July hottest month ever, experts say

Several global meteorological agencies had predicted that temperatures during the month would exceed the previous record

July was the hottest month in recorded history, the European meteorological authority Copernicus reported on Tuesday. This year has been the third-hottest on record thus far, the weather experts said, suggesting 2023 has a chance of beating 2016 as the hottest year in recorded history. 

“These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess told the Financial Times on Tuesday.  

The month’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was about 0.3 degrees C (0.6 degrees F) warmer than July 2019, the previous record holder according to Copernicus, and 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) hotter than the average July from 1991 to 2020.   

Read more

Era of ‘global boiling’ has arrived – UN chief

The announcement confirmed predictions made by the EU body and also by the World Meteorological Organization last month that this July’s temperatures would significantly exceed the existing record. The two groups claimed the first three weeks of July constituted the warmest three-week period ever recorded globally, with July 6 being the single hottest day. 

Additionally, global average sea surface temperatures hit a record high in July, Copernicus reported, noting that the oceans were half a degree C (0.9 degrees F) hotter than the previous 30 years, while Antarctic sea ice cover was measured at less than any previous July on record, 15% below the average for this time of year. 

July’s average temperature was 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) warmer than the pre-industrial era, a figure climate scientists have seized upon because of the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees. 

While Copernicus had designated July 2019 as the previous record-holder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization (NOAA) found July 2021’s average combined land and ocean-surface temperature to be the hottest on record, 0.93 degrees Celsius higher than the 20th century average and breaking records set in July 2016, 2019 and 2020. Copernicus’ figures for July outstrip the NOAA’s for 2021, though that organization has not made any announcements as of Tuesday. 

Copernicus’ temperature records only go back to 1940, and the NOAA’s only date back to 1850, which limits climate experts’ ability to contextualize modern-day heat waves. That has not stopped some experts, such as Potsdam Institute for Climate Research scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, from telling HuffPost that July was actually “the warmest month on Earth in ten thousand years” or even 120,000 years, citing studies that examine markers like tree rings.

Gallup Polls Suggest Nigerans Support Coup; Americans Would Support One

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

On August 8th, the Gallup Organization distributed via email to its “Front Page” subscribers, the results from their pollings in the 13 nations of West Africa (these being polls taken prior to the coup in Niger), which showed that in Niger, 84% said they had “Confidence in Military,” and 71% said they have “Confidence in National Government.” 13% more of Nigerans had confidence in the military than in the national Government. The figures in favor of a military coup were even more lopsided in Ghana (80% having confidence in the military, versus 34% having confidence in the Government), Nigeria (69% having confidence in the military, versus 31% having confidence in the Government), Senegal (50% v. 85%), and Gambia (43% v. 71%). But in only one country, Benin, did more people have — and only barely — more confidence in the Government than in the military: 81% v. 78%. So: in West Africa as a whole, it would apppear that overwhelming majorities want a military coup.

This can happen in countries where the public believe that the Government is extremely corrupt.

Another section of that same email concerned corruption in the nation’s Government, and the question there was “Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country or not?” The only countries shown there were the following 11, which were listed in order of the most corrupt to the least corrupt, the percentages who answered “Yes”:

Mexico and U.S. tied at 74% each.

South Korea 72%

Turkiye 58%

Australia 56%

Austria 53%

France 51%

Canada 47%

UK 42%

Germany 33%

Denmark 20%

The 6 January 2020 Trump-inspired insurrection against America’s Democratic Party might have been tapping into this widesread belief in the United States that the Government (which then was controlled by the Democratic Party) is deeply corrupt. America’s Democratic Party voters have long shown in polls to be far less inclined to believe that the U.S. Government is corrupt than are its Republican Party voters. Consequently: there is far less likelihood of an overthrow of the Government by Democrats than by Republicans, simply because Democrats believe far more in the Government’s lies than Republicans do. Perhaps the reason for this partisan difference is that after the Republican George W. Bush’s lies in 2002 and 2003 that had caused almost 100% of Republicans to believe falsely that Iraq had WMD and so they overwhelmingly supported his invasion of Iraq, more Republicans than Democrats have recognized that they had been suckered by the Government; so, afterwards, the disbelief in the Government tends to be far higher among Republicans than among Democrats (who still don’t yet know that Obama had lied Americans into supporting his destructions of Ukraine, Syria, and Libya — and his sharp intensifications of the Cold Wars against both Russia and China). On 8 August 2023, the front page of the Democratic Party billionaires’ New York Times headlined against the Republican Party, “Like Trump, G.O.P Rivals Feed Distrust in Vital U.S. Institutions: Rhetoric Raises Alarms About Lasting Harm”, but America’s partisan conflict is only between two contending groups of billionaires (Democratic Party ones versus Republican Party ones), and the U.S. public are controlled by all of its billionaires. There is nothing that’s intrinsically wrong with, or “Harm”ful about, “Distrust in Vital Institutions” in a country where the Government is exceptionally corrupt. Similarly, there was increasing distrust in vital institutions in England’s 13 colonies that became the United States, before the Revolution happened, and this was good, not at all “Harm”ful. However, the aristocracy was united against it then, just as they are united against it now. And their propaganda-organs, such as the Democratic Party’s New York Times and the Republican Party’s Wall Street Journal, are united against it today. The only real difference now is the extent of the hypocrisy — it’s far more on the liberal (Democratic Party) side than on the conservative (Republican Party) side. And the polling data show that the Democratic Party’s chocolate covering of the Government’s rot has its intended effects: higher trust in the (deeply corrupt) Government.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.