Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Local conditions and climate change politics
We have, more than once, observed that the difference in alarmism about global climate change between Europe and the United States may have more to do with the local impact of climate change than the nefarious Bush administration. During the "climate change era" the United States has generally enjoyed warmer winters without paying the price of hotter summers, but in Europe (where air conditioning is much less common) the summers have gotten much hotter. Most Americans cannot help but think that the warming of the planet, so far, has made their weather more comfortable (the main exception being in the thinly populated desert southwest).
That trend continues this year (including the June snow in Spokane?) (emphasis added).
The March-May spring season was the 36th coolest on record for the contiguous United States, according to an analysis by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Separately, last month ended as the 34th coolest May for the contiguous United States, based on records dating back to 1895...
The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for May ranked 8th warmest since worldwide records began in 1880, while the boreal spring ranked 7th warmest.
It is great lefty fun to complain that the White House and ExxonMobil shape our casual view of global climate change, but the more likely explanation is the experience of Americans. Most of us like what has happened to our climate since the 1970s -- remember those hideous winters? -- and would be just fine with global warming if it stopped warming right now. Which it may have.
In any case, this month's climate report from the National Climatic Data Center contains any number of interesting factoids. Year-to-date, the global combined land and sea temperature for January - May is the 12th warmest on record, continuing the flat-to-down trend of the last decade. There were substantial hemospheric differences, however, with the Northern Hemisphere showing the 8th warmest land and sea temperatures on record for January - May, while the Southern Hemisphere was the 20th warmest. This difference was matched by sea ice levels, a point often emphasized by activists looking for a public relations victory (emphasis added).
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the May 2008 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, which is measured from passive microwave instruments onboard NOAA satellites, was below the 1979-2000 mean, but greater than the previous six years. This was the tenth least May sea ice extent on record. Sea ice extent for May has decreased at a rate of 2.7 percent per decade since satellite records began in 1979, as temperatures in the high latitude Northern Hemisphere have risen at a rate of approximately 0.37°C per decade over the same period.
Meanwhile, the May 2008 Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent exceeded the 1979-2000 mean. This was the third greatest sea ice extent in May (7.4 percent above the 1979-2000 mean) over the 30-year historical period, behind 2000 and 1996. Sea ice extent for May has increased at a rate of 1.8 percent per decade.
Maybe we need to move some polar bears to Antarctica.
Finally, the YTD lower troposphere (below five miles) temperatures (measured by satellite) show virtually no temperature anomaly, reporting the 20th warmest (11th coolest) temperatures in the 30 year series. If I understand the various controversies around the data, the satellite readings are considered the least likely to have been influenced by differences in measurement locations and instrumentation over time (which have certainly affected ground temperature readings since 1880, the data series used to calculate the land-only and land-and-sea anomalies). Of course, the satellite data is only 30 years old, so it does not tell us about temperatures in the pre-industrial era and therefore eliminates the "hockey stick" that purports to prove anthropogenic global warming.
6 Comments:
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Tue Jun 17, 09:12:00 AM:
I realize your tongue was firmly in cheeck, TH, but introducing this top-of-the-food-chain carnivore to Antarctia is the best way I can think of for it to go from being "threatened" to "invasive". Good-bye penguins, good-bye complex associations that evolved in the absense of the ice bear, and perhaps, in the end, good-bye bear as well.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Jun 17, 09:15:00 AM:
Indeed. In fact, I'm expecting the outraged email from my sister the invasive species expert any minute now.
By 
, at
Tue Jun 17, 11:11:00 AM:
In the 70s and 80s, a lot of schoools in the US relentlessly pushed the meme that we were going into a new ice age as a result of fossil fuel use. Don't discount that as a source of AGW skepticism from Americans over 30.
Also, my experience has been that Europeans are exponentially more amenable to appeals to authority in an argument - much more credulous towards information coming from the UN or government sources, and prone to view highly educated people as experts on subjects wildly outside their actual realm of expertise.
By , at
Tue Jun 17, 12:46:00 PM:
TH,
Your point about actual 'experience' versus a concerted propaganda campaign by "big oil" and the like, rings all too true. My European co-workers are all too eager to jump on the AGW bandwagon, while most Americans are much more skeptical.
Based on our own idiosyncratic notions and observations.
In fact, I would guess that especially the French use the pro- AGW data to butress what is economic policy; i.e. high gas taxes, almost all electricity generated by nuclear, subsidized public transport (buses and especially trains), etc. For France, this has been good basic economic policy to minimize "imports" of oil, etc. But it does make everything more expensive, so the French government 'profits' by promoting the moral virtue of these policies.
By , at
Tue Jun 17, 01:33:00 PM:
@ Anon 12:46
Do the French promote the moral virtue of nuclear energy? I wouldn't be THAT surprised, but considering the leftward tilt of the anti-nuclear crowd here, I'd be a little surprised.
Not saying we couldn't use a little nuclear energy here, though...
By , at
Wed Jun 18, 01:59:00 PM:
Yes, the French do promote the moral virtue of nuclear power, because it doens't create those hideous "greenhouse gases". But all these things do make life in France more expensive.
Last year I stunned a young woman in my company (she is French and lives in Paris), because she didn't think that the US had any nuclear power plants. Imagine that. I think we still operate about 90-something plants, which is about 2.5 times the French 37.
-David
