Bad News For All Of Us, Especially Climate Denialists: 2019 2nd Hottest On Record

The year 2019 was the second hottest on record says NOAA.
On this map, shades of red are warmer than average for 2019,
blue is colder than average.  Central North America
was the only real cold spot. 

It was predictable and expected news earlier this month, but it's still alarming:

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information just came out with their global assessment for the year 2019.

In case you missed it, 2019 was the world's second hottest year on record.

Here's part of a summary from NCEI:

"For 2019, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.71... degrees above the 20th century average. This was the second highest among all years in the 1880-2019 record and just 0.07 (degrees F.) less than the record value set in 2016.

2019 marks the 43rd consecutive year (since 1977) with global land and ocean temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average.

The five warmest years have occured since 2015; nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005. The year 1998 is the only 20th century year among the 10 warmest on record.

The annual global land and ocean temperature has increased at an average rate of +0.13F per decade since 1880; however, since 1981, the average rate of increase is more than twice that rate (+0.32F).

For the 21-year span that is considered a reasonable surrogate for pre-industrial conditions (1880-1900), the 2019 global land and ocean temperature waws 2.07F above the average."

I dunno. Do you see a trend here?

Well, a few people don't see this. The year 2019 seemed to be year a lot of the media dubbed as the time people got it. That the world is warming up and it is dangerous. A crisis, really.

However, there's still that lively group that will tell you that the world is not warming up. Or if it is, it's just a temporary, natural cycle. Or, if they do concede warming is happening, it's not a big deal.

The denialists can just drive you crazy if you let them.  Their counterpoint to this latest bit of news on 2019 and climate change and other world warming news is like this:

"Yeah, but South Dakota had one of its coldest years on record in 2019!"  True, but as South Dakota goes, so goes the world? Um.....

If one more idiot tells me that climate change doesn't exist because some Podunk town had a record low temperature, I'm going to scream. You don't want to hear my scream. It's awful.

Still, they persist.

Back in November, felon and one of the most vile, most stupid commentators out there (and that's saying something!) Dinesh D'Souza tweeted this gem:

"Remember nuclear winter? Of course you don't.  That's because it didn't happen. Yet it was all the rage on the Left in the 1980s. A generation from now, no one will recall climate change either, and for the same reason. The apocalypse has become a political racket!"

Can I be Captain Obvious here again?  People feared nuclear winter but it didn't happen because Russia and the United States decided it would be a bad idea to nuke each other into oblivion.   Friggin' idiot!

Social media sure as hell isn't helping. I don't know exactly how large a percentage of the public is in the climate denial camp, but platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube certainly amplify the false voices of this denialism.

I'll offer just one example: On January 16, Time magazine online reported:

"YouTube has been 'actively promoting' videos containing misinformation about climate change, a report released Thursday by campaign group Avaaz claims, despite recent policy changes by the platform intended to drive users away from harmful content and conspiracy theories."

When you go on YouTube, there's an 'Up Next' feature.  You're watching the video you want to watch, which is the first video in the list of videos on the right side of the screen that YouTube's algorithms think you'd want to watch.

According to the Time report:

"'We've found that it's very likely that at least one in five users who search or a term like global warming or climate change could be sent down this type of misinformation rabbit hole,'" says Fadi Quran, a campaigns director at Avaaz, and one of the report's authors. 'Scientists are working so hard to educate people about the existential threat we face and YouTube is allowing bad actors among us the last word on this issue for many people.'"

Previous studies have suggested that the majority of videos related to climate change on YouTube are at odds against what scientists are telling us.

Even with all this, there are islands of optimism , as a piece in  The Guardian points out, 2019 might have been the year that climate denialism might have been defeated. At least partially:

"The global climate strike, Greta Thunberg's meteoric rise to international prominence, as well as several high-profile international conferences and reports - all contributed in putting climate skeptics on the back foot.

"Even Donald Trump, who previously claimed that the climate crisis was a 'hoax' invented by China to hold back American industry has begun to brag  all his administration has done to address it."

Never mind the fact that Trump's bragging, as always, is a fake facade. Trump is rebranding before our eyes, like he always does to suit his needs.  Trump has done pretty much nothing in terms of  climate change at all, and now his position is that climate activitsts and others are just negative people.

Trump notwithstanding, the discussion around climate change is now mostly how to address it, and not whether we should address it. This is a debate we should have had at least a couple decades ago but better late than never, I suppose. I'm glad we've at least reached this point.

That Guardian article/editorial, which is definitely worth reading, summarizes the many different approaches to what we can and should do about climate change.

It boils down to this, according to the Guardian in one of the best basic outlines of where we stand:

"No one seems quite clear what is the ultimate goal of the global fight against the climate crisis. Is it merely to enable constant economic growth in a sustainable way, or is it about imposing limits on humanity's ambitions in pursuit of a more harmonious relationship with nature."

Climate denialist have long said environmentalists' goals are to take freedom and independence and wealth away from you and me.

Will we find sustainable ways to keep something like our current lifestyle going?  Do we need to keep our current lifestyle going? Should we find something more sustainable, but still far from some grim dystopia? How?

I guess it depends on whether some of the great minds of the world find solutions, or at least paths forward, or whether the usual opportunists make things worse.....

This is one hell of a season finale cliff hanger, folks.