Global Warming War Heating Up

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Jan 21

RE: 2020 sets another global temperature record.  AP report by Seth Borenstein.

The pandemic must be getting near to the end because other parts of the culture war are resuming.  The article at reference is superficially a report about findings by respected U.S. government agencies, but it’s really another mortar shell in the battle over culture.  It isn’t hard to see the fallacies in the reporting.

First off, the years 1934 and 1936 are far and away the hottest on record in North America.  Those were the years of the dust bowl, and good data remains in the hands of NOAA from that period.  But they aren’t said to be ‘global’ records, because weather stations either didn’t exist or were few and far between in Africa, Central and South America, and much of Asia in that era.  So the global temperature record begins in 1950.  What is significant here is that from 1940 to 1978 global temperatures declined, to the point where climate experts feared a coming ice age.  Then, things got warmer.

The claim in the article is that 2020 was the warmest year “on record.”  Except that some agencies say that 2016 was, and some say it’s a tie.  Withal, this means that 2017, 2018, and 2019 were cooler than both.  Hence when Michael Mann, Penn State University professor of climate science, and inventor of the hockey stick graph, is quoted as saying, “another year, same story – record global warmth.” what he’s saying is fallacious.  Temperatures aren’t rising every year, and every time they fall a little it calls for a scientific explanation, which isn’t forthcoming from him.

Let me observe that Professor Mann didn’t say, “record global temperatures,” he said “record warmth” which is ambiguous and unscientific because temperature is what is measured, not warmth.  He ought to know this, so why was he deliberately ambiguous?

The allegation is that the pandemic year, when the world stayed home, is the hottest on record.  Seems like an argument for natural variation, but to say that can get you culturally cancelled.

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