Common Sense For New Hampshire

For some reason Belmar seems to be the New York media’s favorite backdrop to do their weird weather stories from and this current warm spell is no exception:

I’m glad the surfers and all the boardwalk walkers are enjoying it and I’m glad to see that the mayor is enjoying it.  I’m sure enjoying it.  And we’re saving a lot of money!

But not everybody is as sanguine about it.  I heard a guy on the radio say that the fact that we broke a temperature record that was over a hundred years  old was to him pretty strong evidence of global warming.  Huh?  If we broke a record that was set last year, and that record broke the record that was set the year before or the year before that, that might mean something.  But breaking a record that was set over a hundred years ago tells me that a hundred years ago it was almost as warm as it is now.  (Mankind’s 19th century “carbon footprint” was basically non existent.)

I thought it might be instructive to see how many record temperatures were set in the last decade or two.  I tried to find a list of the record temperatures for New York for each day of the year and the years they were set.  I wasn’t able to find it for New York but I did find the data for Albany N.Y. organized the way I wanted it.  For our purposes it really doesn’t matter which city is used.

I see just as many record temperatures that are over a hundred years old, or close to a hundred years old, as I do records that were set in the last twenty years or so.  I also find it interesting that the most recent year that had a month with the warmest average temperature in Albany was 1932. Nine of the twelve record high monthly averages occurred in the 19th century.

Personally I wish global warming was real because a: I plan to move to New Hampshire soon and would like for it to be a little warmer up there and b: the next ice age will be here before we know it and any warming can can do now would be to our advantage.