Guest post by David Middleton
My State is currently in the grip of a very severe drought…
Professor Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric sciences professor at our nation’s greatest university, recently authored a column about our drought in the Bryan-College Station Eagle…
Published Tuesday, August 30, 2011 12:05 AM
Paying the price for climate change
By ANDREW DESSLER
Special to The Eagle
Texas Gov. Rick Perry stirred up controversy on the campaign trail recently when he dismissed the problem of climate change and accused scientists of basically making up the problem.
As a born-and-bred Texan, it’s especially disturbing to hear this now, when our state is getting absolutely hammered by heat and drought. I’ve got to wonder how any resident of Texas — and particularly the governor who not so long ago was asking us to pray for rain — can be so cavalier about climate change…
[…]
I know that climate change does not cause any specific weather event. But I also know that humans have warmed the climate over the past century, and that this warming has almost certainly made the heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.
[…]
Dr. Roy Spencer had an interesting take on Dr. Dessler’s column in his blog…
Dessler vs. Rick Perry: Is the 2011 Texas Drought Evidence of Human-Caused Climate Change?
September 5th, 2011 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
One of the most annoying things about the climate change debate is that any regional weather event is blamed on humans, if even only partly. Such unscientific claims cannot be supported by data — they are little more than ambiguous statements of faith.
[…]
Andy Dessler recently made what I’m sure he thought was a safe claim when faulting Texas Gov. Rick Perry for being “cavalier about climate change” (as if we could stop climate from changing by being concerned about it).
Dessler said, “..warming has almost certainly made the (Texas) heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.”
This clever tactic of claiming near-certainty of at least SOME effect of humans on weather events was originally invented by NASA’s James Hansen in his 1988 Senate testimony for Al Gore, an event that became the turning point for raising public awareness of “global warming” (oops, I’m sorry, I mean climate change).
The trouble is that climate change theory predicts changes, up and down, in just about anything you can imagine. So, anything unusual that happens anywhere, anytime, is deemed “consistent” with global warming.
[…]
According to Dr. Spencer the current national drought conditions are not exceptional; nor is there any statistically significant trend…
And, while Texas is experiencing a record-setting drought; the “record” is just over a century-long and there is no trend at all…
The lack of a trend in the precipitation data made me wonder… Just how often should we be setting precipitation records if the annual variation is random?
The record only goes back to 1895. Does anyone know how often record highs and record lows should be broken in such a short time series?
At a record length of 117 years, there was a 1% chance of setting a new record high in the 117th year…
The probability, pn(1), that the nth observation of a series xm= x1, x2, … xn has a higher value than the previous observations [pn(1) = Pr(xn > xi |i < n)] can be expressed as:
pn(1)= 1/n (1)
provided the values in series are iid random variables.
(Benestad, 2003)
The cumulative probability says that 5 records should have been set between 1895 and 2011.
So, let’s have a look at the data. I downloaded the summer precipitation data for Texas from NCDC’s “U.S. Climate at a Glance” page…
In order to analyze the frequency of record excursions, I plotted the absolute value of the annual summer precipitation anomaly along with an “expected records” curve…
There have been 5 record excursions from the average annual summer precipitation – Exactly what there should have been in a random series of numbers. And the records have occurred with the expected frequency of a random series of numbers. The fifth record excursion should have occurred between 1945 and 2030 – It occurred in 2007.
>> SteveE says:
September 14, 2011 at 2:48 am
I don’t think public opinion is a good measure on the truth of something though. A good measure might be the percentage of experts who have researched the subject in question. <<
Therefore, since the percentage of Catholic Priests (experts on religion) who say that God exists is well over 90%, there is no question that it's true.
In my case… I’m an Aggie by marriage.
Texas didn’t participate in that fraction of a degree of global warming…
Texas Annual, Year-to-Date & Summer Temperatures (1885-2011)
2011, particularly our summer, is a random outlier.
so if not for “humans” a 105 degree day would have been 104.3 degrees … I don’t know about you but I can’t tell the difference between 105 and 104.3 … maybe Dr. D can … and this man is considered a scientist ? Really ???
David,
Straight shootin’ and on target statistics there, Tex! You’ve given us another timely and relevant analysis to refute the misguided statements of Dessler et.al.
Thank You!
Q: How do you get an Aggie off your porch?
A: Pay him for the pizza!
“P.G. Sharrow says:
September 13, 2011 at 9:42 pm
Heavy stands of juniper and loblolly pine! My god! how long has your state been infested by ” Smokey the Bear”. And you probably have large numbers of city people that have moved into this fire trap to “live out in the country”.”
The fires are everywhere not just in the trees but the tree areas around here in central Texas have finally had some of the dreaded massive outbreaks that plague the southern left coast. At last count a record 1,554 houses completely lost in one fire complex of around 34,000 acres. Numerous other fires of record number and acreage this year and a double-dip La Nina to look forward too.
Just another routine year in Texas as far as weather and climate go. Nothing to see here, move along.
Not wishing to be pedantic, but the closing paragraph states:
“There have been 5 record excursions from the average annual summer precipitation – Exactly what there should have been in a random series of numbers.”
I wiould haev thought that it was impossible to say what a random series ‘should’ produce, more accurate would be:
“There have been 5 record excursions from the average annual summer precipitation – Exactly what one would expect in a random series of numbers.”
Pedantic I’ll accept, but working for years in patents does that to you.
Statistics verses physics?
It’s lucky your Texas records didn’t start in 1919.
Some one above commented on whether rainfall follows a normal distribution: I believe that for daily totals, it has been generally found that a Gamma distribution is better. But that doesn’t mean that seasonal/annual totals aren’t approximated quite well by a normal distribution.
I make 6 figures at an oil company and have thousands invested so I don’t believe any of the global warming science. I also wouldn’t believe the world is round if it threatened my livelihood. So keep undermining the science–I’ve got to make payments on my Lexus! Lol
David,
I appreciate the approach you took to evaluating if the current rainfall (and temperatures) amounts in Texas fall within what the climate process has historically been. As you pointed out the variation around the average value has to be considered to answer the question.
As you have worked in the oil and gas industry for a few years you have likely already seen the “Dr. Hansen’s 1981 Projections Compared to Observations”- graph showing us how bad things will be if we don’t stop using fossil fuels. http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/1/6/9/7/0/5/1981cfobs-46485264070.jpeg
I came across the graph in a post by Icarus says:September 10, 2011 at 11:26 am of interest-
“I would ask this:Hansen’s 1981 projections are matching reality pretty well so far that lead me to – Dr. Hansen’s 1981 Projections compared to Observations.
I hadn’t seen the Hansen graph before. As it’s been a bit over 30 years since it was first published, maybe Al Gore will be presenting an updated version of the graph at his upcoming event.
I assume Dr. Hansen’s estimates (projections/scenarios/etc.) of the growth of fossil fuel usage was a little low compared to what has happened in the last thirty years. It seems to me that if we want to evaluate the 1981 projections we need to look into the implied CO2 sensitivity value used to generate the graph for each of the fossil fuel usage time points by scenario. Maybe Dr. Hansen would be willing to update the fossil fuel usage values from his original estimates ( we have 30 years data now) to the real thing without modifying the original CO2 sensitivity value. Then we could tell if the projections are matching reality well or not.
Dessler said, “..warming has almost certainly made the (Texas) heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.”
It’s called La Nina…nuff said
That’s OK. I wasn’t wishing to be deserving of pedantic criticism… You are correct. I should have better worded that last paragraph.
So if I were to say “Warming has almost certainly not made the Texas heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.” can I not say that this is just as true a statement as “Warming has almost certainly made the (Texas) heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.”
Weasel words make me so mad!
“Climate in Texas is drought punctuated by flood.”
LOL
Andy ‘toes touching tonsils’ Dessler says:
“But I also know that humans have warmed the climate over the past century, and that this warming has almost certainly made the heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.”
He knows these things? Knows? Really?
It was undoubtedly that sort of self-deceptiveTexan conceit that prompted the most famous son of neighboring Oklahoma to observe:
“It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”
Will Rogers
Confusing faith for knowledge is the sort of thing that the likes of Dessler falsely (and fallaciously)use to ad hom Spencer… the pot calling the driven snow ‘black’.
This guy walks into a bar and orders a drink. As the bartender serves the drink, the guy asks, “Hey, I heard a good Aggie joke the other day. Do you want to hear it?” The bartender says, “Well before you tell it, I should warn you that I’m an Aggie. See those two guys at the end of the bar? They’re Aggies. And see those guys over at that table. They’re Aggies too. Are you sure you want to tell that joke?” The guy replied, “Hell no! I don’t want to explain it five times…”
Something I’ve noticed over the years of watching this debate is warmists usually have a definition of what a “normal climate” is. Usually a “normal climate” is better defined as good, or temperate, weather. I recently got a good dose of that when I was in the Galapagos Islands in August.
The naturalists who were leading out our trip to these AMAZING islands, were very clear that El Niño was a negative scenario in the Galapagos. Essentially, when El Niño roars the water warms up around there, becomes less fertile and the sea life, and other life that depend upon productive seas, suffer greatly. Never mind that this is what spurs natural selection and speciation. Also never mind that during El Niño seasons, it is very wet and the land animals do quite well in Galapagos. Also never mind that in Texas we are typically enjoying cool, wet, and productive weather. El Niño is BAD and caused by AGW according to all of the Galapagos naturalists.
La Niña, on the other hand, is a blessed paradise down there and represents the natural order of things. The Humboldt current runs strong from South America and brings in cold, abundant waters to the seas around Galapagos. The marine mammals, birds and iguanas thrive in these conditions. Never mind that it doesn’t rain and the land animals are put under severe pressure. Never mind that in Texas it doesn’t rain and we fry under a relentless sun, as we have been under the latest La Niña conditions. To them, this is the natural state of things and anything that upsets it is global warming caused by human burning of fossil fuels.
I finally told our naturalist, “it sure saddens me that all of the lesser animals in Texas have to fry in a drought in order for the special ones in Galapagos to thrive.”
She declined to respond, but I think it may have shorted a few circuits in her brain.
Y’all might want to read what one of Anthony’s co-authors has to say on this topic.
REPLY: Well, unlike the team, co-authors don’t form a wagon circle consensus for the sake of it. We have sometimes divergent opinions, which is always a plus in science. This is why we invited him to be part of the paper. – Anthony
SteveE says:
September 14, 2011 at 2:48 am
I don’t think public opinion is a good measure on the truth of something though. A good measure might be the percentage of experts who have researched the subject in question.
Snap out of it, Steve! How’s about “the truth of something” being manifested by its production of correct empirical predictions? Since you don’t refer to this standard and seem to intentionally avoid it, the “something” being allegedly professed by you and your “experts” is therefore not saying anything relevant to the empirical reality which it only appears to be talking about. It’s words and symbols instead constitute nonsense as compared to empirically meaningful factual claims, no matter how many of the “experts” which you yourself have merely annointed as experts say and write the noises and appearances which you and they like to hear and see.
Don’t be fooled by making a simple mistake! Just because people put symbols together in the form of factual statements, it does not follow that their symbols are indeed factual claims. Their symbols must relate to empirical reality via real scientific method and principle science. So far, “CO2=CAGW” doesn’t, and it’s therefore not even intended to relate to reality, at least as used by your ipcc Climate Science, enc., “experts”!
Roy treating records as a set of incremental numbers that have been randomized and assuming the first number in the randomized set is a record,the number of records to be expected is equal to: ln n where n= the number in the set or number of years in this case. Your graph certainly shows the log function and ln 120 does equal 4.8 (your 5 records). The nature of the beast is revealed when you explore how long we can expect to wait for the next record, wait for it! Ln 420=6 so we should expect to wait over a couple of centuries for the next record. Of course we are talking random so it could happen next year, but not likely.
Of even greater interest and a wonderful check on this randomness of weather records, and dare I say essentially a powerful proof of the skeptic’s position on CAGW, is the fact that all weather records would therefore be 5 – floods on the Red River of the NOrth which I found to be 5 as well and reported this result in a comment on the subject in WUWT, etc. I think it would be a fun exercise to check out snowfall,rainfall, hurricane, etc records in particular regions and see if they, too number 5.
For completeness, you should repeat your statistics for droughts. Are there 5 records as well over the last 117 years?
Please update the blog post so I can see your debunk go all the way!
Mark says:
September 14, 2011 at 7:52 am
Mark, the observations plotted on that graph do not appear to match any of the four major compilations of global temperature anomaly. The plot shows no 1998 peak, and it shows a significant increase in the last decade, which has not been the case.