OPINION:
The mercury soars in July, bringing the season of sweat to the United States. On schedule, news reports burst into view that catalog the discomfort and point an accusatory finger at humanity for precipitating the sultry sweat-fest.
Before Americans helplessly drip with guilt, though, a reason-based perspective should temper overheated climate fears.
Headlines like The Associated Press’ “Record-breaking temperatures grip the planet” startled media consumers over the July Fourth holiday break, generated by both a persistent heat wave frying the South and Canadian wildfires choking the East. The week was proclaimed the hottest on record — unofficially — after the University of Maine announced its climate satellite and computer data analysis indicated the average of Earth’s daytime and nighttime temperatures equaled the record high of 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday and Wednesday and broke it on Thursday.
Going further, University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann, famed for helping make the global warming thesis a worldwide obsession, cited evidence suggesting that the planet has reached its warmest point in 120,000 years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists looked askance at such jarring assertions, however, simply commenting, “Although NOAA cannot validate the methodology or conclusion of the University of Maine analysis, we recognize that we are in a warm period due to climate change.”
Computer models help climatology make its best stab at forecasting future temperatures, just as records embedded in glacial ice samples and tree growth rings are indicative of historical climate trends. These serve as guides for President Biden’s radical climate policies, but real-time temperature readings add a commonsense perspective to the state of the world’s climate.
A measure of the planet’s average temperature is posted at Temperature Global, a website “created by professional meteorologists and climatologists with over 25 years experience in surface weather observations.” Unadjusted readings are taken each hour from tens of thousands of land-based airfield weather stations and ocean-based sensor buoys across the planet to derive a global average.
The July reading — 57.48 degrees Fahrenheit — exceeds the 30-year mean by 0.28 degrees, an amount so tiny as to be undetectable by the human body.
For added perspective, Americans fretting over the notion that every push of the car accelerator or nudge of the home AC lever hastens the collapse of the environment should know that 2023’s toasty summer was, according to actual readings, preceded by eight years when the world’s aggregate surface temperature was cooler — not hotter — than its 30-year average.
Despite minimal variations in the global temperature, green advocates spreading climate-change anxiety far and wide have goaded Mr. Biden into launching a fantasist’s collection of schemes for reducing the impact of human industry on the planetary temperature.
The president’s wars on gasoline-powered vehicles and gas stoves are likely the most infamous among them; Scientific American’s recent admonition to forgo refreshments containing ice cubes in favor of “climate-friendly cocktails” is among the most bizarre.
To be sure, each generation has a responsibility to make certain the next one doesn’t suffer privation brought on by the selfish waste of precious resources. The future is best secured for posterity, though, by applying ingenuity in the advancement of human progress rather than halting it when wilting summer heat worsens global warming fears.
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