What’s the carbon footprint for CNN’s operations?
The strange divide in how Americans experience summer temperatures
The contiguous United States has endured another searing summer. June was unusually warm, and a major heatwave afflicted nearly a third of the population late in the month, and July offered little relief.
This is hardly a surprise: Summers in the Lower 48 are now 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average than they were in 1896, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
And we can all feel that from our time living from 1896, right? Can you even notice 1.6F?
Summer is the season in which the effects of climate change are arguably most apparent: It’s getting hotter, longer, more humid and more dangerous. Yet averages elide a complex reality: The country’s experience of hotter summers — and thus one of the most visceral aspects of climate change itself — is fractured along geographic lines.
Summer is behaving very erratically as the country warms, with large changes in some regions, especially the West, and very muted ones in the central and southeast US.
Comparing summers of the past 30 years with a broad period between 1901 and 1960, the limited warming and even slight cooling in some locations becomes strikingly apparent.
Got that? Slight cooling is also your fault.
It has been attributed to anything from the cooling effects of reforestation in the Southeast to “corn sweat” in the Midwest tied to more productive agriculture. The “sweating” refers to how corn crops transpire and put more water into the air, which then can fall as cooling rain.
“I think a piece of it is the land use change, and basically, the increase in agricultural intensification, which just kind of dumps water into the atmosphere,” said Jonathan Winter, a professor at Dartmouth University who has found that the warming “hole” has actually been good for Midwest corn yields.
Lord, they’re just trying anything to justify their government paid jobs and their cult at this point.
On top of all that, some of the phenomenon has to do with the extreme temperatures associated with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. That human-induced phenomenon skews the data extra-warm in that era for some parts of the US, making it hard to find a warming temperature trend today. Very warm summer temperatures in the 1930s are noticeable, for instance, in the temperature history of Tulsa County, Oklahoma.
And that is an attempt to say “OK, it was super warm then, despite CO2 being below 350ppm, but, that totally doesn’t matter. You’re just not noticing that you are very hot.” Anyhow, this crap just keeps going on and on, like it’s 1990 and they’re trying to convince us that we’re doomed.
If you can trust thermometers, 42 of the 50 states have hit 100 F or more this summer!
Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Alaska and Hawaii have not.
But relax, the plan is to open more coal plants to support our A/C. Adapting!!
Our esteemed host asked:
Actually, I can notice a difference from 1896, because in 1896, I couldn’t walk in from the hot soybean fields into the cool, air conditioned house! At least, that’s how I remember things.
Of course, people do feel summer heat differently. Those of us who grew up in the South do feel summer heat differently than our cousins who grew up in Maine, simply because we’re used to it.
When SSG Pico returned from her deployment to Kuwait, she said that 75ºF felt cold to her, after the 120º F summer in that [insert slang term for feces here]hole country. The Arab Middle Easterners are used to very hot summers, and if they happen to have the oil money to pay Pakistani or Philipino
slavesservantsDag nab it! Hit the “enter” button too early!
If they have the money to pay Pakistani of Filipino
slavesservants, the wealthy Arabs stay in the A/C and let the servants do the outside work.