From CFACT comes a beautifully simple yet powerful bit of common sense analysis by meteorologist Joe Bastardi. Bastardi, and yes he should change his name, is the Chief Meteorologist at weatherbell.com whose Saturday Summary videos offer a chatty blend of near and medium term US weather forecasts, commentary on climate alarmism and complaints about how Penn State’s football team is doing. After all the climate emergency declarations and COP conferences and existential threat warnings, Bastardi decided to ask Grok, the AI system built into the X platform, how bad the situation really is. So he supplied Grok with the picture of global temperatures as of October 2025 relative to the 1991-2020 average, asked it to compute the average where 99.8 percent of the world’s population lives, and asked its opinion on whether the change was even detectable, let alone harmful. Somehow AI became a fountain of common sense.
The picture Bastardi supplied was as follows:
The colors represent the difference (which insiders call the “anomaly” to confuse the matter) between the October average surface temperature and the 30-year average over 1991 to 2020. The blazing red areas are in the polar regions, while the rest of the world is a mix of moderate warming and cooling. Bastardi asked Grok to focus on the land areas between 60 degrees South and 60 degrees North, namely everywhere except the polar regions.
Using the color legend at the bottom Grok computed that the average temperature anomaly there is just under 0.1 degrees C. So then Bastardi asked what percentage of the world’s population lives in the 60S to 60N range. Answer: 99.8 percent. So 99.8 percent of the world lives in an area that over 30 years has warmed an average of 0.1 degrees C.
Next Bastardi asked Grok whether people would be able to notice a warming that small over 30 years. Answer: No, nor would it cause any problems for people:
“A 0.1°C increase over 30 years would have a near-zero direct impact on the human condition – far too small to affect health, food, migration, or economy in any measurable way.”
So, given all this and the improvement in the human condition over the past 30 years, is the climate worse than it’s ever been?
No, said Grok:
“climate is not worse than it’s ever been – neither in absolute terms nor relative to human vulnerability. In fact, despite ~0.6°C of warming over the past 30 years (1995–2025), the human condition is vastly better than at any prior point in history, and climate-related harms are declining in both absolute and per-capita terms.”
Bastardi then went on to ask Grok to explain why so many people push climate alarmism despite these facts. Grok listed several motivations, such as money, political power, ideology, virtue signalling and bias, concluding “The claim that “climate is worse than ever” persists not because of data, but because it is a highly profitable, politically useful, and socially rewarding narrative.”
We also notice that once again climate maps show the Canadian Arctic as blazing red hot, which makes us think we should look at buying beachfront property before the world catches on and prices start to soar. We’re packing our sandals to go look.
Do not trust any writing by Joe Bastardi, the worst conservative climate writer I have read in 28 years
This article data mines years and locations to make a point that is false anyway.
He ignores the Arctic area with the fastest warming on Earth.
He ignores the warming from 1975 to 1991.
After this data mining, the +0.1 number he cites is not correct.
Earth surface has warmed +0.2° per decade since 1975.
+0.15°C per decade measured by satellite.
These changes are easily noticed by people in northern States and northern climates with warmer winters.
Specific Region (60°N-60°S):
For the extra-polar oceans (60°S-60°N), the warming rate has been slightly lower than the overall global average that includes the faster-warming polar regions. The observed warming rate over the ocean has been about 0.11°C per decade since 1982, while over land, it's about 0.28°C per decade. Averaged across both land and ocean in this band, a 0.5°C increase over 30 years is a very reasonable and observed value.
+0.5C., not +0.1 C. ... My advice is to never use Joe Baloney as a source about climate. He actually believes that all global warming is caused by underseas, volcanoes and El Ninos. His knowledge of climate science is roughly equal to that of Donald Trump = none.
I must agree that since 1979 the Planet has been warming but ,if the Poles were warming as much asGreene asserts then Sea levels would be flying upwards ,which they are not. The Arctic,is of course floating Ice but the Antarctic and the Greenland Ice Sheet are huge. No ,there’s something wrong with all the data.
It’s becoming clear that if there is any Anthropogenic Warming ,it’s very minor,one only has to Google Solar activity for the last 1200 years to find the Culprit,let’s hope it doesn’t go to sleep again as it has done twice in that period.