Global Temperatures Didn't Get Memo; Not Playing To Conservatives' Talking Points

Hot times: NASA's map of September global
temperatures shows a lot of heat.  

The dwindling number of people who keep telling us that climate change isn't real have a problem.

These shrinking number of shriekers say all this talk of a warming planet is just a plot by climate scientists to rake in zillions of dollars in research grants, and a plot by the UN to take away all of our freedoms.

But here's the problem. The data keeps showing more and more warming.

And on it went today. NASA said September was the warmest on record, and the six month ending in September were also the hottest on record. Their records go back to about 1880.

There's a pretty decent chance that 2014 will end up as the hottest year on record, too.

Yes, I know six months doesn't prove too much. You want to look at the long term trends. Will things generally keep getting hotter, as they have been? True, we've had a slowdown in the rate of warming over the past decade, but is that slowdown over? Are we going to start heating up really, really fast again? Time will tell.

And some of this year's global heat is probably due to a burgeoning El Nino. An El Nino, to oversimply things, is a periodic warming of the surface water in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

El Ninos tend to make the globe as a whole warmer. But since this is so far a weak El Nino, you'd expect things to be warm-ish, but not record breaking.

Anyway, I'm getting technical. I'll look forward to the even more closely watched National Climatic Data Center statistics on September global temperatures, due out in a week or so.

Of course the problem for the climate science deniers is every time something like this happens, like this hot September, that blasted, pesky media keeps reporting it. And people hear about it. And gets some of them thinking, "Hmmm. Maybe the world is warming up. I keep hearing about these hot climate reports."

In the face of evidence, the narrative is changing. Many people have given up the "climate change is a big lie" meme for other arguments.

In Congress, a number of Republicans claim not to know anything about what's going on, because they're not scientists.

Which is a weasely way to get out of commenting on climate change. Or even better, doing something about it.

Most members of Congress are not scientists. But most are not economists, but they make decisions that  affect the economy all the time. Most members of Congress are not military strategists, but they make decisions about wars and diplomacy all the time.

Or at least they're supposed to. Seems they're making no decisions on anything at all lately, but that subject is for another screed I'll write about some other time.

My point is, most members of Congress are not climate scientists, but that doesn't preclude them from seeking advice from climate experts.  But oops, the public isn't suppose to realize that, or at least say it out loud. My bad.

At my house in Vermont this week, we're supposed to get near record high temperatures tomorrow and Wednesday. That means little of course, because a warm spell on a pinprick spot on Earth doesn't tell you anything about global warming.

But these hot spells keep hitting people with increasing frequency all over the world. Which makes me wonder when the climate deniers will become a tragicomic laughing stock among us sweating masses.

I think that might be starting to happen already.