I have no problem exposing myself as a climate change agnostic. I don’t know whether the world’s climate is changing or not; if it is I don’t know whether it’s the fault of humans or not; and I don’t trust Al Gore or the UN to be truthful about it when they both have great interest in exploiting the theory of climate change for their own benefits.
I also have great problems with the world expecting developed countries to show “leadership” by cutting greenhouse emissions by drastic amounts in a short period of time while showing no real interest in expecting developing countries such as China and India to control the explosion of emissions they’re increasingly responsible for (especially China) beyond asking them nicely to do so and backing off meekly when those countries tell the world to go fuck itself. None of this is anything I haven’t blogged about before.
But it struck me that this summer hasn’t been worse heat and weather-wise than last summer (although I do bitch about the heat and humidity plenty in another blog) and last summer wasn’t as bad as the summer before. In theory, if the climate is changing and it’s getting warmer, that should be evident in the summer as well as in the winter. Since this past winter was pretty temperate even if we didn’t get much snow it got me curious. So I went about checking out some weather history.
I compiled 6 years worth of data (2003-2008) using the months of May, June and the first 9 days of July. 70 day samples for each year. Maybe that’s not enough, but I believe it should be enough to show some sort of consistency over the years if something nefarious about climate change is going on. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not scientist.
Using data for BWI airport from Weather Underground, I created a spreadsheet that can be viewed here. I then used the spreadsheet to create this chart:
What does it show over the course of the last 6 years, as the calls for action regarding climate change have grown louder and more shrill? Not much. Some years have more hot days than other and there’s no real pattern in any of it.
I know I’m only talking about 70 days out of 365 over the course of 6 years and not 365 days over decades or centuries, but if climate authorities can come to the conclusions they do using data that doesn’t show anything much more than some years are different than others then so can I.
I have no doubt whatsoever that climate change is happening. I know from personal experience. When I was a kid (I grew up in Maryland) we had a snowstorm that almost covered the entire door. Those simply don’t happen in Maryland anymore.
I travel (when was the last time you left Reisterstown, Cheese?).
It is a fact that polar ice is melting and that sea levels are rising as a result. Next time you go to an island, ask somebody if the coastline is farther in. If they say “yes”, this is because the sea level is rising.
Buy a plane ticket to Alaska and ask an Eskimo if there’s less ice up there. Bring me back some fish from Prince William Sound, if you can find any that weren’t killed off as the result of the Exxon Valdiz oil spill.
Assuming climate change is occuring, where is the unequivocal proof it is caused by humans? Why can it not be a natural occurance? And why are the top climate change alarmists so interested in scaring the shit out of the developed world but not so much the developing world? When was the last time Al Gore took his PowerPoint presentation to Beijing?
I’m not saying conclusively that climate change isn’t happening. I’m just not sold that my driving a car and heating my house is the cause, and I’m not willing to believe that it’s going to kill the world because some people with agendas say so. Sorry.
Also, An oil spill in P.W. Sound is a drop of sludge in an olympic size swimming pool that has nothing to do with climate change. And, while it’ll never be what it was before the accident (but forests aren’t after wildfires and such either), the sound is by no means dead.
With a graph like that, you draw a straight line through the middle of the plot to reduce the effect of variation and see the trend.
Doing that with your small sample shows that average days over 80 degrees have trended from below 30/year to above 40/year in 5 years, which is significant.
I’m not concerned about the Earth’s health; it’s 4B years old, it’ll be fine. We are an infestation. I am, however, concerned that we will alter it enough that we won’t be able to live on it, and more immediately, I’m concerned that things will get bad enough in already marginal places to make things bad for me.
Or it could show 2003 was an anomaly since that one year skews the trend. After I posted the chart I really realized how terrible of an example it was to use it to get my point across, but I’m used to making myself look bad so it’s no big deal.
I believe if our time is up on this planet it’s up, and not even a return to living in caves and hunting and gathering for survival is going to stop it, so I see no point in allowing climate change authorities to dictate how we live. Better to burn out than fade away, or something like that.
Think about this: If Al Gore had never been born, woudl there still be global warming?