem is denied as serious by those causing it to a degree that probably indicates it cannot be reversed. When it reaches a stage of massive world death, it will generate frightful catastrophic chaos and mass mig

    • maybe later I'll pour some gasoline out on the driveway and burn it just for fun

      Wow. um. If you do, make a youtube video. I want to watch.

    • Since I was a kid back in the 1970's. They warned us that there was a point of no return at around the turn of the century. .

      You were apparently not around in the 70s, because this isn't what people said in the 70s..

      The greenhouse effect was not really a big thing in the 70s-- the big worry at the time was the energy crisis. (And if you'd been around then, you would have known that.)

      As for greenhouse effect, it was completely scientifically accepted in the 70s (that was before the oil companies started the campaign to discredit it). And the scientific consensus was that by sometime around the year 2000, it would cause enough warm

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

        The greenhouse effect was not really a big thing in the 70s-- the big worry at the time was the energy crisis

        There was plenty of talk about the greenhouse effect at the time, as well as the energy crisis. You're right about it being scientifically accepted by the 1970s, though.

        • The greenhouse effect was not really a big thing in the 70s-- the big worry at the time was the energy crisis

          There was plenty of talk about the greenhouse effect at the time, as well as the energy crisis. You're right about it being scientifically accepted by the 1970s, though.

          There was a trivial amount of talk about the greenhouse effect at the time, but it was all "by the end of the century this may be large enough to measure." There was absolutely no "They warned us that there was a point of no return at around the turn of the century."

          At the very end of the 1970s was the “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment” report to the National Academy of Sciences (1979). If you want to know what scientists were thinking at the end of the 70s, you can see it t

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            The greenhouse effect was not really a big thing in the 70s-- the big worry at the time was the energy crisis

            There was plenty of talk about the greenhouse effect at the time, as well as the energy crisis. You're right about it being scientifically accepted by the 1970s, though.

            There was a trivial amount of talk about the greenhouse effect at the time,

            Maybe it depends on location, as I live in the UK, and the greenhouse effect was definitely mentioned, if not as much as how bad British Leyland was at making cars.

      • As for greenhouse effect, it was completely scientifically accepted in the 70s

        I remember reading that at the Advanced Institute at Princeton in the 50s, the greenhouse effect was entirely accepted (and probably for decades before that). The debate there was whether the greenhouse effect or the next ice age would be the dominant trend (and all evidence of course now suggests that the greenhouse effect is a much more present effect, with the next ice age being thousands of years away).

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I'm not sure what you mean by "changed their story." The current effort is to try to limit the damage by holding the warming to 1.5C. There's no suggestion we can avoid it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They got it right, there was a point of no return that we passed around 2000. We are just trying to limit the damage to a manageable level now. It's too late to avoid it, as we are now seeing.

    • This is kinda-sorta the premise of Don't Look Up. Except, in that case, the obvious stared them in the face - you could look up in the night sky and see the comet coming - but humanity still politicized it and shuffled the deck chairs until it was too late. It's worse in reality because, for most of humanity, we can't directly see the oncoming comet. The politicization is probably a shade or two worse because of it.

    • 682 weather stations post one (or more) record temperatures in 2021 while 8,201 do not, and you found a way to weave politics into the story... amazing. Perhaps politicizing scientific subjects is a bad idea?

  • When global warming arguments come up (here, say), I can now just sit back and be the smug, aggravating one - what a flip. I say, "the argument is over, we've won", and if challenged with a lot of science-talk, I get to wave my hand dismissively and smirk that the "argument is over" because the general public are now convinced, thoroughly. If they've been convinced by Bad Science, in your long-winded opinion, it doesn't matter. They're still convinced. Your science wouldn't matter if it were correct,

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rbrander ( 73222 )

        No, you didn't read my post. I skipped over the quoted part of yours, because now I get to. Because it's over.

    • It would help if the pronouncers of doom waited for summer in the same hemisphere as the pronouncement. They have terrible timing

      This was in the news a couple days ago, and my electric bill was affected as stated.

      https://www.ifiberone.com/colu... [ifiberone.com]

      Now last summer was warm. I had the heat pump set to cool for part of 32 days whic was more than usual. The heat pump was been set to heat since the start of October and will remain that way until late April. The current temperature setting is 65 F, so it's not like

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It would help if the pronouncers of doom waited for summer in the same hemisphere as the pronouncement. They have terrible timing

        I'm pretty sure summer 2021 has happened in both hemispheres by now.

  • So they took a sample of almost 9000 weather stations and less than 8% of them "recorded their highest temperature ever in 2021."

    Yep, the earth is going to incinerate itself into a raisin any day now. Time to buy one of those defunct missile silos and move underground to prepare for the inevitable.

  • China (Score:1, Insightful)

    by GotNoRice ( 7207988 )
    Why are we focused on banning plastic straws here in the U.S. while China is still building Coal power plants as quickly as they can?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Lol. MOM! It's not fair! Why do I gotta when he don't? Wah!

  • It must be time for another climate Armageddon post. Gotta pay dem dues! Dance with the one who brung ya. Etc.

  • go watch his interview with Jordan Peterson. Didn't push back once. Which is odd, because when Candace Owens sad the exact same thing on his show not too long ago he actually did push back. i.e. he's changed his mind on the issue, and this is how he shows it.

    Never mind that he platformed 2 climate change denying grifters without anyone at all to counterbalance. If he's not going to push back on nonsense he should have somebody sitting there who will. You're allowed to have more than one person on at the

    • go watch his interview with Jordan Peterson. Didn't push back once.

      I'd rather not. That sounds like the most miserable three hours of my year so far.

    • Never mind that he platformed 2 climate change denying grifters without anyone at all to counterbalance

      It's a podcast, not a news show - he smokes pot while recording it and you're upset he's presenting both sides of an argument in a fair and balanced format? Last I checked the mainstream media decided opposing opinions didn't deserve to be aired, they were too dangerous (anti-vax, anti-climate change,etc), so they don't offer them a voice, Rogan does.

    • Not according to Joe Rogan it doesn't go watch his interview with Jordan Peterson.

      I have no strong desire to listen to a wanker interviewing a dickhead, so I'm going to take your word for it and I do commend you on taking one for the team so I don't have to.

      Does the esteemed Professor have any more bizarre opinions on decapods?

      Seriously though I am impressed at your dedication, I just don't have the patience to listen to either of them.

  • It's only disruption. All life dies facilitating adaptation to change.

    Cities can be replaced differently (they're gradually replaced anyway), agriculture can move, people can stop living where they should not want to live then live where they should, and they can stop making excess numbers of new people.

    Got floods? Move out of flood plains.
    Got fire? Build homes that cannot burn and remove all nearby fuel no matter your esthetic therefore trifling attachment to same.

    Many will choose unwisely but either way d

  • At some point, a sustained 120+ heat wave (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Saturday January 29, 2022 @01:52PM (#62218597)
    will knock down a large power grid in a populated area. At that point, air conditioning will be out for a large population, in the middle of deadly heat. Even if the roads don’t soften too much, there won’t be enough transit capacity to get everyone out in time. 100s of thousands of people will slowly cook to death, because above a certain wet bulb temp, a person dies pretty quickly no matter what. The power of prayer wont save you.

    At that point, people might start to take climate change seriously. Meh. Who am I kidding. Half the population will blame Obame or George Soros.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CODiNE ( 27417 )

      I'm wondering if a DIY emergency CPU fan strapped on the forehead or neck with a battery pack would keep someone alive long enough to get out of the area. Would probably need an LED so they could move around at night

      I've had to survive a deadly fever without electricity or water before. Kept dunking my head in a bucket of water saved from the last time the water ran. Then when less delirious I simply used a rag and sat in front of a fan (after the power came back on).

      What sort of emergency items could exten

      • If a bucket of water kept you cool, the wet bulb temp was under 95F. Above that, no amount of water evaporation or fan use will keep you alive for long. Well documented. A wet bulb temperature above 95F for 3 hours will turn anyone into an undercooked steak aka dead dead dead. No “mind over matter”. No “I’m a tough guy I can handle it”. No “saved by power of prayer”.

        Wet vs. dry heat matters a lot. Look up wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperature. Bottom line - past a c

      • A deep hole may save you, if it's deep enough that the temp is under 120F, that is.

      • Wet bulb temperature is an important concept, and its rising values are very concerning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Basically, if we ignore evaporative cooling from sweat or from dunking your head in a bucket of water, then the 120 degree air temperature will kill you eventually, since our body is designed for a core temperature of about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and is under significant stress when exceeding 100 degrees. A fan would only make things worse, since it increases the rate at which your bod

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by CODiNE ( 27417 )

          That reminds me of Romans cooking off in the catacombs during the summer heat. Maybe some cities in India could build down more often.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by CODiNE ( 27417 )

            Cooling off. Cooling off. But an underground catacomb cook off in Ancient Rome would be neat too.

    • Because everyone is on the power grid, and wil always rely on the power grid, and will have no options other than to sit still and wait for the heat to kill them.

      Don't be an ass.

      As the temps rise society will adapt. This story says over the course of 365 days, 8% of weather stations recorded record temperatures inn2021 - 8,201 did not. Why did increases in global temperatures only effect 8% of the weather stations? Why didn't the other 8,201 ever indicate a single record-high temperature once during 2021?

      92

      • You would care if you lived in one of those areas recording record highs. This is not the type of analysis that any scientist would do but what they are trying to accomplish is to tie in something rather abstract like climate change to something people understand and care about, the weather over their heads.

        • You would care if you lived in one of those areas recording record highs.

          Why would, or should, anyone care if they lived in these areas? We see records broken all the time, high and low, just because we didn't get reliable weather recording until fairly recently. With "recent" being on the scale of climate change.

          We have somewhere around 150 years of scientific and precise temperature data. People that study this stuff will tell us that we will see temperature records broken quite often until we have a statistically significant number of years in records. The daily record hi

  • Instead of trying to avert a planet wide disaster through listening to scientists and having a sane plan, we shot that down in favor of monetizing it instead? Hmm that sounds suspiciously like the plot from a recent Netflix movie, I hope if we all die from it those responsible get eaten by bronterocs.

    • listening to scientists and having a sane plan,

      There is no sane plan available to us at the moment.

      Interestingly, this is similar to the problem with "Don't Look Up." Shooting a nuclear missile at a meteor won't do much to divert it.

      • There is no sane plan available to us at the moment.

        Of course there is a sane plan available on lowering CO2 emissions. I see them on Slashdot all the time.

        There are two camps on what makes a sane plan but both agree that a sane plan exists. In one camp we have the people that will claim we can power the world with renewable energy. Some will even so so far as to claim power from wind and sun is already lower cost than power from fossil fuels, which is telling us that we solved the global warming problem. In what appears to be a minority portion of this

        • "Renewable only" isn't practical. Nuclear isn't politically practical.

          That is, again, assuming we didn't already solve the problem as so many are claiming right now.

          You think it's already solved?

          • "Renewable only" isn't practical.

            I agree.

            Nuclear isn't politically practical.

            I've seen a number of public opinion polls that tell me nuclear power is politically practical. If you want to make the case that, as one AC like to comment repeatedly, "nobody wants nukes" then post some links to recent public opinion polls. I know that a number of polls were made in the last year, and even more that are a bit older since that was "election season" for a close race for POTUS.

            You think it's already solved?

            Why would I not when every time wind or solar power gets a mention on Slashdot there's a large number of c

            • Do you want to argue that renewable energy costs more than fossil fuels?

              No thanks, I'd rather just scare your kids over it.

  • Because here in Belgium we had the worst summer in decades and the most rain ever recorded.
    Average temperatures were around season averages, however not a single day over 30C, which hadn't happened in 30 years.
    So, really a rainy and cool summer here.
    But yes, it's not looking good overall.

  • Last two summer was surprisingly short in central europe. Winters were short and mild too, barely below freezing point. No idea where the data comes from. Maybe the average with the northern regions is high.

  • In the Spring of 1972 I was completing my EE/CS studies at MIT and took an elective course called The Limits To Growth (course 15.nnn) taught by Profs. Donella and Dennis Meadows et al. I still have their book (ISBN 0-87663-165-0, 1972) and may have my class notes hidden somewhere in my "archives". It's a very complex subject and I can't adequately summarize their book here. Let me just say that they modelled a diversity of scenarios, including some technology advances, and in all cases the continuing expo

  • How we all watched in silent amazement when the first weather satellites went up in 1850 - if you're too young to remember, go to YouTube and search "first noaa satelitte launch 1859".

    Copernicus ranked 2021 as the fifth-hottest year since 1850, while NOAA and NASA ranked it as the sixth-hottest since 1880...

  • Bad Data (Score:1, Insightful)

    by davemattwill ( 9324233 )
    Hundreds of heat related deaths! I had to look into this, as all available data shows cold related deaths are more common regionally and worldwide. The best I could find was an estimate published by NYT, referencing non-existant CDC data. These are estimates and to take the numbers as fact is irresponsible and misleading. Anthropogenic climate change is not real either. Yes, humans change their environment, just as the temperature of water changes when you measure it. The exent of our contribution to

  • NBC: world's greatest scientists (Score:3)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Sunday January 30, 2022 @10:57AM (#62221055)

    Totally useless data. How often does this already happen? How many are in urban heat bubbles? How far into the past were records kept?

    NBC has a narrative they are pushing. That is all you need to know. Even so-called "scientists" almost all have a narrative they are pushing in this area, so call me in 50 years and we'll see what has really happened.

  • Let's get real. 30 years is a drop in the bucket in geologic time. The earth has been much warmer than this before. This just proves how the news media seeks to influence rather than inform. Walter Cronkite and his peers were the last honest newsmen.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Dave Cole ( 9740 )

      Maybe a cartoon form of information will help you finally realise that humans have never experienced global conditions this warm, and to our knowledge the temperature has never changed this quickly.

      https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]

      Who am I kidding. You have to actively avoid learning about this stuff to still spout bullshit like you did.

  • So more than 90% of them did not record their highest temperature during 2021?? What's the actual story here then?

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