Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "“The Heat Will Kill You First”: Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell on Life and Death on a Scorched Planet" video.

  1. Two weeks after this bull, Europe is in a cold wave with negative temperature anomalies. Frosts are forecast for southern Germany, and people will need to put their heating on in August. Cool, damp and dull for the foreseeable future. At the height of northern summer so far this July of 176 countries in the Northern Hemisphere, only China and Albania have broken their national records, which is a little disappointing considering all the scary reporting. It's more what you would expect from a slowly warming world (~0.1°C per decade UAHv6) which is of course what we're living in. There are over 5 million excess deaths per annum globally due to abnormal temperatures from the 2000-2019 study led Prof. Guo of Monash University. It found that over 90% of excess deaths were caused by excess COLD rather than excess heat. This applied globally including in the hottest continent, Africa. So, in a world with increasingly mild temperatures, there will be less excess death. Warming is good not bad. It's the "record" word that's most important here. Although Phoenix was incorporated in 1881, NOAA only has continuous data from around 1940. So recorded history for Phoenix in this instance is about 80 years (not that long climatically) and the record for 1930s (when heatwaves were worse) is mostly incomplete. Also Phoenix's population has expanded exponentially in that time from a few tens of thousands to a few million. This has dramatically increased the Urban Heat Island effect resulting in temperatures 10°F (5°C) higher during the day (Scientific American, 2019). This alone explains the record high temperatures. As I'm sure everyone is aware, Phoenix is in the Sonoran desert, which is characterised by long summers and extremely high temperatures. And that's exactly what's happening. There's nothing unusual or unexpected here. The news story is purposely catatrophising the weather to unnecessarily scare people into changing their way of life. There is no global climate crisis. The UN's IPCC AR6, chapter 12 "Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment", section 12.5.2, table 12.12 confirms there is a lack of evidence or no signal that the following have changed: Air Pollution Weather (temperature inversions), Aridity, Avalanche (snow), Average precipitation, Average Wind Speed, Coastal Flood, Agricultural drought, Hydrological drought, Erosion of Coastlines, Fire Weather (hot and windy), Flooding From Heavy Rain (pluvial floods), Frost, Hail, Heavy Rain, Heavy Snowfall and Ice Storms, Landslides, Marine Heatwaves, Ocean Acidity, Radiation at the Earth’s Surface, River/Lake Floods, Sand and Dust Storms, Sea Level, Severe Wind Storms, Snow, Glacier, and Ice Sheets, Tropical Cyclones. There is no objective observational evidence that we are living through a global climate crisis. None.
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