Who Needs Facts, Andy?
By Paul Homewood
So this is what climate science has sunk to!
https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1429099366250434562?s=20&t=jbrp-SxXqW7qPBDy9FK5CQ
Andrew Dessler is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences & climate “scientist” at Texas A&M.
There was time when science was about facts and truths. Now it seems that climate science is not interested in data but feelings.
The chart he disparages has been used as a long term indicator of US heatwaves for several years by the EPA. Moreover it tallies with other official charts published in the National Climate Assessment in 2017:
Heat waves (6-day periods with a maximum temperature above the 90th percentile for 1961–1990) increased in frequency until the mid-1930s, became considerably less common through the mid-1960s, and increased in frequency again thereafter (Figure 6.4). As with warm daily temperatures, heat wave magnitude reached a maximum in the 1930s
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/
The vast majority of State record high temperatures were set in the 1930s, notable 1936:
We can also drill down to individual States, such as Dessler’s own Texas:
https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/tx/
And his own part of Texas:
http://climod2.nrcc.cornell.edu/
But hey Andy, who needs facts?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Texas used be a hardship posting for the US army, they were paid extra because the climate was so difficult, nothing changes.
Hi Paul
Great work. Keep it up!
Interested to know how Andrew Dessler’s discussion beyond his initial graph fits with your exploration. Can you give us a layman’s explanation of what’s happening here? All Dessler’s graphs shoot up beyond 1980. Why are these so different to your various graphs? He mentions cherry-picking a lot. Is this unfair?
Dessler prefers 95% percentiles to 90%, yet the EPA also show a marked decline in heatwaves using 95%:
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-high-and-low-temperatures
Note that this series begins in 1948, so misses the 1930s heat
His analysis is based on BEST homogenised database, which shows just how wildly incorrect it is!
Thanks Paul
Rather than ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ we now have ‘Inconvenient Facts’
“One of the things you learn as a con man is the ability to look at official real world data and think “how can I corrupt that to make my lies look real” signed Andrew Dessler
Currently there is a load of blatant climate change propaganda on Sky Sports during the changeover at the cricket.
To an extent he has a point, but the climate industry uses far worse arbitrary definitions and cherry picks all the time.
And then there are some of his graphs, post 1980 if ever graphs didn’t look right, like they had been algorithmically created! Uses the Berkeley Earth ‘data’ for goodness sake.
A big factor in Texas weather is El Nino, and to this day, nobody can accurately predict how that will perform no matter how supadupa their supercomputer is. Yes, being able to look at graphs and smell a rat is a useful skill as Steve McIntyre showed when looking at Mann et al’s hockey stick fraud. It was a shape he knew from his mining experience of anticipated mine output – many of those turn out to be complete bollocks just like the hockey stick.
Gerry, no time series development based on linear algorithmic terms has ever accurately predicted the future – see Claudius Ptolemy. The mathematical textbooks in the 1830s all emphasise that models are only to be relied on with small displacements and small perturbations. Both weather and climate are large signal non-linear systems, therefore they can develop behaviours not predected by superposition of linear terms and are open ‘systems’. You can model ‘closed’ periodic non-linear systems using eigen values and eigen vectors but not ‘open’ systems. I am astonished that Mann et al tried to do so – it shows an ignorance of the fundamentals of mathematics that is very worrying.
In a coincidence, we are going to have near record heat here today.
The cause is always the same: high pressure in the midwest. The clockwise circulation pushes the air mass SE, over the Appalachians. Compression heating on the lee side creates the high heat.
When we have heat waves, it is caused by a blocked/stalled high pressure system in the midwest, and the high temps persist for days. Meteorologists have a name for it: the Ring of Fire. It affects weather in other ways and places than just heat in the southeast. E.g., more storms in the Great Lakes area.
To claim that climate change is going to cause more heat waves, they must define what they mean by ‘climate change.’ Then they have to explain how it is going to block a high pressure system.
Then the biggie: causes of record heat vary around the world. To claim that climate change is going to cause more heat waves, they need to specify WHERE, and for each “where,” the mechanism that is going to cause the heat, and what will cause it to persist for days.
The assertion that climate change is going to cause more heatwaves is just gibberish. A great many more details are needed before it could be considered scientific.
Central Washington State has had a cold and wet spring in 2022.
Last June the region had record high temperatures. Some of us had 116°F (46°C).
We have only had mid-70s (23C) this June, although next Monday the forecast is for 89° (~32).
Weather is interesting, and watching the sky is a favorite pastime. This is more
rewarding than trying to decipher the “climate cult’s” notion of changing climate.
Climates are established by parameters, most of which do not change in
human lifetimes.
For example, having a mountain range (The Cascades) between me and the Pacific Ocean
makes this area mostly dry – we get about 7 inches of precipitation per year.
Native plants “integrate” the climate. Ponderosa Pines (‘weighty’) are a good example. Some
are estimated to be about 500 years old. That’s about as old as they get, and each year thousands of new ones start from seed.
When the Cascades are flattened to a peneplane (waiting), I’ll expect a different climate.
Tony Heller is also right across this. Dessler has some explaining to do. Expect silence.
https://realclimatescience.com/2022/06/erasing-steinbeck-2/
Nearly total destruction of Andy Dessler’s tweet, nothing but weak chirps left.
I watched Dessler “debate” Alex Epstein at Steamboat (link below). Andy as you call him, showed signs of being a despicable and emotional adversary. He needs to get off the estrogen. Disgusting behavior.
What one country does or doesn’t in climate terms do is of little interest or meaning.