From Dr. Roy Spencer’s Blog

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

We hear that a new El Nino forming in the Pacific Ocean is likely to push global-average temperatures to new record highs in 2023.

Setting aside the fact that we have no idea if current temperatures are warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period of ~1,000 years ago, I have to ask…

So what?

Doing something about global warming depends a lot on how much we are asked to pay to fix it. If it was cheap and practical, we would have already transitioned to renewable energy sources.

It also depends upon just how much global warming we have experienced, and whether it is enough to be concerned with. For the global oceans, the climate models enlisted to scare us in a steady stream of alarmist news reports over-predict ocean warming by a factor of 2. In America’s heartland during the summer, the discrepancy is a factor of 6(!). So, clearly, public concern is being inflated by factually incorrect information.

What Temperature do Americans Choose?

When it comes to life in these United States, roughly 50% of U.S. residents have at least a moderate worry about climate change and global warming. As mentioned above, I believe this is largely due to their response to what is reported by the news media, which is routinely exaggerated.

An interesting question that the late Dr. Pat Michaels asked about 25 years ago is, what temperature do Americans choose to live with? We have a large country with a wide range of climates, from frigid winters to tropical year-round, so there is considerable choice of what climate we decide to live in.

Dr. Michaels pointed out (most recently in 2013) that over the years, Americans tend to migrate to warmer climates. Some of us might claim to be concerned about global warming, but we increasingly choose to live where it’s warmer. I’ve updated those calculations to 2022, and the results are the same:

The blue curve is the usual area-averaged temperatures for the Lower 48, while the orange curve is the state population-weighted average. While the area average temperatures have warmed modestly over the last century, the temperatures where people choose to live have increased by twice that amount. (The possibility that Urban Heat Island effects have spuriously warmed these NOAA-reported temperatures is part of a research project we have been involved in).

Some might claim that the migration to states with warmer temperatures has more to do with economic opportunity than with temperature. But who creates economic opportunity? People. And where do people choose to live? Where the weather is warmer.

There’s a reason why people are flocking to Texas and Florida, and not to the Dakotas or Maine. Ultimately, it’s due to the climate. So, while some of us like to think we are Saving the Earth by buying a Tesla, our migration habits are telling a different story.

This article is a about hypothesis based on folklore and its potential plausibility. It is not presented as a scientific study.

Turtle nesting season has begun in Florida. A bartender, “A”, at my local watering hole is a big turtle enthusiast. So I let “A” know that on my recent walks along the beach, I’ve been seeing lots of new roped-off nests popping up as the nesting season begins.

“A” asked me how far away the nests were located from the water. This is something I hadn’t considered and hadn’t really taken note of. She explained that many locals believe that if a hurricane season is going to be intense the turtles would place their nests up the beach, farther away from the surf than normal. So, a nesting season where turtles lay their eggs close to the high tide line is a prediction for a calm season.

In subsequent walks I paid attention to where the nests are located on the beach. As luck would so have it, this month we had a big flood of seaweed at the same time the King tide occurred. This clearly marked the high tide level making it easy to spot. It turns out that every turtle nest I’ve seen this season are located just above the King tide line.

According to Florida folklore this will be calm storm season. The incubation period for sea turtles is 30 to 90 days. A prediction three months out, and subsequent change in nesting behavior would have a tremendous evolutionary advantage on breeding success.

Nests placed farther than necessary from the water expose the eggs to dehydration and excess predation, especially on that precarious night the young turtles hatch and make a dash for the water. Sea birds and crabs lie in wait for such events.

When nests are placed too close to the water the risk of drowning the eggs occurs,

For the eggs to survive and have a chance of hatching, sea turtles must lay their eggs on sandy beaches. As they are developing, the embryos breathe air through a membrane in the eggs, and so they cannot survive if they are continuously covered with water. 

https://conserveturtles.org/information-sea-turtles-frequently-asked-questions/#21

as well as the physical danger of being washed away in the storm.

Strong wave action can also cause beaches to erode, washing sand away. This can expose sea turtle eggs, leaving them prone to drying out or predation. They can also destroy the nests completely, washing the eggs into the sea where they will drown.

https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/news/2020/08/06/sea-turtle-nests-and-hurricanes-here-is-what-uf-ifas-experts-want-you-to-know/

Sea turtles have been around for around 150 million years. If it this level of predictive accuracy for seasonal storm levels were somehow possible, that’s plenty of time for selective pressure to cause turtles to evolve this survival edge. Whatever the turtles may be using to forecast, be it currents, temperature, salinity, barometric pressure, if it’s possible, they would likely have evolved to be able to do it.

We should hope this folklore is true, and then someday we may be able to use the same indicators the turtles use to improve our seasonal storm predictions, (which haven’t been very accurate the last few years).

HT/”A”

Addendum. Here’s a photo from July of last year helping errant hatchlings get to the Ocean after they’ve headed in the wrong direction.