Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Last month (April 2010), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put out a study called “Climate Change Indicators in the United States” (13 Mb PDF). I read through it … depressingly bad science.
To start with, they parrot the findings of the IPCC as their “evidence” that everything we see in the climate record is human-caused. They say:
The buildup of green- house gases in the atmosphere is very likely the cause of most of the recent observed increase in average temperatures, and contributes to other climate changes. (IPCC 2007)
Despite the “very likely” certainty of the IPCC, I see the current level of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate a bit differently, as shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1. Graph showing our understanding of the climate. Image is the painting by J. M. W. Turner, “Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway”.
Having asserted that all changes are due to humans, they then list a bunch of changes, and consider their case as being established. Here’s how they put it:
The indicators in this report present clear evidence that the composition of the atmosphere is being altered as a result of human activities and that the climate is changing. They also illustrate a number of effects on society and ecosystems related to these changes.
Now, that particular statement is very carefully crafted. It is very painstakingly worded so that no one can say that they claimed the changes in climate are caused by the changes in the “composition of the atmosphere” … but heck, if you mistakenly were to assume that, the EPA won’t get in your way.
In other words, CO2 is rising and climate is changing … stunning news.
But that’s just the start. The individual parts of the report are marked by plain old bad science.
Here’s one example among many. This is the record of “heat waves”, which they define as follows:
While there is no universal definition of a heat wave, this indicator defines a heat wave as a four-day period with an average temperature that would only be expected to occur once every 10 years, based on the historical record.
This indicator reviews trends in the U.S. Annual Heat Wave Index between 1895 and 2008. This index tracks the frequency of heat waves across the lower 48 states, but not the intensity of these episodes. The index uses daily maximum temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which keeps records from weather stations throughout the nation. Approximately 300 to 400 stations reported data from 1895 to 1910; over the last 100 years, the number of stations has risen to 700 or more.
The index value for a given year could mean several different things. For example, an index value of 0.2 in any given year could mean that 20 percent of the recording stations experienced one heat wave; 10 percent of stations experienced two heat waves; or some other combination of stations and episodes resulted in this value.
Sadly, although they say they use NOAA data, they don’t say where the data that they used is located. Well, no, actually that’s not quite true. They say:
The data for this indicator are based on measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Network. These weather station data are available online at: www.nws.noaa.gov/os/coop/what-is-coop.html.
Unfortunately, when you go to that URL, there’s no data. There’s just a description of the Cooperative Station Program entitled “What is the Coop Program?” … but I digress …
Regarding heat waves, they say:
The frequency of heat waves in the United States decreased in the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen steadily since then. The percentage of the United States experiencing heat waves has also increased. The most severe heat waves in U.S. history remain those that occurred during the “Dust Bowl” in the 1930s, although average temperatures have increased since then.
Having said that, Figure 2 shows their data for the Heat Wave Index, the linear trend over the entire period, and the change in atmospheric CO2 during the period.
Figure 2. “Heat Wave Index” (yellow line) and CO2 level (red line, right scale). Orange line is the linear trend for the entire period.
You’d think that the only reasonable conclusions from this chart would be that heat waves and CO2 are not related in the slightest, that there is no overall change in the US Heat Wave Index, and that there appears to have been a step change in the data in 1980 … but this being the EPA, you’d be wrong. This is all part of the ‘CO2 is rising and climate is changing’ mantra.
And you would also think that they would give us drought information to go with this. For example, I showed the change (or rather the lack of change) in the Palmer Drought Severity Index from 1895 to 2009 in my post “Come Rain or Come Shine“.
But strangely, rather than report that drought is no more common now than a hundred years ago, they say:
During the 20th century, many indices were created to measure drought severity by looking at trends in precipitation, soil moisture, stream flow, vegetation health, and other variables. This indicator is based on the U.S. Drought Monitor, which integrates several of these indices.
Why is the U.S. Drought Monitor a strange choice for their analysis? Well, because that particular drought indicator only contains data that goes all the way back to … 2000. Not even one decade of data. And of course, their conclusion is:
Because data from the U.S. Drought Monitor are only available for the most recent decade, there is no clear long-term trend in this indicator.
Well, duh … the USHCN maintains several long-term drought indicators which cover the period 1895 – present, so the EPA chose to only report on an indicator with a nine-year record, and then explains that the record is too short to show a trend.
I could give you many more examples, but my stomach won’t take it. This is the US EPA, however, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. My tax dollars at work …
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Anton writes:
“Don’t you mean more Kool-Aid? If you are not an EPA employee, or relative of one, I’d be surprised. I live in Florida where your glorious EPA did not to prevent the poisoning of the Everglades by sugar manufacturers. But, that’s beside the point, as are most of your comments.”
The people touting the EPA in this discussion read like narcissists with fantasies that the EPA is the Lone Ranger. If you live in America and you have safe drinking water, thank the people who provided it before anyone heard of the EPA and who continue to provide it with no help from the EPA, namely, your local city government. Maybe EPA has come to have some legal authority over local city governments, but the EPA contributes nothing to the daily maintenance of your clean drinking water.
mb writes:
“Jim Clarke> I don’t see a nearly perfect correlation between the heat wave index and PDO, you can find a graph of PDO here.”
Thanks for the link to the chart. I do see a nearly perfect correlation. What do I not see?
Bill Tuttle says:
May 8, 2010 at 3:08 am
The key word in Environmental Protection Agency is “Agency” — it’s a bureaucracy. Any resemblance between it and a scientific establishment are pure coincidence.
A more accurate description if the EPA would be EPR — the Environmental Protection Racket…
_____________________________________________________________________
Bill, leave out the Environmental. it is a Protection Racket pure and simple. A friend’s brother works for the EPA. He was told to leave the big boys like Mobil and Exxon alone and go after the Mom and Pop businesses. The same thing goes on in the USDA.
Here is the testimony before the House of Stan Painter, head of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals. It is a very interesting (and shocking) read if you want to see what is actually going on in the bureaucracies.
http://njcfil.com/b/pdf/stansTestimony.pdf
And a second House investigation where the USDA fumbled the ball only this time someone died: http://www.marlerblog.com/tags/john-munsell/
Brent Hargreaves says:
May 8, 2010 at 4:47 am
Brilliant posting, Willis.
I am puzzled by the Klingons. How is it that we have not swept them away? The sceptics have the clarity, the integrity, the wit and the wisdom to see through the AGW myth. And yet they continue to monopolise multinational organizations and government agencies…..”
________________________________________________________________________
The Conmen behind the AGW myth OWN the presses they kill any story that does not fit their agenda:
“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Richard Haass, Club of Rome Document, 1991, “The First Global Revolution” p. 71,75 1993
The Club of Rome wants a World Government run by them and they are not about to let a little thing like good science or the truth stand in their way. David Rockefeller was co-founder of the Club of Rome.
“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” – Pg. 405 of David Rockefeller’s Autobiography, 2002
And again from David Rockefeller when speaking at the UN Business Council in Sept 17 1994:
“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
I think those quotes make it pretty clear who is behind the myth and why.
David Rockefeller also runs the World Bank through his yearly meeting in Westchester NY and funds Greenpeace and WWF through the Rockefeller Foundations. Maurice Strong went to work for the Rockefellers in the fifties and ran the first Earth Summit in 1972 where he started the whole AGW ball rolling as well as the Environmental Movement. Google those two names for a real eye opener.
If it was a pharmaceutical or cigarette company engaging in these tricks, they would end up behind bars and the establishment would get off on a self-righteous buzz. This behavior by the EPA makes the Nigerian civil service look like a model of integrity. The EPA is simply a gangster cabal.
Hi folks back from my Europe trip. Europe was unseasonably cold. The locals said April / early May is often like that. At any rate if there was Global Warming I didnt feel any effects of it and there was nothing catastrophic except the state of Greece’s (and Potrtugals and Spains) economy and the climate scientists hollering to keep their funds moving in order to perpetuate their myth.
I read today “Scientists decry “assaults” on climate research”. They said “When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action, ..”.
It occurred to me that some people, at least, are saying not that society should wait not till we are “Absolutely Certain”, but that at least we know a little more than 8% about our climate, before we start predicting catastrophies and the end of civilisation due to our changing climate.
The pie chart was nice. My intuitive notion is that the “what we know we dont know” bit should be several times larger than the “what we know” bit. That it isn’t shown that way suggesst that the degree of “certainty” – the “settled science” – in this subject is a bit premature, to say the least.
It’s a subtle but very insightful comment on the current state of the entire conversation about climate and science.
This is currently listed as “Uncategorized”. If the EPA continues ot push their ruling and hearings are held, it might be a good ace in the hole to have all of these snippets about EPA’s poor science in one categorized place that can be summarized for reasonable members of the Congressional panel. I’m not sure how y’all organize the joint, I just think this one might deserve a file folder for a year or so in case.
My $0.02
MB,
Thanks for the discussion.
You are right that the PDO should be temperature neutral, that is, it should not produce a ‘long-term’ temperature trend, if you look at complete cycles. The 20th Century contained one and a half cycles, therefore a temperature trend is to be expected from the PDO over that time period.
We started with the beginning of a warm period and ended at the end of a warm period, which produces a warming trend. Consider it another way. The mid-20th Century cool phase should cancel one of the warm phases, but that still leaves you with a warm phase (about 0.3 degrees of warming) that is strictly the result of the PDO. There is no doubt that the PDO temperature oscillation is superimposed on a warming trend, but the trend is only 0.3 degrees per century when the PDO is figured in correctly.
As for the sun…I believe the cosmic ray theory has some validity and that solar activity impacts global temperature more from regulating low cloud cover than from changes in total solar radiation (which has been historically very small, thank goodness). But changing the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface by a percent or two is not going to have an immediate impact on global atmospheric temperatures. Most of that additional sunlight energy will be absorbed into the world’s oceans and, therefore, be somewhat regulated by the global ocean cycles.
I believe that the very active sun of the mid 20th Century reduced the amount of cosmic ray particles reaching the Earth and, in turn, reduce the amount of low clouds forming, thus increasing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface. Most of this ‘additional’ sunlight energy was absorbed into the world’s oceans and did not have a significant impact on the atmospheric temperatures until the ocean cycles entered their warm phases, releasing heat to the atmosphere as they usually do at those times.
In this sense, the oceans act like batteries, only they do not store electricity, but heat from the sun. The pacific stores this heat in deep waters while the PDO is in its cool phase, then releases it during the warm phase. If the deep waters are being ‘charged up’ when the sun is active and the low cloud cover is slightly less than average, then they will be a bit more ‘charged’ (warmer) than when the sun is inactive and the low cloud cover is a little thicker.
While solar activity apparently peaked decades ago, the sun has been more active than average through the entire 20th Century. The lull in activity recently may not significantly manifest in cooler atmospheric temperatures for several decades, perhaps showing up as a very weak warm phase of the PDO in the middle of this century.
It is somewhat ironic to me that AGW proponents argue that a mechanism that first warms the atmosphere (greenhouse gases) will not immediately show up on our atmospheric thermometers because the oceans will absorb much of the heat, yet try to invalidate a mechanism that primarily warms the oceans (cosmic ray effect) because it does not immediately show up on our atmospheric thermometers.
Glenn says:
Precisely. If you pay an organization $10 to find something wrong, it is not suprising they won’t find a problem. Pay that organization billions, and they had better find something to justify that kind of expenditure – reporting ‘nothing is wrong, can we have our money now?’ will raise an eyebrow or two.
The EPA is like our garbage men: they performed a service we, as individuals, could not do. Now, these garbage disposal experts are dictating what we can throw away, and then dictating what we can consume. They are, after all, ‘experts’ – experts that have overstepped their authority and which demands they be dismantled.