The official high temperature in Minneapolis today, February 19, was 59°, which broke the old record of 57. I guess it's going to be like this till at least mid-week, so the climate change deniers will not be talking about the weather for a few days. A cold winter day proves anthropogenic global warming is a hoax perpetrated by Chinamen but for some reason a few warm ones are just noise. Nevertheless, facts are facts, and 2016 was the hottest year on record. The second hottest was 2015. The third hottest was 2014. Of the seventeen hottest years on record, sixteen occurred in this century. Or, to put it another way, the first sixteen years of the 21st century are all among the seventeen hottest on record.
Maybe it has something to do with the burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect!
The denialists are running low on arguments. John Hinderaker, of the Power Line blog, used to wax eloquent about "global cooling." I couldn't understand what he was talking about until finally it occurred to me that, if year x was the hottest on record, and year x + 1 only the second hottest, then in his world year x + 1 is characterized by global cooling. It's sort of like insisting that on the morning after the 57th game DiMaggio was mired in a batting slump. Hinderaker has been saved from advancing this terrible argument for a few years now, because it's been a few years since the most recent year was not the hottest on record.
I predict that it won't be long now until so-called conservatives--actually, they're not conservative but reckless and irresponsible in the extreme--will switch from insisting that climate change is a hoax to insisting that it's too late to do anything about it. They're wrong now but there's a chance they'll be right then.
Addendum: So far as I know, Hinderaker has not taken the bet.
Comments