And, I’m 62, and I know damned well the climate has changed a lot since I was a child. I’m from southern Illinois and in the winter of 2011-12, I stood outside in the wind at night on New Year’s Eve, wearing a t-shirt and flip flops. That was unthinkable even 10 years ago. If someone had told me it was going to be possible, I would have laughed at them.
Don’t know the difference between an unusual weather even and climate, do you?
But of course you don’t know the difference between natural variability and the trend that overlays it. Why, because you are not a scientist but some science challenged individual who walked in off the street to shelter at Heartland.
Remember, ‘weather throws the punches climate trains the boxer’.
Look around the globe over the last three decades and try to argue that many climate connected trends are not on the up.
For Marion, IL, that was a hot New Year’s eve. In subsequent New Year’s eves, the temp was 20 to 30 degrees colder.
Russell supply data, information and source to back up each proposition raised there Russell.
Mr. Cook, what was the average temperature on New Year’s Eve over the past twenty years compared to the average between 1907–1917?
I’ll make a guess. It’s higher.
Fifty years ago there were roughly the same number of record local cold days as record local hot days. In 2016, it was more than 4:1 hot records over cold records. And the trend is continuing upward in favor of hot records.
I’m 64 living in southern Ontario, Canada. When I was a kid, I remember the snow being really deep and the winters lasting a whole lot longer than now. There used to be a large snowmobile industry around here but that seems to have petered-out around 1980 (sure, you can still buy snowmobiles but there are no local dealers anymore; so seeing them on snowmobile trailers is a rarer sight these days). It has been touch-and-go at the local ski resorts in the past ten years. If it gets cold enough the resorts can make snow but this becomes problematic if it doesn’t stay cold. So it should be no surprise that one very large near-by resort called Blue Mountain in Collingwood Ontario didn’t open this year. I am not joking when I tell you that the resort operator was seen installing water slides etc. in previous years as they permanently shift their primary business season from winter to summer.
But we must remember that this current warming cycle is responsible for the end of the ice age ~ 11,000 years ago where CO2 levels rose from 180 ppm to 280 ppm. That second value was more-or-less the norm until the Victorian Age brought us steam-based locomotives, and it was all up-hill (CO2-wise) from there.
If I were an unscrupulous scientist in it for the money, I’d make more money from denial. Big business has more to spend than my university tenure would ever provide…. just saying.
I suspect the rebuttal to “They’re all in it for the money” is to ask how the hell you could get thousands of scientists in dozens of different disciplines, all of whom have careers that can stand or fall on proving their colleagues wrong, can lockstep for decades without ANYONE, ANYWHERE, EVER blowing the whistle. And that would involve fudging data right across all those different disciplines so the errors introduced match up.
Especially as anyone actually proving all their colleagues wrong would be a sitter for a bushel of Nobel Prizes.
Anyone who can look you in the eye and claim that is either abysmally ignorant or getting kickbacks themselves
Their approach is great. They cured me of my fear of possible thermonuclear exchange between India and Pakistan or Israel and … I also now know that the San Andreas or the Cascadian faults are not actual problems. As for those periodic volacano episodes, most of them have not gone off in my lifetime. Phew!!!
Feeling really really relieved.
If I’ve never experienced it yet, it’s a sure thing that the chance of anything occuring drops to zero.
This is sad on so many levels. First, because these individuals are awash in ignorance and complacency. But these kinds of interviews with man-on-the-street produce these things. Its purpose seems mainly to embarrass/belittle the conveyors of human ignorance. At some point, the journalist has to decide whether it’s in the public interest to provide a platform for uninformed chattering.
Look, we are all blissfully ignorant about certain topics. I wouldn’t want a national journalist to stick a microphone in my face to ask about some topic I was unfamiliar with.
The journalist could have asked the questions differently. The men lived in Louisiana and were fisherman. Couldn’t the questions have been about sea level rise, oil spills, weighing environmental harms vs. profit, protecting future generations.
Let me give an example. “Scientists say that climate change will increase the frequency of Category 5 hurricanes. Some people say that the government should spend money to protect New Orleans and other cities. Other people say that reducing climate change will reduce flash flooding and the severity of hurricanes. Which strategy do you think should be done?”
April 19, 2017 at 10:45 pm
Well, it’s just sad. The old: scientists are in it for the grant money. Was that a Frank Luntz idea?
Just sad. Just really sad.
April 19, 2017 at 10:48 pm
And, I’m 62, and I know damned well the climate has changed a lot since I was a child. I’m from southern Illinois and in the winter of 2011-12, I stood outside in the wind at night on New Year’s Eve, wearing a t-shirt and flip flops. That was unthinkable even 10 years ago. If someone had told me it was going to be possible, I would have laughed at them.
April 19, 2017 at 11:59 pm
For Marion, IL, that was a hot New Year’s eve. In subsequent New Year’s eves, the temp was 20 to 30 degrees colder.
Don’t know the difference between an unusual weather even and climate, do you?
April 20, 2017 at 3:48 am
It’s an outlier but the frequency of outliers can point to climate.
April 20, 2017 at 6:37 am
But of course you don’t know the difference between natural variability and the trend that overlays it. Why, because you are not a scientist but some science challenged individual who walked in off the street to shelter at Heartland.
Remember, ‘weather throws the punches climate trains the boxer’.
Look around the globe over the last three decades and try to argue that many climate connected trends are not on the up.
Russell supply data, information and source to back up each proposition raised there Russell.
April 20, 2017 at 8:19 am
It is as though you fellows are unable to look up things for yourselves or reason arguments out. Tenney Naumer spoke of one single day as proof of climate change, so I changed the dates for one single day: https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KMWA/2015/12/30/CustomHistory.html?dayend=31&monthend=12&yearend=2015&req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=
April 20, 2017 at 11:11 am
But Russell, you have once again omitted any context, now study my reply again and then provide an adequate response to the whole.
April 20, 2017 at 1:52 pm
Yes, I do. You, apparently, do not.
April 25, 2017 at 12:58 pm
Mr. Cook, what was the average temperature on New Year’s Eve over the past twenty years compared to the average between 1907–1917?
I’ll make a guess. It’s higher.
Fifty years ago there were roughly the same number of record local cold days as record local hot days. In 2016, it was more than 4:1 hot records over cold records. And the trend is continuing upward in favor of hot records.
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/us-warm-cold-records-2016-noaa
And 2017 so far appears to be continuing the trend.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-201702
If you wish to keep your head buried, knock yourself out. I won’t.
April 20, 2017 at 5:18 am
I’m 64 living in southern Ontario, Canada. When I was a kid, I remember the snow being really deep and the winters lasting a whole lot longer than now. There used to be a large snowmobile industry around here but that seems to have petered-out around 1980 (sure, you can still buy snowmobiles but there are no local dealers anymore; so seeing them on snowmobile trailers is a rarer sight these days). It has been touch-and-go at the local ski resorts in the past ten years. If it gets cold enough the resorts can make snow but this becomes problematic if it doesn’t stay cold. So it should be no surprise that one very large near-by resort called Blue Mountain in Collingwood Ontario didn’t open this year. I am not joking when I tell you that the resort operator was seen installing water slides etc. in previous years as they permanently shift their primary business season from winter to summer.
But we must remember that this current warming cycle is responsible for the end of the ice age ~ 11,000 years ago where CO2 levels rose from 180 ppm to 280 ppm. That second value was more-or-less the norm until the Victorian Age brought us steam-based locomotives, and it was all up-hill (CO2-wise) from there.
April 19, 2017 at 10:57 pm
If I were an unscrupulous scientist in it for the money, I’d make more money from denial. Big business has more to spend than my university tenure would ever provide…. just saying.
April 20, 2017 at 2:01 pm
There’s exponentially more money on the denial side, especially if you can crank out stuff with some similitude to actual science.
April 20, 2017 at 6:29 am
I suspect the rebuttal to “They’re all in it for the money” is to ask how the hell you could get thousands of scientists in dozens of different disciplines, all of whom have careers that can stand or fall on proving their colleagues wrong, can lockstep for decades without ANYONE, ANYWHERE, EVER blowing the whistle. And that would involve fudging data right across all those different disciplines so the errors introduced match up.
Especially as anyone actually proving all their colleagues wrong would be a sitter for a bushel of Nobel Prizes.
Anyone who can look you in the eye and claim that is either abysmally ignorant or getting kickbacks themselves
April 20, 2017 at 2:02 pm
And in all the countries of the world around the globe.
April 20, 2017 at 7:05 am
Thank you for this video. It is discouraging. But it is helpful to know how they think.
April 20, 2017 at 2:08 pm
Their approach is great. They cured me of my fear of possible thermonuclear exchange between India and Pakistan or Israel and … I also now know that the San Andreas or the Cascadian faults are not actual problems. As for those periodic volacano episodes, most of them have not gone off in my lifetime. Phew!!!
Feeling really really relieved.
If I’ve never experienced it yet, it’s a sure thing that the chance of anything occuring drops to zero.
April 21, 2017 at 8:07 am
This is sad on so many levels. First, because these individuals are awash in ignorance and complacency. But these kinds of interviews with man-on-the-street produce these things. Its purpose seems mainly to embarrass/belittle the conveyors of human ignorance. At some point, the journalist has to decide whether it’s in the public interest to provide a platform for uninformed chattering.
Look, we are all blissfully ignorant about certain topics. I wouldn’t want a national journalist to stick a microphone in my face to ask about some topic I was unfamiliar with.
The journalist could have asked the questions differently. The men lived in Louisiana and were fisherman. Couldn’t the questions have been about sea level rise, oil spills, weighing environmental harms vs. profit, protecting future generations.
Let me give an example. “Scientists say that climate change will increase the frequency of Category 5 hurricanes. Some people say that the government should spend money to protect New Orleans and other cities. Other people say that reducing climate change will reduce flash flooding and the severity of hurricanes. Which strategy do you think should be done?”
April 21, 2017 at 10:08 am
These sort of folk are in the voting minority.
Best,
D
April 21, 2017 at 7:23 pm
Sure a lot of people who seem to have an aversion to looking up the actual data. Here is an alternate take on warming that is interesting at least to me.
http://euanmearns.com/the-staircase-hypothesis-an-alternative-explanation-for-the-recent-global-warming/
These three graphs show the unadjusted and adjusted numbers.

Maybe instead of going on about the weather on new years in Illinois one should look at the actual changes world wide.
April 21, 2017 at 9:40 pm
Nope.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/steps/