Sunday, January 8, 2012

Hey, Senator Inhofe, It Was 67 Degrees Fahrenheit in DC Yesterday


Back on August 19th of last year, I posted a Friday Rant called, "Hey, Senator Inhofe, It's HOT Outside," in which I called out the senior Senator from Oklahoma for his family's dumbass publicity stunt of building an igloo during one of the blizzards that struck DC two winters ago in order to mock Al Gore and others who are concerned about climate change. Specifically, I blasted the global warming denying Inhofe for not subsequently acknowledging this past summer's record breaking heat wave in The Sooner State:
So to recap, Okalahoma's record for the highest monthly temperature ever recorded was just smashed by an astonishing one full degree Fahrenheit. And yet, there was nary a peep about it from the esteemed Senator Inhofe and his merry band of inbreds.

All of this almost makes me wish I lived in Oklahoma. During July I would have had this very strong desire to go find Senator Inhofe's house, wait until about four o'clock in the afternoon, and then break open a couple of eggs and fry them right on his front walk. Then I would have held up my own sign for all passersby to see: "Pray for Cooler Weather...Maybe that Will Help."
Well, guess what? After Oklahoma suffered through a summer season right out of Dante's Inferno, the locale where the "Honorable" Senator Inhofe spends the lion's share of his time is literally going through a year without a winter. We've had exactly one truly cold night so far here in the DC area during this non-winter of 2011-2012, just this past week when the temps dipped into the teens. Other than that we've had maybe three or four nights when it has been below 30 degrees, and the current 10-day forecast is for more of the same through mid-January.

Yesterday, the mercury soared all the way to 67 degrees, and it felt more like early May than January. Even more pertinent is a factoid I read just this past week that DC has not experienced a temperature reading below zero degrees Fahrenheit since 1994, which is astonishing since before that time it was not all that uncommon an occurrence during the coldest months of the year.

So what I want to know is what does Senator Inhofe's family have to say about this run of extremely warm weather we are now experiencing? The silence on that front has been deafening. If you're going to be assholes whenever there is a snowstorm, you're setting yourself up for this kind of criticism. Even at the time their little publicity stunt was monumentally stupid because despite the fact that DC experienced three major winter storms two years ago, each time the temperatures rebounded into the 30s and 40s almost immediately afterward rather than going into a deep freeze, which used to be the norm.

I guess it's true what Stephen Colbert told George Bush the Lesser years ago at the White House Correspondent's Dinner: reality does have a well known liberal bias.


Bonus: John Fogerty knows what's going on

11 comments:

  1. We’ve worked ourselves into a spot
    Where a look at the future we’ve got
    Shows that feces and fans
    Mean no point in big plans:
    It’s going to be too fucking hot.

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  2. Well said, BenjaminTheDonkey!

    Evidence is mounting that climate change predictions based on models and reported by the IPCC are grotesquely overoptimistic. People who either deny global warming or think it's going to be gradual, incremental and manageable are in for an unpleasant surprise. Tipping points thanks to amplifying feedbacks have been passed, and a violently rapid destabilization appears to be imminent. What's so pathetic and crazy is that this outcome has been known for years, but almost completely disregarded:

    http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/01/doing-maths.html

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  3. No winter in Ireland yet, our honeybees were out and about today.

    Funny my friends who were poking fun at climate change 12 months ago when it was -10c have nothing to say right now, even though it +10c or 11c today. Confirmation bias in action, cold winter weather proves there is no global warming but very warm winter weather proves nothing.

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  4. South Wales, no stranger to cold weather, has had no winter this year either. My bees don't know what to do with themselves too.
    All we've had for the last 6 weeks is grey drizzle and around 10c. Everywhere is damp constantly.
    The east of the UK is in drought only 180 miles away.

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  5. we have a problem in the arctic; the last paragraph here
    (you can skip the econ notes)

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  6. rjs this is indeed very worrying stuff. I hope we are not seeing the opening stages of runaway global warming.

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  7. irishwildeye, what's most unsettling is to watch the climate scientists passing this data back & forth among themselves & not saying anything...

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  8. @rjs - very worrying, indeed. Maybe their silence is caused by knowing there is nothing they can do to convince people, and they figure that since there is also nothing that can be done to stop it, why subject themselves to the harsh criticism of those like Inhofe?

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  9. they've all learned there's nothing they can do about cranks like imhofe, bill...i suspect there will be reaction & a plethora of studies after the shock wears off & they get back to modelling the implications...

    one thing for sure, it aint no algae bloom...

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  10. The scientists themselves are not in agreement as to how serious the methane release is - either some are alarmist, or others are in denial!

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-arctic-methane-worst-case-scenario%3Chttp:/www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-arctic-methane-worst-case-scenario/comment-page-2/#comments

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  11. very true, gail, which was the reason for my tongue in cheek crack about an algae bloom, which one prominent climate blogger had proposed...

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