Global Warming for Christmas

Column #382      December 23, 2022

This year, during the week leading up to Christmas, a cold front swept down from the northwest corner of the country and descended all the way to Florida. Check out these temperatures!

Fargo, ND the low Tuesday night was -21 degrees.
Seattle, WA the low Wednesday night was 18 degrees.
Helena, MT the low Wednesday night was -32 degrees.
Boise, ID the low Wednesday night was 3 degrees.
Salt Lake City, UT the low Wednesday night was 12 degrees.
Denver, CO the low Wednesday night was -9 degrees.
Chicago, IL the low Thursday night was 0 degrees.
Kansas City, KS the low Thursday night was -6 degrees.
Columbus, OH the low Thursday night was 1 degree.
Oklahoma City, OK the low Thursday night was 0 degrees.
Powderly, TX the low Thursday night was 7 degrees.
Atlanta, GA tonight’s low will be 9 degrees.
New York City, NY tonight’s low will be 11 degrees.
Stuart, FL tomorrow night’s low will be 35 degrees.
Key West, FL tomorrow night’s low will be 54 degrees.

When cold fronts like this depress southern Florida’s high temperatures to less than 60 degrees for two days in a row, you know it’s COLD. Forecasters are telling Floridians that this Christmas will be the coldest in over 30 years! From experience, I can tell you that temperatures below 70 degrees during the day make south Floridians want to wear heavy parkas, mittens, and mukluks. So, for folks up north and in middle America, you all have my sympathies. I’m also wondering how the electric cars will perform in this kind of weather.¹

Since it’s so cold, I thought this would be a grand time to discuss some unknown facts about Global Warming—and Global Cooling.

From Climate.gov came these gems from Rebecca Lindsey and LuAnn Dahlman.²
●    “2021 was the sixth-warmest year on record based on NOAA’s temperature data.
●    “Averaged across land and ocean, the 2021 surface temperature was 1.51 °F (0.84 °Celsius) warmer than the twentieth-century average of 57.0 °F (13.9 °C) and 1.87 °F (1.04 °C) warmer than the pre-industrial period (1880-1900).
●    “The nine years from 2013 through 2021 rank among the 10 warmest years on record.
●    “Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.14° Fahrenheit (0.08° Celsius) per decade since 1880, but the rate of warming since 1981 is more than twice that: 0.32° F (0.18° C) per decade.”

Bottom line, what they report is that since the pre-industrial period (1880-1900) the Earth’s average temperature has increased 1.04˚C. Obviously the world is actually getting warmer but at a very slow pace.

Paul Voosen is the earth and planetary science reporter at the Science American Association for the Advancement of Science. Several years ago he wrote a piece on global warming that was a “dire warning.” To make his point he used the global temperature curve data generated by Scott Wing, a paleobotanist, and Brian Huber, a paleontologist, in association with Ethan Grossman, a geochemist. When their preliminary data is plotted on a chart, one can see the swings in the Earth’s average surface temperature over the past 500 million years or so.³

Apparently, Voosen’s warning is that the world has been much warmer and CO2 levels much higher in the past than they are today. So it will happen again—because “humans are rapidly warming the climate again.” (He doesn’t say when humans did it before.) Grossman and Henkes reported last year in “Earth & Planetary Science Letters” that: “Some 450 million years ago, ocean waters averaged 35°C to 40°C, more than 20°C warmer than today. Yet marine life thrived, even diversified. It’s unsettling for the biologists, these warm temperatures we’re proposing,” Grossman said. “These are extreme for modern organisms.”

“In addition, in the past 500-million years there were more years the earth didn’t have polar icecaps than there were years that it did! These changes took many tens of millions of years. Our ancestors have been around for approximately six million years, yet the modern form of humans evolved only about 200,000 years ago. Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous Period), after living on Earth for about 165 million years when the earth was much warmer.”

When time is measured in millions of years it’s all a little much for me. I seriously doubt I’ll be around to actually witness much change. In fact, our grandkids and their grandkids won’t be around long enough to see drastic changes.

Yet that doesn’t stop the alarmists from pointing to Global Warming as the cause for every weather event no matter what it is. Why even this past week NPR breathlessly stated that the drought in the western USA is caused by Global Warming. They said, in spite of the fact, that in some areas of the globe rainfall has been much higher than normal—which they also blame on Global Warming.

I don’t know what the alarmists are going to blame this cold snap on. But it’s most likely just another winter event unassociated with the long-term temperature trends. So, instead of a period of Global Cooling, we can look forward to warmer weather in the months and years to come. And, if the rising temperature trend continues, a thousand years from now average temperatures may be ten degrees warmer than they are these days. If so, then White Christmases will be a thing of the past.

Happy Holidays and all the best to you in the year to come!

To your health.

Ted Slanker

Ted Slanker has been reporting on the fundamentals of nutritional research in publications, television and radio appearances, and at conferences since 1999. He condenses complex studies into the basics required for health and well-being. His eBook, The Real Diet of Man, is available online.

For additional reading:

1. How Do Electric Vehicles Perform in Cold Weather? From Evocharge

2. Climate Change: Global Temperature by Rebecca Lindsey and LuAnn Dahlman from Climate.Gov

3. A 500-Million-Year Survey of Earth’s Climate Reveals Dire Warning for Humanity? by Paul Voosen from American Association for the Advancement of Science