The Kansas City Star ran an opinion piece claiming climate change is already making weather more extreme in Kansas and Missouri. This is false. There is no data supporting the claim that either flooding or drought, two specific extreme weather events cited in the story, are worse now than they have been historically. Almost all the records for such events in both states were set nearly a century or more ago, when global average temperatures were cooler.
Joel Mathis, the writer of the Kansas City Star story, “We’re watching the climate change in Kansas and Missouri. Why don’t more of us care?,” opines:
Climate change is already taking a toll on Kansas and Missouri, and not just in the form of wintertime vegetation. Both states are enduring long-running droughts that have challenged the region’s farmers and forced some communities to start hoarding their drinking water. That’s probably just the beginning.
…
Climate change is going to make the extremes more extreme — more intense rain and snowstorms, but also more extended periods of drought. Our big swings will get bigger and more destructive.
But Mathis’ sees an even worse problem, in particular, that the majority of people aren’t that concerned about climate change.
“Last week, Heatmap News reported its new poll found that Midwesterners are ‘consistently blasé about climate change,’” writes Mathis. “Fifty-two percent of folks in our region — a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless — say warming ‘poses little or no risk to their region.’”
The residents of those two states are right to be unconcerned about climate change making their states’ respective weather worse, since historical evidence and data show that neither drought nor flooding amid recent decades of modest warming are worse than they have been historically. Indeed, as Mathis himself notes, Kansas and Missouri are not strangers to droughts, floods, and rapidly changing weather extremes.
“The Midwest is already a ‘high variability’ weather region,” writes Mathis, who discussed this fact with Chuck Rice, a professor of soil microbiology at Kansas State University who served on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. “Think about all the times you’ve heard the joke that if you don’t like the weather around here ‘just wait five minutes.’”
Although it is true that parts of Kansas and Missouri are currently suffering from various degrees of drought, it is not a long-term drought, nor is it historically severe. A short-term drought is no evidence of climate change. Droughts in the early and mid-twentieth century, 70 and 90 years of global warming ago, were more prolonged and severe than the droughts experienced in either state since the beginning of the 21st century. Since official record keeping began, Kansas and Missouri both experienced their most sustained droughts in the 1930s, only to both also experience a sustained drought again in the 1950s. Longer term records developed from proxy data show even more severe and sustained droughts, multiple decades long, have not been uncommon throughout the region’s history.
What’s true of drought across Kansas and Missouri is also true of excessive rainfall and flooding. Kansas experienced its worst flood in 1844; Missouri’s largest recorded flood was 1785, with the flood year of 1844 being its second greatest flood. More costly damage has been done by floods in both Missouri and Kansas since then, in 1903, 1951, 1993, 1998, and 2007. But the reason that more people and property were harmed by the more recent floods is not higher rainfall totals or deeper flood waters, but rather purely demographics. More people and development had taken place in the areas flooded than existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries when heavier flooding occurred. Neither recent rainfall totals nor floodwater depth have been greater in the 21st century than in the past.
Neither a single flood event, no matter how severe, nor single instances of drought, no matter how widely covered in the media, are evidence climate change is making weather in Kansas or Missouri worse or less predictable. Only a long-term sustained trend of either or both types of weather events might implicate climate change in weather changes, but there are no such worsening trends for either state. In short, data provide no evidence that climate change is making weather worse in Kansas or Missouri, so residents there are displaying common sense when they downplay the threat of climate change in their lives. The media should follow the public’s lead on this point. Follow the science, Mathis and the Kansas City Star, rather than hyping a false climate alarm narrative.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
Unless we propitiate Gaia, bad things will happen! Who cares about minor little things like history?
Maybe Gaia will be pleased if we push some climate scientists into a volcano. 🙂
Pushing them into the blades of a wind turbine might be more appropriate. Assuming one could be found that could blow the skin off a rice pudding.
“”Why don’t more of us care?,””
What a give away; emotion over reason.
Because we on the far-far right supported slavery and Adolf all those years ago.
Oh noes! Sorry, that was the ‘moderate’ left….
Data from NOAA do NOT show climate getting worse in Kansas or Missouri.
Kansas is part of NOAA’s South Climate Region. See my post here…
Extremes and Averages in Contiguous U.S. Climate – Part 6: NOAA’s South Climate Region | Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations (wordpress.com)
Missouri is part of NOAA’s Central Climate region: See my post here:
Extremes and Averages in Contiguous U.S. Climate – Part 3: NOAA’s Central Climate Region | Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations (wordpress.com)
I thought I cross posted them at WUWT, but I can’t find them in the archives. I’ll keep looking.
Regards,
Bob
Nope, I only cross posted here at WUWT the one for the Contiguous U.S.
Extremes and Averages in Contiguous U.S. Climate – Part 10: The Contiguous U.S. • Watts Up With That?
Regards,
Bob
Bob, I work with a local irrigation district in Oregon that delivers water to farmers from April to October. We share the water supply with 20+ stakeholders like wildlife, fish, recreationist, other districts, etc… We have had some dry years recently. It seems many conversations start off with: because of global warming, water supply is less reliable….” When I hear that I always wonder what are the real local conditions. Is precip down, temperature up, growing seasons longer? I have been trying to collect that info but the sources are unreliable and short term. I have found U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/crn/ and this will be great a hundred years from now. I have tried buying data from local weather stations but it is sparse. Your book looks interesting but I am looking for info to share with local farmers, that is, how global warming is affecting the 20 acres of grass he is growing. Can you suggest some sources?
There is lots of bad climate info produced under the guise of established authorities like the KC Star. I am sure Samuel Clemons would have something to say about it. Here is an idea for a website or book: How To Talk To Your Neighbor About Local Climate (Bring Global Warming Home To Relevance). A site where you plug in your zip code and it produces 5 basic graphs. So far as I can tell, local average winter and summer temperatures are on a downtrend.
Citizen Smith asked, “Can you suggest some sources?”
Sorry, I haven’t delved into any U.S. climate-related datasets in over three years. Many of the sites I used for sources in the past are now offline.
Regards,
Bob
Citizen Smith, newspapers can supply a lot of weather data, on a daily basis.
Newspapers go back a long way.
With the proper subscription, you can access all the available newspaper articles of the past.
Climate alarmists think weather is bad now. They should read what weather was like in the past. It’s better today.
Global weather history should be a required subject today. Set the students down and have them read about the past. They will feel a lot better about their current situation after doing this. And will be a lot better informed, which is why they will feel better.
Railroads should be a good source of temperature data, although I don’t know the state of preservation of the records, but railroads have been recording the daily temperatures ever since railroad tracks were laid down.
I worked for a railroad at one time and we reported the temperatures to the central dispatcher four times in a 24-hour period. So you get the temperatures of all the stations over a certain area covered by the railroads, every day.
I would be surprised if these records were kept, but they did write these numbers down on Trainsheets, that recorded the activities of the whole railroad for a day, so maybe those documents were preserved as being historically important to the railroad company.
Data from NOAA do NOT show climate getting worse in Kansas or Missouri.
How would climate “get worse”? Would it become unfavorable in some way for particular humans? How would that unfavorability/worse be measured, except by temperature or perhaps rainfall? In fact, since so many examples of different regional climates exist all over the world, from the polar regions to equatorial jungles or mountains can they be ranked in order of “worseness”? Would the climate of northern Siberia be ranked somehow as worse than that of San Diego? How? Don’t people, animals and plants successfully live and survive in both places?
If the worseness is a result of a change in climate, it would seem that the new climate may be similar to other existing climates and more different from others. Is that some kind of disaster? Is stasis in climate desired or even possible under any conditions?
Bob,
I returned from Vietnam and Thailand in November of 1973 and went to the San Antonio Area in Texas to get my wife and 4 year old daughter and 1 year old son (yeah, he was born 2 weeks before I left for my year flying combat missions in Vietnam). The weather when I left Southeast Asia was warm as you might imagine. The weather in Seguin, Texas when I arrived home was mild as I recall.
We then reported to Richards Gebaur AFB in Belton, MO (just south of Kansas, City) and spent most of December snowed in, enduring one of the worst blizzards I have ever had the MISERY to endure. Except for that winter, the weather in Kansas during my years there was no different from the times BEFORE I arrived or since I left the Air Force, and this summer and winter were nothing out of the ordinary according to the records.
This year Kansas had a severe drought in just one area, in south-central Kansas near the Oklahoma border. My local weather forecaster would talk about this area all the time, lamenting that they had not had rain in such a long time that water rationing had to be imposed.
What’s unusual is areas adjacent to this area were not experiencing severe drought, just this one small area. The rain kept going north or south of the area every time.
But then the rains came to south-central Kansas, and now this region is no longer in servere drought, although it could still use more rain.
With the El Nino circulation, rain has finally come to south-central Kansas. Everybody is happy, including my local weather forecaster.
Kansas may be in for some snow in the near future, according to some forecasts. The cold air is coming.
I can attest that there is a shortage of rainfall in northeast Kansas. Although rain did fall, it came slow and irregular. Mostly good for crops but not for ponds and lakes as there was little runoff. I’ve not looked at drought indexes, but I suspect we are not in severe drought. I know southwest Kansas was particularly dry as I have family living there.
Much of the state practices dry land farming. Irrigation is done in certain areas but is depleting the Ogalla aquifer. I am old enough to understand this lack of rainfall isn’t abnormal as do most long term residents. Ultimately, no reason to become a doomsayer forecasting Armageddon.
Story tip – World Leaders’ Terror of Climate Change – American Thinker
Stoltenberg and NATO aren’t the only ones suffering from communicable hysteria. Some of the most important figures in the US military are also afflicted.
“communicable hysteria”
I like it! A good description.
I can hardley keep up with the climate change hysteria. At a time when it should be more obvious than ever that there is no “ threat” and no “exotic “solution needed. STORY TIP – Down under BBC ABC and others seem more determined than ever to blame their “ young people” housing crisis and malaise on you guessed it freaking climate change.
Maybe we should all just vote “ Leftist” the quicker we get this inevitable collapse over with the better. That is as usual the only way (sheep) people learn. Oh wait! They don’t even learn that way.
Oh and Off topic but – I followed up on Elons Boring business – only a shopping 2-3 miles of tunnels bored , most projects stalled and other companies having tunneling machines too.
Yes, it looks like Elon is going to scrap the boring business. I think other investors are still trying to give it a go.
I read a good article on the subject the other day and tried to find it but could not, after reading your previous post about the boring machine business.
Sometimes Google won’t come up with an article that has just been published unless you can type in the exact title of the article or something unique to the article, and I couldn’t remember the title. But it’s out there. Elon is giving up on the boring business.
“Climate change is going to make the extremes more extreme — more intense rain and snowstorms…”
Logical fallacy. Climate change is caused by long term changes in weather patterns, it cannot then be the cause of those changes.
Next: wet pavements caused the rain.
Next: more plant food (CO2) causes climate catastrophes.
reminds me of this 2015 study ranking US cities – Climate Disruption Index.
8. St. Paul, Minnesota Population: 294,873
St. Paul is the first city on our list to be significantly impacted by extreme future drought. “We expect dry places to get drier, wet places to get wetter,” Easterling said. Extreme precipitation will also likely increase, earning this city spot 8 on the list.
2. Minneapolis, Minnesota Population: 400,070
Minneapolis could get pummeled from a lot of different angles, making it number 2 on our list. The city itself will be a good deal hotter than rural places close by. It has seen precipitation increase by almost 40 percent since 1958, a trend expected to continue. Drought here will also continue to worsen.
Notice the different affect (extreme drought vs a 40% precipitation increase, which will cause Drought to increase) shown and ranked position. Written and Designed by: Michele Berger, she needs to get out a little more and realize they are called the Twin Cities because they are 8 miles downtown to downtown. I thought CO2 was a global gas affecting ‘Climate’.
But as Yogi said, them future things are hard to predict.
And in the mean time – the criminals in the US Democratic Party are just as determined as ever to remove the one effective practical candidate we have from the ballot. Ok I have vented now. Back to work preparing for 2024.
Donald has been a Democrat before and will be a Democrat again if he thinks it will benefit him.
You don’t have a clue about Donald Trump.
The radical Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with these attacks on Trump. It is just making Trump stronger, as the unfairness of the attacks become more obvious as being political attacks.
And just as importantly, people are seeing an attempt on the part of partisan, radical Democrats to limit who people can vote for. People don’t like limits being put on them, especially in situations like this.
This is why Trump gets stronger public support with every new radical Democrat attack.
Yes the best way to deal with their crap claims is to point out what’s been going on in the real world along with real data. As its much harder to “adjust away” widely source real recorded data then it is the temps.
OK OK….I’m hoarding my drinking water….but how is this supposed to work?…..flood in the even years and drought in the odd years? Oh, the humanity!
Isn’t that the description of weather patterns in Australia for a long time? Somehow, they seem to have a nice country.
Yep,
if you’re hot you can always travel to somewhere cooler
if you’re cold you can always travel to somewhere warmer
if you’re wet you can always travel to somewhere dry
if you’re dry you can always travel to somewhere wet
Trouble is, it can be a long trip from hot to dry, cold to warm, wet to dry or dry to wet.
Tropical > Sub-tropical > Mediterranean > Temperate
Marine > Coastal > Plains > Alpine > Desert
But that’s one advantage of being a country that’s a whole continent.
Dr. James Hansen who we know and love (lol) is from Iowa and has been guilty of this doublethink since I can remember. I think he finally lost me in 1993 when he said that flooding on a floodplain was a sign of climate change 🙄.
But because of global warming, water is much wetter now.
Follow the science !!
The most frightening concern about CAGW is that nobody mentally sane notices it.
____________________________________________________________
Because anyone who does the least bit of personal investigation realizes that what we are being told is at best an exaggeration if not outright fraud.
NOAA runs a very nice web page, Climate at a Glance that is good for precipitation. See the precipitation Chart and Trend for Kansas and Missouri since1895 below. Anybody can look at precipitation for most areas in the USA48 and be reasonably sure it is accurate. Other metrics likely include “corrections.”
Neither Chart below shows decreasing precipitation for the growing season May through October.
Steve, That is what I was looking for. Thanks. I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth but,,,, how reliable do you think the data is. Has it been “corrected” and why. Where is the raw stuff and how does it compare. Big government = Big Cynicism
There are now many charts of “anomalies” that are meaningless without knowing how the anomalies are calculated.
Precipitation data isn’t reported as anomalies from some chosen baseline.
As far as I know, rain fall records aren’t being corrupted.
If Kansas and Missouri are worried about droughts, the best protection is to double the CO2 in the atmosphere. Now, all we need is to figure out how to do that. 😉
Very nice Sterling.
I live in Topeka, KS. One of the reasons people here in this part of the Midwest don’t pay much attention is that temperatures haven’t changed much in the last 50 years. We are experiencing a drought that has persisted for several years. That by itself is not an “extreme” condition since it has occurred at various periods in the past. There is a reason there are not forests covering the plains.
Surface water is in short supply on the high plains.
I have attached a couple of temperature graphs for Topeka. They are from an NWS station that has been operational for a long time. I have not had the time to update the graphs for 2023. The monthly temperatures their uncertainties have been calculated using the method show in NIST TN 1900 Example 2. The baseline values have been calculated using the same method. The anomaly variance has been calculated using RSS to combine the variances of the single month and the baseline. Most temperatures do not exceed the uncertainty interval which means the values within the interval can not be guaranteed to be any specific value. If I was a quality control person I would call temperatures very well controlled.
These temperatures look very close to what CRN also shows. This isn’t a coincidence. Rural locations without UHI just don’t show the hockey stick that Global Average Temperatures has.
I don’t know of any unmodified, regional temperature chart from anywhere in the world that shows a temperature profile similar to the Instrument-era, Hockey Stick Chart “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile.
The Hockey Stick temperature profile is computer-generated fraud created to scare people into complying.
The written, historical regional temperature records all show it was just as warm in the recent past as it is today. No “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profiles there.
Maybe Kansas should follow the lead of California and start drinking SEWAGE WATER.