As Joe pointed out below some wacko bird Catholic Republican House Republican representative is going to boycott the Pope’s visit because he is going to talk about global climate change, I’m sure that a few others will probably join him. But then we have this: The Planet Set Three Major Heat Records In August.
Like a broken record, we are breaking records for temperature over and over and over again. NOAA’s latest monthly State of the Climate Report reports that the Earth just experienced the hottest August on record, the hottest summer (June to August) on record, and the hottest year to date.
And it wasn’t even close. Each of those records was broken by 0.18°F (or more). So, yes, 2015 is going to be the hottest year on record — by far. Last month, climate scientist Jessica Blunden, who works with NOAA, said it’s “99 percent certain that it’s going to be the warmest year on record.”
Here in Western Oregon we can appreciate this. We broke the record for the number of days above 90 this summer by a long shot. We don’t have air conditioning but did have 3 large box fans going nearly 24/7 for most of the summer and as a result my electric bill was twice what it was last summer. The Pacific Ocean is abnormally warm and as a result we had a warm winter and no snow pack in the Cascades. And then there a the great white sharks being spotted off the Oregon Coast for the first time.
Again, there never was any slowdown in surface temperature warming. This year won’t just top the previous global temperature record set just last year, 2015 will crush 2014. That’s especially likely since the strong underlying global warming trend is being boosted by an emerging “Godzilla El Niño,” as a NASA oceanographer put it.
Bottom line: 2014 was the hottest year on record. 2015 will easily top that. And 2016 may well beat 2015, as discussed here. The long-awaited speed up in global warming is at hand.
Yes, global climate change is a hoax (snark tag off)