That’s climatologist/macroeconomist/epidemiologist Steven Kopits remarking on 70 degrees F high in Madison today. For context, some historical data from here:
Notes: Green + indicates 3/3/2024 forecasted high for Madison, WI. Source: Weatherspark.com, accessed 3/3/2024.
I submit, this outcome is not something to dismiss lightly (unless one doesn’t know what a confidence interval is).
Dismissing facts that cannot reasonably be argued against is a common debating trick.
Problem is, the point if debate club is to learn to win debates. The point of public discussion, for some, is also to win debates, rather than to identify problems and solutions to those problems.
Since none of the solutions to climate change is appealing to the fossil fuel industry or to their fellow travelers, they dismiss evidence of climate change, dismiss the harm it does and will do, dismiss any policy solution as not something the public will support while actively undermining public support for solutions. That’s who they are.
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”
Matthew 7: 6-7 NKJV
12 feet of snow in California mountains. Which only means we are getting a whole lot of rain.
I don’t know where Cali were on a drought?? Maybe the snow, long-term, is a good thing?? I gotta think over the next few weeks it helps on fire danger.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-02-29/incoming-blizzard-will-help-californias-creeping-snowpack
We entered January with the snowpack at about 10% of normal for that time, and we are now up to about what the historical median is: https://engaging-data.com/california-reservoirs-and-snowpack/ and https://engaging-data.com/california-snowpack-levels/. So no drought this year…
We appear to be going into a drought year in the northwest. It’s been tenuous as far as sufficient rain lately. January and February were OK this year.
Spending time with relatives in shaky health at the hospital for a week +2 short visits is no fun friends. Assuming we can keep “shaky” a “steady shaky” things will be back to normal here in 3-4 days. Uncle Moses is very very tired lately, My only sustenance keeping me going is reading good quality things (the Bible, the Federalist Papers, this blog, among other sporadic, scattered readings) and alcohol, and maybe some fish food. Although alcohol can be hard on the heart muscle, the liver, kidney, and other organs I’ll tell you one thing it helps~~my mental health from checking out and going on permanent holiday.
I found 2–3 paragraphs in the very beginning of “The Federalist Papers” that sounds like it is talking about America post-2015. I will try to copy/paste it here in this thread later. I thought others of our more thoughtful readers might enjoy it. Not that I consider myself as cerebral as some of Menzie’s better regulars. But I keep trying
As you mentioned in the previous threat the change in averages are the important part. A single day is sometimes just a fluke. However, even a small change in averages can push whole ecosystems out of balance. That is where the dangers lie. A lot of people, including a few of your commenters, are willfully ignorant because they fear that dealing with global warming will somehow take something away from them. What global warming will take away from them is much more than what they were asked to sacrifice in the past few decades when there was still time. Stupid people ignore problems, smart people solve them.
From Federal Paper #1 written by Hamilton
“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.”
……….
“A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants. “
From the very end of Federalist Paper #2 written by John Jay:
“It is worthy of remark that not only the first, but every succeeding Congress, as well as the late convention, have invariably joined with the people in thinking that the prosperity of America depended on its Union. To preserve and perpetuate it was the great object of the people in forming that convention, and it is also the great object of the plan which the convention has advised them to adopt. With what propriety, therefore, or for what good purposes, are attempts at this particular period made by some men to depreciate the importance of the Union? Or why is it suggested that three or four confederacies would be better than one? I am persuaded in my own mind that the people have always thought right on this subject, and that their universal and uniform attachment to the cause of the Union rests on great and weighty reasons, which I shall endeavor to develop and explain in some ensuing papers. They who promote the idea of substituting a number of distinct confederacies in the room of the plan of the convention, seem clearly to foresee that the rejection of it would put the continuance of the Union in the utmost jeopardy. That certainly would be the case, and I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim, in the words of the poet: ‘FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS.’ “
*oops, repeated the first paragraph, hopefully I didn’t leave any segments out I wanted to share there. But, at any rate, you can read the first 2 papers of the Federalist Papers, it is not very long if a lazy man such as myself can get through it.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed01.asp
I might have typed “James Hamilton”?? If I did, I meant Alexander Hamilton. Wow kids, Uncle Moses IS tired.
Off topic – election history:
‘”The subject everyone is talking about,” a liberal, big city mayor wrote not long ago, is: “How can we peacefully get rid of the present incumbent?” Unless Democrats could agree on a replacement at the top of the ticket, they seemed sure to lose the upcoming presidential and congressional elections.
‘OK, actually, the year was 1948. The mayor was Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis, and the incumbent president in question was Harry Truman — not Joe Biden.’
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/03/biden-can-still-win-if-he-runs-like-harry-truman-00144499
“Dewey Wins!” says the entire U.S. political world of 2024.
Love it. Politico got some great writing/journalism. I could make a solid argument they’ve got Washington Post beat at their own game.
Menzie Chinn,
It’s these type of sensationalist posts that don’t help educate or support/facilitate the discussion regarding climate change. It only muddies the discussion as a single day’s weather means close to nothing as it relates to climate change. A denier can easily reference the historical data which is clear that a 70 degree day doesn’t come close to even cracking the top-20 warmest March days in Madison Wisconsin’s history. This isn’t your first failed attempt in this domain. But the data is abundantly available to support climate change – why do you insist on presenting data that doesn’t meaningfully (if at all) support that cause? Is it because this blog’s comment section has essentially become a chatroom for loners who idolize you? Are these posts merely a check-in?… “hey guys, it’s warm today. I don’t have any substance to post but I need to post something because blogging inactivity may result in you leaving. By the way, it was warm today in my flyover state. Please continue on with completely off-topic comments in this EconBlog-turned-discussion board of randomness. Is it warm or is it just me?”
For a blog you claim to be a “chatroom for losers” you sure do seem to find enough time to read and comment here. Were you projecting onto others some recent self-psychoanalysis??
Perhaps you prefer the type of “analysis” which throws snowballs indoors in February at 38.9072° N latitude to refute global warming??
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4529383/senator-james-inhofe-throws-snowball-senate-floor
seems to me the post is useful with respect to confidence intervals. rather than posting useless whining, perhaps econned could comment on the confidence intervals and the noted temperature, and why one would/not expect that value to fall in/outside of the interval? and what that could mean? of course, econned could take this opportunity to contribute to the discourse. or he could continue with his unrelated whining.
baffling: Since the post upon which he/she was commenting on had a graph *with percentile bands*, one must conclude that either Econned is ignorant of the meaning of such bands, or is willfully ignoring the provided evidence (guess I should’ve left off the graph, and not bothered putting that green “+” there). Here’s my rejoinder: https://econbrowser.com/archives/2024/03/historical-data-on-temperatures
Menzie Chinn,
Please stop acting foolish. The percentile bands aren’t relevant for a city’s single day temp when discussing global climate change. You know this and so does anyone else with a passing knowledge of these topics. Sure, you can convince/fool your village idiots but if that’s your goal, it’s a pathetic one.
econned, that is a false argument. it simply demonstrates you are a village idiot. or you have an agenda and an axe to grind. or both. I have come to the conclusion I gave you more credit in the past than you deserve. you are a much greater whiner than intellectual.
It must be frustrating to be the only person in the room with a functioning brain… I wonder that you stand it!
My advice to you is – don’t stand it, move on to another site filled with big-brained people like you.
Menzie’s stalker is back. Each of his claims against Menzie is an effort at self-aggrandizement, a claim that Econned has the intellectual authority to judge. He clearly does not.
A record high temperature at the very beginning of March doesn’t crack the top 20 for the month of March – well color me impressed with your stupidity and/or willful ignorance.
Yes. You might have to wear…shorts.