Tuesday, April 12, 2011
March in America: Hot, or not?
From the government's climate scientists, propaganda by omission.
Of course, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration knows what it is doing here.
4 Comments:
By 
Lapel Pins, at
Tue Apr 12, 03:57:00 PM:
Weather patterns are simply off the charts not only here in America but around the world. I can't remember ever hearing of such devastating weather and natural catastrophies like the recent tsunamis, earthquakes and severe winters we have had of late.
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Tue Apr 12, 05:29:00 PM:
"Weather patterns are simply off the charts..."
In no particular order, I present to you a list of some of the largest natural disasters (found on a very brief Google search, aided by faded memory of my college Geography class) from around the turn of the last century:
The Galveston Hurricane. The San Francisco earthquake. The Guatemala earthquake. A major Indian earthquake. A major Central American earthquake. Major earthquakes in Mongolia. Statistical proof that hurricanes have been much worse. An earthquake in Italy that caused a tsunami. A major volcanic eruption that caused a tsunami. An earthquake in Japan that caused a tsunami.
The Italian one was apparently the deadliest tsunami in recorded history until 2004, BTW. Bet you never heard of it, though. After that was the famous Lisbon one, addressed in Voltaire's Candide.
This doesn't address other major disasters of history, like the Dust Bowl, tornadoes, floods (one of which killed 2.5 to 3.7 million Chinese in 1931), and the like.
Disasters aren't "off the chart." You just hear about them now, thanks to the magic of telecommunications. There is also a bias toward the modern period because of advances in detection and record keeping. Who knows how many horrific disasters struck humanity throughout history and simply weren't recorded or where the records didn't survive? That plus general ignorance of what we do know (like that a 16th century earthquake in China killed more than 800k people), relatively higher modern population densities (the Haiti earthquake killed 200k people in and around Port aux Prince; there were only about 500k in the whole territory when the nation was founded; there are over 9 million now), and the church of environmentalism constantly screaming that their gods are angry gives the modern era a veneer of being an "environmental apocalypse."
I find it funny that you seem to consider these past couple of years "severe winters." It's generally accepted that North American winters in the 18th and 19th century were much harsher. In fact, that's something that is often repeated by global warming enthusiasts as "proof" of impending disaster. See the Great Blizzard of 1899.
By Gary Rosen, at
Wed Apr 13, 12:45:00 AM:
Well, obviously the tsunamis, earthquakes and severe winters are due to global warming.
By Brian Schmidt, at
Sun Apr 17, 11:18:00 PM:
High snowfall level is consistent with global warming in its earlier decades at temperate latitudes. It's not a good proof though (noise to signal ratio problem). Tsunamis and earthquakes are unrelated.
Back to Watts: his own chart shows huge variability in March US temps even in the last 10 years. Not surprising for a single month in a small area. March 2011 fit nicely onto the long term trend, though, so I don't see much ground for complaint.
