It has never been this hot

[randr]

Weird hot.
I live in Colorado and have worked comfortably on roof tops in the middle of very hot summers at 9000 ft. Today I can not touch any object that has been sitting in the sun without actually burning my hand. The air temp is 98 but the heat coming off the ground is like walking into an oven.
I know the sun's radiation is supposed to be increasing but is there something going on that no one has told us?
A few days like this and some of the dry timber up high will start to self ignite.

[RagAss]

1. You must have missed it.....

Science is a fraud and the earth is 6,000 years old.
Welcome to America.

[panader0]

2. Records are being broken all over the country.

Here in Az we have 100 plus days all summer every year. C'mon monsoon!

[The Blue Flower]

3. Good thing global warming is a hoax

Just think how hot it would be if it were real.

[alterfurz]

15. We'll keep doing what we do until we can't...

...and then we won't. -- James Kunstler

[snooper2]

4. In Texas it's not nearly as bad as last summer

A bunch of my front yard is still green LOL...

Last year at this time I had a dirt bowl...

[Skittles]

18. the humidity feels different this year

much worse

[JNelson6563]

5. I feel sorry for those living in desert states.

If this keeps up water & cooling needs will be unsustainable in those regions.

Julie

[99Forever]

6. The tipping point has been reached and is but a distant memory in our mirror.

There will be no turning back. Our own ability to ignore so many warnings from our fragile planet, now will exact it's price on us for our lack of foresight. I hope I am wrong.

[TBMASE]

7. I'm pretty sure the Hadean eon

was warmer

[kestrel91316]

8. The sun's radiation isn't increasing. The atmospheric content of CO2 IS increasing,

thanks to man's longstanding obsession with burning fossil fuels, and because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the earth is heating up.

We have to explain this to you? SERIOUSLY??

BTW, 98F is nothing. We've hit 119F in my part of Los Angeles. In time, you can probably expect the same in CO. You can run from the greenhouse effect, but you can't hide.

"Weird" is the new normal, just as the climatologists predicted.

[former9thward]

10. NASA disagrees with you. SERIOUSLY.

They say radiation has been increasing since the late 19th century. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0313irradiance.html

If you google you will find all sorts of studies and papers backing this information.

[Sentath]

12. But. not by enough to explain anything.

Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per decade, according to a NASA funded study.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0313irradiance.html

Yes, that says one 20th of a percent.

[belcffub]

14. wouldn't that be

.05 (70's) + .05 (80's) + .05 (90's) + .05 (00's) approx = .15 to .20

also skimming the article further

To put it into perspective, decreases in TSI of 0.2 percent occur during the weeklong passage of large sunspot groups across our side of the sun. These changes are relatively insignificant compared to the sun's total output of energy, yet equivalent to all the energy that mankind uses in a year.

so if .2 percent decrease for one week is equal to all the energy we use in a year what does a .2 percent increase mean

[former9thward]

19. The article says it is significant.

"Historical records of solar activity indicate that solar radiation has been increasing since the late 19th century. If a trend, comparable to the one found in this study, persisted throughout the 20th century, it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.

If global warming proponents are to be credible they must not attack science research which points to causes other than humans.

[theophilus]

17. Who is this NASA you speak of?

I guess it is time to launch a huge government program to shade the earth or something to save some folks.

[belcffub]

23. something like this

[jimlup]

9. At 9000' Wow! That's seriously surprising

I think you are right. We are in trouble. But I think we have several years before the true trouble starts - just sayin' I mean people like Jim Hansen have been warning of tipping points and the loss of civilization for some time now. It is about time to pay the bill.

Climate deniers have focused laser like on the 1 in 20 (now more like 1 in 300) chance that the science is wrong. Instead we should be focused on the 1 in 6 chance that they are wrong in the other direction and we are set for something like a runaway Greenhouse. The arctic methane venting which has been detected only over the last two years has me quite alarmed.

[belcffub]

11. Still waiting for our first ever 100 degree day...

Buffalo, NY has never recorded a 100 degree day...

I lived in Boston for a couple of years back in the 90's... that was hot... melted my candles hot...

[RebelOne]

21. Wait, it is coming. This is only July. August is going to be a killer. n/t

[belcffub]

22. usually for us August is cooler then July

it's been over 60 years since we saw 99 degrees... I'm thinking it will be a while longer before we see 100...

our average temps for July are 3 degrees higher... August is only 78... we always take our vacation days in August for camping... much better weather...

[Bandit]

13. Where I live we are setting records but in the opposite direction.

Both May and June set records for coldest and wettest on record... June was six degrees below normal and only two days the entire month without precipitation. That being said I wouldn't trade you guys for anything. Fifty five degrees and clean air is pretty damn nice. Seeing the sun occasionally would be nice though...

[theophilus]

16. Yep. They haven't told us that all that fossil fuel we have dug up and burned for 300 plus years is

trapping heat in the atmosphere. Oh, well.

[roamer65]

20. No where near the summer of 1988 so far in Michigan.

That was the summer from HELL...so far...

[Motown_Johnny]

24. It is the lack of moisture

I lived in and around Vail for about 12 years. I clearly remember the afternoon thunder showers that would create themselves if the temperature got much above 80.


The lack of snow last winter means there is less moisture available. Now those storms are not creating themselves to then rain cool the area.




Paper doesn't self ignite until 451 F (hence the Bradbury title) so I wouldn't worry about self ignition. Worry about sparks from fireworks and firearms.