The Left sees “Climate buffoons” and “deniers”. What do they see in the mirror?

Larry Kummer, Editor

12 years ago

Summary: Today we look at one of the most interesting aspects of US politics. The rhetoric about climate by both Left and Right runs hot, pretending to scientific authority. But both sides have abandoned science, except as window-dressing. Here we review one example, comparing the rhetoric with the science. Bad news: millions believe the propaganda of Left and Right. Good news: journalists are slowly seeing the problem, and responding. Conclusion: we’ll have to do better if America is to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

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Contents

About “Climate buffoons’ real motives”
About those droughts
About the UK floods
Did global warming cause the polar vortex?
For More Information

(1) About “Climate buffoons’ real motives”

California’s record-breaking drought. Britain’s record-breaking floods. Australia’s unprecedented heat wave. And the polar vortex, times three.The only thing that matched the degree of extreme weather we saw this past winter was the extreme amount of climate denial that arose in response.

— From “Climate buffoons’ real motives: 5 reasons they still spout debunked garbage“, Lindsay Abrams, Salon, 6 March 2014 — “From greed to idiocy, here’s the true agenda of deniers who still claim climate change isn’t happening”

Quite a righteous opening, but factually challenged. Every week brings many similar articles, all examples of the Left’s abandonment of the IPCC, the major climate agencies, and of climate science.

The Left supported science against the Right when politically useful, then jilted science for more useful if poorly supported alarmists. Science, one of our most powerful tools to understand and shape our world, has few friends in either the Republican or Democratic Parties today (see these polls for scary Republican opinions about climate change). It’s a serious problem, perhaps to have unimaginably horrific consequences.

Let’s review the evidence rebuking Ms Abrams’ alarmist rhetoric.

(2) About those droughts

California and Australia have histories of frequent, severe, and long droughts. Droughts worse and longer than recent ones. More generally, the consensus of climate scientists is clear about the global trend in droughts.

(a) Aspen Global Change Institute’s “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate” (CCSP, 2008):

Similarly, long-term trends (1925-2003) of hydrologic droughts based on model derived soil moisture and runoff show that droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U. S. over the last century (Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006). The main exception is the Southwest and parts of the interior of the West, where increased temperature has led to rising drought trends (Groisman et al. , 2004; Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006). The trends averaged over all of North America since 1950 (Figure 2.6) are similar to U.S. trends for the same period, indicating no overall trend.

(b) From page 8 of the IPCC’s “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” (SREX, 2012)

There is medium confidence that since the 1950s some regions of the world have experienced a trend to more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia. [3.5.1]

(c) From the new IPCC AR5, Working Group I, Chapter 2:

Confidence is low for a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century, owing to lack of direct observations, methodological uncertainties and geographical inconsistencies in the trends. Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. However, this masks important regional changes: the frequency and intensity of drought have likely increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and likely decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950. {2.6.2.2}

There is, of course, ample research supporting these conclusions.

(d) A broad explanation: “Historical drought trends revisited“, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Nature, 15 November 2012 — “A new assessment of drought trends over the past 60 years finds little evidence of an expansion of the area affected by droughts, contradicting several previous estimates.”

(e) One study, with a more technical analysis: “Little change in global drought over the past 60 years“, Justin Sheffield et al, Nature, 15 November 2012 — From the abstract:

Drought is expected to increase in frequency and severity in the future as a result of climate change, mainly as a consequence of decreases in regional precipitation but also because of increasing evaporation driven by global warming. … More realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.

(f) What are the worst drought months in America from 1900 to March 2013?

Top months with the greatest extent of Moderate–Extreme on the Palmer Drought Index. (Source here)

Albert Bierstadt’s Storm in the Mountains (1870)

1934 – July	80.3
1934 – Aug	78.0
1934 – June	75.0
1934 – May	73.1
1934 – Sept	70.3
1934 – Oct	68.2
1934 – April	63.9
2012 – July	62.8
1939 – Dec	62.5
2012 – Aug	61.0

(g) Good news: the NY Times is on the job

Many journalists are doing excellent work reporting on both the consensus and frontiers of climate science. Such as these:

“Science Linking Drought to Global Warming Remains Matter of Dispute“, New York Times, 16 February 2014
“A Climate Analyst Clarifies the Science Behind California’s Water Woes“, Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times, 6 March 2014

(2) About the UK floods

(a) In February the UK Met Office issued a special report about the UK storms:

As yet, there is no definitive answer on the possible contribution of climate change to the recent storminess, rainfall amounts and the consequent flooding. This is in part due to the highly variable nature of UK weather and climate.

(b) From the new IPCC AR5, Working Group I, Chapter 2: Floods {2.6.2.2}

AR4 WGI Chapter 3 (Trenberth et al., 2007) did not assess changes in floods but AR4 WGII concluded that there was not a general global trend in the incidence of floods (Kundzewicz et al., 2007). SREX went further to suggest that there was low agreement and thus low confidence at the global scale regarding changes in the magnitude or frequency of floods or even the sign of changes.

… In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.

(3) Is the polar vortex as a result of global warming?

This has been so extensively debunked it’s astonishing that it remains in circulation. There is some research suggesting this, and much suggesting otherwise. We have institutions like the IPCC to fight this kind of cherry-picking the literature, and selling the result as truth.

“What’s going on with the Polar Vortex?“, Jim Overland, NOAA, 6 January 2014 — Excerpt:

In the last five years, we’ve seen the jet stream take on more a wavy shape (left hand map below) instead of the more typical nice oval around the North Pole (right hand map below). This waviness is leading to colder weather down in the eastern U.S. and eastern Asia. Whether this is normal randomness or related to the significant climate changes occurring in the Arctic is not entirely clear, especially when considering individual events, but less sea ice and snow cover in the Arctic and relatively warmer Arctic air temperatures at the end of autumn suggest a more wavy pattern to the jet stream and more variability between the straight and wavy pattern.

(4) For More Information

(a) About the consensus of climate scientists: