Oct. Update: If the earth is warming, why isn’t Baltimore?

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.

image

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

image

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

image

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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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