Quote:
Originally Posted by Oerets
One paying attention must see the climate has changed for the warmer. In my local the winters are no longer drastically cold. This year it was almost 60* in January a month a few short years ago in the teens. My sons in their thirties unaware two years ago when it dipped below zero the need to leave water dripping.
I have see a ever steady warming and wetter weather pattern.
My grandson still have not used the snow toys we bought them a few years ago. Never snowed enough. In other ares the lack of rain is causing fires. Farmer are inundated with rain at opportune times destroying crops.
For one will be glad if my descendants think me silly for the belief in climate change. Rather then willfully ignorant of the signs and arrogantly probating nothing to see here move on attitude.
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I replied to your initial anecdote with actual data, and you replied to the data I provided with anecdotes, and more anecdotes.
Anecdotes can be important when we have no data to go by, but in this case we have very good quality data and lots of it.
So let's take the case of your sons in their thirties. Below is a plot of the actual NOAA data since 1980 for the CONUS, which spans this lifetime of your sons.
Eyeballing it you can see that the temperature anomaly averaged about -0.5 F from 1980 to 1998, and averaged about +0.75 F from 1998 to now. Thus the years from 1998 to now averaged about 1.25 F warmer than those from 1980 to 1998.
You can also see that last year (2019) was actually cooler (on average) than 1981, 1986, 1987, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
So 2019 was #19 on the list of hottest years in the CONUS instrumental record.
Of course you are free to interpret these data however you wish, but in my opinion is that the data do not support your anecdotes.
Finally, note that the scale of the Y axis actually only spans ~5 F, thus greatly magnifying the extent of the temperature differences among the data points.
In the second graph the Y axis is adjusted to ~100 F, a range we are more used to for considering differences among temperature values.
Again, interpret this however you think reasonable, but the graph shows the average temperature anomaly of the CONUS over the last 40 years, on a scale we associate with comparing temperatures.