Those Stubborn Climate Modelers Absolutely Insist on Being Wrong

The previous set of wrongheaded climate models, CMIP5, generated too much warming over the sea and in the tropical troposphere (the lower, most dense, layer of the Earth's atmosphere).  The current CMIPS6 models cause excessive warming all over the Earth in both the lower and the middle troposphere.  It has long been recognized that too much warming in the tropical troposphere causes greater latitudinal temperature gradients that would cause too much warming worldwide.  The errors of the CMIPS5 models were not addressed.  Instead, the bias of the modelers in favor of exaggerated man-made global warming has led to their creation of a new generation of models that actually makes the errors of the previous models worse.  Apparently, these "scientists" believe that when you are proven wrong, the job of science is to develop models and theories that are even more wrong.  These CMIPS6 climate models are supposed to provide the basis for the next UN IPCC report on how man's use of hydrocarbon fuels will cause catastrophic global warming.

A new paper by Dann M. Mitchell et al.,  examines the temperature trends in the troposphere and stratosphere in the tropics for 48 of the CMIPS6 climate models, each of which is supposed to represent the well-understood consensus climate science, despite the differences in their predictions.  The essence of the results of this analysis by Mitchell et al. is shown in this figure from their manuscript accepted for publication in Environmental Research Letters:

The overwrite on the right-most graph is part of the word manuscript on this pre-publication paper.  The vertical atmosphere altitude is given in terms of the pressure in hPa, where an hPa is 100 Pa.  The x-axis gives the change in temperature per decade in Kelvins (a change of 1 Kelvin equals a change of 1 degree Centigrade).  There is warming in the troposphere and cooling in the stratosphere in the left-most graph, so you can tell the pressure at which the stratosphere begins by looking for the intersection with the zero trend line.

The left-most graph is the measured (black) and the model (red and blue) change in temperature/decade for the period 1979 to 2014.  The black measurements are based on three sets of data: RICH1.5 radiosondes, RAOBCORE1.5 radiosondes, and the Reanalysis ERA5/5.1.  The red horizontal lines indicate the so-called 95% uncertainty range of temperature rate change of the models which try to predict the ocean surface temperatures.  The blue model results are for those models that assume the measured ocean temperatures, rather than trying to predict them.  The red models that try to predict the ocean temperatures increase their errors with excessively high warming rates over the oceans at the surface.  Then, on top of that, they predict increasingly larger warming trends as they climb upwards through the troposphere.  The predictions for the cooling in the stratosphere seem to be much better for these models in the 1979-2014 period, but this is scientifically illusory.

The middle and the right graph separate out the 1979-1997 and the 1998-2014 periods of time.  In the earlier period, the models gave too little cooling in the stratosphere, while in the later period they gave too much cooling.  Putting these offsetting errors together, produced a seemingly good agreement in the stratosphere in the combined period from 1979 to 2014.  However, it is clear from the shorter period results that the modelers did not really know what they were doing.  The actual measured rates show little to no cooling in the stratosphere after 1997, while the models insist on cooling rates similar to those for the 1979-1997 period.

From 1998 to 2014, the CMIPS5 models excessively warmed at rates of 4 to 5 times faster than did the actual temperature measurements.  The CMIPS6 models are not improved.  They are especially in error in the upper troposphere at pressures of about 200 hPa.  There is one especially wrongheaded model and it is the one the Canadian government relies upon for its policies on global warming.  It yields a tropospheric warming rate about 7 times the observed warming rate.  Those poor, poor Canadians!  Governmental energy policies based on a seven-fold exaggeration of a "problem" sure does create real problems.

There is also an evaluation of the CMIPS6 models by McKitrick and Christy which has been accepted for publication by Earth and Space Science.  These authors had found that there was a warming bias in the CMIPS5 models in the tropical mid-troposphere in earlier analyses.  Their new work demonstrates that the CMIPS6 models are even more biased towards warming.  This increased warming is seen in their predictions in both the lower and middle troposphere at all latitudes - the tropics and beyond.  They found that the models using higher Equilibrium Climate Sensitivities (>3.4K) warmed faster than those using lower values of the ECS, but both sets of models all predicted faster than the observed rate of warming.  The observed rate of warming in the lower troposphere is given as 0.15 K/decade, while the lower ECS value set of models with an average ECS of 2.7K gave a lower troposphere warming rate of 0.21K/decade.  The observed middle troposphere warming rate is 0.09K/decade.  To get the right rate of warming, the models would have to use ECS values in the 1 to 2 K range.

In conclusion, the climate modelers, whose models are the basis for man-made global warming, continue to show that they do not understand the science and that their degree of understanding is not improving.  Yet, we can rest assured that many governmental bodies will continue to determine their energy-use policies based on their failed understanding of the science.  There will continue to be claims that they represent the consensus on well-understood science.  It is pretty much impossible to understand the stubborn persistence in the belief in the failed catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis as a matter of science.

Their clinging to this erroneous belief is a matter of payoffs, environmental religion, and socialist politics lusting to wrest away more and more control of the management of our individual lives. 

Why don't these black lives matter? by Paul Driessen

Child labor, human rights abuses and deaths are routinely ignored by Greens and Democrats

Marathon Petroleum recently announced it will “indefinitely idle” its Martinez Refinery. The decision will remove hundreds of jobs, billions of dollars, and nearly 7 million gallons of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum liquids per day from the energy-hungry California economy. It will also send fuel prices even higher for minority and other poor families that already pay by far the highest gasoline prices in the continental United States: $1.32 more per gallon of regular than in Louisiana and Texas.

California’s green and political interests don’t want drilling or fracking, pipelines, or nuclear, coal or hydroelectric power plants – or mining for the materials needed to manufacture electric cars. They prefer to have that work done somewhere else, and just import the energy, cars and consumer goods.

They’ve long wanted a totally electric vehicle (EV) fleet, which they claim would be clean, ethical, climate-friendly and sustainable. Of course, those labels hold up only so long as they look solely at activities and emissions within California state boundaries – and not where the mining, manufacturing and electricity generation take place. That kind of “life cycle” analysis would totally disrupt their claims.

Consider copper. A typical internal combustion engine uses about 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of this vital everyday metal, the International Copper Association says. A hybrid car requires almost 90 lb (40 kg); a plug-in EV needs 132 lb (60 kg); and a big electric bus can use up to 812 lb (369 kg) of copper. If all 15,000,000 California cars were EVs, they would need almost 1,000,000 tons of copper.

But copper ores average just 0.5% metal by weight, notes energy analyst Mark Mills. That means 200,000,000 tons of ore would have to be dug up, crushed, processed and refined to get that much copper. Almost every step in that process would require fossil fuels – and emit carbon dioxide and pollutants.

That’s just California. According to Cambridge University Emeritus Professor of Technology Michael Kelly, replacing all the United Kingdom’s vehicles with next-generation EVs would require more than half the world’s annual production of copper; twice its annual cobalt; three quarters of its yearly lithium carbonate output; and nearly its entire annual production of neodymium.

Just one electric car or backup-power battery weighs 1,000 pounds and requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of various ores, Mills says. The true costs of “green” energy are staggering.

Imagine replacing all of the USA’s nearly 300,000,000 cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, buses, trucks and other vehicles with electric versions under the Green New Deal – and then charging them daily. The millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of backup-power batteries, thousands of miles of new transmission lines, grid upgrades and million or so fast charging stations all across America would also require copper, concrete, all these other metals and many more materials, in incomprehensible quantities.

Alaska’s Pebble Mine deposit has an estimated 35 million tons of high-grade copper ore and 3 million tons of molybdenum and other critical GND ores. The copper alone is nearly two times the world’s 2019 output of that essential element. Permits were blocked for years for questionable reasons. But the US Army Corps of Engineers recently found that mining would not have a “measurable effect” on sockeye salmon numbers in the Bristol Bay watershed and should be allowed to proceed, under tough US pollution control, reclamation, wildlife protection, workplace safety, fair wage and child labor laws.

Environmentalists intend to delay the Pebble Mine as long as possible – and block other US exploration and mining projects. That’s why most mining and processing is done overseas, much of it in China and Mongolia or by Chinese companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where none of these laws apply.

Most of the world’s rare earth ores are extracted near Baotou, Inner Mongolia by pumping acid into the ground, then processed using more acids and chemicals. Producing one ton of rare earth metals releases up to 420,000 cubic feet of toxic gases, 2,600 cubic feet of acidic wastewater, and a ton of radioactive waste. The resulting black sludge is piped into a foul, lifeless lake. Numerous local people suffer from severe skin and respiratory diseases, children are born with soft bones, and cancer rates have soared.

Lithium comes largely from Tibet and arid highlands of the Argentina-Bolivia-Chile “lithium triangle.” Dead, toxic fish join carcasses of cows and yaks floating down Tibet’s Liqi River, which has been poisoned by the Ganzizhou Rongda mine. Native people in the ABC triangle say lithium operations contaminate streams needed for humans, livestock and irrigation, and leave mountains of discarded salt.

The world’s top producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some 40,000 children as young as four toil with their parents for less than $2 a day up to 12 hours a day. Many die in cave-ins, or more slowly from constant exposure to toxic, radioactive mud, dust, water and air that puts dangerous levels of cobalt, lead, uranium and other heavy metals into their bodies. The cobalt ore is sent to China for processing by the Chinese-owned Congo Dongfang International Mining Company.

That’s just to meet current raw material requirements. Try to picture the raw material demands, Third World mining and child labor conditions, and ecological destruction, under the Green New Deal.

Liberals often say they support sustainable, ethical coffee, sneakers, handbags and diamonds. No child labor, sweat shops or unsafe conditions tolerated. But it’s a different story with green energy and EVs. In 2019, California Assembly Bill 735 proposed that the state certify that “zero emission” electric vehicles sold there are free of any materials or components that involve child labor. Democrats voted it down. The matter is complicated, they “explained.” It would be too hard to enforce, cost too much and imperil state climate goals. And besides, lots of other industries also use child labor. (So shut up about it.)

Last month, the US House of Representatives had an opportunity to legislate a national certification that federally funded electric buses and charging stations would not include minerals mined with child labor. The Transportation Committee approved the amendment 43-19 (all 19 nay votes were Democrats). But Pete DeFazio(D-OR) quietly replaced the enforceable certification language with a meaningless statement that “it is the policy of the United States” that funds “should not be used” for items involving child labor.

DeFazio claimed certification is unnecessary because US trade agreements prohibit child labor. But there is no agreement with Congo, and China has shown no interest in ending child labor in its supply chains. (Plus, the matter is complicated, hard to enforce and perilous for climate and Green New Deal goals.)

It’s easy for Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues to wear Kente cloth stoles in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. And for Sierra Club staff to criticize the organization’s “history and culture of white supremacy” – what I call callous, deadly and arguably racist eco-imperialism and carbon colonialism. We need real reform, and an end to the cancel culture that silences discussion about the horrors of what’s going on in too many non-white areas of the United States and world.

 

The human and ecological realities of GND policies cry out for debate. So do the violence and death that preceded and followed George Floyd’s inexcusable death. Not just the 25 police killings of unarmed blacks all across America in 2019 that have become the narrow focus of Black Lives Matter, politicians and rioters. But also the murders of David Dorn, Patrick Underwood and other police officers; Mekhi James, LeGend Taliferro, Secoriea Turner and other black children gunned down by their fellow blacks; and as many as 7,000 American black men, women and children murdered by blacks every year.

In Chicago, over the July 4 weekend, police reported 87 shootings and 17 deaths, and nearly a dozen of those shot were children caught in the crossfire, the New York Post despaired. In fact, the black-on-black Windy City murder toll over almost any two recent successive weekends exceeds those 25 police killings.

“Every single person who has been shot in New York City [so far] this July, nearly 100 in total, has been a member of the minority community,” NBC News reporter Tom Winter tweeted, “and 97% of shooting victims in June were members of the city’s minority community.” The solution is defunding the police?

ALL these African, Asian, Latin American and minority American lives matter. It’s time to talk about it honestly, figure out what’s really driving the inhumanity, and create a world we can be proud to live in.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues. 

How to Change a Society from a Largely Free Democratic Republic to a Fascist Socialist Totalitarian State

1.  Divide individuals by gender, by ethnicity, by wealth and income, by education, by age, and by sexuality; 

2.  Pit one group against another using the force of government to provide unearned rewards to some at the expense of others by putting limits on the rights of individuals to earn a living, limiting their freedom of association, and their freedom to cooperate with one another; 

3.  Thereby, creating distrust and hatred as the factions fight to control the government that insists on hurting many, making it a threat to all, thereby making it a matter of life and death for each group to control the government;

4.  Watch a country that once honored merit in the market place, but became an unlimited democracy, succumb to greed for the unearned with the development of ever more special interest groups dependent upon government largess;

5.  The government-run and funded education system becomes a tool promoting more and more government powers, seeks to suppress all private education alternatives, seeks to suppress individual rights especially freedom of speech and the freedom of the press or media, promotes the collective rights of some groups at the expense of the rights of the individuals in other groups, and promotes versions of the country's prior history that diverge ever more from the truth such that more and more power and money flow to the government and the education system;

6. In which a majority coalition of those who have less wealth and want government forced transfers of wealth to themselves and those who most lust for power turn the country into a socialist, fascist country (very poor, primitive countries usually turn communist instead);

7. Which in turn comes to be ruled by the most brutal elements of the power lusters with a total loss of individual rights.

I read William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the summer after the 9th grade and came to understand most of this.  I think I understood some of these lessons better than Shirer did.  There have been many further examples of this process since WWII.

Here is a very interesting analysis video of what we are presently facing based on a young woman's experience during the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Robert Bidinotto -- Many People Embrace Altruism Because They See Relationships as Win-Lose in a Zero-Sum World

I, Charles Anderson, have long argued that the private sector -- a broader concept than the free market -- allows everyone to pursue relationships offering mutual benefits, while the government sector is "dog eat dog" under the rule of brutal force. I have not railed much against altruism as a chosen philosophy, though Ayn Rand and many other Objectivists have. Instead, I have simply tried to convince people that our relationships should be worked to our mutual benefit and government should be limited by the principle that it should not be hurting anyone, not even with a rationale that it was acting for the "Greater Good."  

Yet before reading Robert Bidinotto's comments below, I did not quite recognize that many people were so repulsed by being an oppressor in a world they saw as a zero-sum game that they chose instead to be a victim.  In dealing with zero-sum win/lose governments, I have made this choice myself.  This repulsion for being the bully/oppressor serves as the reason that many people act as though they are altruists, the philosophy of self-sacrifice.  Fortunately, the free private sector is very accommodating to win/win relationships and we can develop a society in which self-sacrifice is not a necessary choice to avoid becoming a monster oppressor.

In a Facebook discussion, Robert Bidinotto, the author of the Hunter thriller novels, made what I believe to be unusually perceptive and brilliant observations that made this much clearer to me. As he says, this explanation for the popularity of altruism needs to be understood and promulgated with vigor.  With his permission, I am reproducing his comments here:

Robert Bidinotto:  On the Origins of "Self-Sacrifice" as Moral "Ideal"

Politics is force -- and the initiation of force necessarily creates zero-sum situations of victimizers vs. victims. This means politics necessarily fuels resentments, hatred, and social "polarization," because politics invariably, unavoidably results in "win/lose" relationships.

  

This state of affairs is the exact opposite of the voluntary, non-coercive trade relationships in a free society, which are to mutual benefit and are thus "win/win." In the marketplace, all parties to an uncoerced transaction walk away afterward believing that they are better off than before. It's why when we pay for something in stores, we customarily say "thank you" -- and so do the sellers. We are happy to get the goods and services sold to us, and they are happy to get our money in exchange. There are no victimizers, and no victims.

You'd think people who truly wanted a peaceful, benevolent, harmonious society would realize this, embrace the free market, and reject government coercion as the central organizing principle of society. But no. 

Why? 

I think that's because a huge percentage of people harbor a fundamental zero-sum, winner-loser view of economic and social relationships. Few people ever become leftists because they read turgid tracts by Marx and Engels about "class warfare." They become leftists because they see social and economic relationships in terms of either gaining power over others, or of submitting to the power of others. They see human interests as being fundamentally in conflict, so that the "self-interest" of some necessitates the "exploitation" of others.

This worldview or Narrative is rooted deep within humanity's tribal past, where human relationships *were* all about either domination or submission. We have to remember that capitalism, historically, is very new -- and from the outset it was misinterpreted through the conventional, long-standing filter of that zero-sum, win-lose worldview. Capitalists were thus "robber barons," not society's creative benefactors. Marx, and generations he influenced, interpreted capitalism and all human relationships in terms of class warfare. Today, "identity politics" rests on the same view of inherent conflicts of interest among demographic groups. Society, to the left, is all about "power relationships."

If I'm right about this, then many people's idealization of the ethics of "self-sacrifice" makes a kind of sense. Altruistic self-sacrifice is not so much the result of philosophical/ideological persuasion, as it is the result of a deep-seated core belief in inherent conflicts of interest -- and the subsequent conclusion that the only way for people to live in social harmony is to forgo their "selfish interests." 

This puts a different interpretive spin on the age-old popularity of altruism. On its face, self-sacrifice makes no sense. Acting in opposition to one's best interests is bizarre, and why people should *want* to accept it as a "moral ideal" is even more bizarre. So Ayn Rand, for one -- viewing human action as powered by abstract philosophical ideas -- tried to explain altruism's prevalence by imagining that malicious philosophers and thinkers have pushed it upon the gullible as a self-contained "ism," and embedded it into various philosophies. You can read endless articles from Rand and her followers bashing "altruism" per se, as a causal force in society. You also see that their critiques have had little societal impact.

My explanation for this failure is that the attacks on altruism per se are strategically misplaced. If what I said above is valid, then altruism is less a moral cause than a moral *conclusion* -- a logical choice for those who believe that socio-economic relationships involve inherent conflicts of interest. If that's your Narrative about the social world -- if you see transactions as nothing but power relationships about dominance and submission -- then you have a logical choice to make: either to become a cold-blooded, predatory brute, or to become (or remain) "nice" and allow yourself to be an exploited victim. Those who truly believe in this Narrative may conclude that they'd rather keep their self-respect by being victimized than join the ranks of criminals and brutes. Altruism thus becomes evidence not of low self-esteem, but rather the misguided quest to *retain* one's self-esteem and humanity in a world of brutes and barbarians.

Is this interpretation far-fetched? I observe that in discussions of emergencies and "lifeboat situations," even many Randians recoil from a view that sees these as zero-sum conflicts, which would require them to behave as ruthless brutes, surviving at the expense of others. Most would prefer to keep their humanity and self-esteem by dying nobly, rather than survive like predatory beasts.

Well, then imagine how you'd *live* (and vote) if you truly believed that *normal social life* was all about zero-sum conflicts of interest -- that each transaction under capitalism entailed someone gaining at someone else's expense. You'd conclude, logically, that economic winners were all rapacious predators and "robber barons." You'd conclude, logically, that to keep your soul, you'd have to sacrifice your prospects for economic well-being and do your work solely for the love of it, not for commercial success. You'd conclude, logically, that to keep the economic predators in check, you needed a powerful, highly regulatory government to suppress predatory "greed." You'd conclude, logically, that Marxism's "class warfare" worldview was valid -- as were Marx's proposed remedies -- which would explain the stubborn, indelible appeal of socialism, despite its epic, bloody failures wherever it is tried. 

If I'm right about this, then the *main* target of individualists' moral proselytizing ought to be the Zero-Sum Narrative, i.e., the belief in inherent conflicts of interest among people -- and not altruism per se, which is mainly an emotionally driven *reaction* to the zero-sum worldview. We need to teach people that economic relationships in a free society are "win/win," not "win/lose." We need to teach what 19th-century thinker Frederic Bastiat labeled "Economic Harmonies." 

And we ought to teach that the "win/win" marketplace, based on voluntary, unforced trades, is the moral antithesis of the world of politics, where all relationships *are* in fact coercive, zero-sum, and "win/lose." We ought to teach that if you want a world that minimizes the coercive victimization of some people by others, then we need to keep relationships in the *private sector* -- that the *political sector* is the *last* place you should turn for solutions, and that politicians are the *last* people you should turn to as saviors. 

And that my friends is a very wise analysis of most of our societal problems, if you think this through for yourself.  Thank you ever so much Robert Bidinotto.

By the way, the Bidinotto novels are a rare pleasure to read.  Here is his author page on amazon.com.

The Otherworldly Mind of Poor, Lost Joe Biden and Implications for Black Americans

This is a satire with a mix of the facts as Joe Biden sees things and real world facts.  Be intelligent enough to take it as such.  I have observed far too much emotion unguided by reason of late.

Joe Biden, the Democrat who would be President, has said that 150 million Americans have died by gun violence.  More recently, he said that 120 million Americans have died from the "novel coronavirus", to use the flimsy name for the Chinese Communist Party coronavirus preferred by the Democrats and other socialists.

In 2017, 52% of homicide victims were black.  The percentage of the American population who are black is 13.4% and the American population is thought to be 329 million by normal people, though it is clearly much less in Joe Biden's world of mass deaths.  Doing the math, normal people would conclude there are 44 million black Americans.

If 52% of homicide victims are black and Biden's 150 million deaths by gun violence is true, then 78 million black Americans died by gun violence or by equally violent means.  Oddly enough, 88% of their killers were other blacks, so Joe must think that of the 78 million black Americans he thinks were killed by gun violence, nearly 69 million were killed by other blacks.  The Democrats' response to this unbelievable black self-extermination is to defund the police.  The Democrats' agenda does not include the preservation of black lives.

The man who would be President, says 120 million Americans have died of the coronavirus.  He and his socialist party have complained that black Americans are dying from the coronavirus in disproportionate numbers.  Black Americans are dying from the virus at rates several times that of white Americans, though the data on black deaths from this cause is not at all complete.  Nonetheless, it is likely not far from the case that about half of all coronavirus deaths are those of black Americans.  Then using the deaths due to coronavirus according to the man who would be President, Joe Biden, about 60 million black Americans have died from this virus.

The man who would be president and the socialist party that so lusts for power to rule the American people that they have in desperation put forth Biden as their knight in tarnished armor, apparently think that 78 million black Americans died from gun violence and another 60 million died from the "novel coronavirus", for a total of 138 million black American deaths.  Without an overwhelming percentage of the black vote, Joe Biden cannot ascend to the presidency, so he must be extremely worried about the upcoming 2020 presidential election.  According to Joe, from his bunker in his basement, there are no longer any black Americans left to vote for him.  In Joe's otherworldly mind, all 138 million out of 44 million black Americans have recently died from either gun violence or the "novel coronavirus."

Fortunately, Joe and his basement bunker, appear to be in another dimension and not in that of normal people.  As bad as gun violence is among black Americans and as bad as the Chinese Communist Party coronavirus has been for the health of black Americans, there are still many millions of black Americans ready to vote for poor Joe.  Despite the fact that Democrats insist on the poorest public education for black communities, despite their refusal to provide adequate police protection in those communities, and despite the anti-business policies of Democrats which suppress jobs in the communities they rule, millions of black Americans will vote for Joe, the one-time segregationist, the present searcher for his lost marbles, and the future numb-minded pawn of the socialists.  If American blacks placed a high value on their own lives, they certainly would not vote for poor, lost Joe and his Democrat socialist handlers.

My Critique of the Washington Post Pulitzer Prize Winning Global Warming Lead Article

The article in the Washington Post, whose arguments I tear to shreds in this post, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2020 for:

Explanatory Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.

Complete nonsense is Pulitzer Prize worthy in the minds of the elitist collectivist left who make these awards.

The August 14, 2019 Washington Post had a front page, above the fold article which continues to fill the entirety of pages A10 and A11:

This article is also posted on-line here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/?noredirect=on

There is a salient bias exhibited here.  The temperature change is measured from 1895 to 2018.  Why is 1895 the starting time for that measurement?  Because 1895 was a very cold year.  Let us examine the average US temperature plot below by Statistica:

The average temperature in 1895 was 50.34⁰F and in 2018 it was 53.53⁰F, so the temperature difference was 3.19⁰F or 1.77⁰C.  Had the Washington Post chosen to start the comparison in 1900 when the average US temperature was 52.77⁰F, then the increase in average temperature from then to 2018 would be 0.76⁰F or 0.42⁰C.  Now no one seriously believes that man-made global warming caused 1900 to be 2.43⁰F or 1.35⁰C warmer than 1895.  So, a change of weather, not a change of climate was the likely cause of this substantial difference in temperature over a 5 year period.  But this 5-year change is 67.5% of the 2⁰C temperature change that the Washington Post, on the authority of the UN, is claiming is a critically disastrous temperature increase.  The choice of a particularly cold starting point for a comparison of temperatures is a common trick of the alarmist game-plan.

The warmest spots on the map from the Washington Post article are about 3⁰C warmer relative to 1895.  Subtract the 1.35⁰C difference in the average temperatures to shift to a 1900 starting point in time and there are no spots in the U.S. with a 2⁰C increase relative to 1900.

There is a second interesting problem which is revealed by the map itself.  Carbon dioxide is always said to be a well-mixed atmospheric gas by the catastrophic man-made global warming crowd.  While it actually is not as well-mixed as they represent it to be, its variations are nonetheless gradual and spread over large areas.  Yet, the hot spots in the Washington Post U.S. map are in very much smaller sized areas.  If the warmer areas are warmer due to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, then those areas should be of much larger dimensions than those of the map.  The strong temperature differences in the map are much too localized and suggest that they are due to chaotic weather differences, not real climate differences.

Further examination of the U.S. temperature change map shows a large area in the Southeastern U.S. where the temperature has actually cooled since 1895 as shown in the light green color.  If one maintains that the warming of 3⁰C in some small areas is due to an increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere since 1895, then isn't the near 1⁰C cooling in the Southeastern U.S. also due to that same increase in carbon dioxide?  The larger area and more gradual changes in the cooled area is a better match for the somewhat well-mixed carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere.  There actually are cooling effects due to carbon dioxide as I have many times pointed out in prior articles.  Those who have greatly exaggerated the warming effect of CO₂, claim the cooling effects are insignificant.  Remove the exaggeration of the warming effect and the several cooling effects are not so trivial and many of them are not saturating or saturating as rapidly with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide as is the warming effect.  I am not actually claiming that the cooling in the Southeast is due to carbon dioxide.  It is unlikely that it is.  However, if you are in the business of assuming that the temperature change since 1895 is due to carbon dioxide, then you ought to consider its cooling effects also.

Some of the hottest areas are near our two largest metropolitan areas, New York City and Los Angeles.  Perhaps these areas have warmed due to the urban heat island effect since 1895?  Virtually all the growth of population in southern California and in Arizona around Phoenix has occurred since 1895, undoubtedly contributing to that major hot spot in the Washington Post temperature map.  The article is full of stories about the warming of the state of New Jersey.  Averaging the population of that state from the 1890 and 1900 U.S. Census results to estimate the 1895 population, the 1895 population was about 1,660,000 people.  With the advent of automobiles, it became possible for people working in New York City and in Philadelphia to live in New Jersey, so those metropolitan areas expanded far into New Jersey.  The population of New Jersey in the 2015 estimate is 8,958,000, which is a increase by a factor of about 5.4 times compared to the 1895 population.  There are extensive urban heat island effects in New Jersey as a result.  The article bewails the fact that the only state in the contiguous 48 states with an average temperature increase above 2⁰C is little Rhode Island.  Its population in 1895 was about 387,000 people, which by 2015 has increased to about 1,056,300.  This factor of 2.7 increase in population in this high population density state has most likely also been accompanied by a significant urban heat island effect.  The warmer area around Miami is another area affected by a very large population increase since 1895.

Many of the areas showing the larger increases in temperature are also low population areas such as that on the California - Oregon border and southeastern Oregon, the area on the Utah - Colorado border, most of Maine, and the stretch across northern Michigan, northern Minnesota, most of North Dakota, and northern Montana.  An examination of the number and quality of weather stations in these areas used to generate this data might turn up interesting results.  Could it be the case that these high temperature areas are largely projections of temperatures outside these areas, which projections predominantly produce warming in rural areas?  In any case, since the population density is low in these areas, any affects on humans is also likely to be low.  These are not particularly warm areas in the first place, so any warming that does occur is quite likely to be very welcome.

Outside of the warmer areas of the Southwest and a small area around Miami, most of the areas showing the most warming since 1895 are rather cool parts of the U.S.  Given that Americans are much inclined to take vacations in warmer climes during the winters from such areas as the Northeast whose warmer winters since 1895 are much decried in the Washington Post article, it is hard to see the warming of such cooler parts of the U.S. as a general disaster.  People upon retirement still move to much warmer parts of the U.S. such as Florida and Arizona.  Apparently, they rather like warmth, however the Washington Post may pretend that warmth is a catastrophe.

Yes, it may be true, as lamented in the article, that ice cannot be cut from northern New Jersey lakes as it used to be for ice boxes, but then again we now have refrigerators. If we did not have refrigerators, the disappearance of that northern New Jersey ice might be a disaster.  Perhaps the Washington Post wants us to lose the use of electricity and to force us to return to the use of ice boxes as a result. In that context, it is a disaster that this return to primitivism in the name of radical environmentalism may be harder to accomplish.  This is not one of my goals and I do not believe it is a goal of most Americans either.

I have carried out the above discussion generally accepting the temperature record data provided by the Washington Post article.  However, the thermometer temperature data of 1895 and of 1900 has been heavily adjusted downward and recent data has been heavily adjusted upward by NASA GISS.  The U.S. temperature data given below is based on the USHCN2 historical network, which adjusts recent thermometer readings upwards by a substantial amount before releasing the data to the public.  Here is a comparison of the high and low daily temperature results for the measured or unadjusted data compared to the adjusted data comparing the 1895 cold year with 2010, as discovered by Tony Heller in a 2010 post on Real Science:

The fact that this data cuts off about a decade earlier than 2018, makes little difference, since the temperature has changed very little in the last decade.  The daily maximum temperatures in the unadjusted data shows smaller areas warming and larger areas cooling.  The unadjusted warming areas are usually areas of high population growth (Los Angelos, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami, and the metropolitan areas of the Northeast) or areas of very low population density in the western US and northern Great Plains states.  The unadjusted cooling areas are mostly areas significantly affected by weather from the Gulf of Mexico.

The minimum temperature data (night time lows) is interesting in the unadjusted temperature hottest spots are actually more common in the western US than in the adjusted data.  There are many more areas of substantial cooling in the unadjusted data also.  Most of this cooling is in areas of the Southeast and the southern Great Plains.  There are larger areas of gray, the temperature unchanged areas, in the night time unadjusted temperature record.  Where warming has occurred it is often in the higher elevation areas of the US, where the day-night temperature variations tend to be larger than in lower elevation areas.  A slight reduction in these day-night temperature swings is more likely to be beneficial than harmful.  The night-time warming just south of the Canadian border is very unlikely to have anything but benefits for the people who live there also.

The land area sum of the unchanged and the cooled areas in both the maximum and minimum temperature unadjusted records, suggests that the average affects of temperature changes are actually rather small.  I expect the overall cooling of the Southeast brings more benefits to the USA than does the warming of the Southwestern and Rocky Mountain states of the USA where few people live.  As mentioned, the warming of those rather large areas just south of the Canadian border surely brings advantages to the people living there.

This Washington Post article by four of their radical Climate Change writers, is an excellent lesson in the massive dishonesty of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmist faction.  There is no attempt to distinguish the general warming of the post Little Ice Age period from any real effects that might be caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  There is nothing but assumption that the official data warming since the particularly cold year of 1895 has been due to man's use of organic fuels causing greenhouse gas emissions.  They are most insistent that mankind should feel a strong, collective sense of guilt that it is destroying the Earth and the future of mankind.  This is baloney.  It is moldy, rotten baloney.

It is a very sad observation that so many Americans actually believe in this irrational nonsense.  It is even sadder that every scientist in the nation is not working hard to reveal this con game.  Quite a few of them are on the take and many of them are intimidated by the lockstep socialism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism of our academic institutions and most of our information media.