Heat Indices Above 105 Degrees for 80 Million Americans This Weekend (axios.com) 135
An anonymous reader shared this report from Axios:
Over 20% of the U.S.' population — 80 million people — are expected to face an air temperature or heat index above 105 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend as a record-breaking heat wave persists over most of the South, the National Weather Service (NWS) warns...
The extreme temperatures, which have been exacerbated by human-caused climate change, will come after several days of excessive heat and will be an immediate risk to public health... Heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, and indices 103 degreesF or above can lead to dangerous heat disorders.
"Dozens" of temperature records could break across the Southern U.S., including overnight highs, the NWS said... About 115 million people in over a dozen states from California to Florida were under heat alerts on Thursday morning... The threatening heat is forecast to continue over the Southwest through "at least" July 28 and may expand into other parts of the country...
Global temperatures are hitting unprecedented highs, too, this year amid climate change and global warming. Elevated temperatures are also contributing to Canada's worst fire season on record, in which at least 27.1 million acres have burned across the country so far.
On Wednesday the city of Phoenix, Arizona — population 1.6 million — "experienced its 20th straight day with a temperature of over 110 degreesF," the article points out. And meanwhile Austin Texas (population 960,000) "saw its 10th straight day of temperatures at or above 105 degreesF for the first time in recorded history."
The National Weather Service's advice? "Take the heat seriously and avoid extended time outdoors."
The extreme temperatures, which have been exacerbated by human-caused climate change, will come after several days of excessive heat and will be an immediate risk to public health... Heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, and indices 103 degreesF or above can lead to dangerous heat disorders.
"Dozens" of temperature records could break across the Southern U.S., including overnight highs, the NWS said... About 115 million people in over a dozen states from California to Florida were under heat alerts on Thursday morning... The threatening heat is forecast to continue over the Southwest through "at least" July 28 and may expand into other parts of the country...
Global temperatures are hitting unprecedented highs, too, this year amid climate change and global warming. Elevated temperatures are also contributing to Canada's worst fire season on record, in which at least 27.1 million acres have burned across the country so far.
On Wednesday the city of Phoenix, Arizona — population 1.6 million — "experienced its 20th straight day with a temperature of over 110 degreesF," the article points out. And meanwhile Austin Texas (population 960,000) "saw its 10th straight day of temperatures at or above 105 degreesF for the first time in recorded history."
The National Weather Service's advice? "Take the heat seriously and avoid extended time outdoors."
Its weird in the south here right now (Score:2, Informative)
It got so hot, my wireless stopped working. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in Arizona, it got so hot on my back porch the other day that the wireless on my remote temperature sensor stopped working. The last temperature reading I got from it was 123F, after that, who knows how hot it got. Really dumb that the wireless module goes out of spec at such a low high temperature.
FYI, ambient outside temperatures weren't likely so hot in general, as my back porch (where the sensor is located) is artificially heated by the output of my house's A/C. Official high this year is only 115F so far, which is nothing considering we top out at 122F in a really hot summer in AZ.
It got so hot our homes are melting (Score:2)
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South where?
I'm in Texas and if you go to almanac.com it's literally 5 degrees hotter lows, median daily temperature, and highs for this time of year than it was during the entire 1980s. It's also warmer than the 90s and the 2000's but not by as much--- because they were warmer than the 80s.
And no, I didn't ignore the 70s- I just made an arbitrary cutoff before I started looking because it was 86 data points as it was. And I already knew it as even cooler than the 80s in the 1950s.
Re: Its weird in the south here right now (Score:2)
That is what I have seen. I saw an anomaly map of the US the other day, the only state not hotter than normal was Maine.
Re: Its weird in the south here right now (Score:4, Informative)
Texas ain't in The South. It's most definitely part of The Southwest.
Re: Its weird in the south here right now (Score:2)
Texas can be in the South or Southwest. Same with Oklahoma.
Re: Its weird in the south here right now (Score:2)
If you ask a map-making Yankee, sure. Not if you ask someone who's lived in the south though. The culture alone is radically different.
Example: Nowhere in TX will the question "Do you boys work?" ever be asked sincerely and without scorn.
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Texas ain't in The South. It's most definitely part of The Southwest.
Incorrect. East Texas is South. West Texas is Southwest. Dallas is East, Fort Worth is Southwest. Austin/I35 is where the split occurs.
Re: Its weird in the south here right now (Score:2)
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I'm pretty interested in the new barium based superwhite paints. They cool items they are painted on compared to the air around them.
The arabians used to use tech like this to make ice in the desert.
I wonder how "white" the phase changing paints are?
As always... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing that global warming turned out to be a hoax.
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Good thing that global warming turned out to be a hoax.
I wonder where's all the "oh oh weather is not climate" crowd.
Re:As always... (Score:5, Informative)
OK. Weather is not climate. Climate gives you a set of probabilities of events happening and weather is the events that happen. This is weather. But it's weather that was made a lot more likely because of the way the probabilities of climate shifted.
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When we get a colder spell it's your turn. Promised.
I love making promises I will very unlikely have to follow up to.
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When we get a colder spell it's your turn. Promised.
I love making promises I will very unlikely have to follow up to.
No, actually "when we get a colder spell and the media deign to make a story out of it like of a heat wave it's my turn". Yes, I admit it's very unlikely you'll have to follow up.
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Actually the media often makes stories out of extreme cold. The Polar Vortex. Current theories also point to global warming as the culprit for more extreme polar vortices.
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Good thing the Feds put a 30-yr stay on atomic power, eh?
Nixon ordered 1000 reactors by 2000 to compliment his EPA.
Big Oil got rid of him in a hurry with the aid of the Soviets/Greenpeace and Ford dutifully rescinded it.
We were supposed to be carbon-neutral 30 years ago.
Even California is shutting down their clean baseload.
Ah, corruption!
Best pay those same people more taxes to fix it.
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isn't Phoenix good for solar power? (Score:1)
Because you hardly see any there.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Seems like it should be higher...
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The problem with solar power is that it needs on one hand a lot of sunshine but on the other hand it doesn't handle heat terribly well.
So... the best place to put it would probably be the poles. Just ship it halfway around the globe twice a year.
I use my hot water tank for cold water now. (Score:1)
It's so hot in Arizona, I use my hot water tank for making cold water because the tap water comes in from outdoors super hot all by itself.
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The problem with solar power is that it needs on one hand a lot of sunshine but on the other hand it doesn't handle heat terribly well.
Another advantage (besides the 2x to 4x power/area boost and theoretical efficiency limit over 90%) for the optical rectenna type solar panels now under development: If they use geometric rather than semiconductor diodes they should be essentially immune to high temperature voltage droop. (At least until the environment is getting warm enough to glow.)
It's just God testing the MAGA crowd (Score:1, Insightful)
God is testing the faith of the MAGA. But not even Jesus can convince those dummies. These same fools who couldn't understand why they had to take the vaccine if all it did was protect grandma and a few weak and sickly people. With this heat wave they'll blast their AC and keep pumping CO2 gas into the air, what's the worst that could happen? After all, God intervenes to protect the Earth the same way he protected the 90 million who died horribly in WW2. The same way he protected the people tortured by Unit
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God is testing the faith of the MAGA.
God can't stop [imgur.com] priests [imgur.com] from raping [imgur.com] children [imgur.com]. Why would anyone think this supposed being cares about them if he can't even protect children?
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Judging by what I can see on this planet, best case, God doesn't give a shit.
Worst case, he's a troll with an agenda.
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Thanks, I appreciate the compliments. Btw, while I do hang out with your mom I am not your sister.
Weather is not climate change (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate how every weather story is being used by lazy journalists as an entry into the climate change discussion.
The hilarious thing is that by the time this story broke, the weather made a drastic change and this weekend and the following week will be significantly cooler than the previous week.
Stupid ass journalists.
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Odd how the global average keeps rising. But you'll probably have a comment about the methods being incorrect.
Re:Weather is not climate change (Score:4, Informative)
Is your hypothesis that humans have been able to pump 400 billion metric tons of CO2 that was sequestered in the earth into the atmosphere and we will suffer no negatives effects from it?
You weave an interesting theory but is there evidence to back this up? Ice core samples should back this up, but , they don't
Antarctic ice cores show us that the concentration of CO2 was stable over the last millennium until the early 19th century. It then started to rise, and its concentration is now nearly 50% higher than it was before the industrial revolution . Other measurements that can fingerprint the source of this CO2 (e.g. isotopic data) confirm that the increase must be due to emissions from fossil fuel usage and human-induced changes vegetation and soils. Measurements from older ice cores confirm that both the magnitude and rate of the recent increase are almost certainly unprecedented over the last 800,000 years. The fastest natural increase measured in older ice cores is around 15ppm (parts per million) over about 200 years. For comparison, atmospheric CO2 is now rising 15ppm every 6 years.
https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our... [bas.ac.uk]
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Except much of our available evidence and observation seems to be pointing to the fact it is in fact a bad thing.
0.04% is a nothing statistic without the rate of change which has in fact doubled in the span of 100 years.
https://news.climate.columbia.... [columbia.edu]
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What is good and what is bad? I don't assign moral values to gas ratios. What is known is that this increase in CO2 in the atmosphere prevents about 1% more of heat from leaving the atmosphere than the energy that the Sun adds to the atmosphere. CO2 prevents only a measly 1% of the energy from escaping the Earth, but unfortunately for everyone this is more than enough on the scale of years to add up to heat up the planet to something that may be irreversible and may not be sustainable for life on the sur
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The link I posted shows that 800k years ago in fact the co2 concentration was not over 1000ppm. Got a link that shows that?
Also why would we particularly use a time in geological history without humans to constrast the world in which humans are widespread today? Do you really think that's a gotcha?
During the age of the dinosaurs it was also hotter and there was more oxygen in the air meaning we had bugs the size of microwaves. Does that mean naything as to how we should live today? There were also a doz
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Weather is, indeed, not climate. If climate were a class, weather would be an instance of that class. Not the same thing at all ... but there sure is a relationship.
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Stupid ass journalists.
Yes, of course they are the stupid ones here.
No way in hell it could possibly be the audience paying the salaries of clickbait pimps every time...
What can I say .. (Score:2, Redundant)
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That's ok, I never liked the outdoors too much.
Sucks to be an extrovert, though. It's gonna be like lockdown, just permanently.
Wow! (Score:2)
Imagine how hot it would be if climate change was real! /s
THIS year's heat due to CUTTING fossil fuel use? (Score:2)
Imagine how hot it would be if climate change was real! /s
What's funny : Just a few weeks ago there were articles (from global-warming friendly sources) about how the recent reductions in fossil fuel use (especially the COVID-related drop in air travel, commercial shipping, driving, and manufacturing) were causing a big spike in temperature.
(Muc hand-wringing about how this might have implications - both for reduced effectiveness of fuel-use cut approaches to cooling the planet and for increased political
How much in PI units? (Score:1)
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Deniers are entertaining,at this point (Score:2, Flamebait)
Shout on, guys. And on. We can afford to be magnanimous, welcome to the platform.
We aren't just at 60% of the population in America (higher everywhere else) in the "Alarmed"(34%) or "Concerned" (26%) about the issue, but those numbers are shifting at a percent-per-year, each. Every year with "unprecedented" heat waves (like this year) and "unprecedented" forest losses (like this year).
The guys who really run the world are putting tens of billions of *private* money into sun/wind/transmission/battery pro
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Welcome to realpolitik.
We live in a world where facts means jack shit and where people decide based on feels. And they feel the heat now. So we finally get to do something.
Sure, it's too late, but hey, since when do we act when there is still time?
Here in Texas... (Score:2)
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cover the planet (Score:1)
Earth radius is 6371km, a circle with that area is 1.28*10^8 or 128,000,000 km^2, 1% of that is 1,280,000. 2% is 2,560,000km^2. We need to deflect light that falls in total on 2.5 million km squared to both stop heating up the planet and to start cooling it (under 1.5% is enough just to stop adding extra heat). Can we do it? If we build 2.5 million satellites, each one with enough reflective surface area (a square km) and thrusters and controls to keep them up and above the sunny side of the planet at a
I Blame the Politicians in Private Jets (Score:2)
How to fight climate change (Score:2)
The ALL NEW thermometers are out. They are off by TEN degrees and have the obligatory disclaimer: Measurements are approximate
Re:It’s just weather (Score:5, Insightful)
It's 2023 can we not go through the oh-so-tiresome dance of "weather versus climate" at this point.
If you don't think the climate is changing fine but let's all stop using local anecdotal conditions as evidence of anything, for or against.
Show some trendlines, some history, anything other than "it's cool over here right now so everything is fine"
Re: It’s just weather (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the weather vs climate discussion IS important. I believe in climate change but lazy journalists using weather predictions to enter to a climate change discussion discredits legitimate climate science every time the weather predictions turn out to be wrong, which is precisely what is happening this weekend.
I do not need a bunch of climate change deniers telling me that climate change is not real because some idiot journalist tried to doomsay with a weather prediction that turned out to be wrong.
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I never said it "wasn't important" but this kindof of lazy conflation has ruined discourse for decades at this point. It's a troll and if we just let anyone use the "bad media reporting let's me justify my factually inconsistent beliefs" we will never, ever get anywhere. It really can't be abided.
You really think that if media coverage was "better" most deniers would change their opinion? It's not that people don't have access to the facts because they do, it's become more than that, denialism is a policy
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The problem with the current climate change is that the rate at which it is occuring.
Scroll to the bottom of that [xkcd.com], it will help you understand (or not, depending on your denial slider).
What allowed humans to evolve and prosper during the last 2000 years (and more) was the fact that weather was changing at a slow rate. Also, humans never had to live with the climate we are headed to (+2C to +4C if we keep doing almost nothing). Even if we are only talking about only +2C, that means about 2 billion people aro
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We are reaching the point where it's becoming hard to ignore. I'm some places if you trip and fall, the pavement is hot enough to burn you.
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but let's all stop using local anecdotal conditions as evidence of anything, for or against.
When I was a little kid, snow would stay on the ground for most of the winter. In the same area 50+ years later, there is almost no snow at all. So I went from building snowmen frequently to going entire years without building a snowman.
I am sorry, but asking me to ignore the evidence of my own eyes is a bit much. Yes, I get it, there will be local variations and they do not indicate the whole; however, when I investigate the whole and I see similar behaviors in the weather, I get the feeling that there is
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That's a great bunch of opinions and emotional arguments.
Also let's not act like the climate denial media is not profiting just as much by feeding their audience what they want to hear over the past 40 years. We can go back an forth all we want over which media sucks, doesn't change the facts of the matter.
The failure of plastic recycling means humans have not been able to dig up and burns hundreds of billions of tons of sequestered CO2 and put it in the atmosphere? Is that what you are suggesting here? Be
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Also let's not act like the climate denial media is not profiting just as much by feeding their audience what they want to hear over the past 40 years.
Arguing for proven solutions (such as nuclear power), is a delusional order of magnitude off from inventing bullshit solutions to "fight" climate change that ultimately fail to meet current or future demand. At the end of it all, tree hugging red tape won't be worth dick to a bunch of dead humans.
We can go back an forth all we want over which media sucks, doesn't change the facts of the matter.
We hardly have to go back and forth. We'll just wait for those quarterly numbers to provide the facts of the matter, as I'm certain CNN and MSNBC can attest by now. The firings have been going quite predictably
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I think that the solutions to climate change are things we already know how to do. Use nuclear power, use window power, use solar power, focus on more walkable and bike rideable cities. Focus more on mass transit and especially things like trains. Replace parking lots in cities with a mixture of shops, parks, and places to live.
None of these things are magical, none of them require new technology, we already know they work well.
You are absolutely right about taxing plastic a lot more. I am generally fine wi
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Dude, come on, let's not act like the concerted anti-climate change effort over the last 40-50 years doesn't exist and isn't also somewhat been used as a front for continued fossil fuel use and also as a general "anti-liberal" weapon. To act like it's all "hey man we are just advocating nuclear power!" is absolutely totally disengenous and I think you know that. There's a TON of money being pushed by right-wing organizations over the decades to push against environmentalism and a lot of it doesn't come f
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Plastic recycling is a scam. It was a scam when the idea was first created. The plastic industry pushed the idea in order to blame consumers and also keep their industry from being regulated. It doesn't work outside of a couple types. It is better for the environment to incinerate it than try to recycle it. I am not saying that incinerating is good, it is quite bad ... it is just better.
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Plastic recycling is a law. Has nothing to do with the "plastic industry".
And obviously it works.
It doesn't work outside of a couple types.
Yeah, guess what: that are the types your recycled stuff is made from, dumbass
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I mean out of the types that are marked as recyclable almost none of that is actually recyclable. Polypropylene you can recycle okay and that is normally found in things like gallon milk jugs.
Recyling doesn't actually work. If you take brand new plastic, right off the line and put it into a recycling system it degrades. You can do that about twice before it degrades to the point where it is not fit for purpose anymore. Recyling does not work.
It is a law now, a law that the plastics industry pushed for to pu
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If you take brand new plastic, right off the line and put it into a recycling system it degrades.
No it does not.
It yields the exact same plastic as before.
Facepalm.
Re:It’s just weather (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop ignoring the extremes getting more extreme and more common as the average temperature rises.
You are not better educated nor smarter than the world's climatologists.
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Re: It’s just weather (Score:2)
Exactly, leave the spouting of absolute bullshit about climate science to the experts. They're way better at it.
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> even Satin quotes the Bible
Yes, it especially likes the silky feeling.
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You had over 30C in south-east England last year? And that didn't give you pause to ponder "wait, we have more than 30 degrees here now? When did this become possible?"
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Re: entitled (Score:2)
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Classic denial. You weren't interested in all the other places that also have record highs?
https://www.kxan.com/weather/w... [kxan.com]
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I asked a question.
Was that heat wave - nearly identical to this, you'll agree - also the result of global warming?
I mean, if THIS one is "obviously" the result of spiralling CO2, then that one must have been too? Or if not...why is it different?
Not sure why a simple question has you so defensive.
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I merely pointed out that you weren't interested in all the other places throughout the world that currently have record highs. You cherrypicked one city, classic denialism.
And you ignored my cite, which "shows the number of triple-digit days is increasing" at Camp Mabry. Surely you agree this is evidence for global warming?
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So do you also call the article - which selected a couple of cities that were the worst examples - also "cherry picking"?
I bet I could find a hundred cities that DIDN'T have heat records. The fact that we are talking about these is INHERENTLY cherry picking, dopey.
Btw nobody's answered my simple question yet. If a heat wave now is "proof" of co2-driven global warming, why isn't a nearly identical heat wave a hundred years ago (when co2 was much lower)?
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Who said it was a heat wave a hundred years ago? You cited one city.
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A heat wave doesn't need to be more than a city, dimwit. You can't keep shifting goalposts although as a climate militant I can see how that would be something you're used to.
Btw, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1... [twimg.com]
Since 1895 percent of days in the US over 90f at all stations has stayed level or FALLEN while co2 has skyrocketed.
Ps: check out 1936.
That's an actual heat wave.
This is well marketed weather triggering hysterical fragile people.
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A heat wave does need to be more than one city, dumbass.
You've also posted a link to some anonymous image on Twitter which is worthless, and who cares how many days were over 90 degrees in the US anyways?
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But you claimed a "heat wave doesn't need to be more than a city", dumbass. Who cares if anyone has ever heard "NY has a heat wave"?
As for your 'climate signals' chart, when I click the 'go to site' button it says 'the page or resource for which you were searching does not exist'.
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But as I clearly pointed out and which you ignored, they don't have a valid source for their chart so you've got nothing.
Meanwhile here's a reputable source;
https://www.climate.gov/media/... [climate.gov]
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And that's what I hate about people who don't understand how measurements and their errors work.
When you measure something, there's an error. Always. We're working really hard to bring that error down, but every measurement has an error. Over time, our instruments get better. And the measurements we take get more precise. But that doesn't mean old measurements are wrong. All they have is a larger margin of error.
A measurement taken in 1500 is as valid as one taken today. What you have to accept is that back
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lolz no, those 1500 era thermoscopes weren't even thermometers but drew water into a glass tube to measure heat. Your claim of them being thermometers that would yield same measurement now within 0.002 degree is an appalling level of ignorance and talking out of your ass.
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Be that as it may, unless you can show that a thermometer used in 1500 is imprecise enough to make the measurements absolutely invalid, no matter the interval given, the measurements stand.
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there was no thermometer then though, and two centuries later the first "spirit thermometers" had all manner of issues affecting repeatable accuracy. A farce to use any measurements from them to prove any case about "climate change"
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They were highly inaccurate. Right. But even if their accuracy was only enough to give them +/- 5 degrees, if they measured 25 degrees it could be 20 or 30, but it can't be 10 or 40. Do you understand that?
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so they are useless for making any claim about climate change
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I do not know, I have not seen the measurements from the time, I have not seen the possible deviation, they may or may not be.
But dismissing them as "they are old and thus wrong" just doesn't cut it either.
Re: just curious (Score:1)
Just because the equipment is better doesn't mean the measurements are better.
Why is temperature data a national secret? BOM still hiding data
https://joannenova.com.au/2023... [joannenova.com.au]
>The bureau is unique in the world in taking instantaneous readings from the probes and using the highest in any 24-hour period as the maximum temperature for that day. In the US, one-second samples are numerically averaged over five minutes, with the highest average over a five minute period recorded as the daily maximum temperatur
Re: just curious (Score:2)
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How long did it take to find a site that is so incredibly good at selective reporting and lying by omission as this one? I'm genuinely impressed.
Re: just curious (Score:1)
You canâ(TM)t engage with the procedures and data, so you fall back to an ad-hominem attack. Check.
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I could. Simply by asking "Who said so?"
Like "who said that the data is a national secret, because it ain't".
There's a lot of accusation going down, but it's very light on factual data.
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so a measurement of 20 degrees from 1500 could be anything from about 18 degrees to about 22 degrees.
That is extremely unlikely. As a thermometer gets calibrated with cold ice slat water and body temperature of a human (old school). A wild error gab of 4 degrees in the middle of the range: close to impossible.
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You're claiming that we couldn't accurately measure temperature until recently. Classic denialism.
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That's the beauty of it, you needn't believe in it. Remember, the key difference between religion and reality is that reality is that which doesn't go away if you stop believing in it.
If you don't believe in the heat waves, they're still here. And they're still getting worse. Sure, I don't care, where I live, more heat essentially just means lower expenses for heating, nothing else.
If you're too then, well, you're right, there's nothing you need to do. Ok, food will get more expensive, but who gives a shit