Climate Central: Millennials Have Never Experienced A Cooler Than Average Month — And Probably Never Will
Dr. Gavin Schmidt is the director of the Goddard Institute For Space Studies at NASA. On June 15, he tweeted that May 2017 was the second-hottest month on record, behind only May of last year. Based on the data so far this year, Dr. Gavin’s tweet said, “With May GISTEMP update, my prediction is 2017 will be ~2nd warmest year in the record.”
The data now support the following thesis put forth by Climate Central: “If you were born after December 1964, you’ve never experienced a month cooler than average on this planet.” And, says Joe Romm of Think Progress, the odds are, you never will.
Skeptics are quick to point out that July 1985 was cooler than average. True, says Romm, if you limit yourself to a timeline that only goes back to 1980. However, historically, if 1880 to 1899 is used as the baseline, the trend is inexorably upward.
Absent some cataclysmic event like the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, which dimmed the sun for years thanks to the enormous cloud of volcanic ash it spewed into the atmosphere, average earth temperatures are on course to rise as much as 10º Fahrenheit in the foreseeable future.
The decision by the Trump administration to sell out the American population for 30 pieces of silver and the greater glorification of the Koch Brothers has greatly increased the odds that this worst-case scenario will come to pass.
“The levels of heat-trapping CO2 in the air are already far outside the bounds of what humans have ever experienced — and the rate of rise is speeding up,” Romm writes. Meanwhile, Trump and his acolytes are looking at the global thermometer and cheering as it rises. “Not to worry,” they seem to say. “Mankind will figure something out, and in the meantime there is all that lovely money to be made!”
Precisely how all that lucre will benefit the lucky few who survive the coming apocalypse is something no one seems to be concerned about. Markets, by definition, depend on customers to make them work. No customers, no profits — something the fossil fuel–addled brains of Scott Pruitt and his nefarious colleagues seem unable to comprehend.
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