While watching her handwaving argument on the webcast with Senator Vitter, I was easily able to find data contradictory to her statement in Dr. Roger Roger Pielke Jr. submitted testimony.
What the data says:
5. Floods have not increased in the US in frequency or intensity since at least 1950.
Figure 5. One measure of flood frequency from the USGS, percent of US streamguages above “bankfull streamflow.” The USGS explains: “The bankfull streamflow is defined as the highest daily mean streamflow value expected to occur, on average, once in every 2.3 years.”
Xiaodong Jian, David M. Wolock, Harry F. Lins, and Steve Brady, Streamflow of 2012—Water Year Summary, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, May 2013.
Live video here: Live Webcast – Flash
Operational question: are the Senators smart enough to perceive the falsification? Only the Budget Committee knows for sure.
If Comet Ison lives up to hype/expectations then minds (the general public) might then be focused on what’s real.
http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/8219/20130717/path-doom-what-sungrazing-comet.htm
oops ISON
Not entirely off topic: Paul Craig Roberts: `The Unspoken Truth: Coup d’Etat in America’
The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere scrap of paper….
“The basis of the regime in Washington is nothing but usurped power. The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force. Those in government see the US Constitution as a chain that binds our hands….
“The only constitutional protection that the Bush/Obama regime has left standing is the Second Amendment, a meaningless amendment considering the disparity in arms between Washington and what is permitted to the citizenry. No citizen standing with a rifle can protect himself and his family from one of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2,700 tanks, or from a drone, or from a heavily armed SWAT force in body armor.
“Like serfs in the dark ages, American citizens can be picked up on the authority of some unknown person in the executive branch and thrown in a dungeon, subject to torture, without any evidence ever being presented to a court or any information to the person’s relatives of his/her whereabouts. Or they can be placed on a list without explanation that curtails their right to travel by air. Every communication of every American, except face-to-face conversation in non-bugged environments, is intercepted and recorded by the National Stasi Agency from which phrases can be strung together to produce a domestic extremist….
“The serfs are obedient.
“The people who helped transform a democratically accountable president into a Caesar include John Yoo, who was rewarded for his treason by being accepted as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt school of law. Yoo’s colleague in treason, Jay Scott Bybee, was rewarded by being appointed a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We now have a Berkeley law professor teaching, and a federal circuit judge ruling, that the executive branch is above the law….
“The executive branch coup against America has succeeded. The question is: will it stand? Today, the executive branch consists of liars, criminals, and traitors. The evil on earth seems concentrated in Washington.”
He concludes, “If Americans acquiesce to the coup d’etat, they will have placed themselves firmly in the grip of tyranny.”
Roberts served as an Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/07/13/coup-detat-paul-craig-roberts/
Stomached a few seconds of “Dr” Heidi-ho. Lies, damn lies & no statistics.
What a surprise. /sarc
CLIMATE CENTRAL – Heidi Cullen
CLIMATE CENTRAL – Funding
No need to say more.
It’s the usual story. They predict more rain, but the data shows no more rain. They product more drought, but the data shows no more drought. So, they predict that the amount of rain will not change, but that the *way* it rains will change. Good rain will become bad rain. Gentle, widespread showers will be replaced with violent localized downpours. Rain on weekday nights will be replaced by daytime weekend rain on barbecues, picnics, weddings, and ball games. It will rain where mosquitoes breed, but not where crops grow. It will rain on kittens, but not on flowers. It’s bad rain, I’m telling you! Bad!
When you reach your sixties it is easy to look at moving images of people and ‘see’ through the makeup and make-believe to the reality.
Cullen and Boxter sitting in a tree …
@G. Karst
A straw man. The debate is not about climate change.
The climate changes no matter what we humans do, full stop, end of story.
Weather patterns change over time, tell me something new.
The debate is about the theory stating that the rise of (Anthropogenic) CO2 in the atmosphere will cause (runaway) global warming and extreme weather as a result.
The real question (The one she can’t and won’t answer) is:
Is the change in this regional weather pattern caused by increased antropoghenic CO2 -> global warming?
And…..
How can this change in this regional weather pattern be caused by global warning while the data shows that there hasn’t been any global warming for the last 18-23 years?
makes perfect sense…
global warming has increased global temperatures a 1/2 degree…
….and that has set up massive instability in the weather
snark/
When you see the official forecast (Chicago, not that it matters), go from:
Hot and sunny in the a.m. no mention of rain, then clouds start building by 10:30 and the forecast changes to 20% chance, then by 12:30 the radar starts picking up the building storms (forecast changes to 40%), nobody says the bases of the storms are at 10,000 feet and the rain may evaporate before it hits the ground.
The radar is looking at storm tops (12-14,000 feet), warnings go out anyway.
Such has been my life, indoors and outdoors for the last 3-4 days.
Extreme rainstorms and snowstorms are becoming more frequent. Connecticut experienced a 73 percent increase in the frequency of extreme rainstorms and snowstorms from 1948 to 2011. In other words, heavy downpours or snowstorms that happened once every 12 months on average in 1948 now happen every 6.9 months, on average.
That’s a reduced aerosol effect and well documented. Aerosols suppress rainfall near their source, but enhance rainfall downwind. There would have been a similar decrease in intense rainfall downwind, but that is over the ocean, and no one measures rainfall over the ocean.
highflight56433 says: “There has been an ever increasing increase in infrastructure that diverted water to streams that typically would have been absorbed into the local landscape. Urban growth covers the landscape, water is diverted to whatever streams are left and other storm drainage is built.”
Exactly. Around Minnesota, you can find rainwater holding ponds and the like. To prevent rain surges into for one, our lakes, which are a valuable resource. We continue to build and add road curbs that collect rainwater and bring it to the nearest stream or lake. More hard surfaces lead to more rainwater surges though our drainage infrastructure. It doesn’t mean the climate changed. But even if it did, now let’s manage the runoff. That seems to be an easier problem then attempting to adjust the rainfall on a global scale.
Some significant amount of source material for Dr. Cullen’s presentation comes from a Kenneth Kunkel et. al. paper:
Monitoring And Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms: State of Knowledge.
Found here:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00262.1
This paper states that the Western US has not joined the extreme rainfall club. Living in the western US, I can vouch for that. Also that warming conditions promote extreme rainfall events. So that IMO, these recent NE US heavy rainfall events may more likely be caused by the present AMO warming cycle than by humans or CO2. I would like data for more than about 40 years into a 60 year cycle to see if these higher rainfalls will eventual decrease even as atmospheric CO2 concentration increases over the next 30 years.
Bernie
But our classy political leadership does not want to hear things that do not agree with their bought and paid for views that AGW is a real and present danger. And that the only thing keeping us from managing the climate is a few flat earthers.
I hope these people were sworn in. They have got to have something to loose.
Is that Heidi Cullen? I thought she was Ruth Bader Ginzburg. 😉
Maybe someone already covered this, I haven’t read all the comments. The caption under the graph reads: Figure 5. One measure of flood frequency from the USGS, percent of US streamguages above “bankfull streamflow.” The USGS explains: “The bankfull streamflow is defined as the highest daily mean streamflow value expected to occur, on average, once in every 2.3 years.”
Why in the world is the USGS using a non statistic as a stat? “Expected to occur” is not what happened just like the “expected warming”. A statistic is the state of something. Either the streams exceeded their banks or they didn’t. What percentage actually did exceed their banks that yeart? That is the data the graph should show and is probably what folks think it does show. To that degree, I feel the graph is invalid and non-scientific.
Dave T
Sacramento, CA
Sacramento
who needs facts when you have faith
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
As with all of the various sorts of extreme weather events, nothing is trending. Besides, love the photo.
It doesn’t matter, she said it, and the damage is done. I could get up on that stage and say that locust swarms are up 2000% because of warmer global temps. its a lie and could be debunked, but the damage would be done and a certain percent of citizens would believe it now.
I hope this comes out right. Average Annual Inches of Rain at each weather station per year Continental US. From NCDC Summary of Days data set.
1974,26.16304578
1975,26.38097386
1976,21.19192315
1977,21.59890268
1978,20.59227185
1979,20.29591647
1980,15.41346166
1981,16.46837086
1982,18.78847837
1983,19.83797701
1984,16.50852128
1985,15.44571644
1986,14.66805945
1987,14.08391442
1988,12.84459331
1989,14.9976958
1990,16.57422375
1991,15.90858323
1992,15.80458992
1993,17.28244711
1994,17.17435038
1995,13.14799911
1996,14.19947049
1997,13.90610291
1998,16.00655205
1999,15.56415302
2000,15.3983219
2001,14.16512604
2002,16.82995213
2003,18.83527102
2004,17.05427643
2005,16.3046201
2006,16.30024752
2007,15.27895026
2008,15.76025539
2009,16.40391786
2010,15.09131387
2011,13.84957945
2012,13.25820408
Someone should have asked Cullen how does it feel when you commit perjury.
[snip – wronger than wrong. .42 inches as an all time record? I don’t think so, check your source and resubmit – Anthony]
Greatest North American one day rainfall…Isla Mujeres, MX…64″
http://currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/North-America.php
Greatest US one day rainfall…Alvin Texas, July 1979…43″
http://accuweather.com/en/weather-news/the-greatest-24hour-deluge-in/52828
I don’t have screen save of the rest of my post on the 1927 Mississippi flood.