The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for October 2016 tied with 2003 as the third highest for October in the 137-year period of record, at 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F). This is 0.26°C (0.47°F) cooler than the record warmth of October 2015 when El Niño conditions were strengthening and 0.50°C (0.90°F) cooler than the all-time record warmth of March 2016 when the El Niño was near the end of its peak. Including 2016, the past three Octobers have been the three warmest in the historical record; however, October 2016 also marked the lowest monthly departure from average for any month since November 2014, which was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above average.It's still getting warmer out there.
Meanwhile in Trumpistan:
In an interview with the New York Times last week, President-elect Donald Trump appeared open to accepting “some connectivity” between human activity and climate change.Meanwhile, also in Trumpistan:
But the man who claimed numerous times that climate change is “an expensive hoax,” “a concept...created by and for the Chinese” and “bullshit” still believes it is “a bunch of bunk,” according to his incoming chief of staff, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus.
Trump infamously tweeted that global warming is a “hoax,” and has selected Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, an outspoken climate skeptic, to lead his EPA transition team.Myron Ebell is the guy who (as I've written before):
Though he likes to bash scientists for working outside their degreed fields, Ebell, it turns out, isn't a scientist at all. He majored in philosophy at the University of California in San Diego, then studied political theory at the London School of Economics and history at Cambridge.And:
"I'm not claiming to be a climate authority—the way Jim Hansen is, or Robert Corell," says Ebell. "Every interview I do, when I'm asked about scientific issues, I say I'm not a climate scientist."While the planet's temperatures continue to rise, in Trumpistan our continually dishonest President-elect has chosen Myron Ebell to help dismantle the EPA.
This is the new normal. Resist the new normal.
