US Climate Is Getting Less Extreme, Not More
By Paul Homewood
I covered this story the other day, and inevitably it is making headlines across the media (as it was intended to):
The claim is not based on any actual data, but on weather attribution models.
But what does the actual data tell us?
Much of the world lacks long term, high quality data. But one country that does have it in abundance is the US, and it tells us a completely different story to the one presented in the latest report.
Heatwaves, for instance, used to be much worse than now, and not only during the dustbowl years of the 1930s. Climate fraudsters love to begin their trends from the 1960s, when the world was cooling. But as the graph below shows, there is nothing out of the ordinary about recent heatwaves:
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-waves
Then we can turn to drought. The record exhibits large swings, but plainly droughts are not getting worse – on the contrary, the 1920s, 30s and 50s were much worse than now:
Floods? I’m afraid not. The data provided by the EPA is the inevitable mixed bag; after all nature does not do straight lines. Some places, such as the North East show a worsening trend, whilst others have been decreasing. Such regional changes may well be associated with oceanic cyclical changes, such as the AMO and PDO, which are known to affect US rainfall patterns. But if the weather attribution models are right, we would expect to see worsening flood trends everywhere.
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-river-flooding
And storms?
There are no trends in the frequency of hurricanes or major ones:
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html
And violent tornadoes are much less frequent now:
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data
The US is of course only one country, albeit a large one. And maybe other parts of the world are experiencing more extreme weather. But if the weather attribution models are right, all of the world, including the US, should be seeing the same effects.
The fact that the US, and for that matter the UK, is not seeing such effects fundamentally undermines their credibility.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This is the fundamental problem. The attribution models say extreme weather is becoming much more likely but extreme events aren’t becoming more frequent. So do we believe models or data?
You’re clearly not a “climate scientist” else you would know!
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
~ Prof. Chris Folland ~ (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research)
“Climate scientists” don’t need no stinkin’ data!
They have $hundred million supercomputer models, why would they believe a $10 thermometer?
Well if you are not using data, you are not using the scientific method and thus are not a scientist. Mr Folland is obviously a Prof of sociology not a science.
A professor of bolloxology would be my guess.
Catweazle: Which of those quotes were from Chris Folland and how much was someone else including yourself. bobn clearly thinks it is all so you need to clarify. It does our cause no good at all to throw around careless unsubstantiated stuff – you can easily check Chris Folland’s publications.
We need to start calling these studies what they are. “Prophecies”
The academics who produce them should be called prophets. Like their ancestors they emerge from their computer caves to prophesy doom unless we repent. Their computer graphics should be called visions which is what they are. The history of the Univetsities is that of theological training institutions and we can undetstand these priests follow in those footsteps but for a different religeon than Christianity. Their religeon is paganism with malevolent gods everywhere who must be placated with sacrifice and self harm including the human sacrifice of unborn babies. The god of wind will blow down your house, the god of the ocean will rise up and drown you. The god of rain will flood you and cause your crops to wither.
We need to start calling these studies what they are. “CRAP!”
There – fixed it got you.
how about pseudo religeous crap
The problem with all computer models is that they are only as “good” as what is put into them. Today, it also depends upon the agenda(s) of those developing the “models”.
With atmospheric studies (think “atmospheric gases” which have conveniently dubbed “greenhouse gases” for the scare factor), reactions take place so rapidly in the atmosphere that they cannot be either captured nor predicted according to an atmospheric chemist I spoke with several decades ago. So this is an obvious problem w/ so-called models. While modern computers might capture more data, it is unlikely that a true picture of reality has been obtained.
Likely this explains the agenda-driven to demand that all those disagreeing with them be subjected to ridicule and dubbed “conspiracy theorists” or “racists”.
Anyone who claims that a purported computer game er, sorry climate simulation of an effectively infinitely large open-ended non-linear feedback-driven (where we don’t know all the feedbacks, and even the ones we do know, we are unsure of the signs of some critical ones) chaotic system – hence subject to inter alia extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, strange attractors and bifurcation – is capable of making meaningful predictions over any significant time period is either a charlatan or a computer salesman.
Ironically, the first person to point this out was Edward Lorenz – a climate scientist.
The models don’t include clouds. Now, I don’t know about anyone else but in my experience clouds do make quite a contribution to temperature given they can stop solar warmth getting to the ground. And how well do they cover ENSO? This is a well-known weather phenomenon but the cause is not understood since nobody can accurately predict its cycle.
Indeed.
Clouds reduce temperature increase during the day and decrease temperature reduction at night, hence producing just the sort of variable feedback the climate models can’t cope with.
As Solar Cycle 25 starts to take effect and the reduction in solar wind causes an increase cosmic ray particles interacting with the atmosphere (see Svensmark) the increase in cloud nucleation will reduce the Earth’s albedo and hence cause cooling.
Couple that with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation’s recent change to the negative phase and the serious problems with Net Zero, expect a reversal in the climateers’ alarmism back to the Ice Age scare that preceded the current AGW scare when the AMO entered its positive phase around 1980.
From WP today.
As the storms raged outside his house last week, Oakland-based hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick got to thinking. This year’s floods are terrible, but not near as bad as in the ARkStorm of winter 1861-1862, which wiped out about one-quarter of the state’s economy. Rain, snow and meltwater created an inland sea, left thousands dead, drowned cattle and sheep by the hundreds of thousands, and destroyed 1 in 8 homes. Six times in the past 1,800 years California has been hit by even worse.
It could happen again, Gleick warns in his column, and we’re not prepared.
Today, the state has a population 80 times larger than in the mid-19th century and grows a quarter of the nation’s food. Another ARkStorm could cost $1 trillion — three times the projected cost of an equally likely catastrophic earthquake.
This Peter Gleick?
Peter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute who has been active in the climate wars, apologised on Monday for using a false name to obtain materials from Heartland, a Chicago-based think tank with a core mission of dismissing climate change.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents
I have a subscription to the Australian Spectator where today I have enjoyed reading this article “What Climate Crisis?” by Prof. Ian Plimer. Subject to copyright conventions I could send it on to other Commentators but that may be forbidden . The string for the address is
https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/what-climate-crisis/?
It may also be in the UK edition but I have not looked yet.
Many thanks. This is essentially the tale I learned when studying A levels in the early 1960s as plate tectonics became accepted science. I’ve not seen and convincing evidence to deny it.
Alarmists would do well to read Bill Bryson’s book “One summer: America 1927”. They might learn something.
The reporting of weather events is becoming frequent.
The climatists are becoming increasingly frantic because they’re losing ground – fast.
The worm is turning.
Globally, ever-decreasing numbers believe climate change is a serious problem, now down to less than half:
Heh – “AS THREAT GROWS”!
Seems the increasingly frantic alarmist propaganda efforts of the AGW hoaxers are globally failing and they’re starting to panic, doesn’t it?
As the old saying goes, “you can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”.
The AGW hoax is dying on its feet.
But the bedwetters don’t need to worry, the Globalists will dream up something else to make them hand over all their money, lose sleep over, lock themselves up, terrorise their kids and hide behind the sofa very soon now.
In fact I think they’ll find they already have – GLOBAL PANDEMICS.
So be afraid, be very afraid!
“Lies, damned lies and government.”
I don’t understand it when you write, “The claim is not based on any actual data, but on weather attribution models”. Do you mean that the the claim is based on those same climate models that are also used in attribution studies?
Insofar as there is something you could describe as an “attribution model” it would refer to the flawed combination of probability analysis and GCMs running in climate prediction mode that is used to guesstimate the difference in the probabilities of an individual weather event under ambient and pre-industrial greenhouse forcing.
As far as I am aware there is no distinct climate model used in attribution studies nor are attribution studies used to project (or prophesy) future change.
Reblogged this on Calculus of Decay .
I note in Samizdat yesterday that the ever-sensible Swiss are proposing a referendum on climate spend. Their referenda make their democracy a class above ours as the government respects popular opinion and allows informed debate.