Statistician William Briggs, author of Everything You Believe Is Wrong, noticed something recently. Seeing a United Nations report to the effect that “billions live in regions that have already experienced warming greater than the global average” got him wondering, since the regions weren’t named. As he recounts on his blog, he decided to see where they could be.

The answer: apparently everywhere.

We all live in Lake Woeonus, where it’s always worse than we thought, there are always five years left to SAVE THE PLANET!, and all the temperatures are rising faster than average.

A Google search of government and news sources since 2020 using such terms as “warming faster than rest of the world” produced this extensive list. Links for each region are in Briggs’ list:

  • The Arctic (warming “four times faster than the global average”) 
  • Europe (warming “more than twice the global average”)
  • The Mediterranean (“20% faster”)
  • The Middle East (“twice as fast”)
  • Africa (“faster,” “more than the global average”)
  • Russia (“2.5 times quicker”)
  • China (“faster than rest of the world”)
  • West Asia (“twice as fast”)
  • Singapore (“twice as fast”)
  • Japan (“about three times as fast”)
  • India (“worst in Asia”)
  • Pakistan (“twice as fast”)
  • Indian Ocean (“higher rate than other oceans”)
  • Australia (“faster than the global average”)
  • New Zealand (“slightly higher than the world average”)
  • South-West Pacific (“more than three times faster than the global average rate”)
  • Antarctica (“three times faster”)
  • Earth’s Lakes (“faster than its air”)
  • Canada (“twice as fast”)
  • Latin America and the Caribbean (“faster than the global average”)
  • Mexico (“faster than the rest of the planet”)
  • Central and South America (“greater than the global average”)
  • The Atlantic Ocean (“warming the fastest”)
  • The United States of America (“68 percent faster than the planet as a whole”)

Briggs started searching individual U.S. states and regions, but as he wrote, he “grew bored.”

In sum, he wrote: “We all live in Lake Woeonus, where it’s always worse than we thought, there are always five years left to SAVE THE PLANET!, and all the temperatures are rising faster than average.”