Meanwhile Outside...

Now that the (first?) Trump shutdown is over, NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) is back to posting monthly updates on how hot the planet is getting.

The Trump shutdown shut down the site for a while.

The latest from the scientists at NOAA:

The first month of 2019 was characterized by warmer-than-average conditions across much of the world's surface. The most notable warm temperature anomalies were present across much of Australia and across parts of northeastern and southwestern Asia, where temperature departures from average were 4.0°C (7.2°F) above average or higher. Record warm January surface temperatures were present across much of Australia and its surrounding Southern Ocean, southern Brazil, the ocean off the south coast of South Africa, and across parts of Africa, Asia, and the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Notable cool temperature departures from average were present across parts of northern North America, Europe, and central Asia, where temperatures were 1.0°C (1.8°F) below average or cooler. According to our analysis, no land or ocean surface had record cold January temperatures.

Averaged as a whole, the January 2019 global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.88°C (1.58°F) above the 20th century average and tied with 2007 as the third highest temperature since global records began in 1880. Only the years 2016 (+1.06°C / +1.91°F) and 2017 (+0.91°C / +1.64°F) were warmer. The ten warmest Januaries have all occurred since 2002, with the last five years (2015–2019) among the six warmest years in the 140-year record. January 1976 was the last time the January global land and ocean temperatures were below average at -0.02°C (-0.04°F).

Meanwhile in the synthetic, bad substitute reality currently encased in the Trump White House:

The White House is working to assemble a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post, a conclusion that federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office. [Emphasis added.]

But like everything else in Trumpville, the fix is in:

The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which would be established by executive order, is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, has said that carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.

Happer wrote that last bit in an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal (a well known and highly respected scientific journal, doncha know). You can read a rebuttal to Happer's BS here.

The obvious purpose of the Happer Committee is not "to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat" but to string together some science-y words for Donald Trump to read so that he can turn around and declare that the science has been "proven" wrong.

Meanwhile, it's still getting warmer out there. The science says so.