Watch out for flying biological debris as we get closer to making it official. As an arctic blast envelopes the eastern US, 2014 becomes, more and more obviously, the warmest year, globally, in the instrumental record.
Despite a bitter cold snap in parts of North America, the globe is rushing hell-bent toward its warmest year on record with last month setting the fifth monthly heat record of the year.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that last month was the hottest October on record worldwide. The 14.74 Celsius (58.43 degrees Fahrenheit) beat out October 2003.
“It is becoming pretty clear that 2014 will end up as the warmest year on record,” said Deke Arndt, climate monitoring chief for NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. “The remaining question is: How much?”
With only two months left in the year, 2014 has now surged ahead as the globe’s warmest year so far, beating 2010 and 1998. So far this year, the world is averaging 14.78 degrees Celsius (58.62 degrees Fahrenheit). If the last two months of the year are only average for the 21st century, it will still be the warmest year ever, Arndt said.
Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said in an email he hopes the new data will put to rest “the silly ongoing claims that global warming has ‘stopped’ or that there is a ‘hiatus’ in global warming.”
The world is approaching the warmest year “in spite of the U.S. being pretty cold,” Arndt said. That’s because the United States is only 2 per cent of the world’s area and the part that’s unusually cold is about 1.5 per cent of the entire globe, he said.
The CPC predicts a 60% chance for an El Niño to develop across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean in the next few months. El Niño, a climate pattern marked by warmer-than-average ocean water, typically brings wetter conditions to parts of the western and southern USA.
“One person one vote, that’s all the legitimacy required.”
That’s ludicrous.
When you have a family meeting about this year’s holiday plans, there is no point in all 3 kids voting for flying to a couple of weeks at a resort on the Great Barrier Reef. Once they’ve described everyone’s dream holiday, it’s the job of the grownups to point out the limitations of time and money and all the other stuff and get everyone focused on tin tacks. Everyone agrees that the perfect would be wonderful, but we have to work with what we’ve got.
Same thing goes for technical/ financial matters in public policy. We don’t all vote on the schedules for preventive screening for breast and bowel cancers. We didn’t vote on outlawing CFC and asbestos products in our countries. We don’t vote on storm resistance standards for houses or school buildings. We don’t vote on how many rat droppings are allowed in food supplied to the defence forces. Occasionally, we have a “perfect” moment in such matters. Getting rid of smallpox was one of those, as was the big sigh of relief when Y2K didn’t destroy civilisation because the techies had done their job on time and in time.
These technical things are decided by people who know the science advising the people who have to administer all this stuff for the benefit of the community at large. And then everyone works out what’s best to be done and what can be done right now.
People bleating about the scientific nitty gritty that they avoided like the plague during their education and every day since have no role in contesting scientific observations and conclusions. They can ask for explanations, and sometimes be disappointed, just like kids asking for the perfect holiday, when the answer is we don’t know or we’re not sure. Just like deciding on the holiday, everyone works with what they’ve got.
Unfortunately, far too many people involved in wishing for a “debate” sound an awful lot like fractious kids in the back of the car whining about “Are we there yet?”
No need to explain it again, I understood your point about a Oligarchy of Experts who we should all defer to. That’s what fascism and communism have in common.
It’s still unexplained who will be expert enough to select those expert enough to take informed decisions, but then again, no fascist or communist regime has ever been sustainable. Even in China popular support is trumping apparatchik selection to the top.
as for your example there are no votes for medical care but surely in a democracy there’s ample debate about the general provision of health care.
Fascism & communism? Seriously? It’s nice to see that polar opposites can have so much in common.
Which political systems allow for every citizen to have an equal voice in every measure and in which countries are they implemented?
Yes, in the mind of Omno ALL knowledge has “so much in common”. It all resides in a screaming hurricane of confusion and ignorance. That’s why he has so much difficulty making sense and elicits so many WHAT??!!! responses when he lets some of it escape.
Nice to see you so happy Dumbold as nothing I’ve said hasn’t been misunderstood by your infinitesimal abilities.
Somehow though people who like to be marched into a totalitarian state don’t remind of unruly kids in the back of cars, rather of dogs wagging their tails in the crates, in the trunk. Happy woof woofing for Thanksgiving.
Fascism was invented by a Socialist
Wait a minute – you follow up a post stating “One person one vote, that’s all the legitimacy required” with one commenting on an “oligarchy of experts”???
Is this some subtle attempt at comedy? If so, please desist as you’ve repeatedly demonstrated that you’re not adept at humor.
There’s been a true Oligarchy with true power that has been operating at odds with the best interests of the common man for a long time and they are responsible for the “skeptics” that you contend are being dehumanized.
This Oligarchy has demonized, dehumanized and even destroyed vast numbers of persons & voters and all for the love of money, while many of them loudly profess their faith in God all the while ignoring the admonitions of the Book of Timothy.
Morin Moss – I see you’re describing a cliché view of liberal democracy. Still unsure why you’d support ditching a flawed electoral system and replacing it with an established Oligarchy, as this has been disastrously attempted several times. Who will decide which science to follow and why?
I see that, once again, you’re dodging and your response, not for the 1st time, is also accurately described as dodgy.
I believe the word you meant to use was truism, not cliché.
Dodging what exactly. I’ve asked for an explanation of your choice ASSUMING your opinion on liberal democracy be correct. You’re saying it’s already an Oligarchy, so what’s the point of replacing it with another?
If it was your intent to be honest, why didn’t you add liberal democracy to your remark about fascism & communism?
It must be quite galling to you that an “Oligarchy of Experts” exists in every hierarchy or would you call those tyrannies?
We disagree on liberal democracy. That’s why I would not add it to fascism and communism (a silly concept, as in a fascist or communist regime I would be in jail and maybe even you).
For the third time: within your frame of mind where current “democracy” is an Oligarchy, what advantage would there be in going into another kind of Oligarchy?
Don’t try to put words in my mouth, or post.
I don’t support putting shills disguised as “skeptics” on an equal footing with experts in the field.
Besides it would not be “replacing” one oligarchy with another, it would be a removal of a source of CORRUPTION.
The scientific bodies were put in place for a reason; if they’re shirking that duty or abusing their power, that’s one issue but allowing self-serving, non-experts equal standing in every decision is path to anarchy. That may be your preferred political construct in which case I expect your future posts to originate from Somalia.
Your comment is meaningless. I have already made the example of health care, an issue that is very much debated in the open the world over in liberal democracies.
Of course behind every public health care intervention there are scientists who have determined what was wrong and what needed be done. But just of course nobody is mad enough to let the “Scientists” decide for everybody else…public health care is a political point of debate, and organized by a Government.
The same for road codes. Dozens and dozens of experts on traffic accidents, but the Code is law and therefore has to get parliamentary approval.
This has zero to do with Somalia or anarchy. This is the way most Western societies work.
Methinks the only reason people here are so dismissive of liberal democracy, is because you keep losing every possible election. I can only thank you for that.
“Your comment is meaningless” – oh, this one is just too easy 🙂
“example of health care” – a much easier “debate” than global warming since everyone gets sick, everyone dies and we have enough knowledge – usually established through tragedy or catastrophe – to establish cause & effect.
Notice I said “usually”. Do I have to resort to the “clichés” of tobacco denial or are you content to accept the causal link between cigarette smoking & lung cancer?
Do you secretly yearn to be that legitimate voter who overthrows The Cancer Industrial Machine as a commie plot to control our lives & steal our tax dollars?
After all, God made tobacco so delicious to inhale and he’s still up there in control, right?
What exactly does winning or losing elections have to do with science?
I suppose that one can argue, to take a page from Saul Alinsky, that the ends justifies the means. So any action taken in the name of a noble cause is justified in your eyes?
Bribery, gerrymandering, voter suppression, duplicity, etc are all acceptable if it’s the only way to win?
MorinMoss – I wasn’t talking about that. I was responding to adelady’s idea that we cannot possibly be debating global warming.
My point is that we can and should, just like we can and do debate health care, rather than simply leave all decisions to some kind of Super Doctors.
“Who will decide which science to follow and why?”
uh..the scientific process continually points out what the best science is, and the National Academy was formed specifically to be able to advise on what the best current science. They have been pretty consistent for 35 years.
The NAS can and does inform a democratically elected Government and Congress (and Judiciary). But my interlocutor was going far beyond that, dreaming of putting the NAS in charge, totally undemocratically to the point of considering people as children. That’s what I am totally against, because it’s bound to generate hell on earth today as in the past.
Excellent rant! (although it will go right over Omno’s head). Omno once again fulfills his role of Useful Idiot by saying something that is (actually beyond) ludicrous and getting his toes well shot off.
As to his “no need to explain it again”, I agree. If you do, you will only bring on more confused babbling from Omno like his indecipherable WHAT????? comment at 7:16 AM. Spare us.
PS I like the “….fractious kids in the back of the car whining about “Are we there yet?” analogy. Omno is certainly one of the “fractious kids”, but he whines instead about “Where are we going?”, “Why are we going there?”, and “Why won’t anyone ever listen to me?”