2020 officially saw a record number of $1 billion weather and climate disasters.

Eh, I think you'll find that they did. See page 39.

Based on data derived from proxies (palaeoclimatology) temperatures have been remarkably range bound for the last 7,000 years as has the rate of sea level rise. There are no written records from the period of the global flood but is was a catastrophic event around about 12,000 to 14,000 years ago, that does however seem to be when agriculture seems to have started based on the archaeological records found. If you are interested someday there is a fascinating discussion between Joe Rogan, Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson about the cataclysmic events around that period and the evidence for them. (It's 3 hours)

There is satellite data and other records on the Arctic ice prior to 1979 courtesy of Mr. Tony Heller and older IPCC documents. The maximum and minimum looks range bound to me. Nothing to lose sleep over despite what you hear about the melting in Green land in Summer, the overall surface mass balance trend in recent years tell a different story that the tabloid stories you get every Summer. If the ice did not melt in Summer and freeze in Winter then we would have a real problem on our hands.

Most modern temperature records really only start being gathered consistently with the development of air travel. There are only 9 rural stations outside the United States that have consistently recorded data since the 19th century that can be considered free of the urban heat island (UHI) effect and one of those is Valentia observatory. For computer modelling purposes there are a number of global temperature datasets used and those datasets are homogenised for various reasons which is the subject of it's own debate - Here is what NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) does to Valentia Observatory and here is what Ronan Connelly's analysis shows.

I don't see Met Eireann being in on any conspiracy the Kilkenny record from the19th century still stands, they do have to play the climate public relations game which is understandable, AFAIK their biggest customer is Dublin Airport (much to the chagrin of Michael O'Leary) that does mean without air travel they may need another funding source in future.

The United Nations has indeed been forecasting doom for past 50 years, and always 10 to 20 years away. They are a broken record in that regard even pulling the same stunt twice 1st using Severn Cullis-Suzuki then Greta Thunberg. On the back on the 1987 Montreal protocol to change refrigerants they made a political miscalculation in thinking that they could change and control the worlds energy systems and so they are stuck with the 26th conference of parties until someone figures out how to dig themselves from the hole they made for themselves.

The newspaper in question as the UK Independent back in March 2000 and the climate expert claimed:

You missed one. Also quoted in that article:

So two different scientists from two of the leading climate research bodies with false predictions there. But the best bit, though, is this

Really devastating consequences alright.

I'm curious how far back does the dataset go? If it goes back far enough is there any correlation with the AMO

I checked my data sets for NYC and the two occasions with more rainfall were also tropical remnant events in 1882 and 1903.

The general trends of precipitation at NYC were falling in the 1950s and 1960s, slowly increasing in the 1970s, and peaked in the mid-1980s. The trends since then have been fairly static in general, above the very long-term averages with the occasional dry year but most of the recent years have been rather wet. This past year is certainly one of the wetter years, to date there have been six daily records broken, albeit three of them were very weak records (low hanging fruit) and three recently were more impressive. There have been a handful of heavier rainfalls in the past however. It's not some new phenomenon never seen before.

Ida resembled a storm in 1888 following roughly the same path and one of the daily records set just edged past the 1888 record (by 4.45" to 4.19"). So the Henri rains (from a different setup entirely) more or less matched the 1888 version of Ida. Newspaper accounts from 1888 speak of flooding and severe storms with that event also, in fairly similar places. One thing that has changed of course is that everything nowadays is paved over so storm drainage in urban areas quickly fills up the streets especially underpasses, back in the 19th century it would fall on large agricultural landscapes that probably absorbed some of the water without having it run off into cities.

That six daily record count (so far) puts 2021 already in a tie with several years in third place behind only 1983 (9) and 1913 (8) (the period of record is 1869 to present). The amount of rain that has fallen so far would only need average rainfall now to end of December to place the year as high as third, it would have some trouble reaching the 80" that fell in 1983, needing another 31" with a long dry spell in view now. The year has already passed all but thirty-five of 152 full years (49.2" has fallen so far).

I'm well aware of what the affects of the AMO are. I just question what triggers which. I recall doing up and posting a graph on here a couple of years back that showed that the AMO trends tend to follow those of the Arctic rather than vice versa. I don't discount the other option either but it planted in me a seed of doubt. Could be just a case of egg and chicken at the end of the day. We'll never know for sure.

"It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred."

"Global mean sea level increased by 0.20 [0.15 to 0.25] m between 1901 and 2018. The average rate of sea level rise was 1.3 [0.6 to 2.1] mm yr–1 between 1901 and 1971, increasing to 1.9 [0.8 to 2.9] mm yr–1 between 1971 and 2006, and further increasing to 3.7 [3.2 to 4.2] mm yr–1 between 2006 and 2018 (high confidence). Human influence was very likely the main driver of these increases since at least 1971. "

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf

The IPCC AR6 WG1 report represents a review of All of the best and most recent scientific studies.

If you do not agree with their findings, then you need to ask yourself why do you feel you know more about the climate than the vast majority of all the worlds most experienced scientists in their relevant fields

This is the level of intelligence we're dealing with when it comes to reporting weather and climate. The problem is, most of the population will believe it and then blame weather forecasters when it doesn't come to pass. But that doesn't matter, the job will already have been done. One more weather event will be ingrained in the public psyche, regardless of whether it was actually real or not.

The reporter is a recent recruit from the Daily Mail...

The shenanigans are far from evenly distributed. One side is blatantly lying about the science and bribing politicians and buying up media coverage. The other 'side' are using emotive language that may not necessarily be fully scientificly accurate all of the time.

So lets ignore all of the people saying things that are not supported by the science on both 'sides'.

The IPCC are saying that we have to act immediately if we are to have any chance of limiting warming to 1.5c which is the threshold where we believe other feedbacks may begin to ramp up

2c is our more realistic target, and the scientific consensus is that we could probably deal with this as long as it is accompanied with negative carbon to bring us under 2c of warming as soon as possible

the 3c+ of warming that we are headed for based on our current emissions is almost universally acknowledged by experts in their fields as being very dangerous levels of climate change

On this image, the baseline is 1990, so we've already warmed by about .8 of a degree since 1990

In the 7 years between when this originally appeared in IPCC AR3 and the updated paper in 2016, the biggest shift in reasons for concern was on the are of 'risk of large scale discontinuities'. The IPCC understated this risk in their earlier publications and are only now beginning to take those risks seriously. Most climate scientists are very personally concerned about these risks and their increasing likelyhood as we add more warming by not acting to reduce our CO2 emissions.

"RISKS OF LARGE-SCALE DISCONTINUITIES.

This RFC represents the likelihood that certain phenomena (sometimes called singularities or tipping points) would occur, any of which may be accompanied by very large impacts. These phenomena include the deglaciation (partial or complete) of the West Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets and major changes in some components of the Earth's climate system, such as a substantial reduction or collapse of the North Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (8)."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2648893/

I never mentioned mainstream media, that's a word that you put in my mouth. However, rag or not, the New York Post has 2.2 million followers on Twitter alone. Just the same as how many Irish seem to get their "facts" from the likes of Dublinlive and Independent.ie, nonsense like the NYP appeals to the masses and undoubtedly influences people's opinions. The fact is that we don't see this type of tripe getting called out by scientific community as the information is wrong in the right way for them, however they'll be first to comment on anything they class as s*eptical of the consensus.

Those 2.2 million followers are mostly Trump supporting climate skeptics

I keep saying we should take the best available scientific evidence, but you are plumbing the depths of tabloid journalism to justify… something

Playing dumb now when it suits. I very clearly stated what my point was.

You are obsessed with Trump. And I don't think it is coincidence that your views on not just Trump, but those who don't conform to capitalist neoliberal ideology, are exactly the same views that corporate and state media and the vast majority of Wall Street billionaires hold. Do you think that by reading the Guardian, and other such partisan 'news' outlets, that that makes you smarter than those that don't?

"The guardian has it's editorial line, but it doesn't go out of the way to lie to its readers at every opportunity" - Akrasia

First Thing: insurrection at the Capitol, incited by the president | | The Guardian

Insurrection Day: when white supremacist terror came to the US Capitol | US Capitol attack | The Guardian

And a gem from their fellow Neolibs in arms: Capitol insurrection denialism is already here - CNN

But... upon investigation:

Exclusive: FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated - sources | Reuters

The Guardian, like so many other neoliberal media outlets, lie all the time to push their political agenda and shape public opinion because they are willing agents of the corrupt political and vampiric corporate class. And I think anyone who consumes ANY media outlet without any shred of critical thought or analysis are people who are not very bright at all.