By Paul Homewood
As WUWT points out, John Holdren is one of many who have tried to link the cold winter in the USA this year to global warming.
In his White House video in January, he had this to say:
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues….
We also know that this week’s cold spell is of a type there’s reason to believe may become more frequent in a world that’s getting warmer, on average, because of greenhouse-gas pollution.”
But is there any evidence that extreme cold winters are becoming more common, or, for that matter, more extreme?
First, let’s check the temperature trends for the CONUS in winter.
Clearly, on a national basis, recent winters have not been unusually cold. In the last 10 years, only three winters have been colder than the 1901-2000 mean. Moreover, no winters in recent years have come anywhere near to being as cold as some of the winters in the 1970’s, for instance, or earlier.
But this graph only tells half the story. As it covers the whole country, it could cover up regional extremes. As we know, this winter has seen particularly cold weather in Mid West and East, but warmer conditions out West. The result is that, to some extent, they cancel each other out.
So, is there a way we can isolate the warm from the cold, and see whether cold winters are becoming more extreme in just parts of the country?
There is actually a very simple method, and that is to use NOAA’s own Climate Extremes Index. This provides the percentage of the country which have had extreme temperatures (or precipitation, drought etc) during the year. As both above average and below average temperatures are shown separately, we can look at extreme cold weather on its own.
The graphs below cover the Winter months (Dec to Feb) only, with the first using mean monthly maximum temperatures, and the second minimums. The results seem pretty similar.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/graph/1/12-02
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/graph/2/12-02
It is abundantly clear that much less of the country has been affected by extreme cold this winter, and indeed other recent ones, when compared with the 20thC. There is also no trend towards cold winters becoming more common.
What is also interesting is that there does not seem to be much of a trend towards milder winters taking over. Only the winter of 2011/12 stands out in this respect, and there have been plenty of similar years previously.
There has been nothing unusual or unprecedented about this winter. And, as cold winters have become less frequent in the last couple of decades, there is absolutely no evidence to support Holdren’s claim that “this week’s cold spell is of a type there’s reason to believe may become more frequent in a world that’s getting warmer”.
Technical Stuff
NOAA give this definition for the (maximum temperature) index:
The U.S. CEI is the arithmetic average of the following five or six# indicators of the percentage of the conterminous U.S. area:
- The sum of (a) percentage of the United States with maximum temperatures much below normal and (b) percentage of the United States with maximum temperatures much above normal.
And their definition for “much above normal”:
In each case, we define much above (below) normal or extreme conditions as those falling in the upper (lower) tenth percentile of the local, period of record. In any given year, each of the five indicators has an expected value of 20%, in that 10% of all observed values should fall, in the long-term average, in each tenth percentile, and there are two such sets in each indicator
The Climate Extremes Index can be accessed at the link below. It covers temperatures, drought, rainfall and hurricanes, and can used on a seasonal or annual basis. There is also a regional section.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/introduction
Cultist lie of the day.
Now let’s all be realistic. Look at the massive problems if the White House hired an honest, intelligent science advisor. Obama cannot function without 1) a working teleprompter, which only displays one and two syllable words, and 2) advisors who will ratify his lies with supporting lies of their own.
It is important to remember that there has be much temperature tampering at NOAA and Giss so the graphs above may be meaningless.
NASA And NOAA Data Tampering Makes Legitimate Climate Science Impossible
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/nasa-and-noaa-data-tampering-makes-legitimate-climate-science-impossible/
NOAA Data Tampering Reaches A Tipping Point
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/noaa-data-tampering-reaches-a-tipping-point/
More DATA TAMPERING at the NOAA.
No wonder they are seeing all kinds of extremes. They made it up by adjusting the past.
NASA – GISS DATA TAMPERING.
NCDC DATA TAMPERING.
Please don’t make John Holdren stop, in fact bait him and encourage him. For the average person struggling to make ends meet with high fuel bills and high food costs, the “cold is caused by hot” argument sounds like a rationalization, which it probably is. The more he says the more full of it he sounds. Instead, someone needs to ask Mr Holdren if diverting 40% of the corn crop to transportation fuel is making as much of a difference in the climate as it is meat prices..
“Holdren is wrong” : Prof. Holdren is consistent.
He has been wrong on every single major policy/science issue he has ever taken a stance on.
The claim of cold winters in the US as proof of “global” warming in faulty logic. For example, Germany and northern Europe had a very mild winter, not cold, and very little snow.
The meme Holdern is trying to whoop up is the weather becomes more “extreme” with global warming (oops climate change).
I live near Chicago, it was on the average coldest winter EVER recorded going back to the 1880s.
Mention of extremes is so subject to media manipulation, of tornadoes. That is why it is important for older people to speak out, and say I remember the big tornado outbreak in ’67, and for sites like Anthony’s to show the graphs how hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, are all in the historic record, and are not getting worse.
Holden even recently lied to Congress about previous testimony on US drought by Roger Pielke Jr. When Pielke asked for a retraction and apology, he got a six page White House memo citing one paper. Apparently they cannot read either, because that paper (by Trenberth) also supported the Pielke testimony. Which was simply thatnitmisnot possible to make a connection between drought and climate change, per the IPCC SREX and other papers. It is possible to make regional US connections with PDO and AMO.
Why did Holdren try to trash Pielke’s testimony? Because Obama is using the California problem to pump for his climate agenda. Just when you think they cannot stoop lower, they do.
Contiguous US Winter temperatures have been declining for 17 winters or since 1998 at minus 1.78F/decade but not for the reasons that Holdren states . Similar declines happened 1895-1920 and again 1954-1979 . These are caused by ocean cycles. Winter temperaturesare also declining for the Northern Hemisphere and the globe taken as a whole .
They are just making it up according to what comes along. Obama claims we are undergoing “accelerated” warming as he gives a talk in the midst of a heat wave last summer. Holdren claims we can expect colder winters on a regular basis because of climate change when the US was engulfed under the polar “vortex” this winter. They hope people forget the earlier claims that we can expect milder winters with little snow as climate change continues on.
So basically, the colder it gets, the more we know it’s warming. I think I got it.
When your entire belief system of AGW has been 100% wrong 100% of the time you get desperate for anything that will restore the RESEARCH GRANT MONEY that is now gone.
Is this the same John Hodren who predicted that the Arctic would become ice free in WINTER!!!? Yep.
Is this the same John Hodren who predicted another looming ice age in 1971? Yep.
Is this the same John Holdren they call a science advisor? Apparently so. Quite baffling indeed.
First, let’s check the temperature trends for the CONUS in winter…..
I have a better idea, first, let’s check the temperature adjustments to the trends for the CONUS in winter….
NOAA can’t get a trend without adjustments….. snark
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/screenhunter_273-apr-18-05-11.gif
They make the *hit as they go along.
Jimbo,
Look at the adjustments for Michigan alone.
Hodren was speaking in January when he said “the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak”
Even if you are right it makes his statement even MORE absurd. Cold spells to become more common in US summer? Caused by global warming? But we were promised more heatwaves. Magma, you are digging a hole just like Holdren, the man who predicted ice free Arctic in winter and another ice age.
“As global warming continues?” Do you think Holdren means “when (or if) global warming continues” because it ain’t warmed in nearly 2 decades.
A technical question — If global warming causes colder winters, at what point does global warming become global cooling? Or does it all just average out? If it all just averages out, does that mean the earth doesn’t have a fever anymore?
Magma
Holdren says “cold spells”. Homewood shows Dec-Feb averages.
There is a difference
So now an odd week of cold weather is due to global warming? Are you for real? Have we never had “cold spells” before?
The cold winter in parts of the States has lasted since December, not just a week or two. Yet it is still not exceptional.
Remember what he said:
But I believe the odds are that we can expect, as a result of global warming, to see more of this pattern of extreme cold in the mid-latitudes
The opposite of this has occurred. But if you want to pick a month, or a week, I can still show you the same.
More extreme weather, if it’s a symptom of anything, is a symptom of global cooling, not warming. See Richard Lindzen.
Permit me to assist with this observation from Carl Sagan, which appears to explain a great deal of the discussion here: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan Facebook.com/ThePeoplesRecord
In the movie Being There, the words of the buffoon are taken enthusiastically as profound wisdom. In the case of John Holdren, the words are both buffoonery and deflection from his real job related to science topics. He has subverted the job assignment into donor group management and left science in the dark as a forgotten subject.
Just today Steven Goddard reports on more NOAA ‘adjustments’.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/the-hockey-stick-is-real-3/
Magma, check this out. I have made a nice compilation of weather events here and here. It’s just the weather for 1935 and 1936 so don’t break a sweat.
While I agree with his prediction that winters will be ‘colder’… But just colder than the mild winters of mid1980s to mid-2000s which were ‘abbynormal’ and disagree with his cause.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/JFM_season_ao_index.shtml