>As you may know, today is Groundhog day which inspired me to perform some calculations. From Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil issues his yearly opinion on whether or not we will have six more weeks of winter. His historical accuracy is 39%, making him far and away one of the most prestigious climate scientists of our time. However, his recent predictions have been nothing sort of chilling.
For those of you unfamiliar with the science, if Phil sees his shadow and then retreats into his burrow, we will have six more weeks of winter. If he does not, then we are in for an early spring. For the first 50 years of the twentieth century the Groundhog predicted spring only 3.5 times, including one partial viewing. However, since then the Groundhog has predicted spring an astounding TEN TIMES! Clearly, we are in for some rapid warming.
To make this even more clear, the image below shows the increasing number of spring predictions. This allowed me to perform a simple linear regression. I’m sad to report that this represents a BEST CASE SCENARIO as the obviously exponential rate of increase in the data means that the tipping point is even nearer. This inevitable extrapolation predicts that winter will be PERMANENTLY six weeks shorter by 2380. Translated, we are losing 2 hours and 42 minutes of winter every year! When will people take this threat seriously?
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