It happens every winter, with every cold snap or large snow dump. Cable “news” pundits, modern-day spiritual descendants of the self-regarding Sophists that Socrates so devastatingly lampooned 2,500 years ago, spout off specious comments about how today’s (or this week’s) weather somehow casts into doubt the practically unanimous scientific consensus on human-caused climate change and global warming.
Many so-called “news” outlets only seem to mention climate change during cold snaps. Like the ancient Sophists, contemporary climate change deniers, such as George Will, are more concerned with, and impressed by, their own “clever” comments and the certainty of their “delivery” than they are with empirical truth, logic or testable facts. So during every cold snap, the deniers set up their favorite straw man — “global warming means it will never be cold again” — and then announce the current temperature; hilarity ensues.
Climate change and global warming do not mean winter won’t continue to happen, and no one seriously advocating for action to slow climate change has ever claimed otherwise. In fact, climate models have consistently predicted not only that winter will continue to occur as climate change/global warming accelerate, but that cold snaps and snowfalls may become more extreme, even as average global temperatures steadily increase.
Empirically observed and scientifically validated measurements continue to accumulate at a frightening pace, confirming that human-caused climate change is not only occurring but occurring far more rapidly than previously believed — the current temperature outside notwithstanding.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains the world’s largest climate data archive and provides climatological services and data to every sector of the United States economy and to users worldwide. Last month, NOAA announced that November 2013 was the warmest November since modern temperature record keeping began in 1880. NOAA further noted that, with a combined land and ocean surface temperature of 56.6 degrees Fahrenheit, November 2013 was also the 345th consecutive month — and the 37th November in a row — with a global temperature higher than the 20th-Century average.
Earlier this month, NOAA announced that globally — averaged temperature for 2013 tied as the fourth warmest year since record keeping began in 1880, and that 2013 marked the 37th consecutive year with a global temperature above the 20th-Century average. NOAA noted that, “including 2013, all 13 years of the 21st Century (2001-2013) rank among the 15 warmest in the 134-year period of record.”
Finally, last week NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which analyzes global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released a report confirming that 2013 was one of the seven warmest years on record. NASA’s methodology differs from NOAA’s, but the two scientific agencies’ separate analyses confirm the same long-term trend of continuing and sustained increase in global average temperatures owing to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases.
Modern-day Sophists may amuse themselves and each other with self-satisfied word games, but the need for action to curb catastrophic climate change is both real and urgent.
The Ridgefield Democratic Town Committee supplies this column.