Claims that 2016 was “the hottest year on record” are drawing sharp criticism from scientists who say it reflects how global warming has become more social crusade than evidence-based science.
“The Obama administration relentlessly politicized science and it aggressively pushed a campaign about that politicized science,” said Steven E. Koonin, who served as under secretary for science in Obama’s Department of Energy from 2009 to 2011.
Koonin, a theoretical physicist at New York University who once worked for energy giant BP, also blamed a “happily complicit” media for trumpeting the now-departed Obama administration’s dubious claim.
The controversy began in mid-January when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report declaring that “the globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2016 was the highest among all years since record-keeping began in 1880.”
NOAA fixed the 2016 increase at 0.04 degrees Celsius. The British Met Office reported an even lower rise, of 0.01C. Both increases are well within the margin of error for such calculations, approximately 0.1 degrees, and therefore are dismissed by many scientists as meaningless.
The reports, however, set the global warming bell towers ringing. Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was quoted at Climate Central referring to the past temperature record and saying “2016 has really blown that out of the water.”
Following the lead of the Schmidt and government press releases, USA Today wrote that “the planet sizzled to its third straight record warm year in 2016.” The New York Times’ front-page headline said, “Earth Sets Temperature Record for Third Straight Year.” The article declared that the latest readings were “trouncing” earlier numbers and the planet had thus “blown past” the previous records.
Such characterizations are absurd, according to Richard Lindzen, a meteorology professor at MIT and one of the world’s foremost skeptics that global warming represents an existential threat.
“It’s typical misleading nonsense,” Lindzen said in an e-mail. “We’re talking about less than a tenth of degree with an uncertainty of about a quarter of a degree. Moreover, such small fluctuations – even if real – don’t change the fact that the trend for the past 20 years has been much less than models have predicted.”
Koonin suggested the White House and the media could consider an alternative presentation of what’s happening.
“I think simply by having the government press releases on the changing climate be fulsomely scientific – that is, putting in all the relevant facts – we would see more genuine science in the media discussions,” he said.
As an example, he offered a headline that read, “Global Temperatures Up 0.0X for 2016; Within Margin of Error for Last N Years.” Rather than exclaim “Sea Levels Highest on Record,” Koonin said, the press releases could encourage, and perhaps media outlets accept, one that reads, “Sea Level Rose 0.1 Inches Last Year, Consistent With Century-Long Trend.”
But would that stir public opinion or sell papers?
“It’s not my job to sell papers,” Koonin said. “The White House positions, the press releases, the published stories – all of that is not exactly inaccurate but it is promoting something considerably less alarming or certain than the layperson might conclude from reading it all.”
The issue is not one of fake news or manipulated data but of emphasis.
The Times said it did not rely solely on data sets that showed a 0.01C increase. The paper’s coverage incorporated other studies that showed a greater increase in average temperatures, particularly those that take Arctic changes into account, said Justin Gillis, who covers global warming for The Times. Gillis provided a bar graph to RealClearInvestigations that showed three other conclusions reflecting higher temperature jumps than those recorded by NOAA and the British meteorology office in conjunction with East Anglia University, one of the world’s centers of global warming research.
Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech scientist who left her academic post this month largely because of the charged politics surrounding global warming, said the other temperature data sets are less precise.
She said there are “some good reasons” why one of the British 0.01C sources elects not to extend its coverage to the Arctic Ocean. “There is little to no data, and the extrapolation methods are dubious,” Curry wrote in an e-mail.
Neither USA Today nor Schmidt replied to requests for comment.
In addition to Curry, Koonin and Lindzen, five other experts told RealClearInvestigations the layman’s understanding of the issue would improve if the Trump administration adopted a more neutral stance toward global warming stories. That would be certain to be interpreted as one of “denial” about global warming, and already several figures in the emerging Trump team have been denounced by The Times and others as climate deniers.
This rhetoric again obscures the real issue, according to the skeptics, who insist the important question for government and taxpayers isn’t global warming’s reality but rather its extent and, consequently, the best policies that can be crafted to address it. Some experts pointed with approval to the incoming administration stripping global-warming material from the White House website literally moments after power changed hands. One suggested the Office of Science and Technology Policy could be transformed and its mission redirected.
“It will be a huge cross-agency effort to stem this flood, perhaps led by OSTP,” said David Wojick, a government contractor who has tracked federal spending on global warming research for years. “Alarmist federal press releases, websites and reports are very big beer indeed.”
http://www.realclearinvestigations.c...m_as_hype.html
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The Sage of Main Street (04-12-2017)
Droughts were far worse in the 1930s than they are now, back when CO2 levels were far lower than now.
"Meteorologist Dorian explains that any drought talk of recent years really pales in comparison to what happened in this country during the decade of the 1930’s. In the“The Grapes of Wrath", John Steinbeck vividly captured the plight of millions of Americans whose lives had been crushed by what is referred to as the“Dust Bowl” era – a time when “climate gas” CO2 levels were far lower.
The 1930’s still ranks as the hottest and driest in US recorded history and the “Dust Bowl” was truly a significant event in our national history.
The figure on the left shows the annual values of the U.S. Heat Wave Index from 1895 to 2015 for the contiguous 48 states. An index value of 0.2, for example, could mean that 20 percent of the country experienced one heat wave, 10 percent of the country experienced two heat waves, or some other combination of frequency and area resulted in this value. Data source:*Kunkel, 2016 (EPA).
The above figure on the right shows the number of all-time maximum temperature records at USHCN weather stations that reached extreme heights in 1936 – far and away above any other year.
Tens of thousands of “climate refugees”
Conditions were so dry in such a widespread part of the country that dust storms formed numerous times in the Central Plains as loose soil turned to dust which the prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that blackened the skies – even as far away as the east coast. The drought came in three waves during this decade, 1934, 1936 and 1939-1940, and tens of thousands of families had to abandon their farms."
http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.WwUXJpgy.dpbs
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Let's clarify this. From Scientific American:
According to NOAA data, the global average temperature for 2016 was 1.69°F (0.94°C) above the 20th century average and 0.07°F (0.04°C) above the previous record set last year.
In NASA’s records, 2016 was 1.8°F (0.99°C) above the 1951-1980 average.
Each agency has slightly different methods of processing the data and different baseline periods they use for comparison, as do other groups around the world that monitor global temperatures, leading to slightly different year-to-year numbers.
But despite these differences, all of these records “are capturing the same long-term signal. It’s a pretty unmistakable signal,” Arndt said. Or as he likes to put it: “They’re singing the same song, even if they’re hitting different notes along the way.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ear-on-record/
lol
Isn't that convenient that you use just US data?
You know why the Dust Bowl came about, moron? Because, since the 1890s, people were replacing the native grasses with wheat. Historically, the native grasses retained the soil and ameliorated those kinds of conditions. But greed led to people moving to those areas and plowing up the native grasses for wheat. Great during WWI, when the Ukraine's wheat was halted. When it came back into the world market, wheat prices crashed. Leading to more plowing and more planting to make up the difference.
Dust Bowl, motherfucker. A man-made condition.
Last edited by domer76; 04-12-2017 at 01:34 PM.
Bill (04-15-2017)
The Dust Bowl was caused by two ocean hotspots in the Atlantic and Pacific.
"The unusually hot summers of 1934/36 broke heat records that still stand today. They were part of the devastating dust bowl decade in the US when massive dust storms travelled as far as New York, Boston and Atlanta and silt covered the decks of ships 450km off the east coast.
Research by Dr Markus Donat from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and colleagues has revealed that unusually warm sea surface temperatures occurring at exactly the same time in two very specific locations were likely responsible for creating the record breaking heat.
"In the Pacific, there were anomalously warm ocean temperatures along the coastline of the Gulf of Alaska stretching down as far as Los Angeles," said Dr Donat.
"On the other side of the country in the Atlantic Ocean, in a relatively small area off the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia, the ocean surface was also unusually warm. Together they reduced spring rainfall and created perfect conditions for scorching hot temperatures to develop in the heart of the US."
As part of their study, the researchers compared the large-scale climate conditions in 1934 and 1936 with those of the extensive recent hot drought years of 2011 and 2012 to see if there were any similarities to the dust bowl years."
https://m.phys.org/news/2015-05-ocea...owl-years.html
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Indeed so.
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Agnotology lives on and is supported by the Koch brothers among others. That Americans can so easily be convinced the obvious isn't obvious demonstrates how easily people can be made to believe anything at all. Money talks as they say and ideas supported by money convince too many. For the reader and the thinker a few books below. You will never convince the believers as their knowledge is a part of how they think
'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
This is excellent on the Kochs. "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" Jane Mayer
Wanna make America great, buy American owned, made in the USA, we do. AF Veteran, INFJ-A, I am not PC.
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." Voltaire
Naomi Oreskes is an effing lunatic and a serial liar to boot. That you give her any credence is not surprising in the least.
http://principia-scientific.org/naom...ry-conflicted/
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Last edited by cancel2 2022; 04-13-2017 at 07:29 AM.
Prof. Richard Lindzen talking on the Howie Carr Show about climate change and the incredible bullshit surrounding the science, or more accurately, the lack of it.
https://howiecarrshow.com/dr-richard...tudio-1-18-17/
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