So, I think it's now official in 50 US states 2012 was the hottest ever, Finally displacing the dust bowl outliers of 1934. A quick search of Google news will reveal, depending on what Google thinks it is that you want to see based on your history (and if I were to be really cynical I would say based on there computation of which sites you're most likely to generate the highest AdSense revenue form), some climate advocacy groups warning of the dangers ahead. A large number of local papers mentioning their local records broken. and of course the usual suspects of deniers. Mentioning "2012 Hottest" (again specific to my profile) shows that "2012 hottest" almost displases hottest commodity trade of 2012 as the top news story -- I suppose that's an improvement.
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There are the Usual deny lunatics who continue to deny it entirely. But the usual villains associated with institutions that try to project some image of credibility seem to have gradually changed message. No longer is the fact of global warming a product of environmental radicals' hysterical delusion but instead a distinct possibility, with even the acceptance that human activity greenhouse gas emissions might play some role.
The tone of the Forbes article by the immoral Patrick Michaels telegraphs perfectly the tone and rhetoric of the article: "2012 Was The Warmest Year In U.S. Temperature History -- Barely"
Snarky, condescending, full of red herrings, mis-representations and pseudo facts. A depressing piece of snide intellectual dishonesty that's all to familiar. A short paraphrase would be: Oh, 2012 was the hottest year on record in the US, but really only by statistical accident, so don't buy into all the climatological doom and gloom stuff.
But the for me the most shocking article was by the Cato institute'sPaul Knappenberger. Again he admits that 2012 was the warmest year on record in the US. And tries to kick up a bit of sand about why that may or may not be significant. He makes the really quite extraordinary claim:
Notice that the linear is not a great measure of what has been going on climatologically. There have been several multi-decadal periods when the average U.S. temperature has been generally above (1920s-1930s; mid-1990s-present) or below (1890s-1910s; 1960s-1970s) the linear trend term
Which is to say that because the warming proceeded in an exactly linear fashion (something that would be impossible for climate to do) that we shouldn't worry about it. I've seen this ignorant argument before but not by someone who wasn't and Internet troll and who had an attributable name. Clearly he's not serious. This is just a malicious rhetorical exercise. Blogging 'product'. It's the sort of thing that that not only denies scientific reality but excludes rational thought.
But, all the above is still par for the course. I'm usually able to find something in climate change denialist's post that I haven't seen before. Often you can follow their thought process as they try to come up with some rhetorical gimmick and hastily edit to obscure it's obvious fallacies.
But what I hadn't seen before, though I'm sure it's been floating around for a while now is this:
Further, as I have pointed out, there is little we could do to alter the climate influence of anthropogenic emissions even if we wanted to. So, probably the best thing to do when planning for the future is to be aware of the more or less capricious nature of our nation’s climate and keep in mind that humans are supplying an ever-growing warming pressure on top of that. The Boys Scouts got at least one thing right.
In the back of my mind I always wondered if we would see this argument go mainstream: Anthropomorphic climate change is a reality, but it's to costly, too politically difficult, and too late anyway to do something about it. So we as a nation, need to stockup, arm up and prepare to keep the zombies out for the apocalypse that we're now resigned to.