Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Warmest Month In Human History Edition: Why Non-Linear Change Is Your Future ... by gimleteye

For decades, the GOP denied climate change. The party of Donald Trump made non-linear change your future. This is ugly stuff. In November, vote. When you do vote, remember which political party's candidates are to blame and vote accordingly.
August 16, 2016 

Today in Weather & Climate: Warmest month in human history edition (Tuesday, August 16th) 

Hey all,

Days like this are tough for me, I'm not going to lie. A fresh batch of climate data was released, and it looks like last month continued the current streak of 15 consecutive monthly global temperature records. On Twitter, NASA GISS director Gavin Schmidt went a step further and said "July 2016 was absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began." (July is usually Earth's warmest month because most of the land is in the northern hemisphere, and land heats up more than ocean does in the summer.)

We know that July 2016 was the warmest month since we've been watching with carefully calibrated thermometers, but it's also quite likely the warmest month in the history of human civilization, dating back at least 10,000 years. Pyramids, agriculture, cities, Beyonce, all of it.

We are risking everything by continuing on this path. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. We can't have a stable and prosperous global society without the basics of water, food, health, and stability. Climate change risks all of these, as well as the ecosystems and other species that makes living on a planet so wonderful.

We're past the point of planting a symbolic tree in your backyard or signing a petition. In an interview the other day, a scientist spoke of her remaining hope as rooted in the possibility of "nonlinear success" when so many are worrying about nonlinear collapse and failure—which leads to despair. Some of my journalist colleagues have faulted me for saying things like this, but we live in a time of blunt language. Our generation risks profound change if the climate models are right, and they have been so far. What are you waiting for to make as much noise as you can about this? What's it going to take?

Thanks for reading,
Eric

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just plain common sense tells you something is changing. The scientific measurements, and dramatic changes verify the direction of change. Look at the 1,000 year floods in Louisiana, and the rain keeps coming. Look at the fires in California, and they are reporting fire tornadoes. We can be stupid and elect people who put personal gain over the welfare of the people if we want to, but in the end we will all suffer.

Anonymous said...

Anon above, so you won't be voting for Hillary?

Anonymous said...

"What are you waiting for to make as much noise as you can about this? What's it going to take?"

Thought full voting and yea, noise, might nudge the future temperature rise.

But in the end it's only changing our every one's live stiles that will do it.

Gubment can't do it for us, they could only kick our collective derrieres to get us moving in the right direction.

Philip Stoddard said...

Here's the original posting from NASA:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/news/20160816/

Anonymous said...

I don't know, I worry about the electorate. It seems simple. Take care of yourself, your family, your friends, and your community. We are all stuck here on earth together. It is the only home we know. Why wouldn't we try to keep it livable for us and generations to come? Well, let me get back to "As the Presidential Election Turns", and see what happened today.

I am Dr. Remulak said...

The temperature is different only a few blocks away and it can vary widely across a small geographic area. Even when we look at temperatures observed at only one specific location, the temperature is constantly changing. So how can anyone claim with a straight face that we have found a single average global temperature and it's the hottest ever? Let's forget the fact that mankind has only been keeping temperatures for the past 150 years on a planet that is 4 billion years old. I call bullshit on this one.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Remulak? A conehead from France no doubt.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Regulak (if that is his actual name) did not read the NASA report posted by Dr. Philip Stoddard (his actual name) to discover that NASA's numbers are based on a large network of recording stations across the planet.