I hate to impair a popular narrative with actual data, but…
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Like much of the U.S., the Baltimore area (where I live) was enduring an apparent heatwave this summer.
It was hot enough that, even I, momentarily thought: “Maybe the earth really is warming.”
Then, I started looking harder at my monthly electricity bills from BGE (Baltimore Gas & Electric).
Besides usage info, BGE reports the average monthly temperature, for the current and prior years (the red boxes below).
We previously reported in the past couple of months that year-to-date temperatures in the Baltimore area have been a couple of degrees colder than the prior couple of years.
Well, I just got my October bill and guess what.
The trend is continuing.
The average October temperature this year was 55 degrees … 10 degrees colder than last year’s 65 degrees.
Hmm
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Getting more granular, a local Baltimore TV weather anchor pulled together a daily temperature chart for October.
The bottom line: A majority of days in October were colder than the historical average (aka. “normal”) by an average of 5 degrees; a minority of days were warmer than normal, by an average of 4 degrees
Was October a fluke?
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Nope.
To dig deeper, I pulled more historical data from my BGE file…
Below are the average monthly temperatures in Baltimore (as reported by BGE) for January to October in years 2020, 2021 and 2022
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What does the data show?
- Again, this year (October 2022) was 10 degrees colder than October 2021 … and 7 degrees colder than October 2020
- More broadly, comparing year-to-year temperature by month, all 2022 monthly temperatures were equal to or colder than 2020 temperatures
- Compared to 2021, only one month — February 2022 — was hotter than the 2021 temperature (40 degrees to 36 degrees) … all other months in 2022 were colder than their comparable months in 2021.
- The 10-month average (January to October) for 2020 and 2021 were essentially equal at 61.6 degrees and 61.4 degrees respectively.
- The 2022 10-month average (January to October) was 2.9 degrees colder in October 2022 than it was in October 2021 …. and 3.1 degrees colder than it was in October 2020.
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My take
- It’s conceivable that BGE’s data collection is wrong … or that Baltimore is a complete outlier that’s not representative of the rest of the earth …. but, I doubt either is true.
- The data probably doesn’t indicate that the earth is cooling … but, it sure as heck doesn’t support a global warming narrative.
Somebody’s gotta explain to me:
- If the data shows that my average local temperatures have dropped about 3 degrees from 2 years ago (and one year ago) — why should I believe (with “settled science certainty”) that the earth will be a degree or two hotter 50 or 100 years from now if I keep driving my SUV?
This circle doesn’t square…
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