The media has been abuzz with claims that this 4th of July was the hottest 4th of July ever. Given the well-known heat waves of 1936 and 1966, along with memories of many other summers hotter than I have experienced in recent years, I was pretty sure this was one more in a long list of desperate lies to try and keep the myth of catastrophic man-made global warming alive. It is that myth which the Biden administration, the Democratic Party in general, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and many a kleptocracy have been using as a justification for attacking the many and broad rights of the individual to promote a collectivist lowering of the standard of living of all mankind. Independence Day is anathema to these people, so it must have been very tempting to turn it into an object lesson for catastrophic man-made (man guilty) global warming.
The vigilant CO2 Coalition has looked into the claims that this 4th of July was the hottest 4th of July ever. Using the data available in the U. S. Historical Climatology Network, NOAA NCEI, for the Lower 48 US states, the maximum average temperature among the weather stations is for the 4th of July:
This chart does not have the 4 July 2023 data point yet, since NOAA apparently has not yet provided such recent data. Let us suppose that 4 July 2023 actually was the hottest recorded US 4th of July, though I suspect that is not the case. That would only be significant for the claim of catastrophic man-made global warming if it were part of a 4th of July warming trend. Now, despite the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere throughout the period 1890 to 2022, the maximum average temperature on the 4th of July has been nearly constant over the 1895 to 2022 period of time. The trend line has actually shown a small decrease with time!
The CO2 Coalition has provided us with another way of looking at the temperature record for the 4th of July:
This chart shows the percentage of the weather stations recording temperatures greater than 100F on the 4th of July from 1895 to 2022. This percentage also has a downward trendline.
If the temperatures of the U.S. 4th of Julys have a story to tell, it is that the U.S. is slowly cooling. If CO2 is the thermostat controlling the climate, then the cooling effects of CO2 have become dominant over increased warming effects at the concentrations reached by about 1950. This would imply that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 for which its warming effect reaches a maximum is about 310 ppm. Above that concentration, additional atmospheric CO2 causes cooling. Of course, choosing a single day of the year is not the best way to determine whether the U.S. is warming or cooling over more than 12 decades. But it is a much better indicator than the one single 4th of July of one year that the priests of catastrophic man-made global warming have offered the world as proof of global warming due to man's CO2 emissions.
The catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis has been proven false many, many times. It is based on a misunderstanding of thermal radiation, the ignorance of CO2 cooling effects, poor surface temperature records, misguided temperature record manipulations, a wanton neglect of the benefits of atmospheric CO2, an overestimation of the economic harms of warming, and a fervor to reduce mankind's ability to use the resources of the Earth to improve the human standard of living.
Yet Americans continue to leave northern states for the warming climates of southern states. Apparently, humans prosper in warmth. Imagine that.
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