What Michael Brune Did Not Tell You

By Paul Homewood

 

 

In the latest episode of Marc Morano v Bill Nye Michael Brune, on the Piers Morgan show, Brune, who is executive director of the Sierra Club told us “extreme weather is here”. He used the 2012 drought as an example, saying

“61% of the country suffered a crippling drought. The reality is that extreme weather is here.”

 

But what do the official figures say?

 

According to NOAA’s drought index, the PDSI, US droughts have been clearly declining since the 1950’s, regardless of the events of 2012.

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=pdsi&month=12&year=2012&filter=12&state=110&div=0

 

Even last year, taken in isolation, comes nowhere near the severity of droughts in the 1930’s and 50’s. Furthermore, the longer term trend in recent years suggests nothing alarming is happening, as the 36 month PDSI indicator illustrates below.

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=pdsi&month=12&year=2012&filter=36&state=110&div=0

 

What do the precipitation statistics say?

 

 

Climate At A Glance

Annual Precipitation
Contiguous United States

---

 

Annual 1901 – 2000 Average = 29.14 Inches
Annual 1895 – 2012 Trend = 0.16 Inches / Decade

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html

 

Again, official figures from NOAA show that long term rainfall trends are increasing.

 

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation

But there’s more that Brune did not tell you. We are currently in the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO, which started in the mid 1990’s, and typically lasts about 25-30 years. NOAA have this to say about the AMO, which they confirm is a natural event that has been around for a long time:-

Recent research suggests that the AMO is related to the past occurrence of major droughts in the Midwest and the Southwest. When the AMO is in its warm phase, these droughts tend to be more frequent and/or severe (prolonged?). Vice-versa for negative AMO. Two of the most severe droughts of the 20th century occurred during the positive AMO between 1925 and 1965: The Dustbowl of the 1930s and the 1950s drought. Florida and the Pacific Northwest tend to be the opposite – warm AMO, more rainfall.

Their map makes this abundantly clear.

 

Red and blue colored dots represent positive and negative correlations of Northern Hemisphere summer rainfall with the AMO index. When the AMO is positive (warm Atlantic) there is less rainfall over most of the United States and northeastern South America, and more rainfall in southern Alaska, northern Europe, west Africa and Florida.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/faq/faq_fig1.php

 

Check out the AMO index below, and the cycles of the PDSI index become readily apparent, Drier weather from 1930-60, and again in the last decade.

Conclusions

I am just guessing, but I suspect Bill Nye was pulled from the programme at the last minute, because his attempts to discuss the facts in the first programme were such a disaster. Instead the warmist establishment wheeled out one of their spin merchants, with the aim of avoiding any debate on the science. (It does all seem rather unlikely that Brune was ready for the interview, supposedly at 6 minutes notice, which was when Nye pulled out!)

The introductory statements bear this out.

 

Morgan – “I’m going to rest my weary voice box and let Michael tell you why there is science. “

 

Brune – “Sure, well, actually I don’t want to waste any time on this. The science is settled. “

 

Whether Brune knew any of these facts, and deliberately withheld them from the debate, I really cannot say. Either way, the real facts do not seem to be of any relevance to Brune and his ilk.

 

 

Full transcript of the programme is here.