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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Some sort of Climate Laxative is probably in order.
Just a dumb question from a redneck country-boy …. If CO2 is such a driver of temperature increase, and man-made CO2 is such an important component of that CO2, why do we NOT see the 1940’s having record high temperatures? After all, what happened in WWII -all the gasoline burned in trucks, tanks, airplanes, fuel oil and coal in ships, energy used in factories for all the war production, all the cities in Europe and elsewhere that were burned- that’s a LOT of CO2!
ferd berple says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:53 pm
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?
Yes and it wouldn’t be the first time science was wrong!
“Temperatures in Denver did reach 105oF in June, but this was far below the state record-high temperature of 114F, set jointly in 1933 and 1954. Were Colorado wildfires worse in 1933 and 1954?”
Is that sentence very meaningful by itself? I think the 105F temp in Denver this summer tied the all-time record high for Denver and the upper “Front Range” region (the part of the state at about 5000 ft elevation along the base of the Rockies from about Denver to Wyoming). That 114F temp is surely in the far SE corner of the state over by Oklahoma, likely around 3400 ft MSL. The gap between 105F in Denver and 114F over there means nothing by itself. I don’t know what the highers were in the SE corner of the state this year.
I hate to quibble about the data being used. In Denver, we may not have set a new record high (overall) but we had several days where specific records were broken. Also, we set a record with the number of days at or above 90. In spite of this, I truly feel this is a reflection of – Denver isn’t the state as a whole and no matter which records were set in the US, the US only represents about 2% of the globe. This doesn’t qualify in anyone’s analysis as global.
Chris Wright says:
October 25, 2012 at 4:15 am
The melting runway could not have been caused by global warming, as there hasn’t been any since the last century. Most likely it was caused by incompetence. And a strange phenomenon commonly known as ‘summer’.
Or black soot from aircraft exhausts. or antifreeze sprayed on the aircraft wings.
NewToSite: it’s true the 105 in Denver doesn’t compare correctly to the state all time high. But consider that the Denver temperature is now measured at DIA which is direr and a bit warmer than the old measurement site at Stapleton. It obviously makes sense that Denver would have a better chance at tying its all time high.
As for the state all-time records, they are generally free from local siting problems. These hot places are generally remote and rural and have not gotten hotter despite whatever global warming we might have had over the years.
eric1skeptic – To extend your point, the official measurement location in Denver has changed at three times in the past. Until the Stapleton site was used, the official measurement was in City Park, far far far away from the concrete jungle known as an airport. I think this change was in the 30’s as Stapleton was built in ’29. Then the site changed again in 1995 with the closure of Stapleton and the opening of DIA. I think the difference in location between City Park and DIA is 40 plus miles. The main difference is, in a park setup, lots trees and manicured/watered/maintained grass versus open prairie with miles of concrete. What is peculiar is, lots of times, DIA has a lower temp than the local news stations which are on the outskirts of downtown.
I just studied the website of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). I was curious how the findings of Steve Goreham (based on NOAA raw data) compare with those of the Federal Government of the USA.
A link to Key Findings of the USGCRP is below:
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/key-findings
This reads like fear-mongering propaganda, followed by an advertisement for “low-emissions” energy sources. The overall tone is highly pessimistic as opposed to scientific or disinterested.
The USA is split into eight geographical regions. A sub-heading under each region assessment lists “key issues”. Mostly, this consists of “projected calamities” which could/should result at some future date. No effort is made to summarize findings where data would indicate a regional temperature vs. time profile over the past century that is not alarming (which clearly must be the case if maximum temperatures measured in 30 of the 50 states have not been exceeded for 70+ years and counting!).
Finally, minimal effort is made to educate the reader about limits to the projections (and least of the potential that the models used could be grossly in error). Mitigation policies are referred to as “essential” (which implies the assumption that these will have a measurable effectivity). Most interestingly, “uncertainty” is ascribed based on the decision by a “Federal Advisory Committee”!
Kurt in Switzerland
I wasn’t providing commentary about climate change, and the points made above—about land-use changes around a given weather station and wholesale relocations of the Denver weather station—-are all valid. All I was pointing out is that it is severely fallacious to compare (or inadverdantly appear to compare, I hope) a record high in or near Denver to a state-wide record high that was set in a very different climatic zone.
We didn’t set any heat records, but it was a long, hot, dry summer in Kansas.
Usually summers in Kansas are surprisingly humid (at least here in the east), regardless of summer rainfall. This summer, we had so little precip that the relative humidity was low (relatively speaking, of course).
We didn’t set any high temperature records, but even people who were alive the last time the record was set (1936) don’t really remember it. That’s one reason why the GW meme gets so much traction.
Also, in 1936, people were used to living without air conditioning. It just seems so much hotter now because we aren’t acclimated to our natural climate. We sleep in air conditioned homes. We work in air conditioned offices. Everywhere we shop is air conditioned. We drive in air conditioned cars. Air conditioning was a luxury not too long ago. Most homes didn’t have it, or only had a window A/C unit for the whole house. Same with our vehicles. Now you have to struggle to find a car where A/C isn’t a standard feature. For some of us, the only time we aren’t in a climate controlled environment is when we’re getting in and out of our climate controlled vehicles. So the summers seem hotter and more humid (and the winters seem colder bleaker as well).
Reblogged this on Ready For Anything Preparedness Store and commented:
Re-blogged from Watts Up With That news blog out of New Zealand.
I assume your record temperature for Colorado was drawn from this Weather Underground comment:
Las Animas is in the extreme south east portion of the state (Arkansas river valley) I once lived not far from there in Rocky Ford Colorado. The 1930’s dust bowl extended up into that part of the state. It certainly is hot much of the year in that area, Sedgewick is in the extreme North east corner of the state and it also well known for hot summer temperatures.
The highest recorded temperature in the state is often quoted as being in Bennet Colorado at 118 deg F 11 July 1888. There is some question about that temperature and some discount it but having been a storm chaser out in that area it is easily capable of temperatures well up in the 100-teens.
It interestingly enough is literally with in sight of DIA, from bennet you can see the aircraft on final approach into DIA and from high ground near Bennet you can actually look down on the airfield.
I would suppose one of the reasons that 118 deg F record is discounted is that very proximity to DIA and the current weather recording location. If it is a true temperature taken with reasonable thermometer siting it would tend to document that the DIA location is much hotter than the Stapleton or City Park recording stations.
I grew up in Denver and the hottest summers I have ever experienced were in the mid 1950’s, the early 1970’s (all the down town bank thermometers were showing 105-107 deg F temps) and a particularly hot summer in the 1980’s. In all of those years temperatures in the 102-105 degree F range were common through out the Denver Metro area although the “official temperature” at the Stapleton site was in the low 100’s. I have been up and close to the old Stapleton weather recording station in the 1980’s and it was a pretty good site with the enclosure in the center of a large grass area and a long single sidewalk out to the enclosure (approaching from the north) the only nearby concrete and buildings were well back from the enclosure. It was however just off the Airport proper and the main east west runways were only a few hundred feet south of the weather station. Likewise I70 was about a 1/4 mile north. Otherwise it was in open prairie terrain.
Larry
” NOAA databases are based on adjusted data”
Seriously, even the NOAA works on the BLS “adjustment” model? Are they using the same “birth-death” model for Arctic ice? I bet they all use the same software for crunching numbers and “revising” said numbers after the fact (because headline numbers are the only ones that get any play).
“…When a potential record meteorological value has been observed, it will be brought to the attention of the local National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Office or the state’s State Climatologist. If, after reviewing the observation, the WFO or State Climatologist feels it is legitimate, they will convene the SCEC for a review and vote on the value.”
Even temperature records are determined by a committee? I can imagine the scene: ‘I am sorry, comrade Nature, but the Supreme Soviet of Communist Climate has voted, and there’ll be no gold star for you. Your temperatures just aren’t heroic enough.”
@more soylent green! – I know it’s supposed to be a skeptic’s perspective, but your post reminds me of a sarcastic comment on ZH about some BS economic data: “Numbers aren’t important. It’s how you FEEL about those numbers that’s important.”
We’ve had a dreary and rather cool ‘summer’ here in the UK. In the last two days we’ve also seen small amounts of snow and there were freezing cold gales, with hail at times, and big seas off the Northumberland coast. (It is very beautiful, mind). This all happened a few days after a supposed mini-heatwave, which certainly didn’t happen away from the south east, but which has been made much of by the media.
I used to enjoy October in England; gentle warmish sun and fruit and nut-gathering. Not this year though!
It therefore really intrigues me to see the chart above….I can’t find any ‘highest’ figures marked ‘2012’!
Am I being sarky, or what?
Is there a difference in Brit slang between “sarky” and “snarky”? I assume “sarky” is a phonetic contraction of “sarcastic-y”.