Hill recently published an article on climate change, “There is no ‘new normal’: without drastic action, the climate will only get worse.” stated that without “drastic action”, extreme weather will continue to escalate due to the use of fossil fuels. This is wrong. Many of the examples the author, Andrew Pershing, uses in the article are misleading. The weather hasn’t gotten any worse, not even in the form of floods or heatwaves.
Pershing wrote:
First, the extremes we are witnessing are not normal. Unusual in the sense that they are not natural. This summer’s heat domes and smoke waves are more likely to occur on a planet where humans have been burning coal, oil and natural gas for 150 years. Some of the events that we have witnessed go so far beyond historical norms that they really could not exist without climate change. This is especially true of recent times global temperature recordnot likely to last long.
Pershing, vice president of science at Climate Central, a climate advocacy group, made a fatal mistake when he referenced recent “global temperature records” from the University of Maine’s climate reanalyzer “visualization” website. As a clear scientific expert, he should have known better.
Climate realism debunked the claim that July 4lame pants week saw the highest temperature on record, This, ThisAnd Thisbut no need to take it from us.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was quick to issue a notice as the false claim was spreading rapidly, saying that the analyzer was again “not suitable” for the purpose of cataloging real-world temperatures. It is not an official product of NOAA and the University of Maine’s own reanalyzer website itself issued a notice saying it should not be considered an official observational record.
Pershing also mentioned the recent heat in Texas and flooding in Vermont, as examples of events that would not have happened without climate change, calling the conditions that led to these events “new.” This is also wrong.
Heatwaves are not increasing in intensity or frequency in the US, according to report the best and most accurate data available from NOAA– as shown via maximum temperature anomaly data from the Climate Reference Network. (See picture below)
Texas is included in this estimate, and data from the Environmental Protection Agency shows that most of Texas has seen decrease among unusually hot days since 1948. Very few locations show a positive trend.
For flooding in Vermont, Climate realism recently posted an in-depth analysis, “Dishonest climate scare headline of the week moved to @USATODAY,” explains that according to historical records of Vermont, “one of the most common hazards affecting and marking the Vermont landscape is flooding.”
As Pershing says, it’s not the atmosphere’s ability to hold water that makes Vermont more susceptible to severe flooding. The topography of the state makes it so. Past storms, such as the Great Flood of 1927, have been similarly destructive.
After all, despite increased rainfall in mid-latitude regions as discussed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – no detectable change in the frequency or intensity of flood events. The likelihood is that flooding is decreasing worldwide as much as it is increasing.
Further in the post, Pershing makes the cryptic claim that average weather “guides planning for things like roads, buildings, or storm drains,” but the technique is no longer effective for infrastructure planning because the local climate is so unpredictable.
This is simply meaningless. Roads were washed away by floods, buildings were destroyed, and entire towns were under the waves as long as human civilization built them. In particular, for stormwater drainage, as cities are expanded and more impervious surfaces such as concrete are laid, water treatment must change. It has long been known that new development changes floodplains very quickly, especially in already low-lying areas of the floodplain, such as Louisiana.
Pershing concludes his article with a call to action to stop burning fossil fuels and to “bet the trend” that the weather must get worse and will continue to do so, telling readers that “if something in the weather is changing or weird, it could be related to climate change and will probably happen more often.”
Weather data simply doesn’t support this fear-inducing claim. EQUAL Climate realism pointed out many times (This, ThisAnd This, only in a few cases!) Weather like extreme rain, storms, and tornadoes did not become more frequent or severe. In some cases, such as for strong tornadoes, the data shows there is less now than before, not more.
In a roundabout way, Pershing was right. No “normal” climate change exists, as he admits it always does. Weather is difficult to predict accurately and extreme weather can be dangerous. Where is he wrong in asserting that modern times are seeing extreme weather like never before and that it is getting worse with moderate warming over the past hundred years.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. As a Heartland Institute intern in 2018, she co-authored the Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Unmasking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracture”.
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