Nice reminder Andrew that we have to talk global heat not just regional to the deniers. But, most deniers will deny any rebuttal anyway. What your post shouted out to me is the dust bowl tragedy and we heading into many of them globally and they'll be worse. When we talk heat 🥵 we gotta talk water 💧.
I think one of the biggest opportunities for climate communication is helping people see thresholds instead of trends. Systems often appear stable right up until they aren't, and that's true for infrastructure, ecosystems, and even economies. Once you start looking for those margins of safety, the conversation changes completely.
Surely it would be helpful to take into account the level of records from 100 years ago. You write "the heat of the 1930s was regional — it was concentrated in the middle of the U.S. That’s different from today, when extreme temperatures are a global phenomenon."
But how would you know? Back then most of the world, including the oceans had no weather records for the weather stations were largely confined to North America and Europe. Globally the number of weather stations back then were a small fraction of what there is today.
Yet another long-debunked zombie false denialist meme, relentlessly rebunked by successive generations of denialists. See berkeleyearth.org, Richard Muller's genuinely skeptical 2011 project to verify the global temperature record. Dr. Hausfather participated. Tony Watts said he was prepared to accept whatever result Muller's project produced, then proved himself a pseudoskeptic by backtracking when Muller announced he was no longer a climate-change skeptic. Notwithstanding, BE is now the canonical, verifiable high-quality global temperature record.
Well Mal, I never said anything was "unreliable". I was merely asking a question - which is the foundation of scientific inquiry.
I would add that nothing does more to discredit platforms like this than to have irrational, abusive, ideologically driven rants emerge in response to genuine inquiry.
Were I managing The Climate Brink, I would be doing something about it.
I apologize, Geoff. On rereading your question above, I see it's actually reasonable from someone who isn't a publishing climate scientist (please correct me if you are). But you must be new to the political debate! Denialists like to claim they're "just asking questions". Your question "How do you know the heat of the 1930s was different from today's?" has historically been asked by known, truculent pseudoskeptics who don't believe climate scientists are being honest: see Ken Towe on this thread! And of course, the OP is all about how denialists claiming "the 1930s were hotter" have abused the verifiable record.
Nor was my response irrational or ideologically driven, even if misdirected. Aggressive pseudoskeptical denial, often itself driven by a rational fear of collective intervention in fossil-fuel producer profits if not a paranoid fantasy of global authoritarian collectivist government, is a serious obstacle to collectively capping global warming: see "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
Was I "abusive"? Maybe, but resolute, motivated denialism is abusive to all genuine skeptics! I agree "irrational, abusive, ideologically driven rants" discredit this platform, and I thank Prof. Dessler for down-moderating Ken Towe, Scott, and other unhinged denialist commenters. I confess to feeling personally insulted by denialists who come here to JAQ off. I get enough likes from Drs. Dessler and Hausfather that I'm confident my reply was within their rules. But I need to be more tolerant of others' ambiguity!
1. "Aggressive pseudoskeptical denial, often itself driven by a rational fear of collective intervention in fossil-fuel producer profits if not a paranoid fantasy of global authoritarian collectivist government" suggests an ideological drive to me.
2. "capping global warming" in the absence of any plausible solution appears to remain a pipe dream.
3. Whilst not a scientist I am aware that Einstein's Theory of Relativity shattered a paradigm that had been basic to physicists' understanding of the universe since the seventeenth century. That being the case were I a scientist I would be hesitant in adopting an attitude of 'the science being settled' on any topic irrespective of how ever many scientists posted 'likes'.
* Mal is not a good name. If one has conviction it makes sense to me to be identifiable.
Thanks for sharing our paper. That heat wave methodology was developed by Ken Kunkel and served as an official climate change indicator for EPA until Trump took them down last December. There are many metrics and datasets for most phenomena so you give good advice not to just rely on just one. FYI you can see 32 metrics of US extreme weather at my new site inspired by that 1999 paper: https://extremeweather.thehonestbroker.org/
Interesting dashboard. Your numbers are based on raw, unadjusted measurements, so they're wrong. In some cases, not terribly wrong, in other cases, very wrong, You should correct them by using adjusted measurements. Please don't force me to spend my time putting my own dashboard together that has correct numbers.
There are 32 metrics available there for 7 phenomena. Some are unadjusted others are adjusted. Which variables specifically are you concerned about? The site discusses these issues as well.
Have you ever used a scientific instrument to measure something? Do you believe that there is any field of science where raw measurements are published without calibration, adjustment for bias and filtering of faulty data?
Andrew, thank for the Sobel share. That's a great post and I couldn't agree 👍 more that this dysministration is screwing humanity by burning climate science ( actually all science, truth, and, wisdom).
Unprecedented degradation from mechanical and chemical treatment of land is far more widespread today than it was in the 1930s. It doesn't make sense to argue that such a signal simply does not exist today when the underlying drivers are much more extensive and widespread globally now. The Dust Bowl was a clearly detectable regional example, but it occurred in a relatively confined area and has since been partly masked by practices such as irrigation. Globally, however, irrigation of land is a luxury and but a small fraction of currently destroyed landscapes. We have a UN framework on desertification, and another on biodiversity, largely for these reasons. Pretending landscape destruction is limited to the past doesn't add up; this framing seems to be mostly out of convenience or mental shortcut. The pragmatic route is to say look, we see a clear signal in the past, and since degradation is far more extensive globally today, it's probably still there as part of today's signal.
If you're able to provide a regional forcing associated with human activities from the US dust bowl as asserted in your headpost it may provide a useful comparable. I have not found any such thing for degradation, only for irrigation. Seems to be the same thing, just opposite side of the coin https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4199/egusphere-2026-4199.pdf
sorry I don't know what you mean. International climate model intercomparing supports UNFCCC, with a mandate to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Figure 2 of the report provided shows areas of land degradation, and the reports estimates 100 million hectares newly degraded annually. This is a newly added area is comparable to an additional dust bowl area added every couple years. Climate model inputs of land use/land cover change don't include degradation. Evidently it's an exciting area of emerging research in efforts to address climate model biases. Something related to your interests might include the entire climate model ensemble not capturing the changing land-sea thermal contrast. The observed contrast is 2.37, and the ensemble mean is a ratio 1.79 with a maximum ensemble member at 2.33. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.19581
Appreciate the information shared here, having just re-read The Grapes of Wrath, which provides a vivid account of living and working during the Dust Bowl. A timeless example of a system enabling choices optimized for short-term thinking, creating life-altering local impact, while the decision-makers calling the shots were inured to it.
No. They're not related whatsoever. I'm talking about the physical invisible axis that the Earth spins around. Obviously it went down by one half of a degree. Meaning the angle went up by one half a degree and the North Pole went down in the north south arrangement 1/2 of a degree. Because it lost so much mass on the opposite side.
No. They're not related whatsoever. I'm talking about the physical invisible axis that the Earth spins around. Obviously it went down by one half of a degree. Meaning the angle went up by one half a degree and the North Pole went down in the north south arrangement 1/2 of a degree. Because it lost so much mass on the opposite side.
No it's not. It doesn't bother to define the index.
In the US 1921 was the warmest year on record before 1934. Both followed quickly on 1917... the coldest year. Clearly, man-made CO2 was never involved. And July of 1921 was also a very serious problem in Europe.
I think you missed the point of this post. The data used in the original plot are biased and need to be corrected. Then you need to think about the physics of the issue. If you do that, the clear conclusion is that the increase in heatwaves in the last few decades is due to humans.
Heh. I, for one, assume that's what he's here for.
"Then you need to think about the physics of the issue. If you do that,the clear conclusion is that the increase in heatwaves in the last few decades is due to humans."
Seems to me he's here to make that unclear! Of his comments, "what is good is not new, and what is new is not good" (h/t Martin Sherlock). AFAICT, his sole motive for commenting on TCB is to obstruct collective decarbonization. You've got more patience than I, for which I'm sure we're all grateful!
Suddenly I see a link in the reply box to 'The Climate Brink reply rules'! Thanks!
I did not miss your point. You totally ignored the data going back to 1917 and 1921 in both the US and in Europe.
Europe in the 1920s was hot and dry … Weather of 1921…press comments OUTSIDE the US: (In the US 1921 was the warmest year on record and it followed 1917 only four years earlier… the coldest year on record)
BRITISH ISLES: London, July 10. England is sweltering and suffering the worst drought in a century. Today was the seventy-eighth virtually rainless day. For the third successive day temperatures have exceeded 100. The rainfall for the year is less than one-third normal to date.
FRANCE: Paris July 12. The Senate yesterday... cancelled the usual July 14 military review in Longchamps owing to the extreme heat.
GERMANY: Berlin, July 27. The potato crop has been the hardest hit of any in Germany by the prolonged dry weather..
RUSSIA: July 17. Twenty million persons are on the verge of starvation in drought-stricken sections of Russia, subsisting mainly on moss, grass and the bark of trees, according to the Vossische Zeitung, which quotes information from "reliable Russian sources." The parched earth, it is asserted, is opening up great crevices, and wells and rivers are drying up. Foliage is asserted to have withered on the trees, and a number of villages are reported on fire
SWITZERLAND: Zermatt: July 26. The heat has not greatly abated. On the summit of the Wellenkuppe, above Zermatt, and 12,830 feet high, the temperature at 10 o'clock in the morning has exceeded 100°F., and this despite the summit's being perpetually snow-clad… never do Alpinists remember such a variety of bright-colored butterflies in the high mountains as this year.
ITALY: July 30. The principal phenomenon...was the intensely hot weather. An unprecedented heat wave continued to develop in its intensity of heat and in its length and duration.
ITALY: Venice, July 30. The principal phenomena which prevailed [this week] was the intensely hot weather. An unprecedented heat wave continued to develop in its intensity of heat and in length of its duration. For several weeks the heat has increased until the past week the temperature has been up in the high nineties for day after day, and unofficial reports of over 100° have been frequent. The extremely high humidity has practically brought active business to a standstill, and has caused many deaths and heat exhaustions. The principal damage caused by the heat wave is the protracted period of drought which accompanies it. Agriculture is the chief sufferer from the heat and drought and no alleviation appears in sight. Weeks of cloudless scorching days have played havoc with the crops which were in progress when the heat wave began.
Clearly atmospheric CO2 was close to pre-industrial and could not have been the proximate cause..physics or not.
Are you seriously trying to deny or disbelieve that the 1920s and 1930a were hot and that atmospheric CO2 was at pre-industrial levels? Do you even know what the pre-industrial global mean temperature was?...back before 1900?
Nice reminder Andrew that we have to talk global heat not just regional to the deniers. But, most deniers will deny any rebuttal anyway. What your post shouted out to me is the dust bowl tragedy and we heading into many of them globally and they'll be worse. When we talk heat 🥵 we gotta talk water 💧.
Would love to have you all chime in on our upcoming article on extreme heat!!
I think one of the biggest opportunities for climate communication is helping people see thresholds instead of trends. Systems often appear stable right up until they aren't, and that's true for infrastructure, ecosystems, and even economies. Once you start looking for those margins of safety, the conversation changes completely.
Yes, I agree. I wrote about this here: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/why-are-climate-impacts-escalating
Thanku for sharing I will read.
Surely it would be helpful to take into account the level of records from 100 years ago. You write "the heat of the 1930s was regional — it was concentrated in the middle of the U.S. That’s different from today, when extreme temperatures are a global phenomenon."
But how would you know? Back then most of the world, including the oceans had no weather records for the weather stations were largely confined to North America and Europe. Globally the number of weather stations back then were a small fraction of what there is today.
Yet another long-debunked zombie false denialist meme, relentlessly rebunked by successive generations of denialists. See berkeleyearth.org, Richard Muller's genuinely skeptical 2011 project to verify the global temperature record. Dr. Hausfather participated. Tony Watts said he was prepared to accept whatever result Muller's project produced, then proved himself a pseudoskeptic by backtracking when Muller announced he was no longer a climate-change skeptic. Notwithstanding, BE is now the canonical, verifiable high-quality global temperature record.
So what are you saying?
I'm saying "temperature record 100 years ago is unreliable" is an iteratively refuted denialist falsehood, harder to kill than Rasputin.
Well Mal, I never said anything was "unreliable". I was merely asking a question - which is the foundation of scientific inquiry.
I would add that nothing does more to discredit platforms like this than to have irrational, abusive, ideologically driven rants emerge in response to genuine inquiry.
Were I managing The Climate Brink, I would be doing something about it.
Mal Adapted? Apt!
[Last edited 0830 PDT 8/4/2026: MA]
I apologize, Geoff. On rereading your question above, I see it's actually reasonable from someone who isn't a publishing climate scientist (please correct me if you are). But you must be new to the political debate! Denialists like to claim they're "just asking questions". Your question "How do you know the heat of the 1930s was different from today's?" has historically been asked by known, truculent pseudoskeptics who don't believe climate scientists are being honest: see Ken Towe on this thread! And of course, the OP is all about how denialists claiming "the 1930s were hotter" have abused the verifiable record.
Nor was my response irrational or ideologically driven, even if misdirected. Aggressive pseudoskeptical denial, often itself driven by a rational fear of collective intervention in fossil-fuel producer profits if not a paranoid fantasy of global authoritarian collectivist government, is a serious obstacle to collectively capping global warming: see "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
Was I "abusive"? Maybe, but resolute, motivated denialism is abusive to all genuine skeptics! I agree "irrational, abusive, ideologically driven rants" discredit this platform, and I thank Prof. Dessler for down-moderating Ken Towe, Scott, and other unhinged denialist commenters. I confess to feeling personally insulted by denialists who come here to JAQ off. I get enough likes from Drs. Dessler and Hausfather that I'm confident my reply was within their rules. But I need to be more tolerant of others' ambiguity!
Thank you Mal*. Apology accepted although -
1. "Aggressive pseudoskeptical denial, often itself driven by a rational fear of collective intervention in fossil-fuel producer profits if not a paranoid fantasy of global authoritarian collectivist government" suggests an ideological drive to me.
2. "capping global warming" in the absence of any plausible solution appears to remain a pipe dream.
3. Whilst not a scientist I am aware that Einstein's Theory of Relativity shattered a paradigm that had been basic to physicists' understanding of the universe since the seventeenth century. That being the case were I a scientist I would be hesitant in adopting an attitude of 'the science being settled' on any topic irrespective of how ever many scientists posted 'likes'.
* Mal is not a good name. If one has conviction it makes sense to me to be identifiable.
Thanks for sharing our paper. That heat wave methodology was developed by Ken Kunkel and served as an official climate change indicator for EPA until Trump took them down last December. There are many metrics and datasets for most phenomena so you give good advice not to just rely on just one. FYI you can see 32 metrics of US extreme weather at my new site inspired by that 1999 paper: https://extremeweather.thehonestbroker.org/
Interesting dashboard. Your numbers are based on raw, unadjusted measurements, so they're wrong. In some cases, not terribly wrong, in other cases, very wrong, You should correct them by using adjusted measurements. Please don't force me to spend my time putting my own dashboard together that has correct numbers.
There are 32 metrics available there for 7 phenomena. Some are unadjusted others are adjusted. Which variables specifically are you concerned about? The site discusses these issues as well.
Have you ever used a scientific instrument to measure something? Do you believe that there is any field of science where raw measurements are published without calibration, adjustment for bias and filtering of faulty data?
Andrew, thank for the Sobel share. That's a great post and I couldn't agree 👍 more that this dysministration is screwing humanity by burning climate science ( actually all science, truth, and, wisdom).
https://deepconvection.substack.com/p/the-new-transatlantic-science-gap?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=pluaa
Unprecedented degradation from mechanical and chemical treatment of land is far more widespread today than it was in the 1930s. It doesn't make sense to argue that such a signal simply does not exist today when the underlying drivers are much more extensive and widespread globally now. The Dust Bowl was a clearly detectable regional example, but it occurred in a relatively confined area and has since been partly masked by practices such as irrigation. Globally, however, irrigation of land is a luxury and but a small fraction of currently destroyed landscapes. We have a UN framework on desertification, and another on biodiversity, largely for these reasons. Pretending landscape destruction is limited to the past doesn't add up; this framing seems to be mostly out of convenience or mental shortcut. The pragmatic route is to say look, we see a clear signal in the past, and since degradation is far more extensive globally today, it's probably still there as part of today's signal.
Interesting points. Can you point me some data to support it?
A special report on land for the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was produced by Potsdam Institute. https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/faces/ViewItemOverviewPage.jsp?itemId=item_30631
I need more than just a link to a report. Can you point me to where it says it's affecting temperature in a way similar to the dust bowl?
If you're able to provide a regional forcing associated with human activities from the US dust bowl as asserted in your headpost it may provide a useful comparable. I have not found any such thing for degradation, only for irrigation. Seems to be the same thing, just opposite side of the coin https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4199/egusphere-2026-4199.pdf
sorry I don't know what you mean. International climate model intercomparing supports UNFCCC, with a mandate to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Figure 2 of the report provided shows areas of land degradation, and the reports estimates 100 million hectares newly degraded annually. This is a newly added area is comparable to an additional dust bowl area added every couple years. Climate model inputs of land use/land cover change don't include degradation. Evidently it's an exciting area of emerging research in efforts to address climate model biases. Something related to your interests might include the entire climate model ensemble not capturing the changing land-sea thermal contrast. The observed contrast is 2.37, and the ensemble mean is a ratio 1.79 with a maximum ensemble member at 2.33. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.19581
Are you familiar with the US definition of the heat wave index?
US annual index heatwaves.png
It might help.
No answer? Are you not able to tell us why your obtuse comment is so important?
Why might it help? Explain your claim.
Who really believes that you can deduce anything at all from "ten year climate increments"?
Who really doesn't believe that our 40 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions absorb and redirects thermal energy and is therefore causing warming?
Appreciate the information shared here, having just re-read The Grapes of Wrath, which provides a vivid account of living and working during the Dust Bowl. A timeless example of a system enabling choices optimized for short-term thinking, creating life-altering local impact, while the decision-makers calling the shots were inured to it.
The axis of Earth has tilted .5° out of kilter because of redistributing the mass of the ogallala aquifer..
Has it moved towards the same direction that the magnetic pole is moving?
No. They're not related whatsoever. I'm talking about the physical invisible axis that the Earth spins around. Obviously it went down by one half of a degree. Meaning the angle went up by one half a degree and the North Pole went down in the north south arrangement 1/2 of a degree. Because it lost so much mass on the opposite side.
No. They're not related whatsoever. I'm talking about the physical invisible axis that the Earth spins around. Obviously it went down by one half of a degree. Meaning the angle went up by one half a degree and the North Pole went down in the north south arrangement 1/2 of a degree. Because it lost so much mass on the opposite side.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/heat-wave-index-usa
check this out,,,
Yes, that’s the same figure we’re talking about in this article.
No it's not. It doesn't bother to define the index.
In the US 1921 was the warmest year on record before 1934. Both followed quickly on 1917... the coldest year. Clearly, man-made CO2 was never involved. And July of 1921 was also a very serious problem in Europe.
I think you missed the point of this post. The data used in the original plot are biased and need to be corrected. Then you need to think about the physics of the issue. If you do that, the clear conclusion is that the increase in heatwaves in the last few decades is due to humans.
"I think you missed the point of this post. "
Heh. I, for one, assume that's what he's here for.
"Then you need to think about the physics of the issue. If you do that,the clear conclusion is that the increase in heatwaves in the last few decades is due to humans."
Seems to me he's here to make that unclear! Of his comments, "what is good is not new, and what is new is not good" (h/t Martin Sherlock). AFAICT, his sole motive for commenting on TCB is to obstruct collective decarbonization. You've got more patience than I, for which I'm sure we're all grateful!
Suddenly I see a link in the reply box to 'The Climate Brink reply rules'! Thanks!
I did not miss your point. You totally ignored the data going back to 1917 and 1921 in both the US and in Europe.
Europe in the 1920s was hot and dry … Weather of 1921…press comments OUTSIDE the US: (In the US 1921 was the warmest year on record and it followed 1917 only four years earlier… the coldest year on record)
BRITISH ISLES: London, July 10. England is sweltering and suffering the worst drought in a century. Today was the seventy-eighth virtually rainless day. For the third successive day temperatures have exceeded 100. The rainfall for the year is less than one-third normal to date.
FRANCE: Paris July 12. The Senate yesterday... cancelled the usual July 14 military review in Longchamps owing to the extreme heat.
GERMANY: Berlin, July 27. The potato crop has been the hardest hit of any in Germany by the prolonged dry weather..
RUSSIA: July 17. Twenty million persons are on the verge of starvation in drought-stricken sections of Russia, subsisting mainly on moss, grass and the bark of trees, according to the Vossische Zeitung, which quotes information from "reliable Russian sources." The parched earth, it is asserted, is opening up great crevices, and wells and rivers are drying up. Foliage is asserted to have withered on the trees, and a number of villages are reported on fire
SWITZERLAND: Zermatt: July 26. The heat has not greatly abated. On the summit of the Wellenkuppe, above Zermatt, and 12,830 feet high, the temperature at 10 o'clock in the morning has exceeded 100°F., and this despite the summit's being perpetually snow-clad… never do Alpinists remember such a variety of bright-colored butterflies in the high mountains as this year.
ITALY: July 30. The principal phenomenon...was the intensely hot weather. An unprecedented heat wave continued to develop in its intensity of heat and in its length and duration.
ITALY: Venice, July 30. The principal phenomena which prevailed [this week] was the intensely hot weather. An unprecedented heat wave continued to develop in its intensity of heat and in length of its duration. For several weeks the heat has increased until the past week the temperature has been up in the high nineties for day after day, and unofficial reports of over 100° have been frequent. The extremely high humidity has practically brought active business to a standstill, and has caused many deaths and heat exhaustions. The principal damage caused by the heat wave is the protracted period of drought which accompanies it. Agriculture is the chief sufferer from the heat and drought and no alleviation appears in sight. Weeks of cloudless scorching days have played havoc with the crops which were in progress when the heat wave began.
Clearly atmospheric CO2 was close to pre-industrial and could not have been the proximate cause..physics or not.
My analysis in this post includes data going back to 1900. In Zeke's post (https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/hot-days-cold-thermometers), he shows data for the entire land surface.
Are you seriously trying to deny or disbelieve that the 1920s and 1930a were hot and that atmospheric CO2 was at pre-industrial levels? Do you even know what the pre-industrial global mean temperature was?...back before 1900?
Why are you cherry-picking weather records, when the discussion is about climate change?
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-weather-normals-30-years-hottest-record-united-states
Why? Explain why you think it's important.