John Kerry and Tornadoes – not a good mix
Warren Meyer over at climate-skeptic.com is a bit fired up over the NCDC sponsored, Los Angeles PR firm processed, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. He’s running a series. This is #4. Full report available here: GCCI Government Report
GCCI #4: I Am Calling Bullsh*t on this Chart
For this next post, I skip kind of deep into the report because Kevin Drum was particularly taken with the power of this chart from page 58.
I know that skepticism is a lost art in journalism, so I will forgive Mr. Drum. But in running a business, people put all kinds of BS analyses in front of me trying to get me to spend my money one way or another. And so for those of us for whom data analysis actually has financial consequences, it is a useful skill to be able to recognize a steaming pile of BS when one sees it.
First, does anyone here really think that we have seen a 20-fold increase in electrical grid outages over the last 15 years but no one noticed? Really?
Second, let’s just look at some of the numbers. Is there anyone here who thinks that if we are seeing 10-20 major outages from thunderstorms and tornadoes (the yellow bar) in the last few years, we really saw ZERO by the same definition in 1992? And 1995? And 1996? Seriously? This implies there has been something like a 20-fold increase in outages from thunderstorms and tornadoes since the early 1990’s. But tornado activity, for example, has certainly not increased since the early 1990’s and has probably decreased (from the NOAA, a co-author of the report):
All the other bars have the same believability problem. Take “temperature extremes.” Anyone want to bet that is mostly cold rather than mostly hot extremes? I don’t know if that is the case, but my bet is the authors would have said “hot” if the data had been driven by “hot.” And if this is proof of global warming, then why is the damage from cold and ice increasing as fast as other severe weather causes?
This chart screams one thing at me: Basis change. Somehow, the basis for the data is changing in the period. Either reporting has been increased, or definitions have changed, or there is something about the grid that makes it more sensitive to weather, or whatever (this is a problem in tornado charts, as improving detection technologies seem to create an upward incidence trend in smaller tornadoes where one probably does not exist). But there is NO WAY the weather is changing this fast, and readers should treat this whole report as a pile of garbage if it is written by people who uncritically accept this chart.
Postscript: By the way, if I want to be snarky, I should just accept this chart. Why? Because here is the US temperature anomaly over the same time period (using the UAH satellite data as graphed by Anthony Watts, degrees C):
From 1998 to today, when the electrical outage chart was shooting up, the US was actually cooling slightly!
This goes back to the reason why alarmists abandoned the “global warming” term in favor of climate change. They can play this bait and switch, showing changes in climate (which always exist) and then blaming them on CO2. But there is no mechanism ever proposed by anyone where CO2 can change the climate directly without going through the intermediate step of warming. If climate is changing but we are not seeing warming, then the change can’t be due to CO2. But you will never see that fact in this helpful government propaganda piece.
One of the drawbacks to internet journalism is it’s so much more complicated to line my birdcage now.
Anthony: Thanks for the Kerry-Swift Boat “photo”.
NBC nightly news did the most one-sided, biased report on this release last night. In the piece it was stated the Midwest has “already seen warming of 7 degrees.” After the past couple of winters and the cool spring, I’m sure there’s a lot of viewer skepticism out there.
John Kerry is such a clueless bozo. Here he is in what I like to think of as “Thurston Howell IV and Lovey” [from Gilligan’s Island] : click
Look at that grin. Could he be any more insufferable?
American Thinker has an entry titled:
Did ABC Fabricate Projections of an Underwater Southern Florida? (Updated)
It has a video of the ABC broadcast covering the Global Climate Change Impacts In the United States Report.
The closing update is….
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/did_abc_fabricate_projections.html
They aren’t going to get much money by selling warming when it’s getting colder.
Of course they know they committed the ultimate error when they blurted out Global Warming causes cooling.
A lot of folks caught the ironic nature of the renaming attempt.
Not going over well. MSM is frantic trying to stop the damage.
Too late.
10’s of millions of ordinary folked dropped it like a hot potato.
Warming causes Chilling is what is stuck in people’s heads, and it’s the butt of every streetcorner joke.
The USS GoreStall is taking on water….not because of catastrophic sea rise, but because of the huge hole amidships.
Struck the Iceberg of Cooling.
Of course, you MUST ignore UV degradation of PVC HV line coatings as a function of time. I’m sure those lines strung in the 50’s and 60’s are as fresh as a daisy.
Was reading Meyer’s article earlier today.
I honestly don’t see how they could possibly get away with this chart.
It’s rediculousity in the purest sense.
I love the ‘propaganda’ wording. This puppy is should backlash on them…big.
There is just too much bad information and it’s all over blogland. Someone will pick it up eventually.
They are pushing hard now.
If they can float the lie for only a few more months, they may in fact be able to pass legislation that makes this incredible scam concrete.
Looking at the US temperature chart compared to the grid disturbances chart we can see that the increase in disturbances is NOT caused by temperatures. So what is it? Could severe storms have doubled in the last few years because of the slight DECREASE of temperatures? I know that there have been blackouts and brownouts in Texas. Since Texas has the largest percentage of wind power in the USA, could that be a factor? Perhaps the numbers should be broken down by state, state temperatures and state use of windpower. Have states like California and Kansas, who have been turning down permits for coal fired plants, contributed to grid failures? I’d say that’s a pretty good bet. What about nuclear power? When will we start building these plants again?
These are only a few of the really telling questions that the grid failure graph raises…
This grid failure graph points the finger at poor management in the highest corridors of power. It does NOT give any support to the failed CO2=CAGW hypothesis.
The grid failure is a proxy of the failure of failed political leadership.
Mike
Increases in grid disruptions may have more to do with changes in the grid than changes in the climate. Our electric grid has become loaded to maximum capacity. Under present conditions, any type of weather event that causes an outage will more likely to cause a “significant incident” if power is unavailable from elsewhere.
Do reasonable people of sane minds really believe this crap? Either I’m losing it myself or the regular Joe is lost in space. Should we riot in the streets like they are doing in Iran? It seems to catch the MSM’s eye anyway. I would like to see Anthony propose a date and some sort of activity that will let the rest of the US (and world) see that there is a portion of society that is fed up with this crap! Does anyone have any ideas?
A huge jump in windstorms on this chart, “climate change lowers wind speeds” six posts back; and both of them supposedly due to global warming. Oh well, I guess it’s okay as long as they’re consistent.
K-Bob (20:01:19)
Either I’m losing it myself or the regular Joe is lost in space.
http://www.televisiontunes.com/Lost_In_Space.html
It’s not you!
K-Bob (20:01:19) : “Should we riot in the streets…”
I believe the next U.S. “riot” will be 912.
Tack on this little gem from the AP and Weather Channel
http://www.weather.com/newscenter/specialtopics/slideshows/globalwarmingeffects.html?page=1&scheme=article-vert-plain.css
EXACT Opposite from what we’re seeing the past couple of years.
And this is what the report ‘Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States’ has to say about this chart:
‘….Although this figure does not demonstrate a cause-effect relationship between climate change and grid disruption, it does suggest that weather and climate extremes often have important effects on grid disruptions. We do know that more frequent weather and climate extremes are likely in the future, which poses unknown new risks for the electric grid.’
Jason Bair (20:33:23) :
Tack on this little gem from the AP and Weather Channel
It’s perfectly logical TWC would highlight this. Its owner GE will stand to gain big-time from AECS.
Perhaps the Loony Lefty grid instability caused by government mucking about with the provision of electricity (ala Gov. Grayout Davis in California) has something to do with it? A graph of grid instability vs government interventions might be enlightening…
Here in California we can definitely say that the “blackouts” were attributed to “hot weather” when the grid failed to deliver enough during very hot days… yet they miraculously stopped with the removal of Gov. Gray Davis and the reversal of the “buy at minibar prices on the spot market only” insane government mandated policies.
Want a stable grid? Get government out of it. Period.
Yes, I’ve “been there, done that” for over 1/2 century. The bottom line is pretty simple: Grid stability is inversely proportional to the degree of government involvement. I’ve seen a fair sample, and the trend in pretty clear… (PG & E had to field the complaints. Prior to being mucked with, they had small hours to power restoration at most. Post mucking, it was frequent rolling outages several times a summer for several hours… Now? With Grayout gone? Can’t remember the last outage.)
Politicians and lawyers make bad engineers and worse economists (and absolutely horrid business managers). Put politicians (most of whom seem to have law degrees) in charge? To quote Gomer: Surprise surprise surprise!
Jason Bair (20:33:23) :
Tack on this little gem from the AP and Weather Channel
Unbelievable! Just lies.
Here is the actual US monthly anomaly (NOAA) in the manner we are used to seeing – anomaly F from average, seasonally-adjusted with 1895 to 2009 baseline.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/3491/usmonthlyanom.png
Not particularly useful of course.
Here is the same data with a 12 month moving average which is a little more helpful in terms of seeing the trends. 1934, 1998, 2005 are the peak years.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8913/ustempsf.png
Keep in mind, the trend for these temps have been adjusted upwards by 0.765F from the raw data.
Mr. Smith almost has the reason. The number of weather related grid failures has increased because the grid is saturated. Population continued to grow, and the grid, which was built over the last century, has not. So we are pouring more power through the same grid, meaning hotter temperatures, and pushing the system ever closer to electrical saturation. So it doesn’t take much to push a power electrical device over the edge when its already tippy toeing there. And the reason we are near that saturation is a desire not to build more grid infrastructure, because, you see, soon every house will have a solar panel, and we can abandon the grid! Its so simple!! And when every house has a govt mandated solar panel, then, magically, the grid will not be as close anymore to its saturation point, and so, alternative energy will indeed have reduced grid failures. But not because it has dropped temps….
Mike (and others): why focus only on US temperature to correlate with US tornadoes? The temperature has been increasing at the level of the seas surrounding the US and also in the Arctic, and I’m quite sure this must influence local weather. For example, in north-western Europe, the weather is mainly dictated by the jet stream and what is happening in the North Atlantic.
K-Bob (20:01:19) :
Do reasonable people of sane minds really believe this crap? Either I’m losing it myself or the regular Joe is lost in space. Should we riot in the streets like they are doing in Iran? It seems to catch the MSM’s eye anyway. I would like to see Anthony propose a date and some sort of activity that will let the rest of the US (and world) see that there is a portion of society that is fed up with this crap! Does anyone have any ideas?
Yes.
A 4th July independence day celebration of the integrity and goodwill of the founding fathers and modern day truth tellers. A party in your local park with leaflets available for anyone to pick up with the salient facts presented.
At the top, Al gore with a “The debate is over” quote of some kind. Below this an image of the Rushmore monument with a couple of juicy quotes beneath.
E.g. George Washington: “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
Thomas Jefferson: “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Abe Lincoln: America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Below that, a copy of Anthony or Bill Illis’ graph of U.S. temperature trends, again with a couple of juicy quotes from Lindzen, and Spencer, along with their qualifications and titles. Maybe also a web link to WUWT and the 31,000 petition
At the bottom, a question posed about the taxes to be levied and the zero impact they will have on climate. Are *YOU* willing to pay for this with your wages and liberty?
end with another quote from a founding father:
Jefferson: All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.