Cool summer? What to say when Aunt Edna asks about global warming
Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr
Mother Nature wants us off her back. Why else would she send a cool summer to the Midwest–hotbed of conservatism and home to The Heartland Institute, the leading global warming doubt tank–right when the planet’s long-term heating trend has pitched us to the cusp of disaster and our only hope for a climate bill is teetering in the Senate?
Could the mother of all mothers be conspiring to undermine support for human initiatives against climate change? She knows she’ll be rid of us eventually, but is she growing impatient?
Already global warming skeptics like John Hinderaker at Powerline, Deroy Murdock at the National Review, and my Aunt Edna have begun to leverage this cool summer against the foresight we need to keep our species–and many of our fellow species–alive for the next few centuries. It’s hard to convince people to join the fight against long-term warming when they’re donning cardigans in July. Aunt Edna is likely to offer up testimony from WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling:
What a summer! Many Chicago-area residents are shaking their heads — some pleased by the lack of heat, others disappointed at the failure of hot weather to gain a foothold here. And extremely rare midsummer lake-effect rains were pouring down on sections of La Porte County, Ind., and Berrien County, Mich., on Friday evening — just the latest meteorological twist in a summer of topsy-turvy weather across the region.
July has slipped to the coolest to date here in 42 years — its 68.7 degree average temperature running nearly 5 degrees behind the long-term (138-year) average. Friday’s 70-degree high was the first time in 53 years a July 17 temperature failed to break above 70 — but you’d have to travel back to the 64-degree high 85 years ago to find a July 17 that was cooler.
It’s that kind of talk that leads Aunt Edna to supplement her usual fusillade of emails (chain letters, kitten pictures, scary hoaxes documenting the war against the phrase “under God,” patriotic poems with animated gifs of waving flags) with a little missile like this one:
It sure is cool outside. I wonder what happened to Global warming. XO Aunt Edna
Here’s how I recommend we respond:
Dear Aunt Edna,
Great to hear from you! The concern of scientists about global warming stems from a gradual increase in the earth’s global mean surface temperature — the average of the temperature over all land and sea — over the last 150 years or so. Since 1880, the global mean surface temperature has increased by about one degree Fahrenheit. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? We might not even be able to feel a change that subtle. But in the long term, across the entire globe, it’s enough to start melting ice and altering habitats.
So even though we’re enjoying a cool summer in Chicago, it doesn’t mean much compared to the rest of the globe. Phoenix, where Aunt Florence lives, has been experiencing its hottest July ever. Across the globe the extremes tend to average out, with just this very gradual trend of global warming.
On the local level, all we can expect to see are more radical variations in temperature. And in fact, even though Chicago’s mean low temperature for July is about nine degrees below the historic mean, our mean high temperature is two degrees above it. The thermometer is going crazy!
I love you, Aunt Edna. My love to Uncle Walter.
Don’t forget that last paragraph. There is no greater tool in the arsenal against global warming than compassion–compassion for elders like Aunt Edna who, when she’s not sending us delicious klotchkes, sends us emails, and compassion for the elder of all elders, Mother Earth, as she wearies of our fungal proliferation across her once-comely surface.
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The current warming of the planet began long before people had cars or electric lights. In the past 150 years the temperature has risen just over half a degree Celsius, but most of that rise occurred before 1940. Since that time the temperature has fallen for 4 decades and risen for 3. The most dramatic temperature decrease in the past 150 years occurred at the beginning of WWII when industrial production was being ramped up to a level the world had never seen before.
Jeff McMahon’s article condescends to all who do not share his belief in the junk science of anthropocentric global warming by likening them to his Aunt Edna. Worst of all are his patronizing comments about “compassion for elders” as a great tool in the fight against global warming. Poor Aunt Edna. Her only crime was to stick her frail head out of the window this summer to see what the weather was like. Sorry there were no demons out there, just an indifferent planet going through yet another natural cycle.
Maybe there is a reason it’s hard to convince people to join the fight against long-term warming when they’re donning cardigans in July. After all, Aunt Edna, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.
Now Dennis, where exactly did you get your numbers for the claim that most of the temperature increase was over by 1940? According to NASA, the temperatures have been oscillating with a warming trend since 1880. And if we look at a 350,000 year temperature and carbon chart, we find an unnaturally high spike in both right around the peak of industrialization.
So to put it bluntly, throwing around random numbers with no references and declaring something you don’t have a grasp of as junk science doesn’t make it so. With your approach, you might as well declare that the planet is headed into another ice age tomorrow, using just as many citations, i.e. none.
In response to another comment. See in context »Greg
re: re 1940 warming; It’s one of the many fictions that appear in the “science” that accompany the fraudulent Oregon Petition, also the source of the bogus ‘30,000′ scientists claim.
good vid about the Petition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8mlF8KT6I
the “science” debunked:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf
my own blog which brings together many resources exposing the fraud:
In response to another comment. See in context »http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/what-if-the-oregon-petition-names-were-real/
There is irony to your accusations of condescension while you lecture others and are in fact grossly misinformed. What you offer as “facts” are actually fables found only on wingnut websites.
Please take the trouble to actually know what you are talking about before castigating others for ignorance.
http://cce.890m.com/temperature-record/
Thank you
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Novak,
Thank you for your comment.
I would agree with the broad point that climate change is not something that burst onto the scene when the first Model T was built, or any time after that. Global climate change has happened for millions of years, and will continue to happen. Where your opinion and mine part ways is at the idea that man does nothing to affect the weather patterns on this planet. A delicate balance had been reached, and humanity, unknowingly, threw that balance off. Man-based carbon emissions are aggravating the existing warming trend.
As a young person, I find it disrespectful, and self-important to decide that you are going to continue to contribute to the decay of a home that you will not be living on much longer.
I don’t think it is junk science when a majority of the scientific community agrees that the data behind climate change is fundamentally sound.
The idea that a cool summer day means climate change is false, just seems absurd to me. One data point is not the entire set. Taking all the points, and looking past the year, or decade scale, that is where we see climate change.
Aunt Edna, you might not have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing, but you do if you want to understand what that wind means.
Science like a jury trial has trouble “proving” anything. All it can do is provide explanations, such as the theory of gravity, that are highly predictive of outcomes. If you hold a hammer over your foot and then drop it, the hammer will fall on your foot. *Unless* you are traveling in a decelerating vehicle.
The notion of global warming is supported by evidence, mean temperature rise, and by a plausible explanation, that the enhanced levels of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere reflect infrared radiation back to Earth. This process can be reproducibly demonstrated and quantified in a laboratory.
Just as the laws of gravity aren’t broken by the hammer that doesn’t fall on your foot, global warming can’t be disproved because the Earth has natural temperature fluctuations.
Similarly, evolution can’t be disproved because, for examples, no common ancestor for humans and chimps has been found or because we can’t see evolution happening before our very eyes.
Finally, if we take measures against global warming and are wrong, what harm has been done? But if we fail to take measures and global warming is a fact we will have ended up creating a cataclysm for succeeding generations of mute people and mute species rivaled only by the Giant Asteroid Collision.
But then that collision is also mere “theory”.
Every doubter of global warming seems to also be a self-made climate scientist. No citations necessary. But there are a few rogue scientists they can cite when they need to. I like Bob’s idea about experimentation. I’m going to head out to the car with a hammer and see if it hits my foot when I hit the brakes.
Who you gonna believe, an ice sheet that has existed 10,000 years or your poor Aunt Edna shivering this week in her cardigan?
Ouch! I thought that there is no greater tool than compassion in the arsenal against global warming. I mean, when poor Aunt Edna was puzzled by cardigan wearing global warming alarmists in July, no one asked her for charts or citations. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised though. Even Al Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as that from Hitler http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6658672.ece …and we all know how bad Hitler was!
Okay, I’ll admit, I am not a scientist. I am just a guy who reads, observes and writes. I try to be accurate and I try to avoid hyperbole. (see Al Gore citation in previous paragraph) So, in response to Greg Fish, I never claimed that most of the global temperature increase was over by 1940. I did state that “in the past 150 years the temperature has risen just over half a degree Celsius, but most of that rise occurred before 1940.” Fortunately, Greenfrye supplied a chart reinforcing my observations: http://cce.890m.com/temperature-record/
In both the Hadley/CRU curve and the NASA GISS curve, most of the rise in temperature does occur before 1940. It then falls for 4 decades at precisely the point the world ramped up industrial production during WWII and the Post War Industrial Era. I do regret resorting to hyperbole when I called this a “dramatic temperature decrease”. Suffice to say, industrial production increased and the global temperature dropped from 1940 for 40 years.
Jeff McMahon may claim that any self-made climate scientist (I am not a scientist) can cite a few rogue scientists when they need to. He then tries to reinforce this statement by citing a link to the environmental lobby group Greenpeace exposing how Exxon funds Global Warming Denial. Not a very scientific citation, Jeff. Patrick Moore, scientist, co-founder, and former leader of Greenpeace who left that organization said “We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882720657033391.html
So, why is it that anyone who expresses the slightest doubt about the anthropomorphic origins of global warming is immediately jumped on by a band over zealous green Cossacks? Why is it so unreasonable to have a healthy skepticism about any theory? Why did the EPA recently suppress a report by two staffers citing declining global temperatures and changing scientific consensus on weather patterns? http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/06/26/26greenwire-two-epa-staffers-question-science-behind-clima-89720.html
Could it be that the really big money behind skewing scientific opinion is in favor of global warming “science” and not the other way around? Could it be that the new game in town is in carbon credits, a groundbreaking new commodities bubble orchestrated by Goldman Sachs and disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine/7
Or could it be, Dear Aunt Edna, that when people stand around in cardigans in July and tell you how hot it’s getting, you don’t need a degree in science or a chart to know that they may be wrong.
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