Climate Change Weekly #126
Winter temperatures throughout the United States are in a 20-year cooling trend, defying alarmist global warming predictions and debunking claims that warmer winters are causing environmental catastrophe.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, highlighted by the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, reveal this winter’s exceptionally cold winter was merely the continuation of a long-term cooling trend. The trend line for the past 20 years shows more than two degrees Fahrenheit of cooling in U.S. winter temperatures since 1995.
U.S. Historical Climatology Network data show the cooling trend extends back even further, with winter high temperatures in a cooling trend since 1930.
Global warming activists frequently assert that warmer winters are causing all sorts of environmental harms. The poster child for these alarmist claims is assertions that pine beetle infestations in the western United States are caused by warmer winters failing to keep pine beetle populations in check. Global warming cannot be causing pine beetle epidemics if the claim depends on assertions that winters are getting warmer. Winters are not getting warmer; they are getting cooler. Therefore, global warming cannot be causing recent pine beetle epidemics.
Objective scientists point out, instead, that pine beetle epidemics have occurred for millennia, including in extremely cold places like Alaska. Government forestry practices that have unnaturally suppressed wildfires, leaving in place an unnatural density of old and weakened trees, are much more likely to fuel pine beetle epidemics.
MORE INFORMATION: Forbes.com
IN THIS ISSUE
Study: resilient corals adapt to warmer water … Hayhoe: skeptics want to “screw everybody and let the world burn” … *Yawn*: more Antarctic sea ice records set … Roy Spencer presents “10 good skeptical arguments” … Federal report: solar project is a “mega-trap” killing wildlife … Slate: Taco Bell should lower beef content to stop global warming
STUDY: RESILIENT CORALS ADAPT TO WARMER WATER
Temperature-resilient corals quickly and successfully adapted to warmer water in a recent scientific study, leading the scientists to conclude, “Adding these adaptive abilities to ecosystem models is likely to slow predictions of demise for coral reef ecosystems.” The scientists, publishing their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Science, transplanted corals between reef sites with different temperatures. They discovered the corals fared quite well, even when suddenly transplanted to significantly warmer sites. “In less than two years, acclimatization achieves the same heat tolerance that we would expect from strong natural selection over many generations,” the scientists reported.
MORE INFORMATION: Science
HAYHOE: SKEPTICS WANT TO “SCREW EVERYBODY AND LET THE WORLD BURN”
Global warming alarmist and self-proclaimed evangelical Katherine Hayhoe compared skeptics of her asserted global warming crisis to theological evil and drunk drivers getting behind the wheel and killing people. Emphasizing her message that God is on her side and skeptics are defying God’s will, Hayhoe said, “The message that, we don’t care about anybody else, screw everybody, and let the world burn, that message is not a consistent message in the Bible.”
MORE INFORMATION: Mother Jones
*YAWN*: MORE ANTARCTIC SEA ICE RECORDS SET
Antarctic sea ice extent set more records last week, with the sea ice anomaly for April 28 registering 50 percent higher than any prior ice extent for the date. In Antarctic sea ice coverage, scientists may finally have uncovered a “hockey stick” graph that is not dependent on flawed statistical models and cherry-picked, anomalous data. The seemingly weekly records for Antarctic sea ice extent beg the question: Is it still a news story if it keeps happening every week?
MORE INFORMATION: Real Science and Cryosphere Today
ROY SPENCER PRESENTS “TOP 10 GOOD SKEPTICAL ARGUMENTS”
Climate scientist Roy Spencer presents a pithy list of top skeptical arguments on his personal website. My personal favorite is: “4) Climate Models Can’t Even Hindcast. How did climate modelers, who already knew the answer, still fail to explain the lack of a significant temperature rise over the last 30+ years? In other words, how do you botch a hindcast?”
MORE INFORMATION: Roy Spencer, Ph.D.: Global Warming
FEDERAL REPORT: SOLAR PROJECT IS A “MEGA-TRAP” KILLING WILDLIFE
The Ivanpah solar power project in southern California acts as a “mega-trap,” attracting insects that in turn attract birds to their deaths, a federal study reported. Moreover, each of three southern California solar power facilities – each utilizing different solar power technologies – served as “equal opportunity” bird killers. Among the carcasses recovered at the solar power sites were pelicans, herons, hawks, peregrine falcons, roadrunners, doves, owls, hummingbirds, and orioles. In an article summarizing the study, The Atlantic referred to the Ivanpah solar power project as a “Death Star” for birds, bats, and butterflies.
MORE INFORMATION: The Atlantic and National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory
SLATE: TACO BELL SHOULD LOWER BEEF CONTENT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING
In the wake of revelations that only 88 percent of Taco Bell “seasoned beef” was actually meat, Slate online magazine defended the fast food chain and urged it to further reduce its meat content. “If fast food leaders like McDonald’s and Taco Bell started replacing half of their meat with vegetable protein, they could potentially slow global warming,” Slate urged.
MORE INFORMATION: Slate
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