Science

I am baffled. 

https://x.com/basedpatriotx/status/1826392447737385389?s=46

this was the most interesting read i’ve had in months.  if it’s a lie still earned my attention 👁️👁️

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@aviationdoctor.eth have you ever heard about this? I don’t know any geologist help

1/ There are at least a couple of levels on which to address these claims.

The first is scientific. The second is sociological. It’s difficult to tease them apart in my reply, so bear with me.

2/ If you go to the Unilad article at the root of that X thread, in between the obtrusive ads and the stock photos, you’ll find a lay summary of a genuine observation, which is that the eastern equatorial Atlantic, a small patch between equatorial Africa and Brazil, is experiencing slightly lower surface temps than the seasonal average (by 0.5°C).

4/ In fact, July is habitually the cold season for that exact eastern equatorial patch that… is experiencing cooling right now. The only thing out of the ordinary is that the cooling is slightly more pronounced than usual.

5/ Now, stop reading for a moment to examine the chart below, from the *same* scientist quoted by the Unilad article (Philip Tuchen); what do you see?

6/ The chart shows that in March, the surface temperature of the *same* patch of the Atlantic was *much* warmer than the historical average; in fact, three times warmer than the current cooling (1.5°C vs 0.5°C).

7/ But, note how the article conveniently omits all that context by simply stating “The Atlantic Ocean is cooling down at a record speed and scientists don't know why”.

8/ What it doesn’t say is “The Atlantic Ocean has been warming well above average, and is now cooling slightly below average”. I don’t recall seeing a Unilad article, or an X tweet by “Based Patriot X”, about the extraordinary warming last spring.

9/ Yet it *is* remarkable — it’s the warmest it’s been in 40 years! Why is it that people conveniently ignore the overwhelming warming signals, and jump up at the first hint of a modest cooling signal, thinking it’s a gotcha moment for climate science?

10/ Is it a case of selective bias? Is it possible that Unilad is just a shitty ad farm fishing for click bait at the expense of accuracy? Is it possible that “Based Patriot X”, whose Twitter PFP mocks the “Dark Brandon” meme, is both politically and financially motivated?

11/ After all, his latest tweet offers people to subscribe to him for money after his climate denial claim went viral among a gullible and predisposed subset of X’s audience (I’m not lumping you in, you actually asked for a counter view, which is fantastic).

12/ This is where the argument turns to the sociological, though; I loathe it, so I’m not going to press further down that path of questioning motives, and I’ll return to the facts shortly.

13/ Just keep in mind that this is a prime illustration of the Gish gallop; unqualified climate deniers can spew bullshit faster than actual scientists can or care to refute it. It takes an order of magnitude more time to debunk unsubstantiated claims than to make them. See

13/ Just keep in mind that this is a prime illustration of the Gish gallop; unqualified climate deniers can spew bullshit faster than actual scientists can or care to refute it. It takes an order of magnitude more time to debunk unsubstantiated claims than to make them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

14/ Let’s now turn to the other claim: “scientists don’t know why”. The Unilad quotes Philip Tuchen being visibly helpless to explain the phenomenon.

15/ Yet, in his *own* lay article at http://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/atlantic-nina-verge-developing-heres-why-we-should-pay-attention, Tuchen explains it very simply: it’s an Atlantic La Niña event, which is the reciprocal of El Niño.

16/ La Niña is simply an unusual oscillation in the Atlantic surface temperature with a frequency of several years. In summer, winds from the southeast push surface waters away from the equator, and it gets replaced by deeper waters which are cooler, leading to a decrease in the surface temperature.

17/ Every few years, this seasonal fluctuation departs from the average. An oscillation toward warmer-than-average is called El Niño, and one toward colder-than-average is La Niña. That’s it. That’s the cast.

18/ Keep in mind that what we colloquially refer to as “global warming” is a *long-term* increase in the global *mean* surface temperature of the Earth.

19/ It does *not* mean that every part of the world will get warmer, nor that it will be warming at the same rate, or by the same amount, nor that transient, localized cooling is impossible. In fact, some places might see snow for the first time as a result of changes in humidity and wind patterns!

20/ So, climate change is unevenly distributed in latitude, longitude, and time. That’s not new. What’s unmistakable though is that there is a very clear and rapid atmospheric warming signal coinciding with the industrial age and the release of vast amounts of greenhouse gases (incl. CO2) in the atmosphere.

21/ Even Richard Lindzen, the scientist that “Based Patriot X” uses as scientific caution for his own climate denialism, acknowledges that.

22/ But among the GMST increase, there are local variations. The climate is a complex system with feedback loops & tipping points between the atmosphere, the oceans, their circulation patterns, the land albedo, etc. A transient cooling in a localized patch due to La Niña does not invalidate decades of robust research.

23/ So now that the whole premises has been debunked, I don’t consider it worth my time to explain why “Based Patriot X” is completely off in trying to pin the GMST on natural, non-anthropogenic causal factors like the Milankovitch cycles.

24/ NASA does a much better job of that anyway:

24/ NASA does a much better job of that anyway: https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/

25/ Note that I’ve shortened every cast in this thread to 320 characters instead of the usual longer limit, so that you don’t have to unwrap each cast with the “Show more” button (which unfortunately does not yet expand inline, @v is aware).

26/ One last word: I don’t write those long threads for fun (they only increase my blood pressure!) nor money. Unlike “Based Patriot X”, I don’t ask for subscriptions. I have a job and can sustain myself. I write those because I care 🎬

3/ Keep in mind that this zone is exactly in between the North Atlantic, which is experiencing summer (i.e., warmer waters), and the South Atlantic, which is experiencing winter (i.e., colder waters). It doesn’t take much changes in the atmospheric and oceanic circulation to cause a 0.5°C change in surface temp.