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AUGUST WEATHER NEWSLETTER AND COMMENTARY- Hurricane Harvey As Climate Change?

COOLER THAN NORMAL HERE IN NORTHWESTERN SC

The first and last weeks of August were cooler than normal here with the middle weeks warmer.  For the fifth month in a row there were no record weather events. The high temperature was 94 on August 22; the lows were 63 on the 1st and 28th.  We did finally break the 5 months in a row of above average precipitation with only 3.75 inches, down 0.73 from average.

SEVEN YEAR COOLING TREND HERE

The traditional June, July, August meteorological summer temperature period was similar, with June-  1.5 degrees below normal, July-  0.3 above, and August- 0.6 below, which averages out to 0.6 degrees below normal for our summer.  Our high summer temperature was 96 on July 21st, and after the record heat of August 2007 (10 days at 100+) and summer 2010, both detailed last month, we've been in a seven year cooling trend with only 2 days reaching 100 degrees those 7 years.

I wondered if those receiving this weather letter, living in seven different states, had a similar August departure from normal.  Yes and no. From Maine to Colorado and Texas, in cities near our recipients, temperatures were between 0.3 and 2.1 degrees below normal whereas in northern California and central Florida, temps were about 1.8 degrees above normal.  The U.S. is only about 5% of the globe, so there's no reason to think our temperatures will be reflected in the satellite temperature data that will be published next week.

Average High Temperatures In Our Region
Here's our normal SC/NC/GA regional September weather.  For those of you not in our region, those cooler green colors are mostly for the mountains of North Carolina-
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The NOAA United States Prediction for September

NOAA just revised (cooling) their September prediction to make it look very much like the August results. They predict most of the mid-west and East will continue to have below normal temps with the west coast and Florida continuing to have above normal-

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HOW ABOUT HARVEY?

The biggest news last month was the tragic (and record) rainfall that occurred in the Houston area from a several day, almost stationary hurricane/tropical storm, Harvey.  

Houston averaged 0.9 degrees below normal in August, and they also didn't reach 100 degrees whereas they had a much warmer and more typical August in 2016 with five 100 degree days.
Likewise, despite some headlines I read, temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which had been well above normal last winter toward the end of the El Nino, had returned to normal.  It's difficult to make a case that Harvey was related to global warming or climate change.  A very non- fortuitousness placement of high and low pressure systems caused Harvey to stall over eastern Texas and bring all that rain.

JOURNALISTIC SENSATIONALISM AND INCOMPETENCE

The tragic storm played right into the equally tragic climate wars which are creating cynicism, hatred, disinformation, and thereby hamstringing responsible debate and attempts to respond to severe weather events and climate change.  There's an information war between those promoting the threat of CAGW and those who think AGW is not an existential threat, and possibly benign.  

Aeschylus, 525- 426 BC wrote, "In war, truth is the first casualty," and so it is with the climate wars. Both sides have been engaged in trench warfare the past two decades, demeaning the motivation and character of the other side, and cherry picking data to ague their POV.  The alarmists employ the additional weapon of arguing that severe weather events are the result of and consistent with CAGW.  Of course, severe weather events are consistent with global warming. cooling, and everything in between.  


I worked as a insurance adjuster in Puta Gorda, Florida, for State Farm in August and September, 2004, just after Hurricane Charley struck the gold coast of Florida, August 13, 2004 as a category 1 hurricane with 16 deaths. Three powerful hurricanes struck Florida that year, and all the climate talk hype then was that "this is the new normal."

Annual catastrophic hurricanes were predicted by a few of the celebrity climate scientists, and this was repeated endlessly by the media, and then by Al Gore in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth.".  So what happened? There wasn't another strong (category 3,4, or 5) hurricane to hit Florida or the U.S. for the next 13 years, the longest drought in hurricanes  in U.S. history. I showed you the IPCC (Pielke) graph last month and the IPCC declaration that there was no correlation between global warming and hurricanes. Charley was the first major hurricane to make U.S. landfall in 13 years.

INCOMPETANCE- "Houston has three 500 year floods in 3 years!"

Here are examples of the most ignorant and absurd reporting on the Houston tragedy-

From Washington Post-  Houston is experiencing its third ‘500-year’ flood in 3 years. How is that possible?  Remember when I devoted some paragraphs to the absurdity of 500 and 1000 year claims when we have just 150 years, or less, of weather data.  Even 100 year events can not be known with 150 years of data.  

NY TIMES-     We Don't Deny Harvey, So Why Deny Climate Change?  In addition to the false relationship, it falsely implies widespread denial of climate change, and uses the denier label to demonize the climate scientists, IPCC, and those few reporters who actually understand and report the science.  

REPORTING THE SCIENCE

While journalists (and those same celebrity climate scientists who previously predicted annual catastrophic hurricanes as the new norm) were sensationalizing flooding as "the new normal" there was a peer reviewed study published three days ago in the Journal of Hydrology-    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002216941730478X#%21  
Conclusion-  "The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC (Hartmann et al., 2013) that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking." 

WHEN CIVILITY AND TRUTH ARE ABSENT- WHAT REMAINS?

In our present period of distrust and division, "fake news" and "alternate truth" claims, I'm reminded of the last line of one of my favorite poems, Dover Beachby Matthew Arnold-          "where ignorant armies clash by night."

WHY IS SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING AND DATA IMPORTANT?

There is global warming and, especially in the northern part of the northern hemisphere, climate change from that warming.  There are many unanswered and presently unanswerable questions about the future- "how much," "how severe," how much is natural and how much is the result of greenhouse gases, and what are responsible ways to mitigate and adapt to the possibility of severe global warming and climate change without creating even worse, and more tragic, unintended consequences like we've done with corn ethanolpalm oil,and wood chips transported from our Carolinas to Britain so they can meet their green energy goals.  I've covered those tragedies and unintended consequences many times in the past.  The links to corn ethanol, palm oil, and wood chips above are new ones I haven't used before. You can find many more! Please, please become familiar with the tragedies our rushed-to attempts to combat climate change have caused and are causing.  Let's learn from our mistakes.

The present hype, sensationalism, incivility, and demonizing makes rational understanding, common ground, and responsible action almost impossible.  There are hysterical claims that virtually every severe weather event, even that most every problem mankind faces is because of climate change and that demon CO2.  There is the equally ignorant belief that "going green" will solve the problem-that we must and can reduce CO2  50%  by 2030 and 80% by 2050.  This is magical thinking.  

We'll have the climate report in a few days and-

1) continue looking at the tragedy of substituting science, data, and informed debate by magical thinking 

2) try to answer a question several of you asked about renewable energy- especially wind and solar- and why they're good, but not good enough to solve the problem

Right now the best thing we can do is to give to the American Red Cross, work to make our local communities resilient and our own less fortunate neighbors less vulnerable. This requires opening our purses and spending, spending a lot, on infrastructure improvements (Every dollar invested in mitigating the risk of natural disaster saves $4 in relief and rebuilding costs, according to a Pew report) something neither New Orleans nor Houston was willing to do which contributed to their tragedies.

Doug Allen  9/3/2017

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