Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
The Washington Post (WaPo) has published a story claiming that the heat wave in Texas this week is “tied to climate change.” This is false – it is a weather event, not a climate event. Texas experiences heatwaves on a regular basis, and history shows that Texas experienced event greater heat waves in both intensity and duration long before climate change ever became an issue.
The WaPo story, written by reporter Dan Stillman is titled “The troubling heat in Texas and its ties to climate change in 5 maps” and makes these claims:
Texas is no stranger to searing heat, but the heat wave that arrived last week is becoming exceptional for its intensity and duration. Air temperatures have soared past 100 degrees for multiple days, even exceeding 110 in spots, and the sizzling heat index has reached as high as 125. Excessive-heat warnings are in effect into the middle of the week for a massive chunk of the state and could be extended.
…
The scientific literature is replete with studies connecting the intensity, frequency, duration and size of heat waves such as this to human-caused climate change.
…
The heat dome responsible for the ongoing Texas heat wave is one of the strongest of all time and, according to WFLA-TV chief meteorologist and climate specialist Jeff Berardelli, is “basically impossible” without climate change.
In essence, Stillman cites no actual scientific papers, and bases his entire linkage of the Texas heat wave to climate change on the opinion of one off-hand remark by a local TV meteorologist.
If in fact, such heat domes are “basically impossible without climate change,” how would they explain the famous 1980 United States Heat Wave, affecting Texas, which occurred long before climate change was ever an issue?
In Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, high temperatures exceeded 100 °F (38 °C) a total of 69 times, including a record 42 consecutive days from June 23 to August 3,[4] of which 28 days were above 105, and five days above 110. The area saw 29 days in which the previous record high temperature was either broken or tied, including its all-time high when the temperature hit 113 °F (45 °C) on three consecutive days (June 26 and 27 at DFW Airport and June 28 at Dallas Love Field).
According to the National Weather Service in Dallas, that by tracking Annual and Consecutive 100° Days, it is clear there have been quite a number prolonged and intense heat waves before. In other words – these events are normal for the state.
The July 1936 Heat Wave, said to be the most intense heat wave in American history, claimed the lives of 5,000 people across the U.S., mostly in the upper Midwest. Surprisingly, Texas had below normal temperatures during that month. This illustrates two things:
- Intense heat waves have happened well before “climate change” was ever an issue.
- The location and duration of heat waves is weather pattern dependent.
Indeed, the TV meteorologist who said the current heat wave was “basically impossible without climate change” apparently hasn’t studied weather history.
Here is another important point. Heat waves are not global, they are local or regional. This map from Weather.gov illustrates the dichotomy associated with how weather patterns, not climate change, rule the temperature at synoptic weather scales. In the map below, circled in red, you can clearly see the Texas heat wave, while to the west, circled in blue, you can see parts of California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon are suffering from freeze and frost warnings.
Did climate change only cause the Texas heat wave and not the freezing, or is WaPo simply confusing the difference between weather and climate? It seems they are.
In Climate at a Glance: Weather vs. Climate there is this figure the European Space Agency (ESA) that illustrates the difference:
The key takeaway:
- What we experience on a day-to-day basis are weather events, not climate events. Weather is not climate.
Further, in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves there is this figure: Heat Wave Index (HWI) for the Contiguous United States, 1895–2020
The source of that HWI figure is none other than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
From that figure we can deduce:
- In recent decades in the United States, heat waves have been far less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s.
- The all-time high temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.
This data destroys the claim that the current heat wave was “basically impossible without climate change.” Had Stillman, his sources, or WaPo editors bothered to look at the temperature data presented by history, or the definition differences between weather and climate, perhaps they would not have made such foolhardy claims.
Unfortunately, their lack of diligence did little more than create a climate scare story which badly misinformed their readers.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Actual fact-checking is no longer a function of the media or journalism in general it would seem. They really don’t care what the truth is, since truth, like everything else has become subjective and the reporters now seem to take an ad hoc approach to justify a narrative rather than insisting that objective reality dictates said narrative.
Every day’s a slow news day in our MSM obsessed with their own income and expansion.
Anything is now their ‘truth’ because it generated income.
Restrict news channels on TV to the evening news, as it was in the 70’s, instead of constant rolling news that demands content no matter how trivial or untrue.
Competition for the highest quality content would then be fierce and the drivel reduced to NetZero….
The other day I ran across a new quote for my file.
“In a world of propaganda, the truth is a conspiracy theory.”
I spit my coffee Steve. I will pass that along. I swear that the past 2 generations of publicly schoo…ahh indoctrinated children believe that the Governments of the world can actually control the weather if we just let them dictate our lifestyles. Boy are they in for a sad surprise.
I believe the decline in quality reportage / journalism began in the 1970s when universities started offering “journalism” degrees.
As a cadet reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper in the late ’60s, I was told to get off my arse and go out and find / hear / see and write up what a story was all about, from ALL perspectives.
I shudder to think what my editors would have made of a reporter rummaging through the trash bins of Tik-Tok or the like for their news content.
It must be difficult to get a story thoroughly and honestly written before the Internet tells the world.
It must be difficult to interpret a story with unique insight before 1 billion Internet commentators provide opinions..
Video was supposed to kill the radio star but I think Internet killed the journalism star more completely.
Every word they write has to compete with 1 billion authors who suffer no consequences for writing exciting fiction.
Global climate change is a myth.
There is not a single global climate. Climate was a term introduced to teach schoolchildren about local weather patterns across continents and between hemispheres. There are many climate systems across the American continent (N&S) and across the European continent.
It’s all nonsense, and a global temperature is also nonsense.
+ 100
Sadly, Texas heat domes attributed to climate change is not only a WaPo thing. The US government did it in the 2014 National Climate Assessment chapter one. And a 2011 blizzard in Chicago ignoring 1999, 1988, and especially 1967. I dissected each example in Chapter 1 and showed each was simply a blatantly false narrative in essay Credibility Conundrums in ebook Blowing Smoke,
Do NOT trust US government on climate, period. A couple of favorite further examples. EIA knowingly got LCOE of wind versus CCGT wrong in 2015. NASA to this day has a webpage on sea level rise acceleration impossibly ‘measured’ by satellite in mm when their satellite manual says accuracy is cm, and where their own assessed component contributions do NOT close with their asserted rise rate. It is that bad.
I heartily recommend Rud’s “Blowing Smoke” ebook to everybody. And Steven Koonin’s “Unsettled” as well.
Of course not.
History deniers just can’t bring themselves to consider any events prior to Trump’s election.
Before 2016, the world was the embodiment of The Garden Of Eden.
Except for Katrina. But that was GW Bush’s fault.
It is a typical “wonderful world” story—don’t know much about history
Yes, the late, great Sam Cook.
Having worked in West Texas over four summers, I can definitely attest to the fact that hot spells are normal in the summer there … with high temps routinely climbing to 110-120 degrees. And West Texas also gets very cold in the winter, with low temps routinely getting well below zero despite the latitude. This kind of extreme swings in temperature is common throughout the entire high plains of central US, whose climate is continental with very little influence from marine air masses that act to moderate temperatures near coastal regions thru-out North America.
The hot spells and cold spells of the high plains happen every year. Historical documents produced by Spanish explorers, American settlers, US Army campaigners and others going back to the 16th century (still in the Little Ice Age) make this very clear,
The Spanish explorers named an area within what was colonial Texas but is now within New Mexico the “Jornada del Muerto” – Journey of the Dead – for its extreme heat and lack of water. Similarly the Spanish named the high plains stretching eastward from the Pecos River “Llano Estacado”- or Staked Plains – because it was so hot in summer and cold in winter that it had no trees, and also lacked terrain features, such that the only way they could navigate the extremely inhospitable country there was by following stakes pounded into the ground by others.
My son in Wyoming routinely sends us photos of his truck temperature readings in the winter; 40 below is not uncommon.
At 75 MPH, a common Wyoming speed limit, the wind chill is fierce.
And the left believes electric cars will run just fine anywhere while keeping their passengers comfortable…
So long as they wear many layers of battery powered thermal underwear.
“it is a weather event, not a climate event.” Mr. Watts of coarse is correct but slips up by using their term. “Climate Event” is a meaningless term as climate is an average of weather parameters. Tellingly, every plaintiff witness in the Held V Montana trial just completed used this term. Yes even all their experts. This WaPo writer does not seem to know the difference either as Anthony points out and hopefully this article will educate him.
If they want to discuss the topic, make them give you their definitions and then make them be consistant in their use of their terms.
I think it more of a typo than a slip.
If he had put climate in quotes, no problem.
(it is a weather event, not a “climate” event.)
I agree and should have made that clearer.
“climate is an average of weather parameters“
Put right foot in ice-water and left foot in hot water. On average you will feel fine.
Or more to the point. What are average parameters in Wyoming?
My climate is a BSk [Köppen-Geiger].
“Of course” not coarse.
This problem has infected the IPCC, as shown in the following entry in their “Glossary” annex for each of their Working Group assessment reports.
NB : This is copied from “Annex VII” of the AR6 WG-I report, on page 2222 (bold in the original, underlining added by me) :
NB : The current Texas heatwave hasn’t lasted for “a season”, so technically they haven’t respected the IPCC criteria required to declare something as “an extreme climate event” … but “for simplicity” they can refer to it as “a climate extreme” anyway.
Senior Fellow Anthony Watt’s usage is correct.
Anthony states that it is a “weather event”!
The author, Dan Stillman incorrectly terms weather events as “climate change”.
Hi Anthony. Decades ago, I was a resident of Southeast Texas for a good number of years. I can recall high temps and humidity both in the 90s from May to October. So that there wasn’t a great difference between indoors and outdoors I set my thermostat for 82F during that time.
I just checked the NWS site for Houston and while the dry bulb is 94F, the humidity is low at about 54%. Nothing exceptional for there.
7-Day Forecast 29.77N 95.37W (weather.gov)
I hated low humidities in Houston. Drove my sinuses nuts and gave me a headache.
Regards,
Bob
Good post, Anthony. Thank you.
Also:
https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/tx/
See figure 2. Data is through 2021. Annual number of days reaching 100F or higher in TX since 1900. Data is from “24 long-term stations” in the GHCN-Daily database.
Just like the lead image of the Heat Wave Index for the U.S., there are some reports from the U.S. government in which the data flatly contradicts the fashionable claims.
DD:
Thanks for the link!
There are some nice graphics that indeed belie the current climate crisis meme for Texas. Plus hurricanes, rainfall and Palmer Drought index among others.
However, the text does try to paint a gloom-and doom picture. Ignore that part.
Here is Figure 2:
Exactly. And in the Wyoming report, there is a similar graph for the contiguous US.
Also as Figure 2.
https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/wy/
While at one time the Post might have been interested in the truth that has not been for a very, very, very long time. When it comes to anything even slightly political, and Climate Change is greatly political, it has no qualms at lying. Is Dan Stillman actually stupid enough to believe the tripe he puts out, I doubt it.
WaPo slogan below the Banner is ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’
And that is exactly what they are doing. Their stories spread darkness, not light. As here.
I suppose “pulling the wool over our eyes” would also apply.
Just the other day, CNN ran a story on “unprecedented ocean heat waves”, especially this year in the Atlantic Ocean. They also cited a 2021 heat wave in the Pacific, along the Canadian coast, when they said 5 billion shellfish were “cooked to death.” No source or citation of course, for such a specific and radical claim. I would have thought the North Pacific turning into fish stew would have been noticed elsewhere. Shoddy journalism at its finest.
Yummy!
You reminded me of this, since my brother and wife live near Seattle. They grow oysters and dig clams in the cove below their summer home on the bay side of the Olympic Peninsula.
It was a heat wave over Vancouver. Story was everywhere climate alarmist—NPR, SciAm, Seattle Times. The claimed billions of cooked mussels and clams and such were all in the rocky intertidal zone exposed only to air temps at low tides. Apparently a fairly regular occurrence, because despite the headlines there was no noticeable impact on local seafood production whatsoever of any types.
So were they cooked, so that one could sit down and eat them, or was there just an anomalous high water temperature or air temperature that was outside their comfort zone? “Cooked” implies to me that they boiled or steamed. I can see animals dying of excessive body temperature, but they are not cooked.
Yes, Washington State University resident Professor of Meteorology Prof. Cliff Mass wrote a rational, sober appraisal of the well-precedented WEATHER influences and effects at the time.
Thank providence that such rational, expert voices are still available for anyone with the intellect to listen to them.
I thought the oceans were already supposed to be “boiling”?
(You could buy a lobster diner right off the boat!)
You are being played.
Most plankton are shellfish.
Wouldn’t take much water volume to support 5 billion shellfish plankton. I suspect whales likely exceed 5 billion shellfish per feeding.
In his “The Worst Hard Times”, Timothy Egan chronicles the heat of the 1930s, but as I recall there were cold episodes in the norther plains.
I gave the book to a friend, so can’t check.
He probably got reported and incarcerated for possession of a “disinformation” publication.
Isn’t there another more common definition of climate? Southern California has a climate and Minnesota has a different climate? The equator has a climate and the South Pole has a different climate?
There apparently are > 30 recognized climatic zones around the world, and within each zone, hundreds of recognized unique regional climates with their own weather patterns and effects.
For example, Prof Cliff Mass has published a detailed explanation of what prevails in the (very localized) localities of the Pacific North Western region of North America (Oregon, Washington east & west of the Cascades, + BC coastal + east of the Coast Range).
https://www.amazon.ca/Weather-Pacific-Northwest-Cliff-Mass-ebook/dp/B09G4BLYHM
So “averaging” weather effects and measurements around the globe is arrant nonsense.
In SoCal, there are many climate zones depending on how far from the Pacific you are.
Great points, thanks for posting it Anthony!
This can’t be repeated enough and applies to all the other similar extreme weather situations the last 2 decades.
Cliff Mass can be counted on as an elite source for using objective, authentic science.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-golden-rule-of-climate-extremes.html
The Golden Rule
“Considering the substantial confusion in the media about this critical issue, let me provide the GOLDEN RULE OF CLIMATE EXTREMES”
Here it is:
“The more extreme a climate or weather record is, the greater the contribution of natural variability.”
“Or to put it a different way, the larger or more unusual an extreme, the higher proportion of the extreme is due to natural variability.”
I have lived in Texas all but 2 of my 73 years and can attest that we get these very hot weather events about one summer every decade. Same for snow and ice. I recall playing in a softball tournament in that 113 degree heat. Young and dumb.
BTW I often read about ERCOT and would just like to say they do the best with what they got. The problem is with the stupid legislature going green.Politicians, Lawyers, not engineers nor scientists
The Army has the answer to hot weather. I was stationed at Fort Hood Texas 1969-1971, we had lots of near 100 or over 100 degree days. The Army took care of us in our time of need, we were required to wear our caps so we wouldn’t sun burn our heads because our heads belonged to the Army and they didn’t want them sunburned. We could roll our sleeves up to our elbows and they kept plenty of salt tablets at all drinking fountains. That did the trick, nobody I knew suffered heat exhaustion or heat stroke. God bless the Army.
When I was conscripted to wear the green back in the 60s, it was a chargeable offence to contract a case of sunburn – “self-inflicted injury”
That’s what I always heard also, article 15 offense.
Here is a link showing exactly what is going on in Texas. It shows a high pressure system hovering over Texas and surrounding area, and this high pressure system is what is causing the area to warm up, not CO2
I just heard my weather man say the heat index in my town in Oklahoma is currently 115 degrees! Oklahoma is under part of the high pressure system, too.
Until the climate alarmists can connect the movement of high pressure systems to CO2, they can’t claim CO2 is causing the heat. When the high pressure system moves away, the heat goes with it.
Here is the Nullschool link with the center of the clockwise rotating high pressure system marked.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-102.53,25.26,535/loc=-106.367,29.928
Oh, but you know that most environmentalists WILL claim anything they want regardless of any evidence, logic or reason, as fanatics are want to do.
Yes, they do. A Blizzard of BS (Bad Science).
From the article: “The July 1936 Heat Wave, said to be the most intense heat wave in American history, claimed the lives of 5,000 people across the U.S., mostly in the upper Midwest. Surprisingly, Texas had below normal temperatures during that month. This illustrates two things:
intense heat waves have happened well before “climate change” was ever an issue.The location and duration of heat waves is weather pattern dependent.”This is easily explained because this is a weather pattern dependent event, and in the case of 1936, the high pressure system that brought all the heat to the United States was centered over the northern plains of the U.S. and did not include Texas as it was a little too far south, so although Texas was hot, as it is every summer, it was not exceptionally hot at this time because it was not receiving the full force of the high pressure system heat.
From the article: “Indeed, the TV meteorologist who said the current heat wave was “basically impossible without climate change” apparently hasn’t studied weather history.”
Isn’t that the truth!
“basically impossible without climate change” apparently hasn’t studied weather history.”
Should say : “Explanations like this would be impossible without a FAKE climate crisis.”
U.S. state and territory temperature extremes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_temperature_extremes
Almost half of the all time highest/hottest temperature readings for each state occurred in the 1930’s and still stand today.
Climate Change Alarmists should be called out on the discrepancy between the scary, bogus Hockey Stick chart temperature profile, and the completely different benign temperature profile presented by the written, historical record.
The written, historical temperature record refutes the computer-generated Hockey Stick temperature profile.
And just to add a little bit to that: Oklahoma sits on the northern border of Texas and 1936 was one of the hottest years in Oklahoma history, so the high pressure system reached as far south as Oklahoma, but did not quite get into Texas that year.
The year 1936 was also a record cold year for some parts of the U.S.during that winter. The high pressure systems causing this extreme weather would warm up the land underneath the high, but the clockwise circulation would also bring cold Canadian and Arctic air down into the U.S. on the eastern side of the high pressure system.
So 1936 had some of the hottest temperatures on record in the United States and also some of the coldest temperatures in the United States. Just think if that happened today. The Climate Change Alarmists would go nuts!
The winter of 1935-1936 was exceptionally cold across much of North America, particularly the US Midwest, Great Plains, and Canadian prairies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_cold_wave
The fact that the following summer was the polar opposite (no pun intended) would seem to suggest that the landlocked areas of North America were dominated by the continental airmass and weren’t receiving much maritime influence. That isn’t really all that unusual, given that the Rocky Mountains block much of the Pacific air from having as much of an impact as it otherwise would.
Hot in Texas? Unprecedented!
I always possess strong skepticism when reading anything coming from the WaPo. They are nothing but a left-wing rag and their comment sections are complete cesspools.
The Washington Post has a leftwing political agenda. Their job is to promote this agenda. One should question everything they say because you may not be getting all the truth from them. In fact, it’s a certainty.
In south-east Arizona right now – (202306251710 MT): 105°F, Acurite ‘system’, +/- 2°. The predicted high was 106°. The same high pressure dome that’s affecting Texas. Relative humidity at 0800 this morning: 9%, according to nul earth.
Monsoon season – still 10 to 12 days away. Sort of looking forward to it, even if it does cancel the Fourth of July fireworks.
Just had a look at the forecast. “Possible evening thunderstorms”, July 3. Right on time.
I recall that the Southern Plains/Texas region was in the grips of consecutive 100+ F degree days during the Spring/Summer of 1980. Around the same time as the Mount St. Helens eruption.
The Southern Plains/Texas are always in the grips of 100+ F degree days during any summer. That is the natural order of things. Some years are worse than others.
Anthony,
Agreed, “Here is another important point. Heat waves are not global, they are local or regional”.
Here is a graph that shows 5-day heatwaves in Australia.
If heatwaves were formed by involving climate change, they would plausibly be hotter as the site got closer to the equator. In Australia, they do not.
In Australia, some of the hotter heatwaves happen in Melbourne and Adelaide, far from the Equator. Weather systems do this. The hot air forms in central Australia, then weather systems take it S-E or South to the coastal cities. How hot these coastal cities get depends on weather systems again. If the hot air mass moves slowly, it cools down before it gets to the coast. It also depends on how hot the air got in the centre of the country before it left, hotter with a slow moving system.
The better test of heatwave severity related to climate would then be – has the centre got hotter oiver decades?
Answer – no.
Here is the 5-day heatwave story for Alice Springs, slap bang in central Australia. The graph shows the hottest 5-day heatwave for every year since records began in 1878. No sign of a warming climate in these numbers, is there?
You guys should do graphs like this for your own countries.I can see what happens in Australia, but for climate arguments you need global data.
Geoff S
“Here is another important point. Heat waves are not global, they are local or regional”.
Heatwaves are local or regional because high-pressure systems, which are the cause of the heat buildup, are local or regional.
When the high-pressure system moves away, it takes the heat with it.
Look at that small pocket of dangerous climate change in Southern Texas (-:
Also in the N.Plains, there was an area of climate change (-:
The rest of the country enjoyed weather last week (-:
Freedom of the press is a great high tower from which to fabricate news and conduct extensive and long-running framing operations.
The Leftwing Press has turned itself into a weapon against Democracy and the U.S. Constitution, with their unscrupulous support of the agenda of the radical Democrats/Marxists.
I lived in the DFW area in the summer of 1980. This year’s heat wave has a long way to go before approaching the heat wave of that year. Because of the media hype I’ve checked the temperatures throughout Texas in the past few days. They look fairly normal for heat waves this time of year.
The DFW summer of 1980 was brutal. Just awful. This one is too.
Not a weatherman, an actor. An actor who is paid to push climate change no matter what the weather is doing.
I went to a science museum and was surprised to see how much of what my generation was taught as truth has been disappeared.