The World Has Just Experienced the Hottest Summer On Record -- By a Significant Margin (cnn.com) 255
Scientists are reporting that this year's summer was the hottest on record -- and by a significant margin. CNN reports: June to August was the planet's warmest such period since records began in 1940, according to data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. The global average temperature this summer was 16.77 degrees Celsius (62.19 Fahrenheit), according to Copernicus, which is 0.66 degrees Celsius above the 1990 to 2020 average -- beating the previous record, set in August 2019, by nearly 0.3 degrees Celsius.
Typically these records, which track the average air temperature across the entire world, are broken by hundredths of a degree. This is the first set of scientific data to confirm what many had believed was inevitable. The planet experienced its hottest June on record, followed by the hottest July -- both breaking previous records by large margins. August was also the warmest such month on record, according to the new Copernicus data, and warmer than every other month this year except for July. The global average temperature for the month was 16.82 degrees Celsius -- 0.31 degrees warmer than the previous record set in 2016.
Both July and August are estimated to have been 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus, a key threshold scientists have long warned the world must stay under to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. With four months of the year remaining, 2023 currently ranks as the second warmest on record, according to Copernicus, only 0.01 degrees Celsius below 2016, which is currently the warmest year on record.
Typically these records, which track the average air temperature across the entire world, are broken by hundredths of a degree. This is the first set of scientific data to confirm what many had believed was inevitable. The planet experienced its hottest June on record, followed by the hottest July -- both breaking previous records by large margins. August was also the warmest such month on record, according to the new Copernicus data, and warmer than every other month this year except for July. The global average temperature for the month was 16.82 degrees Celsius -- 0.31 degrees warmer than the previous record set in 2016.
Both July and August are estimated to have been 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus, a key threshold scientists have long warned the world must stay under to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. With four months of the year remaining, 2023 currently ranks as the second warmest on record, according to Copernicus, only 0.01 degrees Celsius below 2016, which is currently the warmest year on record.
Thermometers have a liberal bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thermometers have a liberal bias. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a massive woke conspiracy, perpetuated by the deep state, to steal votes and make Vladimir Putin look bad.
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As if HE needs any support to look like a fucking madman...
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Apparently Vlad is the bees' knees in Slovakia and Hungary. Something about Russia being a Christian nation is usually brought up by his admirers and the Christian Right in the U.S. I suppose randomly killing civilians in missile strikes is pounding the love of Jesus Christ into them.
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Hungary is run by a populist who sings whoever's song as long as he suck his shlong.
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Re:Thermometers have a liberal bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S. To anyone who's just popped over from 4chan, Bretibart, etc., my comment was a sarcastic joke. Please don't use it as a "fact" you found on the interwebs pipes.
Selective Reporting Fuels Climate Hysteria!!! (Score:2)
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/j... [nasa.gov]
Next summer will be above average too, but less hot than this one.
Austin: 110 F June-Sept, 100 F Sept-? (Score:2)
The hottest Summer _so_ _far_(!) (Score:2)
We (humanity) are decades too late in getting a solid eco-turnaround going. What we are seeing now are cascading effects of man-made climate change gaining momentum. Which means even _if_ we'll finally get a feasible eco-turnaround going, we will still have to do active damage control for the foreseeable future.
We are screwed either way. How hard is up to us. ... I'm hesitantly optimistic, but growing sceptical of whether humanity will make the turn in time. This would be so easy, but people would rather dr
The hottest Summer _so_ _far_(!) (Score:3)
We (humanity) are decades too late in getting a solid eco-turnaround going. What we are seeing now are cascading effects of man-made climate change gaining momentum. Which means even _if_ we'll finally get a feasible eco-turnaround going, we will still have to do active damage control for the foreseeable future.
We are screwed either way. How hard is up to us. ... I'm hesitantly optimistic, but growing sceptical of whether humanity will make the turn in time.
This would be so easy, but people would rather drive obscene SUVs and live in 50m2+ per person spaces rather than cut back a little. This mess has me hate all the idiots dragging their heels and being proud of it.
So? (Score:2)
Here in western Canada the temperatures were seasonal this summer, despite the OMG WERE ALL GOING TO DIE narrative.
The drought, on the other hand, is serious. Low snow pack over the winter, bone dry spring. We've had a really bad forest fire season. I know the fire people are working their asses off, but if we're spending that much with that little to show for it, maybe we need to rethink things?
What are we supposed to do about it?
...laura
no records before 1940??? (Score:2)
I find it a bit odd that they claim that there are not records before 1940. Though only counting from that point on is a good way to support their claim. If you just took the time to go look at the National weather service web site, they go far earlier than 1940, and even show that there was a heat wave in the 1920's and 1930's that would could cast some doubt on the claims being made by this article.
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The only thing that can save us now is the Sun literally vanishing. I'm not an astrophysicist, but I feel like the chance of that is around one or two percent .. but hey one can hope.
Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score:5, Funny)
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Notice how the scale changes on all these things once you get closer to 'modern day'. We only have accurate records for the last roughly 100 years, everything before that was an average of 1-100 years (for things that survived 1000+ years and can accurately average 2-3 years of data in 1 sample) or 100s to 1000s year average (depending on how far back you go).
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stop trolling.
Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score:4, Informative)
No revolution, incremental change [Re:Summer ...] (Score:5, Interesting)
And we are supposed to start a socialist revolution in order to deal with the climate crisis?
No.
We are supposed to develop better techologies to deal with the problem.
This site is news for nerds. Nerds develop technologies. That's what we do.
(But I do find it amusing that it is the right-wing trolls who keep saying "only socialism can solve this problem!")
Re:No revolution, incremental change [Re:Summer .. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not so much that, but their observance that the left wing folks out there, the "progressive" types, are pushing socialist agenda type solutions to the problem, rather than true technologies like you originally mentioned.
People propose solutions that fit their worldview and their agendas, news at 11.
If conservatives are unhappy that liberals are proposing lefty solutions to climate change, they should respond by proposing conservative solutions to climate change. So far, the right's response seems to be to deny that it's real, or deny that humans can be the cause (as if that even matters), or deny that it's going to be a problem, or deny that we can do anything about it. In other words, conservatives are leaving the solutions to the left, rather than proposing their own.
Of course, I'm not sure what Republican solutions would even look like. Conservative and libertarian approaches are pretty clear -- find ways to let the market drive it, harnessing entrepreneurialism and individual economic freedom, using it as a way to distribute tax cuts, etc. But Trump Republicans are more populist than conservative and don't really believe in markets. It's hard to see what a populist solution to climate change would look like, since populists aren't really interested in solving problems. Hence deny, deny, deny, deny.
Delusion (Score:4, Insightful)
>>freak scaremongering report
Yep. You can ignore facts a long as you want.
Science does not give a crap about your delusion.
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I had a physics professor that used to joke that you may not believe in gravity but gravity believes in you. No matter how strong your belief is when you jump off a cliff you are not going to float into the air and are instead going to slam into the ground.
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Your prof got it all wrong. It's not about belief, it's about forgetting to hit the ground:
>The knack [to flying] lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
But not on purpose:
> One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else then you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the g
The usual trolling disinformation [Re:Summer i...] (Score:5, Informative)
It simply mean next summer will be colder and yes the Sun is the major source of planet warming but the Sun influence is never mentioned anywhere in those freak scaremongering reports.
I don't know why I have to keep repeating this. We know that the measured global warming is not due to changes in solar intensity because we measure solar intensity. That's not the cause.
I'll also point out that if the cause of warming were the solar intensity, both lower and upper atmosphere would warm up. But we see the lower atmosphere getting warmer and the upper atmosphere cooler. That's the signature of the greenhouse effect.
We measure that, too. Guess what: it's not the sun.
What a sold to the elites and buffoon Antonio Guterres is, he said:
I have not idea who Antonio Guterres is, but if he's not a climate scientist, you should stop listening to him.
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The only breakdown I can notice
(Emphasis mine) Well there ya go everybody. One random internet coward can't personally observe anything changing, or probably just refuses to acknowledge it, so there isn't any problem. Carry on as normal.
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Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score:4, Funny)
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Whoosh
Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that can save us now is the Sun literally vanishing.
All life on Earth is dependent on energy from the sun - that would literally kill all life on Earth. Global warming is a serious problem that is going to cause ecological damage and may severely disrupt societies but is not an existential one.
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All life on Earth is dependent on energy from the sun
Extremophiles living near volcanic vents don't depend on energy from the sun.
Plants under grow-lights powered by nuclear energy don't depend on the sun either.
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>> Extremophiles living near volcanic vents don't depend on energy from the sun.
Yes, they do.
Their environment would also shift approx 100K lower if the sun would not shine.
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Forst case, no. May take a few millennia, but they would die just as well. And they are going nowhere anyways. Second case, nope. Or do you think those grow-lights could still be manufactured and that nuclear power could be kept up? If so, you are extremely deluded.
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That's such a strange thing to say. Never understood it. Of course the exception disproves a rule. It's no longer a "rule". It's a tendency, a predisposition, a likely outcome... but it's no longer a rule.
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Hahaha, no. The "sun vanishing" is basically impossible unless a) this is a simulation or b) magic on that scale is real. Both things have no convincing evidence going for them, although there are enough nil withs believing the respective fantasy. That said, the sun going out would be extinction level, there is no way humanity could survive that.
The actual situation is much simpler: We are screwed massively. The next 30 years or so will decide whether we will "only" get most or all of a civilization collaps
Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score:5, Informative)
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/2825/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/2825/ [xkcd.com]
Huh?!? The obligatory XKCD is today's XKCD?!?
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The world has just experienced the highest obligatory XKCD on record!
I must be having a senior moment (Score:2)
Because I don't get the joke. Doesn't fall = autumn in the USA, is the gag something about that?
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Doesn't fall = autumn in the USA,
Yes, but they also start the season rather late. Summer is over in the UK, and winter has given way to spring in Australia. But Americans are sticking with Summer until the equinox. No idea why.
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I found the seasons were slightly offset when I lived in N. America. Maybe a month later? It makes me laugh when I hear people in the UK use the term "Indian Summer"; they have no fucking clue what that really means.
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Maybe because the equinox is an observable, predictable event, rather than some arbitrary calendar date that is otherwise meaningless. Just a thought.
Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score:5, Interesting)
So, tldr - in climate science, meteorological seasons are often used as opposed to astronomical seasons because of their historic partitioning based on temperature. June-August is summer in meteorological seasons, and is the same consistent period that's been reported in relation to this discussion.
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Isn't this a little premature given that summer is not over until the 21st September?
Wait, you guys link the seasons to the equinox? Next you'll tell me that the time is based on when some telescope sees a particular star rising, that I need to trim my hedges during a waxing moon, and that Sagittarius being inline with Mars means I'm getting a reach-around from the wife tonight.
Summer ended 6 days ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Wait, you guys link the seasons to the equinox?
Yes because basing it on months means you are basing it on the orbit of the moon corrupted by a few thousand years of historical and cultural misunderstanding...and even then you pick those months based on where they lie in relation to the equinox because the axial tilt of the Earth is what actually determines the season. That's why everyone links seasons to the equinox, even if they try to hide it.
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[...]the axial tilt of the Earth is what actually determines the season.
Not on its own, it doesn't. If it did, then the summer solstice (around June 21st) would be the middle of summer in the northern hemisphere, as that is the day of maximum solar insolation. The start of summer would be half way between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, and the end half way to the fall equinox. But seasonal lag [wikipedia.org] means that warmest weather lags behind the summer equinox. How much it lags behind depends on where you are on Earth.
Defining the seasonal lag as around 33 days and using the
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Yes because basing it on months means you are basing it on the orbit of the moon corrupted
Months are tied to the sidereal year every bit as much as the equinox. The only difference is how much lag they give to the seasons.
The solstice has the most sun, so one might expect that to be mid-summer/winter, but temperatures lag. Depending on the exact place you live, one or the other might more accurately reflect the hottest quarter of the year. Not starting summer until the sunniest day seems weird to me, but the further you are from the equator, the greater the lag.
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Neither months nor the equinox are tied to the sidereal year. The equinox is tied to the tropical year (by definition). The calendar months are a division of the calendar, nothing more.
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Except they aren't. Months haven't been tied to the moon for a long time. There's a reason the equinox falls on the same day every year. Regardless of what you pagan star worshipers think in the language of science the seasons are linked to calendar months. And time is linked to the movement of atoms (and drifts from astronomical time).
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If the weather forecasts for the next two weeks are even close to accurate, they won't put that "hottest summer ever" record in any kind of jeopardy.
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Isn't this a little premature given that summer is not over until the 21st September?
TFA points out that they define "summer" as June, July, and August. I don't know about you but where I've lived, September tend to be cooler than August.
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Isn't this a little premature given that summer is not over until the 21st September? I expect it will still break the record but it would be nice to actually have the data before making claims like this.
In meteorology, summer is 1 June till 31 August. Weather frogs can't handle partial months.
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Yeah. Story should probably have said "Northern Hemisphere" rather than "The World".
That said, I'm not looking forward to a likely El Nino summer down here.
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You're in London too? ;)
We were supposed to have summer months ago but it didn't show up this year except for a couple of days in June. Absolutely loving these 30-34 degree days this week though.
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Really?
I think most of us here on this site think you are talking about America....especially since Slashdot is a US Centric site.
Re:I Live In SW Texas (Score:4, Interesting)
People are definitely noticing the differences in Florida. Everything from more heat stroke cases to higher AC bills.
Re:I Live In SW Texas (Score:4, Funny)
... Florida ... higher AC bills.
My air conditioner already runs non-stop during the summer in Florida, so the bill is as high as it can possibly get.
Checkmate, climate change alarmists. /s
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However, my solution to that is to install a bigger unit... going to upgrade from a window unit to a ductless with about 3 times the capacity. Might need to go 4 times.
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no, solar power is DC, but you often add an inverter to get Anonymous Cowards.
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Well, yes, but AC is a huge power hog. So it takes a lot of panels. On the other hand, with roof mounted panels, you're also stopping a LOT of the sun from hitting the actual roof, so it acts like insulation*.
I'm currently renovating my current house - it came with a criminal lack of insulation in the roof. In the middle of the day, I can use one of those laser thermometers to measure various temperatures.
Outside wall I insulated: low 80s
Outside wall I didn't touch: upper 80s.
Ceiling: 90s. - This is
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I just visited our office in the Dallas area, and my coworkers who live in Texas consistently commented on the summers getting much hotter over recent years. With this year being a significant outlier as a very hot summer.
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While it is indeed true that the Earth is warming (we have good measurements) do keep in mind that one region is not representative of global warming. Any specific region might be warming, cooling, or staying the same; it's the global average that is slowly rising.
People piping in with "this particular area has definitely been hotter!" just lead to the useless chain of "but my city had a cool summer" followed by more "my county had record highs" and "our area just had a really cold August" and "but Englan
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You will. By then it will be far too late to do anything though. On the case of Texas, clearly no loss.
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It you're considering that it reaches at least as far back as the 1940s, "in their lifetime" goes from Boomers to Zoomers, and even the surviving "Silent Generation" before the boomers will only really have memories after this time. We are looking at 83 years, after all.
If anything, the "zoomers" don't have the historical context to realize just how much of an upset this is.
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Here's a handy graphic for you. https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
Re:since records started in 1940 lolz (Score:4, Informative)
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And as a scientist, what do you think of the claims that we have a consensus and therefore the science is settled?
Re:since records started in 1940 lolz (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that is the way science works. Science gets more and more settled as more and more scientists agree that it is. This happens when more and more data appears which supports this position and fails when opposing evidence appears.
So, the science of climate change caused by human CO2 emissions is settled and will remain so unless substantial amounts of counter evidence appears, which seems unlikely now.
Of course, the details about the impact of climate change and what we can do about it are far from settled. That's where science works mostly now.
Re:since records started in 1940 lolz (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, let's whack a big ol' "[[ CITATION NEEDED ]]" on pretty much all of that.
It must be all that tarmac around the poles which is causing icebergs the size of entire countries to break off and melt into the sea.
As for your pork:
Exxon scientists predicted global warming with 'shocking skill' in the 1970s [harvard.edu]
Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections [science.org]
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It is widely known that the uptick in forest fires is caused by heat islands. That's a relief to know.
Re:since records started in 1940 lolz (Score:4, Insightful)
Its worse than that, they are comparing to historical ADJUSTED temperatures,
Not sure what "they" you are referring to here. There are five major scientific institutions on three continents that are independently doing historical climate reconstructions, and a dozen or so other ones that do less comprehensive reconstructions to check their work. All of them show pretty much the same results: the average temperature of the Earth has been increasing.
Re:since records started in 1940 lolz (Score:5, Insightful)
for reasons they avoid explaining
Except that 100% of adjustments have been explained in very great detail in peer reviewed scientific papers. But that would require reading.
At the same time, temperature measuring stations that use to be in rural and semi-rural locations are now surrounded by tarmac and housing, creating heat islands that make them hotter on average - without any form of adjustment for this effect.
Errr ... This IS the reason you claim they never explained. I wanted to accuse you of not reading, but... you clearly already understand why the adjustments are happening. *IN BOTH DIRECTIONS*. The down directions are where heat islands existed and aren't accounted for, and the up direction is where new heat islands are created.
Re:Climate change is an odd beast (Score:5, Informative)
Well, when I had a class that hit on climate change tangentially, what this comes down to is that with "global warming" you have more energy in the system. This means that various balances change, so yes, some areas can get colder.
Roughly speaking, around the poles, you generally have a continuous wind system that at ground level is cold air going towards the equator, with warm air at altitude heading towards the poles, where it then cools and sinks before heading back.
With more energy, this cycle actually increases in magnitude and reaches further.
Also, warmer air can hold more moisture, which means when it hits the mountains and cools, you can indeed see more snow. More energy = more shit happening.
I've lived in Alaska and North Dakota - you generally don't get snow when it's at its coldest. The moisture is already long gone.
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You might want to take a basic statistics class.
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Statistics, like the guy who drowned in a river that was, on average, only 6 inches deep?
Re:Climate change is an odd beast (Score:5, Insightful)
If everywhere simply got warmer by 2 degrees C that would be an insignificant change. Instead of a pleasant spring morning being 18C (65F), it'd be 20C (68F).
But that's not what's happening. We're talking about +2C increase averaged over the entire globe, further averaged over several years. That's a enormous degree of statistical aggregation that smooths out big increases in local extremes. Producing that apparently insignificant 2C change takes *vast* amount of energy; on the order of 380 zettajoules.
That amount of energy disrupts key weather patterns producing the climate we expect to have. For example disruptions of the Jet Stream that allow warm-mid latitude air to penetrate into arctic regions [usatoday.com] displace the frigid air that was there south, producing extreme cold events [wikipedia.org] in temperate regions.
Michigan (Score:3)
Michigan has had one of the mildest summers in recorded history. Dry and cool except for the last week, and a week or two in June. Has something to do with the arctic jet stream pushing all the hot weather we usually get down into the more southern states, which are even hotter than normal.
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...People were trapped in the San Bernardino mountains because of the massive amounts of snowfall they got and roofs were caving in left and right from the weight of the snow.
Do keep in mind that local conditions are not global average.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the amount of snowfall is proportional to the amount of water vapor in the air; it can go up as the temperature rises (in the places where water is evaporating to form the clouds that make the snow). If it gets too cold, the amount of snowfall is low. Antarctica is very dry, because the snowfall is low.
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That didn't take long! No surprises there though.
Bet's on it being a boomer white male conservative who's overweight?
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Bet's on it being a boomer white male conservative who's overweight?
You lose. It was a pale skinny kid who is either trolling or trying to be funny by parody. Successful if the former, but even more sad. Nobody who believed that could have got such grammar correct.
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Talk about a brain dead reply. Follow the money.
1) Who is behind it?
2) Who is getting paid?
3) What is to be gained from this?
4) You linked to a WSJ opinion piece along with a source that is totally not biased in the least.
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WSJ [Re:Follow the money] (Score:5, Interesting)
(bias in favor of big businesses is not identical to right-wing bias. But in the specific case of climate change, it is, because businesses want to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt ("FUD") about information that might encourage people to do anything that might affect their profits.)
Re:World Summer? (Score:4, Informative)
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The "global south" isn't just a euphemism: 88% of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere.
We don't measure temperature per capita though, so that's completely irrelevant.
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Re:I used my pool 4 times. (Score:4, Insightful)
Summer has been the coldest I've seen it in my lifetime here.
Unless you live all over the planet at once what your personal experience *HERE* is irrelevant. Yeah I've also experienced one of the coldest summers, and if you dig out the original reports you'll even find your example of being exceptionally cool, and exceptionally excpetional compared to the rest of the world.
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Ignores the 1930s, which were hot but not this hot (Score:3)
Here's the global temperature history from six different climate groups: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
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weather.gov seems to support this claim.
https://www.weather.gov/arx/heat_jul36
1936 record july temps:
All-Time Records Set in July 1936
Location Temperature Date
Decorah, IA 111F July 14
Fayette, IA 110F July 14
New Hampton, IA 110F July 13
Mondovi, WI 110F July 14
Richland Center, WI 110F July 14
Rochester, MN 108F July 11 & 14
La Crosse, WI 108F July 14
Lancaster, WI 108F July 14
Viroqua, WI 108F July 13
Hatfield, WI 108F July 14
Osage, IA 107F
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They are not interested in data that shows the globe is slowly warming and has been doing so consistantly for fifty years.
That's important, but not news. A new world record, though! Scientifically, that's just one data point. In newsworthyness, it's news.