Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Is "the climate emergency" really an emergency?

About a week ago there was a deluge of scary headlines clear across the media landscape, all screaming the same hysterical message; 2023 WAS HOTTEST YEAR IN RECORDED HISTORY OH MY GOD WE’RE DOOMED!!! In my rejoinder to those scary headlines, I pointed out that “recorded history” is about 150 years of planet earth’s approximately 7,000,000,000 years of history. I further pointed out that the previous record was set in 2016. To my way of thinking, when the climate crisis takes a dawdling eight years to set a new record, we’re not really in the lights-and-sirens phase of this “emergency.” What I didn’t have at the time was a solid number for how much the new record eclipsed the old one. I have since found that information at the website of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Institute. That’s the institution guiding EU climate policy. The EU is way ahead of us when it comes to saving the planet. Here’s the money line; “2023 had a global average temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016.” All those scary headlines were triggered by a 0.17 degree Celsius increase over eight years. Does that justify all those scary headlines? I think not!

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