Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Yes, North Carolina, it's still warming.



"So much for global warming", is a popular line being sent to our Buzz column this week. But, as data, and the chart above, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research shows, just because record cold snaps keep occurring, doesn't mean that records aren't being made in the other direction as well.

As their senior scientist Gerald Meehl explains, "One of the messages of this study is that you still get cold days. Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we're setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But the odds are shifting so there's a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows."

The report says, "If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even. Instead, for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, as the country experienced unusually mild winter weather and intense summer heat waves. "

Their report, complete with caveats, can be found here.

-- posted by Kevin Siers

9 comments:

Algernon said...

http://www.livescience.com/environment/050330_earth_tilt.html

__

Global warning is not a unique circumstance preciously allocated to our lifetimes.

The Earth tilts one way you get cooling, the Earth tilts the other way you get warming. A cycle after all is a circular motion, at least according to Steve Miller.

Hysterics over global warming can be attributed to the same mind set that thinks the green crackers are people, or someone betting on certain financial futures perhaps.

However...one can not help but look at the smoke stacks of industry...buses spewing black smoke...A coal fired Duke plant or your neighbors antiquated Mercedes diesel...and think realistically...that can not be all that good.

Unburned hydrocarbons will indeed doom us all.

WashuOtaku said...

Pretty graph, means nothing though. Doesn't go into any detail of the size (all towns/cities in the United States or just a grouping, also what for the ones that didn't exist till more recently?) of the sample or what they were comparing too (the full time frame since we began taking measurements, which is 1870 or using computer models to assume historic data?).

As always, you can always create an answer by using statistics by simply adding and removing data as needed. Since this article shows no work on how the numbers are made (the link simply goes to the Atmospheric Research Homepage); then my recommendation to the Daily View is to revise the article to either include the data (link at least) or mention the fact that its quesitonable still since no data is supporting this pretty graph.

Quotes are a nice touch to make an article more than it is, but you need more than just quotes.

Nice graph!

Jason said...

You can expand or contract and move around your time frame of reference and get any trend you want, because the system is in constant flux. All you need to do is set your start point at a low part of a cycle and put the end point at a high point and you have a warming trend. Do the opposite, and you have a cooling trend.

This is all a hoax and always has been.

metroniner said...

Wow a chart that dates a few decades, from a planet billions of years old...besides, in order to trust this chart, you must trust the data...? Climategate proved scientists can't be trusted. I also like how it leaves of Oct, Nov, Dec 2009. Kevin Siers is a nutjob who can draw.

metroniner said...

dare to read Observer

http://www.accuweather.com/news-weather-features.asp?partner=&traveler=0&date=2010-01-04_1701&month=1&year=2010

hello world said...

You can keep up the constant drum beat all you want. Still don't buy it. Nice graph.

Anonymous said...

Man, the ignorance of people is amazingly alarming. This is a blog people, not a research article. If you're intelligent enough, go pick up a scientific journal and try to find one, any articles that use solid evidence and disproves global warming. But based on the comments here I have a really difficult time believing any of you could possibly even understand one of those articles.
They don't even insult people who have different opinions!! Imagine that!

Zon said...

You can present all the empirical data you want, a wing-nut is still not going to believe you. Some of them disbelieve we have a warming problem because a democrat is the one saying we have a problem. Heaven forbid anyone but a republican be right. Others are just plain ignorant and like being that way. But the fact is, a wing-nut is that way and the only thing that will change it is their deaths.

Algernon said...

Timothy is right of course

..when it comes to wing nuts..


Righty tighty...

Lefty loosey