July 2019 Was Not the Warmest on Record

Reblogged from Dr Roy Spencer.com:

August 2nd, 2019 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

July 2019 was probably the 4th warmest of the last 41 years. Global “reanalysis” datasets need to start being used for monitoring of global surface temperatures.

[NOTE: It turns out that the WMO, which announced July 2019 as a near-record, relies upon the ERA5 reanalysis which apparently departs substantially from the CFSv2 reanalysis, making my proposed reliance on only reanalysis data for surface temperature monitoring also subject to considerable uncertainty].

We are now seeing news reports (e.g. CNN, BBC, Reuters) that July 2019 was the hottest month on record for global average surface air temperatures.

One would think that the very best data would be used to make this assessment. After all, it comes from official government sources (such as NOAA, and the World Meteorological Organization [WMO]).

But current official pronouncements of global temperature records come from a fairly limited and error-prone array of thermometers which were never intended to measure global temperature trends. The global surface thermometer network has three major problems when it comes to getting global-average temperatures:

(1) The urban heat island (UHI) effect has caused a gradual warming of most land thermometer sites due to encroachment of buildings, parking lots, air conditioning units, vehicles, etc. These effects are localized, not indicative of most of the global land surface (which remains most rural), and not caused by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Because UHI warming “looks like” global warming, it is difficult to remove from the data. In fact, NOAA’s efforts to make UHI-contaminated data look like rural data seems to have had the opposite effect. The best strategy would be to simply use only the best (most rural) sited thermometers. This is currently not done.

(2) Ocean temperatures are notoriously uncertain due to changing temperature measurement technologies (canvas buckets thrown overboard to get a sea surface temperature sample long ago, ship engine water intake temperatures more recently, buoys, satellite measurements only since about 1983, etc.)

(3) Both land and ocean temperatures are notoriously incomplete geographically. How does one estimate temperatures in a 1 million square mile area where no measurements exist?

There’s a better way.

A more complete picture: Global Reanalysis datasets

(If you want to ignore my explanation of why reanalysis estimates of monthly global temperatures should be trusted over official government pronouncements, skip to the next section.)

Various weather forecast centers around the world have experts who take a wide variety of data from many sources and figure out which ones have information about the weather and which ones don’t.

But, how can they know the difference? Because good data produce good weather forecasts; bad data don’t.

The data sources include surface thermometers, buoys, and ships (as do the “official” global temperature calculations), but they also add in weather balloons, commercial aircraft data, and a wide variety of satellite data sources.

Why would one use non-surface data to get better surface temperature measurements? Since surface weather affects weather conditions higher in the atmosphere (and vice versa), one can get a better estimate of global average surface temperature if you have satellite measurements of upper air temperatures on a global basis and in regions where no surface data exist. Knowing whether there is a warm or cold airmass there from satellite data is better than knowing nothing at all.

Furthermore, weather systems move. And this is the beauty of reanalysis datasets: Because all of the various data sources have been thoroughly researched to see what mixture of them provide the best weather forecasts
(including adjustments for possible instrumental biases and drifts over time), we know that the physical consistency of the various data inputs was also optimized.

Part of this process is making forecasts to get “data” where no data exists. Because weather systems continuously move around the world, the equations of motion, thermodynamics, and moisture can be used to estimate temperatures where no data exists by doing a “physics extrapolation” using data observed on one day in one area, then watching how those atmospheric characteristics are carried into an area with no data on the next day. This is how we knew there were going to be some exceeding hot days in France recently: a hot Saharan air layer was forecast to move from the Sahara desert into western Europe.

This kind of physics-based extrapolation (which is what weather forecasting is) is much more realistic than (for example) using land surface temperatures in July around the Arctic Ocean to simply guess temperatures out over the cold ocean water and ice where summer temperatures seldom rise much above freezing. This is actually one of the questionable techniques used (by NASA GISS) to get temperature estimates where no data exists.

If you think the reanalysis technique sounds suspect, once again I point out it is used for your daily weather forecast. We like to make fun of how poor some weather forecasts can be, but the objective evidence is that forecasts out 2-3 days are pretty accurate, and continue to improve over time.

The Reanalysis picture for July 2019

The only reanalysis data I am aware of that is available in near real time to the public is from WeatherBell.com, and comes from NOAA’s Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2).

The plot of surface temperature departures from the 1981-2010 mean for July 2019 shows a global average warmth of just over 0.3 C (0.5 deg. F) above normal:

Note from that figure how distorted the news reporting was concerning the temporary hot spells in France, which the media reports said contributed to global-average warmth. Yes, it was unusually warm in France in July. But look at the cold in Eastern Europe and western Russia. Where was the reporting on that? How about the fact that the U.S. was, on average, below normal?

The CFSv2 reanalysis dataset goes back to only 1979, and from it we find that July 2019 was actually cooler than three other Julys: 2016, 2002, and 2017, and so was 4th warmest in 41 years. And being only 0.5 deg. F above average is not terribly alarming.

Our UAH lower tropospheric temperature measurements had July 2019 as the third warmest, behind 1998 and 2016, at +0.38 C above normal.

Why don’t the people who track global temperatures use the reanalysis datasets?

The main limitation with the reanalysis datasets is that most only go back to 1979, and I believe at least one goes back to the 1950s. Since people who monitor global temperature trends want data as far back as possible (at least 1900 or before) they can legitimately say they want to construct their own datasets from the longest record of data: from surface thermometers.

But most warming has (arguably) occurred in the last 50 years, and if one is trying to tie global temperature to greenhouse gas emissions, the period since 1979 (the last 40+ years) seems sufficient since that is the period with the greatest greenhouse gas emissions and so when the most warming should be observed.

So, I suggest that the global reanalysis datasets be used to give a more accurate estimate of changes in global temperature for the purposes of monitoring warming trends over the last 40 years, and going forward in time. They are clearly the most physically-based datasets, having been optimized to produce the best weather forecasts, and are less prone to ad hoc fiddling with adjustments to get what the dataset provider thinks should be the answer, rather than letting the physics of the atmosphere decide.

Severe Weather Due To——–Weather!

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

WOW!! A BBC video about severe weather, and no mention of climate change:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/47725850

Off to the re-education camp for Darren Bett!

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Blowing the whistle on the climate of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

Reblogged from Watts Up With That:

Guest Blogger / March 28, 2019

A brief overview of on-going climate research.

by Dr. Bill Johnston

Background

Australian taxpayers spend inordinate amounts of money each year on “saving” the Great Barrier Reef and to keep the bucket brimming with cash there is little wonder that the myriad of organizations involved want careful control over the spin and the people who do the work. The dust-up between Peter Ridd and James Cook University (JCU) is a case-in-point.

The Reef is indeed wonderful, big, can be seen from space; its worth this much or that depending on how its counted and of-course the bigger the better and therefore whatever they spend is an ‘investment for future generations’ … And JCU defends “Peter’s right to make statements in his area of academic expertise …”; except of course doubts he may have about other researchers’ research (otherwise known as the failing-to-act-in-a-collegial-way-and-in-the- academic-spirit-of-the-institution gotya). It does not help that with 15 coauthors, the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies Professor Terry Hughes makes the ambit claim that “Global warming is rapidly emerging as a universal threat …to the long term future of these iconic ecosystems” in the prestigious journal Nature (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0041-2); especially if it isn’t true.

The Number-1 problem faced by the Reef

The biggest problem faced by the Reef in the 21st century is the feeding-frenzy resulting from too much money being flung at too many institutions all [peddling] their own exaggerated versions of catastrophe so they can demand more money and thus keep the gravy train puffing along. The players have habits to support – boards, over-paid vice chancellors and professors; administrators of this and that, travel budgets, meetings, multiple media-teams etc. all of which are proportionally paid-for from the Australian Research Council’s cash-for-science bucket. For every dollar that actually lands on the Reef, three or four dollars or more is likely to be swallowed by such overheads. Then there are the well-organised and well-funded climate drum-beaters like WWF, Nature Australia, GetUp!, Greenpeace, the Climate Council and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition doom-merchants, who prey on vulnerable children who are integral to the success of the enterprise.

It follows that if 50% of the big-spenders were forced to find something more useful to do, the amount of research done on the Reef could double or treble; alternatively, more could be spent on more pressing issues somewhere else. The question is, do the boards of the organizations, consisting mostly of lawyers, engineers, lobbyists, accountants and mates ever undertake due-diligence on their ‘brand’ or on the research they supposedly oversee?

As cause de jour for everything, climate change is looking very wobbly. Careful analysis cross-referenced by documents, plans and aerial photographs held by the National Library and National Archives of Australia shows that the Bureau of Meteorology has questions to answer about how data have been gamed to warm the climate. It is not feasible they can’t remember locations of the original Aeradio weather stations at Cairns, Townsville and Rockhampton and when they moved and changed. Rather than reciting untrue claims about climate warming to The Conversation, ABC and the Fairfax press, Blair Trewin et al. should front-up to taxpayers and explain how badly and why they got it so wrong. For their part, from CSIRO down, the good ol’ mates and fellows on flag-waving boards and in science institutes and academies have failed dismally to uphold their glossy governance statements. It is clear that scientists like Peter Ridd should be free to do their work without the burden of implied support for climate change, for which there is no evidence in any Australian weather station dataset. It’s also valid for scientists of Peter’s standing and repute to call out peers doing poor or shifty work especially where the hierarchy is more protective of their brand-and-gravy than they are concerned about excellence in science.

Behind the closed doors of political correctness and vested interests, Australian science has lost its way and it’s a hideous situation that taxpayers are constantly misinformed and manipulated by organizations they once held in high-regard. Despite the Bureau’s best efforts, including deliberate bias (https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/guest/aust/bom-audit/johnston-bill/2018/bourke/back-of-bourke-v1.3_10.pdf), there is no evidence the climate has changed or warmed or that climatic extremes are increasing. Except in fluffy-duck-science stories based on modelling, which are mainly perpetuated by competing doomsayers and institutional catastrophists via the left wing press; neither the Reef nor the Murray-Darling Basin are or have been under threat from climate warming.

Temperature across Australia are being reported as getting warmer because in November 1996 the Bureau changed to networked automatic weather stations, and over the ensuing 2 decades sacked their trusty observers and reduced the size of instrument shelters (Stevenson screens) from 230 to 60-litres. Without even considering site biases (obvious in time-lapse Google Earth Pro satellite images) unattended small screens beside dusty tracks and at airports are biased-high from accumulated grime. Biased data that changes the colour of summer from red to purple looks scary, but doesn’t change the climate.

Pushed from the top by CSIRO and the Australian Research Council’s money bucket and from the bottom by green groups; climate change is a billion-dollar scam the likes of which Australians have never experienced before. Chairman David Thodey who heads-up the CSIRO brand has no relevant scientific credentials (https://www.csiro.au/en/About/Leadership-governance/Minister-and-Board/Members), yet via silo-structures it is Thodey and his Board that oversees the Bureau and signs-off on “The State of the Climate”; “Climate change: Science and Solutions for Australia”; “Climate projections”; … “Climate Adaptation” ….. It is a problem that individual weather station data don’t support their rhetoric. Unlike Peter Ridd, Thodey didn’t have the spine to push back. He and his Board have allowed science to be hijacked for political purposes and the Great Barrier Reef gravy train is the product of that failure. Further, it’s well known that like JCU; within the Bureau and CSIRO, jobs are on the line for speaking-out.

In the name of ‘climate-justice and ‘climate-action’ and with a general election looming, it is time to put climate fallacies to bed so Australians can get on doing and making things that build wealth and contribute to the country’s future; and hopefully, so wannabe-politicians co-opted by vested interests like WWF don’t run amok and make decisions that affect everyone for all the wrong reasons.

Exemplified by Peter Ridd vs. JCU and for the sake of our nation’s future, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison should commit to an open inquiry into climate change including the role of the Bureau of Meteorology in creating trends and changes that don’t exist.

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Here’s the backstory, complete with photos and diagrams:

GBR climate backstory_1.1

Borenstein Tries The Daily Records Con

HiFast Note:

Here’s the Average Mean Temperature and other charts for Wooster, OH:

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Another remarkably dishonest and deceitful piece, even by Seth Borenstein standards. That it should be aided and abetted by NOAA is shameful:

Over the past 20 years, rather than shiver through record-setting cold, a new Associated Press data analysis shows.

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Planet-Sized Experiments – we’ve already done the 2°C test

Willis Eschenbach / March 17, 2019

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

People often say that we’re heading into the unknown with regards to CO2 and the planet. They say we can’t know, for example, what a 2°C warming will do because we can’t do the experiment. This is seen as important because for unknown reasons, people have battened on to “2°C” as being the scary temperature rise that we’re told we have to avoid at all costs.

But actually, as it turns out, we have already done the experiment. Below I show the Berkeley Earth average surface temperature record for Europe. Europe is a good location to analyze, because some of the longest continuous temperature records are from Europe. In addition, there are a lot of stations in Europe that have been taking record for a long time. This gives us lots of good data.

So without further ado, here’s the record of the average European temperature.

Figure 1. Berkeley Earth average European temperature, 1743 – 2013. Red/yellow line is an 8-year Gaussian average. Horizontal red and blue lines are 2°C apart.

Temperatures were fairly steady until about the year 1890, when they began to rise. Note that this was BEFORE the large modern rise in CO2 … but I digress.

And from 1890 or so to 2013, temperatures in Europe rose by about 2°C. Which of course brings up the very important question …

We’ve done the 2°C experiment … so where are the climate catastrophes?

Seriously, folks, we’re supposed to be seeing all kinds of bad stuff. But none of it has happened. No cities gone underwater. No increase in heat waves or cold waves. No islands sinking into the ocean. No increase in hurricanes. No millions of climate refugees. The tragedies being pushed by the failed serial doomcasters for the last 30 years simply haven’t come to pass.

I mean, go figure … I went to Thermageddon and all I got was this lousy t-shirt …

In fact, here’s the truth about the effects of the warming …

Figure 2. Average annual climate-related (blue line) and non-climate-related (red line) deaths in natural disasters. Data from OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database

In just under a century, climate-related deaths, which are deaths from floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures, have dropped from just under half a million down to about twenty thousand … and during this same time, temperatures all over the globe have been warming.

So no, folks, there is no climate emergency. Despite children happily skipping class to march in lockstep to the alarmist drumbeat, climate is not the world’s biggest problem, or even in the top ten. Despite the pathetic importunings of “Beta” O’Rourke, this is not World War II redux. Despite Hollywood stars lecturing us as they board their private jets, there are much bigger issues for us to face.

The good news is, the people of the world know that the climate scare is not important. The UN polled almost ten million people as to what issues matter the most to them. The UN did their best to push the climate scare by putting that as the first choice on their ballot … but even with that, climate came in dead last, and by a long margin. Here is what the people of the world actually find important:

Figure 3. Results of the UN “My World” poll. Further analytic data here.

As you can see, there were sixteen categories. People put education, healthcare, and jobs at the top … and way down at the very bottom, “Action taken on climate change” came in at number sixteen.

In summary:

•We’ve done the two degree Celsius experiment.

• The lack of any climate-related catastrophes indicates that warming is generally either neutral or good for animal and plant life alike.

• Climate related deaths are only about a twentieth of what they were a hundred years ago.

• The people of the planet generally don’t see climate as an important issue. Fact Check: They are right.

===========================

Here, my gorgeous ex-fiancee and I are wandering on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We went and looked at Death Valley. It’s a couple hundred feet below sea level, and very, very dry. In the Valley, I saw that there was a temperature station at Stovepipe Wells. So I immediately looked for that essential accessory to any well-maintained temperature station … the air conditioner exhaust. Here you go, you can just see the air conditioner on the right side of this south-looking photo:

But what good is an air conditioner without some good old black heat-absorbing asphalt pavement to balance it out? So of course, they’ve provided that as well … here’s the view looking west. I’m not sure if this station is still in use, but any readings here would certainly be suspect.

Heck, if we’d parked our pickup truck facing outwards in the next stall to the left and revved the engine, we probably could have set a new high temperature record for this date …

Death Valley itself is stunningly stark, with the bones of the earth poking up through the skin …

Ah, dear friends, the world is full of wonders, far too many for any man to see all of them … keep your foot pressed firmly on the accelerator, time is the one thing that none of us have enough of. As Mad Tom o’ Bedlam sang,

With a host of furious fancies, whereof I am commander
With a sword of fire and a steed of air through the universe I wander
By a ghost of rags and shadows, I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world’s end … methinks it is no journey.

Today we’re at Boulder Creek, just east of the Sierras by Owens Lake … or Owens Ex-Lake, because all the water that used to fill the lake now waters gardens in LA.

However, the drought is broken in California, and some of the Sierra ski resorts have gotten forty or fifty feet of snow over the winter, so the east slope of the Sierras look like this where we are:

I am put in mind of what the poet said …

Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

My very best to each one of you, sail on, sail beyond …

w.

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HiFast Note:

Willis’ photos of the Stevenson screen were taken at the Stovepipe Wells Ranger Station (36.608169, -117.144553)

The USCRN site ISWC1 is about 700m south (36.601914, -117.145068).

Inverse Hockey-Stick: climate related death risk for an individuals down 99% since 1920

Reblogged from Watts Up With That:

Anthony Watts / January 27, 2019

Bjørn Lomborg writes on Facebook about some new and surprising data that turn climate alarmist claims upside down.

Fewer and fewer people die from climate-related natural disasters.

This is clearly opposite of what you normally hear, but that is because we’re often just being told of one disaster after another – telling us how *many* events are happening. The number of reported events is increasing, but that is mainly due to better reporting, lower thresholds and better accessibility (the CNN effect). For instance, for Denmark, the database only shows events starting from 1976.

Instead, look at the number of dead per year, which is much harder to fudge. Given that these numbers fluctuate enormously from year to year (especially in the past, with huge droughts and floods in China), they are here presented as averages of each decade (1920-29, 1930-39 etc, with last decade as 2010-18). The data is from the most respected global database, the International Disaster Database. There is some uncertainty about complete reporting from early decades, which is why this graph starts in 1920, and if anything this uncertainty means the graph *underestimates* the reduction in deaths.

Notice, this does *not* mean that there is no global warming or that possibly a climate signal could eventually lead to further deaths. Instead, it shows that our increased wealth and adaptive capacity has vastly outdone any negative impact from climate when it comes to human climate vulnerability.

Notice that the reduction in absolute deaths has happened while the global population has increased four-fold. The individual risk of dying from climate-related disasters has declined by 98.9%. Last year, fewer people died in climate disasters than at any point in the last three decades (1986 was a similarly fortunate year).

Somewhat surprisingly, while climate-related deaths have been declining strongly for 70 years, non-climate deaths have not seen a similar decline, and should probably get more of our attention.

If we look at the death risk for an individual, seen below, the risk reduction is even bigger – dropped almost 99% since the 1920s.

Data Source: The International Disaster Database,http://emdat.be/emdat_db/

What Proof Our Climate is Warming?

Science Matters

This is a reblog of a post at Manhattan Contrarian How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”? Excerpts in italics with my bolds

Back in August I had a post by the title of “How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”? The post took note of the fact that, with a time series (like for temperature) that fluctuates up and down, you can always give a presentation that makes the trend look to be whatever you want it to be, so long as you get to pick the start date. If you want to make it look like the trend is up, you pick a start date where the value of the series is low; and if you want to make it look like the trend is down, you pick a start date where the value of the series is…

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UK Climate Trends – 2018

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly

The Met Office has now published its data for 2018. We can expect plenty of claims about last year being the 7th warmest in the UK since records began (in 1910). Or that all of the ten warmest years have occurred this century.

The real significance of these latest numbers, however, is that they continue to confirm that UK temperatures stopped rising more than a decade ago, after a step up during the 1990s.

As the 10-year averages below indicate, UK temperatures have been stable for some time, and arguably are now beginning to drop back:

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Hansen’s 1988 Predictions Redux

Reblogged from Watts Up With That:

Willis Eschenbach / January 6, 2019

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Over in the Tweeterverse, someone sent me the link to the revered climate scientist James Hansen’s 1988 Senate testimony and told me “Here’s what we were told 30 years ago by NASA scientist James Hansen. It has proven accurate.”

I thought … huh? Can that be right?

Here is a photo of His Most Righteousness, Dr. James “Death Train” Hansen, getting arrested for civil disobedience in support of climate alarmism …

I have to confess, I find myself guilty of schadenfreude in noting that he’s being arrested by … Officer Green …

In any case, let me take as my text for this sermon the aforementioned 1988 Epistle of St. James To The Senators, available here. I show the relevant part below, his temperature forecast.

ORIGINAL CAPTION: Fig. 3. Annual mean global surface air temperature computed for trace gas scenarios A, B, and C described in reference 1. [Scenario A assumes continued growth rates of trace gas emissions typical of the past 20 years, i.e., about 1.5% yr^-1 emission growth; scenario B has emission rates approximately fixed at current rates; scenario C drastically reduces trace gas emissions between 1990 and 2000.] The shaded range is an estimate of global temperature during the peak of the current and previous interglacial periods, about 6,000 and 120,000 years before present, respectively. The zero point for observations is the 1951-1980 mean (reference 6); the zero point for the model is the control run mean.

I was interested in “Scenario A”, which Hansen defined as what would happen assuming “continued growth rates of trace gas emissions typical of the past 20 years, i.e., about 1.5% yr^-1“.

To see how well Scenario A fits the period after 1987, which is when Hansen’s observational data ends, I took a look at the rate of growth of CO2 emissions since 1987. Figure 2 shows that graph.

Figure 2. Annual increase in CO2 emissions, percent.

This shows that Hansen’s estimate of future CO2 emissions was quite close, although the reality was ~ 25% MORE annual increase in CO2 than Hansen estimated. As a result, his computer estimate for Scenario A should have shown a bit more warming than we see in Figure 1 above.

Next, I digitized Hansen’s graph to compare it to reality. To start with, here is what is listed as “Observations” in Hansen’s graph. I’ve compared Hansen’s observations to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Land-Ocean Temperature Index (GISS LOTI) and the HadCRUT global surface temperature datasets.

Figure 3. The line marked “Observations” in Hansen’s graph shown as Figure 1 above, along with modern temperature estimates. All data is expressed as anomalies about the 1951-1980 mean temperature.

OK, so now we have established that:

• Hansen’s “Scenario A” estimate of future growth in CO2 emissions was close, albeit a bit low, and

• Hansen’s historical temperature observations agree reasonably well with modern estimates.

Given that he was pretty accurate in all of that, albeit a bit low on CO2 emissions growth … how did his Scenario A prediction work out?

Well … not so well …

Figure 4. The line marked “Observations” in Hansen’s graph shown as Figure 1 above, along with his Scenario A, and modern temperature estimates. All observational data is expressed as anomalies about the 1951-1980 mean temperature.

So I mentioned this rather substantial miss, predicted warming twice the actual warming, to the man on the Twitter-Totter, the one who’d said that Hansen’s prediction had been “proven accurate”.

His reply?

He said that Dr. Hansen’s prediction was indeed proven accurate—he’d merely used the wrong value for the climate sensitivity, viz: “The only discrepancy in Hansen’s work from 1988 was his estimate of climate sensitivity. Using best current estimates, it plots out perfectly.”

I loved the part about “best current estimates” of climate sensitivity … here are current estimates, from my post on The Picasso Problem  …

Figure 5. Changes over time in the estimate of the climate sensitivity parameter “lambda”. “∆T2x(°C)” is the expected temperature change in degrees Celsius resulting from a doubling of atmospheric CO2, which is assumed to increase the forcing by 3.7 watts per square metre. FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4, AR5 are the UN IPCC 1st, second, third, fourth and fifth Assessment Reports giving an assessment of the state of climate science as of the date of each report. Red dots show recent individual estimates of the climate sensitivity

While giving the Tweeterman zero points for accuracy, I did have to applaud him for sheer effrontery and imaginuity. It’s a perfect example of why it is so hard to convince climate alarmists of anything—because to them, everything is a confirmation of their ideas. Whether it is too hot, too cold, too much snow, too little snow, warm winters, brutal winters, or disproven predictions—to the alarmists all of these are clear and obvious signs of the impending Thermageddon, as foretold in the Revelations of St. James of Hansen.

My best to you all, the beat goes on, keep fighting the good fight.

w.

Wildfires USA – 80% Less Than The 1930s

sunshine hours

Bjorn Lomborg has been trying to quell the hysteria about forest fires in the USA.

As Lomborg writes on Facebook:

Some people have pointed out that the National Interagency Fire Center writes that “Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.”

This is convenient, since the NIFC for the longest time didn’t even want to acknowledge that there were data before 1960 (https://web.archive.org/web/20171206160413/https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html). I’ve consistently pointed out that we had early data and where the data starting in 1926 comes from; it is the Wildfire Statistics from USDA, summarized in the official Historical Statistics of the United States – Colonial Times to 1970, p537: http://bit.ly/2hGp7XF.

So, we all know, very well, where this data is from.

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