Why Nobody Ever Calls The Weather Normal
By Dr. Matt Ridley
WHEN the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about “extreme weather”.
Part of the problem was that some time towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century it became clear that the Earth’s average temperature just was not consistently rising any more, however many “adjustments” were made to the thermometer records, let alone rising anything like as rapidly as all the models demanded.
So those who made their living from alarm, and by then there were lots, switched tactics and began to jump on any unusual weather event, whether it was a storm, a drought, a blizzard or a flood, and blame it on man-made carbon dioxide emissions. This proved a rewarding tactic, because people – egged on by journalists – have an inexhaustible appetite for believing in the vindictiveness of the weather gods. The fossil fuel industry was inserted in the place of Zeus as the scapegoat of choice. (Scientists are the priests.)
The fact that people have short memories about weather events is what enables this game to be played. The long Australian drought of 2001-7, the Brisbane floods of 2009-10 and the angry summer of 2012-13 stand out in people’s minds. People are reluctant to put them down to chance. Even here in mild England, people are always saying “I have never known it so cold/hot/mild/windy/wet/dry/changeable as it is this year”. One Christmas I noticed the seasons had been pretty average all year, neither too dry nor too wet nor too cold nor too warm. “I have never known it so average,” I said to somebody. I got a baffled look. Nobody ever calls the weather normal.
So it is deeply refreshing to read the new book called Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change by the internationally respected geologist Bob Carter and illustrated by the cartoonist John Spooner, which puts climate change exactly where it should be – in perspective. After demolishing many other arguments for carbon taxes and climate alarm, Carter runs through recent weather events, showing that there is nothing exceptional, let alone unprecedented, about recent droughts, floods, heat waves, cyclones or changes to the Great Barrier Reef.
How come then that last week the World Meteorological Organisation produced a breathless report claiming that “the decadal rate of increase (of world temperature) between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented”? It took professor Ed Hawkins of Reading University a short time to point out that this was no longer true if you compared 1993-2002 and 2003-2012 – ie, if you took the most up-to-date records. In that case, the latest decade showed a smaller increase over the preceding decade than either of the preceding decades did. In other words, the temperature standstill of the past 16 years has begun to show up in the decade-by-decade data.
And this is even before you take into account the exaggeration that seemed to contaminate the surface temperature records in the latter part of the 20th century – because of urbanisation, selective closure of weather stations and unexplained “adjustments”. Two Greek scientists recently calculated that for 67 per cent of 181 globally distributed weather stations they examined, adjustments had raised the temperature trend, so they almost halved their estimate of the actual warming that happened in the later 20th century.
Anyway, by “unprecedented”, the WMO meant since 1850, which is a micro-second of history to a paleo-climatologist like Carter. He takes a long-term perspective, pointing out that the world has been warming since 17,000 years ago, cooling since 8000 years ago, cooling since 2000 years ago, warming since 1850 and is little changed since 1997. Consequently, “the answer to the question ‘is global warming occurring’ depends fundamentally on the length of the piece of climate string that you wish to consider”. He goes on: “Is today’s temperature unusually warm? No – and no ifs or buts.”
Carter is a courageous man, because within academia those who do not accept that climate change is dangerous are often bullied.
Indeed, Carter, who retired from James Cook University before he got interested in the global warming debate but remains an emeritus fellow, recently found himself deprived of even an email address by colleagues resentful of his failure to toe the line. As the old joke goes: what’s the opposite of diversity? University.
http://www.thegwpf.org/matt-ridley-calls-weather-normal/
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Wasn’t that known as the ‘English disease’, where they can’t stop talking about the weather?
Must be catching. :^)
One reason for the perception isn’t short memory, it’s that the complete 30-year cold, 30-year warm cycle covers the human adult life span. We just don’t have the longevity to recognize the cycle when it comes around again.
“The one thing you can accurately predict about the weather is that it is going to be unpredictable.” (Derek and Clive)
I remember my parents saying many years ago now, that talking about the weather was always a safe bet. Religion and politics were risky, but weather? Always safe. Even then they’d go on about extremes. “Isn’t it hot!” or “Isn’t it cold!” Everyone enjoyed a good whinge, whatever the weather.
We live in strange times that now many can’t mention it for fear of triggering an extremist reaction.
I enjoyed this article, by the way. It always gives me – if you’ll pardon the expression – a warm and fuzzy feeling whenever the truth comes out. I get tired of hearing nothing but doom and gloom, a bit of “Hey, guess what, it’s average” makes me rejoice. Thank you, Matt. 🙂
If you want to read the analyses by Dr. Ed Hawkins mentioned by Matt, then they are here:
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/wmo-report/
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/rates-of-change/
Ed Hawkins
I believe that Bob Carter’s position of adjuct research fellow at JCA has ‘expired’ http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2013/06/28/384514_news.html .
On a brighter note, his new book Taxing Air, is in the Canberra library system !. It has been difficult to get a book presenting a different climate viewpoint into the system, and this addition is very welcome.
A 31-year-old satirical piece by an Italian climate scientist has been sadly prescient on the current fashion about “abnormal weather”
http://omnologos.com/how-to-be-right-about-the-climate-always/
No email for you!…
Richard111: says:
> Wasn’t that known as the ‘English disease’, where they can’t stop talking about the weather?
The ‘English disease’ is truly characterised by people’s reluctance to stop talking about the weather and by the emphasis they put on it, but similar conditions, albeit transient, occur in other nations.
When I was about 10 — many years ago, before Global Warming and even before Global Cooling — in other words, before weather became politicised — my geography teacher showed me how to keep weather records using simple instruments. Which I did almost continuously for a number of years. It was a fun thing to do, as it was, but the funniest part was being able to contradict various weather observations by guests and relatives gathered at the dinner table, such as: “We’ve been having such a cold/hot/wet/dry/rainy/stormy season this year — quite unlike last year.”
I would pull out my weather logs and charts and show them how wrong they were. Amazingly, whenever I heard claims like that, they were always wrong. But they never admitted it. All I heard was, “There must be something wrong with your measurements”.
Unlike the English, the Russians near me did not linger on the subject of weather for too long. They just made a wrong statement or two and carried on discussing something else.
Michael Crichton couldn’t have put it any better:
The future of the earth: Is this the end of the world?
Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Floods, What is happening to our planet?
Is this the end of the world? – NO. We live on an active planet – earthquakes are continuous, a million and a half a year, or 3 every minute, a Richter 5 every 6 hours, a major quake every 3 weeks, there’s a quake the size of Pakistan every 8 months, at any moment on our planet there are 11 lightning strikes every second, there are 1500 electrical storms on the planet at any moment, a tornado touches down every 6 hrs, a tidal wave crosses the Pacific every 3 months, there are 90 hurricanes a year, one every 4 days, its constant, is this the end of the world?
No, this IS the world
I know that geophysical phenomena follow the Pareto Distribution, here’s rainfall
I suspect memory does also. My memory of Hurricane Hugo is fading even though the events of that year were reinforced by an exceptional snowfall in Coastal South Carolina and the Loma Prieta Earthquake.
‘ it became clear that the Earth’s average temperature just was not consistently rising any more’
Has global warming stopped or stalled? R Alley has the answer!
Has anybody notice the unusual hot spot over the middle pacific ocean? I notice it has been largely present since somewhere between 2009 and 2010 and hasn’t really gone away.
Perhaps magnetic hot spots are to blame as very little research is done on them which they are fragments of the NP breaking up and when the progress of one slows down it will cause unusual heat signatures in that area.
Sadly though I am likely as usual too late for the conversationists to notice my question so never mind then.
Sorry for wasting time.
When I served as an interpreter at a natural history museum, I was often asked about “normal” weather. It soon became obvious to me that “normal weather” is what individuals remember as the weather during their childhoods.
We really do live so short a time that our individual observations have no meaning in terms of climate trends.
But if by normal you mean the long-term stable temperature, that would be about 25 Celsius, which obtained for most of the time since the Cryogenic, all of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic up to the Oligocene. That’s about 10 degrees Celsius above the global average today, far hotter than most of the catastrophist warmist predict. And there was no ice in Antarctica, nor near the North pole. Looks like a warm Earth is the normal Earth.
Good point. I lived in the UK and remember the wonderful, long heatwave of 1976 and the bitter few winters of the early 1980s. So I laugh when the recent bad winters were blamed on ‘climate change’.
I am appalled at the two faced behaviour of these desperate Warmists. A few years back they rightly insisted that the weather is not the same as climate and that trends are what is important. It was said with an air of superior, deep knowledge and disdain for sceptics. Yet today they have no shame in declaring any flood a sure sign of man-made climate change.
Here is a little something for Warmists who are convinced that the climate is not ‘normal’. Well they are right it really is not ‘normal’. Let’s look back over the past ~11,000 years of our ‘benign’ Holocene. Here are some climate changes which would make Warmists’ heads explode – from mega-droughts around the world lasting hundreds of years to an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Extreme is normal for our Holocene.
Joanne Nova has a lot more about Carter’s separation from JCU at http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/jcu-caves-in-to-badgering-and-groupthink-blackballs-politically-incorrect-bob-carter/
You can guess the tenor of the piece from the title.
Just follow the money. Report of Extreme weather[the problem is worse than we thought] = hypothetical problem that needs to be studied = free money from the government to study the problem=new report of more extreme weather[it is even worse than before]=more hypothetical problems =more government money=new report[the problem is much worse than before] etc
Stop the free money, the problem will go away, extreme weather will diminish.
The AGW alarmists are the sci-fi horror film “shape-shifters” brought to life….
News organizations hype the weather because it supposedly attracts an audience and increases revenues. Some of the Richmond (VA) TV stations have given us a couple hours of breathless, prime-time coverage of thunderstorms. So, why shouldn’t the warmist cults hype weather? It sells and we aren’t smart enough to remember that we’ve had weather like that before.
When I moved to Michigan, the first 2-3 years all I heard was this isn’t normal weather for a Michigan spring/summer/fall/winter no matter what weather we were having. I decided that I lived in a very unique place where the weather was never normal.
Bob says
“Michigan… A unique place where the weather is never normal.”
I just moved to Michigan from New Mexico. To read the above is such a relief. Now I understand.
@- herkimer
Just follow the money. …
Stop the free money, the problem will go away, extreme weather will diminish.
Climate research does not CAUSE the large excess of hot records over cold records. That is a objectively observed physical reality. Claiming that less research will affect the rate of heat waves, drought flood and ice melt is very silly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/06/26/warm-temperature-records-dramatically-outpacing-cold-records-in-washington-d-c/
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Actually, just about an hour ago, I did hear a Weather Channel forecaster call the the weather “normal”. She was talking about rain forecast for, I think it was, the Tampa area. This is not an exact quote but as near as I can recall she said, “These popup thunderstorms are normal for July in Tampa. But we know that these are more intense.”
{snip} Dr. Carter puts his life work, name, and reputation on the line while you take pot shots from the comfort of anonymity. If you want to to make criticisms like that, you are welcome to do so, but have the courage to put your own name on on the or STFU. Feel free to be as upset as you wish – Anthony Watts