Story submitted by Forrest Mims III, originally published for the San Antonio Express-News
In the early days of this column, concerned readers sent many questions about the earth’s ozone layer, which I began measuring in 1990. Today, public interest in the ozone layer has been replaced by concern about global warming.
Answering questions about global warming requires considerably more space than this 437-word column. So let’s focus in on the temperature history of Texas for now.
The 2011 Texas drought was exacerbated by the highest temperatures since 1895 during June, July and August. Several prominent climate scientists have blamed these record highs on global warming. These claims are puzzling because, in spite of the 2011 record highs, Texas records going back more than a century show slightly more cooling than warming. So I visited the National Climatic Data Center website to review Texas temperature records. The NCDC provides monthly temperature records for 10 Texas regions going back to 1895.
It also provides the average temperature for the entire state.
I retrieved all 12 months of data for each year since 1895 and plotted the average annual temperatures on a chart along with their trend. As shown in the chart, the average temperature of Texas barely changed between 1895 and 2011.
The total warming during those 116 years was a statistically insignificant 0.046 degree Fahrenheit. If the record highs of 2011 are omitted, Texas cooled 0.055 degree from 1895 to 2010.
The NCDC temperature data do not fully account for the enhanced warming of weather stations that have become surrounded by buildings and pavement. This is the heat island effect. Dr. Daniel Boice of the Southwest Research Foundation studied the temperature at New Braunfels and San Antonio from 1946 to 1990. www.swri.org/3pubs/ttoday/fall97/heat.htm
He found that San Antonio has warmed when compared with its smaller neighbor. San Antonio might be several degrees cooler today than in 1885 if no new buildings and roads had been constructed. Why do some scientists insist that Texas is warming when the data show a negligible increase? I don’t know. But I do know that a National Science Foundation program officer told me that applications for atmospheric science grants that do not include a global warming theme stand little chance of acceptance.
Climate scientists are right to be concerned about droughts, especially since no Texas drought since precipitation records were begun around 1870 matches the megadroughts revealed in the rings of bald cypress trees. Those droughts occurred hundreds of years before SUVs and power plants began pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a process blamed for global warming that has not yet arrived in Texas.
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Forrest Mims III, an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was named one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover Magazine. His science is featured at www.forrestmims.org. Email him at forrest.mims@ieee.org.
I looked at the more advanced statistics for the Texas temperatures. The slope (sometimes mis-named the ‘trend’) is 0.0443 degrees per century, but the standard error of that value is 0.2655 degrees per century. The slope could be as high as 0.575 degrees per century, or as low as -0.487 degrees per century (+/- 2 sigma = 95% confidence limits).
In other words the trend is statistically insignificant.
Too late folks as usual, the Warmist lies have run around the World while the truth was still getting its boots on…
Sorry, moderators, but sometimes nothing happens to let me know my attempt to post actually worked. Usually there is an instant response indicating the post took. When there is none, I have no clue whether it took or not. It seems I have to log in with a different browser to know for sure.
Feel free to delete the superfluous posts–and this one. –AGF
[REPLY: Not sure what you are seeing, but some times it takes a little while to approve all the comments, and some times comments end up in the spam filter and need a little more time to be retrieved. -REP]
Hey! I’d wondered what happened to Forrest Mims.
I owe a large part of my career to learning digital electronics from Forrest’s ‘Cookbooks’.
Thanks hugely, Forrest!
Not surprised to find you working on the factual side of this particular subject, but glad you’re still going strong.
Tennessee anyone?
The NOAA says Tennessee has been cooling since 1895 by -.03F / decade. Which is the same as Arkansas.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/the-warming-hole-tennessee-noaa/
@AGF What would the hockey stick look like if you coloured each individual temperature record and proxy differently, so you could “compare apples to apples”? There’s a lot done already to deconstruct the hockey stick, all that’s needed is to present it graphically in similar fashion.
lancaster did the cookbooks. mims did the notebooks.
one of the most fun guys a kid could grow up reading – i remember the o-scope the size of a matchbox out of 2 chips.
I lived in Dallas around the late 70’s and it was a lot hotter then.
Days of 110 F wre common , as many as 21 of them in a row.
That hasn’t happened since then.
agfosterjr says:
April 27, 2012 at 10:00 am
The Texas state climatologist thinks he’s got the goods on us:
Anyone care to deconstruct him? –AGF
[Moderator’s Note: Don’t you think three links to the same site are about enough? -REP]
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Indeed REP…… okay AGF, I’ll bite. It’s a fallacious argument. It is essentially the same as Foster and Rahmsdorf’s. Just do a search here for much discussion on that bit of idiocy proclaiming that ‘it would be getting warmer if not for it not getting warmer’. It’s fascinating to see them blame it on La Nina, but when El Nino rears it’s head, it’s all about CAGW. It’s a duplicitous argument. If not for volcanoes….. blah, blah…. those naturally occurring events haven’t happened in a grand manner for quite some time. But, again, it’s fallacious to consider them separate from the earth’s temps. Further, a sharp observer would notice that Nielsen-Gammon found a creative way to eliminate the El Nino of 2009-2010 from his graphics. Very nice ploy. He gets creativity points. I’m not sure that’s what we’re looking for in our scientists, but look at him go! As the ad says, “But wait! There’s more!!!”
He continues in his laughable creativity by displaying a graph from 1951-2011. Then he states, “To dig deeper, I’ll zoom in on the period since Agung. This isolates the period of nearly steady warming since 1970 and lets us focus a bit more on what has happened since 1998 or so. Here’s the chart:”,
But, again we see that’s nothing of the sort. He presents the same graphic except from 1967 to present. There is no focus on what “happened since 1998 or so.” He continues with his lunacy by stating, “Somehow, it no longer appears that global temperatures have leveled off in the past decade.” But, in the next para….. “Stare hard enough, though, and you see that they have leveled off. The last ten data points have little or no trend.” Odd, he never really shows the trend. Here’s the last ten years showing the same GISS data he’s using….. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002 (expect corrections as the data moves further away from the present. The temps will retroactively drop.)
You see AGF, to continue this facade, we must get creative. We must come up with skull piercing, mind numbing, abject stupidity to state that ‘if things were different, they’d be different’. I’d go into more detail, but they’re pretending ENSO is a force of it’s own like a volcano, which for some reason only counts when they serve to advance the CAGW argument, but when they don’t, they play a juvenile game of calling “no counts!” There are a couple of very learned people here who can explain ENSO in much greater detail than I, and the mysteries of it’s mechanisms, but considering intellectual vacuums such as what Nielsen-Gammon has presented only serves to makes us dumber. Already I’m preparing to purchase some malt beverages to cleanse my brain cells of the ones infected by exposure to this sophomoric idiocy.
AGF, I want to thank you. I’ve been on the road and while the accommodations were supposedly high-end, I couldn’t get them to understand that some of their access points weren’t functioning properly so I didn’t have a chance to participate much in the climate discussion. So, this was building up a bit. Thanks again!
James
All these significant digits… what kind of thermometers were being used back in 1985-mid-20th C. that went out to three significant digits? If your thermometer is calibrated in degrees, then your observational error is going to be +/- 0.5 deg no matter how many thermometers you use. One would get a more accurate reading by using a bunch more thermometers, but they’ll all still have that +/- 0.5 deg error bar, and no amount of statistics can make that go away.
_Jim says:
April 27, 2012 at 10:15 am
I lost a couple Maple trees (I know; they are/were bad choice for this area, but I also lost a native Persimmon tree too) owing to the long, hot, dry summer last year.
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Nerd says:
April 27, 2012 at 10:27 am
Which maple? Up here in Ft. Worth at Metro Maples, they had Shantung maples surviving last summer without any water in sandy soil. Maybe that’s why they were designated as Texas Superstar plants…. http://metromaples.com/perfect_anti_storm.htm
Unknown Maple sub-species. But last spring a frost seemed to have ‘done in’ a couple trees in the front yard (which had leafed out when the freeze, not just a frost, occurred) and by the end of summer the remaining living trees had shed a lot of leaves despite regular (although restricted per city ordinance) ‘lawn waterings’.
During subsequent removal I noticed bores in the Maples and the Persimmon tree. I don’t know the species of these maples; several were planted before I moved in and a couple I raised from seedlings from seedlings that sprang up. I also lost several cherry trees by the time summer was over. I think between the weather and insects the trees succumbed …
The large Maple in the front yard was struck by lightning s few years back too; the upper growth supports that plus I was on the front porch when the bolt struck (no delay between what looked like a nearby lightning strike and thunder ‘report’ plus one can actually hear what I will describe as a high frequency ‘hiss’ that accompanied the strike ostensibly as the air ‘breaks down’ and forms the conducting plasm path to earth and or objects to earth.)
Funnily, the fruitless Bradford Pear tree out by the street has survived all this (freeze and last summer) and looks good this year.
.
Texas has been warming since the 1970’s. I don’t know if it is AGW. But there was some mid centery cooling in NA due mainly to aerosol pollutants.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=tmp&month=12&year=2011&filter=ytd&state=110&div=0
We have a drought in the UK at the moment
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/26/drought-hit-england-floods?newsfeed=true
“However, the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, said the rain would not avert the drought and water companies were right to impose a hosepipe ban”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17867522
“The UK has seen a dramatic change in the weather in the past few days, changing from drought warnings to flood alerts”
Met Office 3-month Outlook
Period: April – June 2012 Issue date: 23.03.12
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layout-precip-AMJ.pdf
“The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drierthanaverage
conditions for AprilMayJune
as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the
driest of the 3 months.”
LMAO! AGF, I really need to thank you again! You caused me to look in a place where I had refused to earlier. So, ENSO accounts for the slight decreasing temp trend of recent years? Okay, let’s graph the ENSO values of 1970-1998, where the most dramatic temp increases occurred…….
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/does-enso-alter-our-global-temps-omglmao/
Uhmm……… ok, I’ll take ENSO caused the global warming for $200, Jack. It’s going to be difficult to state ENSO caused the flattening/cooling and then state that it didn’t cause the warming as well.
_Jim says:
April 27, 2012 at 11:25 am
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The trees don’t die on the spot, they fail to thrive.
“Jeff Norman says:
April 27, 2012 at 9:54 am
“The 2011 Texas drought was exacerbated by the highest temperatures since 1895 during June, July and August. Several prominent climate scientists have blamed these record highs on global warming.”
It would have been better if Mims had actually identified these “prominent climate scientists” and provided links to their pronouncements. Without these, this article is something of a strawman.”
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Google is your friend in cases like this. It isn’t a strawman if I can find the answer in under 10 seconds with google.
Keyword search was — record texas highs climate change.
second article on the list was this: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/environment/article/Droughts-water-woes-expected-to-intensify-3381513.php Which perusing of reveals 2 named climate scientists. Some person I’m sure no one has ever heard of. James Hansen of NASA and the Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon are both quoted in the article.
Amusingly this quote by Hansen has since been proven wrong in several areas.
“We conclude that extreme heat waves, such as that in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, were ‘caused’ by global warming, because their likelihood was negligible prior to the recent rapid global warming,” he wrote in the paper that is still undergoing peer review. “We can say with a high degree of confidence that these extreme anomalies were a consequence of global warming.”
The fourth link returned was this one with climatologist Katharine Hayhoe http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/03/30/climate-change-and-the-drought-an-interview-with-katharine-hayhoe/ Found on NPR.
Do you want me to continue looking up climatologists attributing this to AGW?
Just to get this straight.
The record that nobody trusts says that it hasnt been warming in Texas.
The record that nobody trusts shows a UHI in Tmin of ~.3C per decade in san antonio.
where the record nobody trusts in san antonio was compared to three surrounding temperatures
which nobody trusts. Funny how they didnt compare the Tmax measure that nobody trusts as well
And these results from temperatures that nobody trusts are reported to 1/100ths of a degree F.
And when GCR studies show that increased GCR leads to increased clouds and lower temps,
its a record that you dont trust that provides the evidence. And when Scefetta produces a projection based on solar activity and record you dont trust, that projection is what? GIGO?
And when sea level increases from 1900 to today, that must be due to
1. warming that isnt happening
2. meltwater from landed ice, that isnt actually melting.
And when you say that we are recovering from the LIA, what is really meant is that it is no warmer today than it was when washington crossed the delaware or frost fairs were held in london.
Its not warming in texas. its not warming anywhere. Glaciers are not melting. Sea level is the same as it always was, and frost fairs are scheduled for next year in London.
/sarc off
Mosher: “The record that nobody trusts says that it hasnt been warming in Texas.”
Or Arkansas. Or Tennessee ….
You trust it. And we are mocking you with the data you trust.
Does not compute; assertion would seem to be at odds with (does not match) field observation.
Loss of bark (literally: bark is coming/hanging off the trees), failure to bring forth ‘spring bloom’ of leaves and helicopter seeds: death was pronounced and deconstruction (by chainsaw) has commenced …
.
Is anyone else seeing 120 year period sinusoid in that graph?
James Sexton says:
April 27, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Uhmm……… ok, I’ll take ENSO caused the global warming for $200, Jack. It’s going to be difficult to state ENSO caused the flattening/cooling and then state that it didn’t cause the warming as well.
I looked at their graphs and it didn’t make any sense to me. Everything I’ve seen (particularly from Tisdale) show we’ve had more El Niños. Their graph showed the opposite. How did they come up with that? Typical warmist adjusting? Make it up? Who knows.
Is not the “/” the logical not operator?
Therefore your “/sarc off” may be re-written thusly: //sarc and double-not being simply: “sarc”.
The “/” operator is not an ‘Esc’ (escape) character used to access some alternate character set (like back in the teletype days) n is it to indicate an ‘escaped’ sequence of characters that may mimic control characters suc as in bit-oriented protocols like HDLC where the ‘flag’ sequence when appearing in binary data would be ‘escaped’ with a specific, dedicated, preceding and indicating ‘byte’ …
.
When there is a post saying “Climate scientists who have been claiming Texas is warming are totally wrong”, why can’t we be told who those scientists are, and what they said? After all, they can read the NCDC site too. In fact, the site was compiled by climate scientists and meteorologists. Are they totally wrong as well?