Guest post by Steve Goreham
The summer of 2012 will be remembered as a hot one by most Americans. Beginning with an unseasonably warm spring, the year continued with a prolonged heat wave into July and August in the Midwest and other locations. Temperatures exceeded triple digits for days in Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, and many other heartland states, producing the worst agricultural drought since the 1950s. Temperatures were described by the news media as “broiling,” “sizzling,” “scorching,” “frying,” and “unprecedented.”
The U.S. corn crop was heavily impacted. By September 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had designated over 2,000 counties in 32 states as natural disaster areas. The U.S. corn harvest totaled 10.7 billion bushels, down 13 percent from 2011. Soybean production finished at 2.9 billion bushels, down 8 percent from 2011.
Climate alarmism was as hot as the weather. Dr. James Overpeck of the University of Arizona told the Associated Press, “This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about…This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level.” Articles in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and other publications blamed “human-induced climate change” for the heat wave. Proponents of Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are destroying Earth’s climate, proclaimed disaster from sea to shining sea.
The summer of 2012 is now over and all temperature data recorded. Guess how many states set new state high-temperature records in 2012? None! According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), not one of our 50 states set a new state high temperature record in 2012 (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec).
When wildfires raged through Colorado in June, Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University told Reuters, “What we’re seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like…It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster…” Temperatures in Denver did reach 105oF in June, but this was far below the state record-high temperature of 114oF, set jointly in 1933 and 1954. Were Colorado wildfires worse in 1933 and 1954?
It was hot in Arkansas, reaching 111oF in Little Rock. But this high was well below the all-time state-high record of 120oF set in 1936. Lansing, Michigan, reached 103oF, but also fell short of the state record of 112oF set in 1936.
In fact, only one state high-temperature record has been broken in the last fifteen years, that in Ft. Pierre, South Dakota in 2006. High-temperature records for 23 of our 50 states date back to the decade of the 1930s, during worst-ever U.S. droughts in the period termed the “dust bowl.” Two-thirds of state high-temperature records were set prior to 1960, countering claims that the recent decade was “the warmest ever.”
On the contrary, what we saw during the summer of 2012 was natural temperature variation in action, not the effects of CO2, a trace gas in our atmosphere. In our United States it gets hot in the summer and sometimes also dry.
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Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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Hmm. 1994? I don’t really remember. I had graduated from HS that year and my fondest memories tend to be coldest weather episodes in Texas in the 1980s. Everybody in Texas just accept that hot weather during the summer. We only care about rainfall amount.
So where on earth do all the smarmy rhetoricians get the ‘fact’ that this was the hottest summer EVER? I see them quoting the NCDC, NOAA, CRUTemp, yadda yadda, brazenly hollering that everything was shattered. Even the thirties. Crikey.
I hope many can remember the cold winter that much of eastern Europe and Alaska experienced. Too, the Pacific North West had a very cool spring and summer. Any heat experienced in the Midwest was more than off-set by cooler temperatures in the West.
Hmmm, Cool in once place = warmer in another = a balanced system. Imagine that…..
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), not one of our 50 states set a new state high temperature record in 2012 (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec).
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It is early yet. Once NOAA reads this post the adjustments will start flying hot and heavy, and many new records will be set for 2012.
Nicely done, Steve! Keep after those university profs, you’ll find your debate soon. Best, Chuck
You should also point out that the average date for all State record lows is in 1949 and for State record highs is in 1945. Therefore, the average of the dates for the State low records is more recent than the average of the dates for the State high records! This implies slight global cooling, not warming.
We are having an early snow season here in NE Oregon. Snow spit hit my windshield on the way to work at 6:45 this morning. Nothing like the skies hocking loogies at your windshield in October. Halloween appears to be shaping up as a snowy freaky evening of trick or treating.
“The U.S. corn crop was heavily impacted.”
No just affected, but actually impacted.
So, how come if CO2 is pushing up temps, why are there not new records being set every year in the US? Could it be that climate science is completely wrong about CO2 and it has no net forcing?
Otherwise it makes no sense. Even in the forcing is much less that predicted, given the rise in CO2 we should be seeing large numbers of records every year. The fact that we are not suggests to me that CO2 has an insignificant role in climate.
in the UK, after their dismal summer, now this:
24Oct: Daily Mail: Get ready for an Arctic blast! Cold winds to blow snow showers in from the north as temperatures dive by more than 10C
By Martin Robinson and Simon Tomlinson
Gritters are being readied to cope with a widespread cold-snap, with most of the UK expected to have frosts and Scotland and northern England told to prepare for snow…
But over the coming days forecasters predict daytime highs of just 4C in the north and 8C in the south, falling to -2C in places at night…
‘For most of us, it will be the end of the week before the sunshine returns and when it does the weather will be far from warm,’ a spokesman for the Met Office said..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2222392/UK-weather-Cold-winds-blow-snow-showers-north-temperatures-dive-10C.html
The data used in the article must be have been RAW DATA that is why the “unprecedented warming” and subsequent effects are not noted. Please redo the analysis after the data has been smoothed and adjusted to conform to the current scientific research funding trend.
Great job Steve Goreham. Now the rest of us have ammunition to fire back at the crazies. By the way, we have 15 cm of snow on the ground here in Fort McMurray, Alberta even as I write. We are expecting four more days of snow starting tomorrow. That is very early for snow to stay on the ground for us. Thank God it wasn’t Toronto, Ontario otherwise there would be a national panic in Canada.
From http://www.texasalmanac.com/topics/environment/significant-weather-1990s
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Oct. 15–19, 1994: Extreme amounts of rainfall, up to 28.90 inches over a 4-day period, fell throughout southeastern part of the state. Seventeen lives were lost, most of them victims of flash flooding. Many rivers reached record flood levels. Houston was cut off from many other parts of the state, as numerous roads, including Interstate 10, were under water. Damage was estimated to be near $700 million; 26 counties were declared disaster areas.
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Was the year Belton Lake almost overflowed. That is quite an accomplishment.
facts are not enough to stop the CAGW juggernaut:
25 Oct: Sky News: Australia a major greenhouse player- UN
Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said there was a misconception among many Australians that their nation was acting alone in combating the problem.
‘Nothing could be further from reality,’ she said in a speech at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney on Wednesday.
‘Every one of Australia’s top trading partners has something already in place.’ …
***She said nations wanted to be competitive in ‘the low-carbon economy that’s coming down the pipe’…
Ms Figueres said if climate change was allowed to go on unchecked it could wipe out all the development that had taken place over the past 25 years.
‘There’s no plan B because we don’t have a planet B,’ she said.
http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=809301
“According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), not one of our 50 states set a new state high temperature record in 2012”.
But,but,but. What about the other 7 states?
Seriously,just when are the sheeple going to wake up to the fact they are being fleeced? I expect a major panic here in Edmonton,Alberta (260 miles SW of Ft.Mcmurray) this month,as it is shaping up to be the first halloween in 8 years WITHOUT snow on the ground! Quick.Let Mann know we are dying from the heat here.
Canadian wheat harvest up 5.8 % from 2011.
Hurricane Wilma hit B.C. in 1962, no hurricane since.
Steve Gorham:
I cannot find your “Year and Decade of Highest U.S. State Temperature Records” data in the
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec
reference cited, and you do not indicate the publication date for this data. Please provide a link to the NOAA data ostensibly used for your diagram.
We’re not seeing any new “high” records … because, as has been detailed on this site before, “daily average temps” are not increasing due to increased high temps, but because the “low temps” for the day are not as cool.
WUWT, has posted several studies in print addressing such, including changes in irrigation, the effects of structures, etc.
So .. the real “CAGW” theory is not that temperatures will get warmer … but that the low temperatures won’t be as cold. That is the smoke and mirrors of the CAGW cabal.
How often have we heard that the last decade was the warmest? With the Hadcrut4 anomaly for August at 0.526, the average for the first eight months of the year is (0.288 + 0.209 + 0.339 + 0.514 + 0.516 + 0.501 + 0.469 + 0.526)/8 = 0.420. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 11th. 2010 was the warmest at 0.54. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.818. With the 2011 anomaly at 0.399 in 12th place and the 2008 anomaly of 0.383 in 14th place, if things stay as they are, then 3 of the last 5 years are not even in the top 10 in Hadcrut4.
It is curious that we humans spend astronomical resources chasing mythological fantasies, such as AGW and a pittance on seeking the truth of anything.
The problem is that people with an agenda always have their agenda even when and after they are discredited. If it gets cooler now, that is still global climate change AND it is always caused by us because we are evil in our very existence. Not them of course but you. Here in western Oregon we didn’t have a single day in 2011 over 100 F. Three years of late spring, cool weather and early fall. 2012 was warmer. Late spring normal fall, cooler than normal summer. My father, who went to the 8th grade, used to say, “it’s the usual unusual weather”. Hell, I remember when they blamed it all on nuclear bombs going off in the 50’s.
Weather changes. Climate changes and thank God that, Mihigan (well, maybe Wisconson) isn’t under a mile of ice. Better now, eh?
And, if it is us, how do you expect to fix it with 7 billion people and most with a great desire to not use a hole in the ground for a toilet and to have things like lights and heat.
Ferd, a couple answers to your comments.
First, the NOAA state extreme data base uses data from raw thermometer measurements. Therefore, all measurements are in for 2012. I have checked with NOAA and there were no state high temperature records set this last year.
Second, the reason that the state extreme data base conflicts with other NOAA data is that many other NOAA databases are based on adjusted data. NOAA adds an adjustment which is on average about 0.5 degrees fahrenheit (biased to higher temperatures) to the raw thermometer data. From these adjusted numbers, claims are made that this summer was the hottest ever. But the raw themometer numbers do not reflect this.
This isn’t for the whole state of Ohio but the all time record high for Columbus was 106*F set on July 21, 1934 and tied July 14, 1936.
The all time record low was -22*F set January 19, 1994.
Be careful not to give the Warmists ammunition here : It is possible to
have lower maxima coexisting with higher means … “Dr Deanster” implied
this in his(?) post above.
From July 2011: “NOAA released the July “State of the Climate” update for the U.S., and, no surprise, reported blistering heat torched large parts of the country. The average temperature of 77 was the fourth warmest since 1895. Amazingly, Oklahoma’s average July temperature was 88.9 degrees – the warmest to occur in any state during any month on record.
But July was not only scorching hot. July’s Climate Extremes Index, which examines the percentage of the U.S. impacted by a full range of extreme weather conditions, was the highest on record for the month (since 1910). Thirty seven percent of the country contended with extreme weather. The extreme July – for all extreme weather classifications – follows the most extreme spring for precipitation .”
That was pretty hot, too.