Pinch, Pinch, another Record Falls - 229

Temperature records from pole to pole have been tumbling.

One of, if not the longest continuous temperature records, comes from the Midlands of England. Monthly records go back to 1659 with daily record keeping from 1772.

Contemplating and researching the motivation of these dedicated recorders would be an interesting study in and of itself. Every day they laced up their boots to march out, rain or shine, to the weather station to take and record a reading. I wonder if they anticipated their readings would be referenced in 2022.

Each day the UK Met Office records the temperature at the Midland’s and the continuous line of data sets a new record. Impressive, but it is not the record I am interested in highlighting. On July 19^th modern day instruments registered a new “high” temperature record for the midlands and much of England. The previous high Midland’s median temperature, one spanning over 91,000 readings for 250 years, was 77.4 F. On July 19^th the median temperature registered at 82.6F. This broke the record by 5.2 F.

But this is not the record I wish to highlight. There is a climate historian who monitors extreme temperatures worldwide. Maximiliano Herrera has recently been focusing on the heatwave and low rainfall which China is currently suffering through. It is a nasty one. His conclusion about the China heatwave is, “This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time. There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China.”

This is quite a statement considering the drought afflicting the Horn of Africa, our own Southwest, and Europe. The record China is setting an eye popper, but it is not the one I wish to call attention to.

Recently, the worst drought in human history was broken. It began in 1981 when a young scientifically educated congressman called in experts to the US capital to inform congress about climate change. His name is Al Gore. His foresight and diligence later earned him a Nobel Prize.

He continues to devote 1000s of hours of his time to supporting the climate organization he started, Climate Reality.

In 1988, the head of the Goddard Institute of NASA, James Hansen, testified to the US Senate about the dangers of the greenhouse effect.

In 2007 environmental activists, shocked by the lack of action by the government, began to organize. Lead by Bill McKibben, these climate patriots formed 350.0rg*.

Shortly thereafter all environmental groups marshaled their efforts to combat the climate crisis by petitioning congress and organizing huge marches.

Despite the non-partisan testimonies of the world’s best scientists and the dogged persistence of climate activists no meaningful US legislation could break the impasse of fossil fuel funded obstructionism on capital hill…until now.

The multidecadal drought of common-sense climate legislation is over. It happened on 16 August of 2022 when President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. This was a long hard slog.  You may want to thank President Biden and our Senators Stabenow and Peters. They have been behind this legislation for years.

For me, passage was like a soothing cool rain falling on my garden and my bald head. It ends a long dry hot spell. Pinch, pinch…

·       The odds of setting a warm temperature record vs a cool record has been rising in the 2000s. Since 2020 the ratio is  2.4 to 1. Ref: Senior Scientist Gerald Meehl at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

·       350.org was named after the target level (max ppm of CO2) set by scientists as a goal to minimize the threat of heat waves. Today the concentration of carbon dioxide sits at 414.72 and rising.