This Is Your Life on Climate Change (The Atlantic)
The Atlantic
This Is Your Life on Climate Change
2019 was the hottest year on record, with one exception.
By ROBINSON MEYER
JANUARY 15, 2020
... In 1981, the median American was born, a happy and healthy statistical girl. The planet inched even hotter, setting a new all-time record a few hundredths of a degree Celsius warmer than 1980’s. Then, in 1983, as she learned to string sentences together, the record was smashed again. The global hottest-year record had now been broken three times in four years.... 1988 was even hotter than 1987. It was the new hottest year on record.
She kept growing up; 1989, third grade, was among the five warmest years ever measured. The Berlin Wall fell. The years 1990 and 1991 were even hotter: the two new warmest years ever measured, each toastier than 1988, 1987, or any other year in the observed NOAA record. In June 1991, as the American wrapped up fifth grade, a massive volcano named Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. Its ash blocked sunlight and cooled global temperatures in 1992, the same year Bill Clinton was elected. Clinton’s vice president, Albert Gore, had warned a few years earlier of an “ecological Kristallnacht” aggravated by heat-trapping greenhouse-gas pollution in the atmosphere. Yet Clinton and Gore failed to pass an early version of a climate policy, a “BTU tax” on energy use, in 1993, the following year. It was a funny time: 1993, even though it was cooled by Mount Pinatubo’s ash, was still as hot as 1980—which had once been the hottest year ever measured. Then 1994 arrived. It was even hotter than ’93.
The median American started high school in 1995, and temperatures began to surge to new highs. That year was the new hottest year ever. A five-day heat wave killed more than 700 people in Chicago alone, one of the deadliest American natural disasters of all time. The next year, 1996, though not as bad, was still among the 10 hottest years ever. 1997 pushed through 1995’s record and became the new all-time-hottest year measured. Then a monstrous El Niño lifted 1998 even higher—the hottest year of the 20th century, it was more than twice as far from the century’s average as 1980. And as the median American graduated from high school in 1999, about 16 percent of the world’s coral reefs were dying or dead.
The new century arrived. The years of her early twenties—2001, 2002, and 2003—were each hotter than any year in the 20th century except 1998. In 2003, then the second-hottest year ever, a continent-sized heat wave killed as many as 70,000 people in Europe. Two years later, 2005 set a new hottest-year-ever record. The years 2006, 2007, and 2009 were all among the five warmest on record. Then 2010 broke the all-time heat record again...She turned 30 in 2011, which was both a chill year for this century—and warmer than any year before 1997. The years 2012 and 2013 were among the five hottest ever. Then came the three-peat: 2014 broke 2010’s all-time record, then 2015 was even hotter, then 2016 was hotter still. On land, 2016 was nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th-century baseline.
More here
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/2019-was-2nd-hottest-year-record-nasa-and-noaa-say/604939/
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
