Dumbest man in Washington explains, above.
A rapidly intensifying storm that could be one of the most intense on record for the Midwest in January is helping to prompt watches and warnings for the entire Lower 48 states on Friday.
Threat level: The storm’s hazards are multifaceted, from “life-threatening” blizzard conditions in Iowa to powerful winds that may cause damage in at least a dozen states.
- Conditions in Iowa have disrupted campaigning as all eyes are on turnout ahead of Monday’s caucuses.
- In addition, more rounds of severe thunderstorms with possible tornadoes are likely Friday and Saturday across the Southeast, with flooding rains along the East Coast.
Details: The storm, which will reach its maximum intensity over Michigan this weekend — causing waves on the Great Lakes to reach or exceed 20 feet — will help accelerate a push of Arctic air south and southeastward from Montana to the Gulf Coast.
The intrigue: Typically, climate scientists hold a press conference at the end of a year to explain where the period ranked on the list of hottest years and why.
- This year, NOAA and NASA’s top climate researchers could only accomplish the first part, saying it is not yet known why the year got so unusually warm.
- “We’re looking at this and we’re frankly, astonished,” Gavin Schmidt, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, said during a press conference.
- Schmidt said 2024’s conditions will help indicate whether 2023 was just “a blip” or if “There’s something systematically different going forward.”
- “I think we’re discomforted by the findings that we’ve had,” Schmidt said.
Yes, but: Some climate scientists, most prominently former NASA researcher James Hansen, have already concluded that last year was not just a blip, and climate change is speeding up due to the planet’s increasingly lopsided energy imbalance.
- This is caused by the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which absorb heat and were emitted by burning fossil fuels.
- Most climate scientists have not yet bought into Hansen’s conclusions, but many have not ruled it out, either.
The bottom line: As climate scientist Zeke Hausfather wrote Friday, predictions for 2024’s temperatures are now less reliable after the notable forecast bust for 2023.
- “Ultimately, what matters for the climate is not the leaderboard of individual years,” Hausfather wrote Friday. “Rather, it is the long-term upward trend in global temperatures driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Until the world reduces emissions down to net-zero, the planet will continue to warm.”
“We’ve listened to scientist after scientist….”
Name one.