Hunga Tonga Denial Syndrome (HTDS) Update: Guardian Says We're Headed For 'Uncharted Territory'

Wait, what? I thought we were already in uncharted territory. I’ve lost count of the number of times this uber scary alarmist phrase has been used by the media since temperatures first shot up in June last year. But now it seems, after 10 months of record hot global temperatures, we are facing the really, really scary prospect of ‘uncharted territory’. It’s all so confusing!

Schmidt listed several plausible causes of the anomaly – the El Niño effect, reductions in cooling sulphur dioxide particles due to pollution controls, fallout from the January 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption in Tonga, and the ramping up of solar activity in the run-up to a predicted solar maximum.

But based on preliminary analyses, he said these factors were not sufficient to account for the 0.2C increase: “If the anomaly does not stabilise by August – a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events – then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated.”

Ah, yes, of course, Gavin Schmidt’s Nature article where he dismisses the possibility that Hunga Tonga may be responsible for the lead up to record high global temperatures and instead hints darkly that it might be due to some mysterious ‘tipping point’ scary feedback of man-made greenhouse gas warming. I covered that here:

The game plan is becoming all too clear: deny/dismiss the Hunga Tonga volcano as having any significant role to play in recent sudden warming, play down the effects of El Nino if the planet does not cool significantly in the coming months (after having absurdly claimed that it was El Nino in its infancy which sparked the rise in the first place) and hey presto, what are you left with? A dangerous and hitherto unpredicted acceleration of man-made global warming! Which means, we only have 5 months to save the planet! Because if the current run of record global temperature anomalies extends to August, then we’re done for.

Love the picture of the man and his dog walking across a dried up mud flat/river bed. Wishing that was here! Every single day, I end up trudging along rain soaked muddy paths with my two hounds (sponge dog hair pants). We don’t have dry ground here anymore; it’s all just lakes and rivers and knee deep mud! ‘Because the jet stream stupid’; it’s been very persistent in a southerly location this winter and spring, driving moist Atlantic air (and cloud and rain) across the British Isles and the occasions when it has dipped even further south across France and Iberia, it has allowed cold (but also quite moist) air to affect us. Result: a very thoroughly miserable washout winter and spring in the UK with very little sunshine. Who knows, maybe that’s connected to Hunga Tonga too because the scientific literature indicates that the unprecedented stratospheric water vapour injection may drive changes in global circulation and the jet streams. But if it’s not the climate fanatics blaming crap British weather on global warming, it’s the geoengineering conspiracy theorists blaming it on relentless ‘spraying of our skies.’