Sunday, July 26, 2009

Global warming, eh?

Jesse Farrell at the AccuWeather blog presents some interesting statistics about our unusually cool July in Ohio and the Eastern United States. While he is careful not to tie his analysis to the global warming argument and acknowledges that he is professionally neutral on the subject, the stats provide skeptics with some useful ammunition against those who want to go into panic mode. The link is well illustrated with tables and maps.

A few of the items:
1. There have been more than 3,000 record lows set this July, an unusually high number of records.
2. A map of the United States north and east of Memphis shows no place that had July temperatures above average, and one spot that appears to be near Somerset, Pennsylvania, that averaged 10° below normal (which Mr. Farrell considers to be "rare"). Most areas in Ohio showed a variance of 3-5° below normal.
3. Low temperatures for July in Ohio ranged from 47° to 59°. Supposedly, this is summer.
4. There is a beautiful map that shows the number of days above 85° this July. Only St. Louis, Washington, DC, and Roanoke VA showed more than one day that warm this month.

Back in December 2007, I expressed frustration at the difficulty we were experiencing knowing the truth about global warming. While I am not prepared to declare it a hoax, the findings above support others from Columbus meteorologist Jym Ganahl and the scientists cited in the December 2007 article, that cast doubt on the validity of assertions that temperatures are rising globally.*

* Which is not to discount areas, such as the Arctic, where rising temperatures are melting glaciers and endangering habitat for polar bears.

Update 7/27: A commenter in The Ohio Republic's Facebook mirror makes a telling point: "The establishment is one step ahead of you Harold as they have already changed their terms and now use 'global climate change' as their pretext for more taxation and regulation." More smoke and mirrors.

Virtual buckeye to Gordon Gekko at taxmanblog.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Stupid. It burns....

Barga said...

As a person who has worked in these fields you are sorely misinformed. We have always called it enhanced greenhose effect and climate change. Global warming is popularized by Gore, and he is not one of us

the effect of climate change is hard to calculate, as it is a worldwide average increase (which it has been), not a localized phenomina

also, to blow your mind. Global warming (i.e. an increase in overall average tempereatures via EGE) will result in an ice age

Harold Thomas said...

Barga:
I'm not sure we are in disagreement. My issue with the discussion of climate change has to do with the idea that it is principally caused by human activity.
The scientific evidence I have seen indicates that at least 98% of the climate change we are experiencing is the result of natural forces, such as sunspot activity.
Consequently, the emphasis on reducing carbon emissions and the like is misdirected. We could easily (but slowly) reverse the human effect of carbon dioxide buildup by planting more trees. The "carbon emission credit" scheme is nothing but a device for governments to control human activity, and a profit-making scheme for firms like Goldman-Sachs, which owns 10% of the exchange on which the carbon emission credits will be traded. (See the Glenn Beck video I published July 28).

Barga said...

That is where mainstream media is fucking with the science again, the EGE is natural, Climate changed is caused by us, but not how you think.

We contribute directly to roughly 2% of the gasses, and indirectly to 5%. I know that this seems like little, but consider that nature is able to naturally remove 96% of the current gasses. That means that through our direct actions and indirect ones, we are typing the ballance. That is how we cause it, by throwing it out of wack

Barga said...

note, i rounded, as the numbers are inclusive on one side and exclusive on the other, which is just confusing