2012 in the top ten hottest years in recorded history
by David Atkins
Whatever you do, don't be alarmed. I'm sure there are more important issues out there when those annoying "climate people" stop yapping:
Last year was one of the 10 hottest since global average temperatures have been recorded, according to an assessment of worldwide climate trends by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"The State of the Climate in 2012," released Tuesday, paints a sobering portrait of vast swaths of the planet transformed by rising temperatures. Arctic sea ice reached record lows during the summer thaw. In Greenland, about 97% of its ice sheet melted in the summer, far greater than in years past.
Greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise. In early May, the ratio of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million in an average daily reading at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory, thought to be the highest concentration in millions of years.
The report is a like "an annual check-up for the planet," said Kathryn Sullivan, undersecretary of Commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA's acting administrator. It documents "remarkable changes" in crucial areas like Arctic ice, sea levels and greenhouse gas emissions, she said.
Sullivan said she hoped the report would help businesses, communities, farmers and governments gauge their vulnerability to climate change and better prepare.
"Many of the planning models for infrastructure rely on the future being statistically a lot like the past, and certainly the data should lead one to question if that will be so," Sullivan said. "Extreme weather events are more frequent and more intense than what we have presumed."
In case anyone has bought into the lie that warming is tapering off, that's a mistake:
Over the last 150 years, the annual average global temperature has risen sharply, and is now about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than in pre-industrial times, NOAA said. Nine of the 10 hottest years have been recorded since the late 1990s, with 2012 ranking number 8 or 9, depending on the methodology. In January, NOAA reported that 2012 was the hottest year on record for the lower 48 states.
Heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels are the primary cause of higher global temperatures.
From a media criticism perspective, it's nice to see journalists finally just telling the truth about climate change without giving equal shrift to the deniers. That's a step forward.
But it's hard to know what it will motivate people to take this stuff seriously. Even among progressives, climate change tends to rank far below other concerns like the economy, healthcare, taxes, war, and a host of other issues. That's understandable since other issues tend to have more immediate salience in people's lives. But progressives are also supposed to be forward thinkers, able to model the effects of decisions better than our conservative counterparts.
The day is coming soon when climate change is going to be an ever-present problem in all our lives, and getting worse every day.
Unfortunately, by the time most of the world wakes up and gets into true crisis mode about it, it will likely already be too late to stop it. It really is a question of whether we as a species have the capacity to move beyond immediate self-gratification and use the power of reason to save ourselves. The jury is still out.
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