There are many ways to play politics with the weather. And before he’s done, Joe Biden is likely to use all of them and invent a few more.
It’s hot outside in many areas of the country. It’s very hot in the desert — just ask the residents of Phoenix or other Arizona and New Mexico cities. Likewise, it’s also hot on the plains and in the Great Lakes region. It’s hot on the coasts. It’s hot in the South. It’s hot in the North.
How hot is it? The punchline is that this is the hottest July evah. “July is on track to Earth’s warmest month on record.” While that sounds impressive, it’s good to remember that the records only go back to 1850.
“The extreme weather which has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in a statement. “The need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is more urgent than ever before.”
Even if we were to be stupid enough to reduce or eliminate “greenhouse gases” (CO2, methane, Nitrous oxide (N2O), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)), we’d sow the seeds of our own destruction.
Mankind has trod the earth for at least 150,000 years according to the fossil record. During that time, the climate has warmed, cooled, and warmed again. But this time, it’s different. This time we have a president looking to prove a point about the changing climate. This time, we have a president who wants to communicate to the voters just how much he really, really, really cares about workers doing their jobs outdoors during the summer.
The White House asked the Department of Labor to issue a formal “hazard alert” that will “reaffirm that workers have heat-related protections under federal law,” officials said.
In other words, there are already laws on the books to protect workers. But the Biden administration is in full campaign mode and the president wants to show the voters that he’s on the ball.
Maybe he’ll cancel summer next.
It will provide employers information on protecting workers, and help ensure workers know their rights, a White House summary states.
In addition, the department will “ramp up enforcement of heat-safety violations,” expanding inspections of “high risk” sectors like construction and agriculture.
The intrigue: It’s the first time the Labor Department has used the “hazard alert” tool to address extreme heat, a White House official tells Axios.
Congratulations Joe! Another “first” for you! Perhaps you can find a way to fold in some kind of affirmative action angle to the “hazard alert.” I’m sure there’s a deserving minority out there who needs to be recognized as the public face of the “hazard alert.”
Or would that be taking things too far?
Axios is also reporting that “Other efforts include NOAA investments to improve weather forecasts.” Is it really a big deal if the weather forecast calls for temps in the upper nineties instead of the mid-nineties?
Tucked into a New York Times scare piece about the hot temperatures being connected to climate change is a strange admission: we don’t know why the temps are so high.
Even so, when global average temperatures shatter records by such large margins, as they have been doing since early June, it raises questions about whether the climate is also being shaped by other factors, said Karen A. McKinnon, a climate scientist and statistician at the University of California, Los Angeles. These elements might be less-well understood than global warming and El Niño.
“Do we expect, given those two factors, the record to be broken by this much? Or is this a case where we don’t expect it?” Dr. McKinnon said. “Is there some other factor that we’re seeing come into play?”
Before we spend $15-$30 trillion on climate mitigation and pay extortion to poor countries, perhaps we should discover what it is that we’re dealing with — scientifically speaking, of course.
But that’s just not possible when we get morons like this speaking in absolutes.
Researchers who analyzed this month’s punishing heat waves in the Southwestern United States, northern Mexico and Southern Europe said this week that the temperatures observed in those regions, over a span of so many days, would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of human-driven climate change.
There’s no way to measure whether the temps were “virtually impossible” to achieve without human-caused warming. But it sure looks good in the New York Times — almost as good as “hazard alert.”
