It's significantly warmer in Michigan, but it's nothing to get hysterical about

This graphic from Climate Central showing Michigan annual average temperature increasing 0.622 degrees F per decade 1970-2011 is pretty amazing.

I went to NCDC's Climate at a Glance page and reproduced that same result for myself just to verify it (0.6 degrees F per decade).

But one has to ask, Why confine results to 1970-2011 (the terminus ad quem for the study, published in 2012, was 2011) when you can easily go back to 1895 and get a per decade trend result for a much larger sample?

The change in average temperature on a per decade basis for the whole available sample period 1895-2014 produces 0.2 degrees F per decade in Michigan, three times less per decade than for 1970-2011 alone. The result is identical also through 2011. Despite the significant warming since the year 2000, the long term trend remains unmoved and the current period of warming may actually have run out of gas.

Michigan average temperature is increasing 0.2 degrees F per decade 1895-2014

I thought it would be interesting to use the length of the sample period in question (42 years) and go back to the beginning of the record in 1898 and look at each 42 year period from then going forward to 1973 (which takes you through 2014) to see if there are any periods of decadal warming trend comparable to +0.6 degrees F per decade in 1970-2011. I chose 1898 to avoid some gaps in the record in some places in prior years in Michigan.

The results are graphed below.

It turns out there are five 42-year periods showing temperature trend of +0.5 degrees F per decade on the left side of the graph, beginning in 1903, 1912, 1914, 1915 and 1916. (Students of the Dust Bowl beginning in 1930, take note, as also those studying economics. Weak GDP of the era may be associated with warmer climate, as it also seems to be now.)

These correspond to six 42-year periods showing temperature trend of +0.5 degrees F per decade on the right side of the graph, beginning in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1973.

If that were all that were to it, there would be no discussion of global warming today, despite the consecutive nature of the recent examples. The two data sets are almost a wash.

What is remarkable about the more recent data is the presence of four 42-year periods of +0.6 degrees F decadal trend (beginning in 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970), and four of +0.7 degrees F (beginning in 1965, 1966, 1971 and 1972), all in conjunction with the +0.5 degrees F periods. It's a trifecta of warming data.

Still, overall the results show that there are two distinct periods where the decadal trend is consistently +0.2 degrees F or above: the 27 years from 1898 to 1924, and the 20 years from 1954 to 1973. In the former the average of the decadal uptrend is +0.3555 degrees F per decade. In the latter the average of the decadal uptrend is +0.4950 degrees F per decade. Clearly the latter period, contemporary with us, is significantly warmer than the former, by 39%, about which some of us have become hysterical.

The antidote to this is the trough of downtrend years in the middle of the graph which coincides with the period of the global cooling hysteria of the late 1960s and 1970s. The 42-year trend record went negative for 1928-1969 and stayed negative to flat until the period 1946-1987, nineteen years straight, twenty if you count the flat period 1927-1968. Year after year, the 42-year trends ended -.1 degrees F decadal trend or -.2. Many climate scientists predicted the return of an ice age while unbeknowst to them the seeds of a warming era were already germinating.

The record shows how quickly things can turn, for example 0.5 degrees F in trend in just seven years from 1923 to 1930, from above trend on net to well below it.

The decadal trend fell by a whopping 50% between 1917-1958 and 1918-1959, from +0.4 degrees F to +0.2.

More recently the decadal trend fell by 28.5% between 1972-2013 and 1973-2014, from +0.7 degrees F to +0.5. (It's entirely within the realm of possibility that decadal trend could revert to normal by the close of 2017.)

There was just one similar abrupt change to the upside. Between 1964-2005 and 1965-2006 the decadal trend shot up 40% from +0.5 degrees F to +0.7.

Otherwise the record shows incremental change in the trend from year to year, 0.1 degree F up or down at the most.

Don't be surprised when you see it.

July 2015 average temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, MI is 1.7 degrees F below normal

The July 2015 temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, MI at 1.7 degrees F below normal means the cumulative anomaly for 2015 increases to 21.4 degrees F below normal from 19.7 degrees F below normal through June and 18.0 degrees F below normal through May.

For a warming planet, we're doing nothing in Grand Rapids this summer to erase the negative average temperature anomaly . . . but there's always August if you are a grower, or hope if you're a warmist.

The total temperature anomaly for 2014 in GR was 30.3 degrees F below normal, a little over 2.5 degrees on average per month.

The significance of that may be lost on you, but here in Michigan a couple of degrees makes all the difference between being Michigan and being Wisconsin. On the other side of Lake Michigan at this latitude, average temperature is historically two degrees colder than here on average. There they are exposed to the cold drying winds which come off the plains in winter. Here we have the warming effect of Lake Michigan in winter as it gives off its heat and the attendant snows, unless it's frozen solid like a brick. And that makes all the difference to berry, grape, apple and other growers who proliferate on the warmer side of the lake and depend on the warmth and the snow cover to protect their plants.

Hey global warming frauds: FBI admits bogus science reigned supreme for decades at hair comparison unit and in courts

And you climate fraudsters will be the next to be exposed.

From the story here:

"The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the nation’s courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said. The question now, they said, is how state authorities and the courts will respond to findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques — like hair and bite-mark comparisons — that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989."

Former environmental activist takes aim at anthropogenic global warming

AGW gets a dressing down from Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, Ph.D. in ecology, of Rainbow Warrior fame, here:

"[T]he Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.

"The idea it would be catastrophic if carbon dioxide were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous. ...

"Over the past 150 million years, carbon dioxide had been drawn down steadily (by plants) from about 3,000 parts per million to about 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution. If this trend continued, the carbon dioxide level would have become too low to support life on Earth. Human fossil fuel use and clearing land for crops have boosted carbon dioxide from its lowest level in the history of the Earth back to 400 parts per million today.

"At 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide. The optimum level of carbon dioxide for plant growth, given enough water and nutrients, is about 1,500 parts per million, nearly four times higher than today. Greenhouse growers inject carbon-dioxide to increase yields. Farms and forests will produce more if carbon-dioxide keeps rising.

"We have no proof increased carbon dioxide is responsible for the earth’s slight warming over the past 300 years. There has been no significant warming for 18 years while we have emitted 25 per cent of all the carbon dioxide ever emitted. Carbon dioxide is vital for life on Earth and plants would like more of it."

Michael Savage attacks the pope for saying limits exist to free speech, ends up saying the same thing

Michael Alan Weiner

Michael Savage attacked the pope yesterday for two things: for stating that there are limits to freedom of speech, and for opining that human beings bear some responsibility for global warming.

Savage found the first idea an affront to the First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights ("Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"), wondering how the pope never heard of it.

The pope in his capacity as the vicar of Christ on earth, however, wasn't telling Congress to abridge the freedom of speech of anyone. He was simply reminding Christians everywhere (and chiding the secularists of France and the United States especially--hello Hugh Hewitt) to restrain their own speech as a matter of spiritual principle, in obedience to the teaching of Jesus:

"Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man. ... [W]hat comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man."

-- Matthew 15:10f, 18ff.

The pope was reminding the world that there is a higher law than the laws of France or the laws of the United States when it comes to what we say. Every Jew should be able instantly to recognize this idea, since practicing Jews frequently restrain their own speech as a matter of principle. They will often write "G-d" instead of "God" for fear of taking God's name in vain as the commandment in the decalogue warns. More to the point, every Jew should already grasp the Jewish basis for the Christian idea of self-restrained speaking because it comes from the prophet Jeremiah who said that "the heart is evil above all things". And neither do Jews have any excuse to be surprised by the doctrine since it is well worked out by the rabbis in the doctrine of "the evil inclination" which must always be guarded against.

Michael Savage, however, is lately more interested in removing the guards, indeed in "unprotected talk", rather than in the circumspect speech implied by his well-known motto of borders, language, culture. Freedom of speech as understood absolutely by civil libertarians is at war with that, because it leads to open borders, many languages and multiculturalism. Savage should understand by now that such libertarianism is incompatible with conservatism, and that when it comes to mental disorders, liberalism does not have a corner on the market.

The coup de grace came yesterday when Savage turned to the global warming statement made by the pope. Savage said he objected to the pope addressing a matter that had nothing to do with religion because it was outside the pope's area of expertise, outside his scope, as Savage put it, which it certainly is.

But isn't that nice. The pope exercises his freedom of speech on a matter not expressly religious and Savage all of a sudden wants to limit it, obviously because he disagrees with it but also because the pope is not an expert. But the pope has every right to speak his nonsense in the United States, whether religious or otherwise. The point of criticism on this matter should be on the substance of what the pope says, not on his role as pope supposedly "pontificating" about it.

In this still Protestant country, the pope is viewed as nothing more than a man who is no different from us, whether he speaks about the teaching of Jesus or anything else. We can say that the pope is right about the limits to freedom of speech as he stated them, and that he is probably quite mistaken about the human role in global warming, because on both counts we can look into the matter and decide for ourselves from the evidence.

We read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, but unless we do, we risk appearing Christians or Jews or Americans in name only.

Global Warming In Grand Rapids, Michigan: Cumulative Temperature Deficit of 26.5 Degrees Fahrenheit January-July 2014

Grand Rapids, Michigan has been building an impressive record of below average temperatures in 2014:

January -6.3 F below average

Feb.      -9.1

March  -9.0

April    -0.4

May    +0.6

June    +1.8

July     -4.1

That's 26.5 degrees F below normal for seven months, or 3.79 degrees F below normal on average for every month this year through July.

And August to date is already -1.4 degrees F.

Attention Drudge readers: Anthony Watts booted "Steven Goddard" from WattsUpWithThat some years ago

Seen here.

Drudge recently linked to a "Goddard" (a nom de plume) story about the summer of 2014 being the "coolest summer on record" in the country, through like July 23rd, which it certainly is from the point of view of extreme summer temperatures, i.e. the annual frequency of 90 degree F or above on a percentage basis. For his story showing the chart of the NOAA data, see here. Extreme summer temperatures have been in decline for most of the last century, contrary to the alarmism of the global warming crowd, a point "Goddard" doesn't seem to have emphasized.

There is no reason to doubt his presentation of the facts that I can detect, except that it could be argued from a chart of the other extreme, the annual frequency of below zero temperatures, that for the same period, about eighty years, there has been a slight decline in the frequency of that metric, too. So there may be a decline in extremes also on the cold side if confirmed. So far "Goddard" has not supplied the trend line for that chart in the comments section. But if confirmed, that would suggest a general thesis that climate extremes have been declining within a minor warming trend which may or may not be reversing now. That's big news since climate alarmists keep telling us the warming trend will produce "extreme weather". It isn't. It's producing ameliorating conditions.

  

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard oddly unaware high CO2 coincides with 17yr+ pause in global warming

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

[Shale] has whittled down the US current account deficit, now just 2pc of GDP [approximately $340 billion?]. Cheap gas costs - a third of EU prices and a quarter of Asian prices - has brought US industry back from near death, perhaps for long enough to give America another two decades of superpower ascendancy. But making money out of shale is another matter.

Even if the fossil companies navigate the next global downturn more or less intact, they are in the untenable position of booking vast assets that can never be burned without violating global accords on climate change.

The IEA says that two-thirds of their reserves become fictional if there is a binding deal limit to CO2 levels to 450 particles per million (ppm), the maximum deemed necessary to stop the planet rising more than two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. It crossed 400 ppm threshold this spring, the highest in more than 800,000 years.

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Ambrose's problem is that he has insufficient skepticism: There is no binding deal, and we couldn't stop developing nations from spewing even if we wanted to. Ambrose has become a co-dependent in the climate scare and is trafficking in last year's news:

If CO2 was at the same level as of 800,000 years ago, why are we cooler by 5-10 degrees and sea levels lower by 75-120 feet? This would indicate there’s no CO2/temp/sea level relationship.

Indeed, as the picture has unfolded in the last year, we are well past the 17 year milestone for no temperature anomaly. All that extra CO2 is doing nothing, except maybe producing too much vegetation.

So I bought a lawn tractor to mow it all down.

Don't blame QE for the decline of the dollar, blame Bush or Greenspan or global warming or war

The decline of the dollar under QE has been nothing when compared with its decline from 2002 to 2008.

Between high water marks in early 2002 and a low beneath 70 in March 2008 the trade weighted dollar sank a whopping 36% in just six short years, 6 times more than the 6% it fell since TARP passed on October 3, 2008 and QE began in late November 2008 until now.

Say what you will about QE, but it's just dumb to blame it for a decline of the dollar.

The dollar was already dead! The dollar declined 36% during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Overall the dollar is down 6% since the emergency measures of 2008, but is recovering somewhat.

Senate Dems Pull All-Nighter Talking Global Warming As Lake Michigan Posts All-Time High Ice Cover

The Christian Science Monitor reports here:

Twenty-eight Democrats and two left-leaning Independents, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his top lieutenants, are scheduled to speak in shifts until about 9 a.m. Tuesday. The event is not a filibuster, nor is it related to any legislation. The intent is to urge a divided Congress and nation to “wake up” on this issue.

Meanwhile Lake Michigan broke a record on Saturday for ice coverage at 93.29%, as reported here:

The National Weather Service says more than 93-percent of the lake was covered in ice on Saturday. A rapid build-up of ice came with a stretch of cold weather from late February into the first week of March. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory measured the ice cover at 93.29 percent. That's the most since record keeping started in 1973, breaking the record of 93.1 set in 1977.

Arguably Obama's 2008 Election Caused All The Job Losses, And We Still Have Not Recovered

total nonfarm employees n.s.a. 1/07-2/14

Arguably the response of business to the election of Obama was outright fear, leading to record job losses. And just as arguably, Obama's class warfare rhetoric has justified those fears. The number one enemy of a communist after all, is a climber. You wouldn't know that of course because the socialist fellow travelers who've taught you and your kids since the 1960s conveniently left that out of the narrative. But that is a separate story.

The fact of the matter is, the so-called Great Recession had already been long in the tooth on election day 2008, and total nonfarm had declined just 2.7 million from its zenith in November 2007 at 139,443,000. But there is really nothing out of keeping for such a large decline given that total nonfarm usually falls off at the end of calendar years. A good example which raised no alarms at the time was in December 1998 when total nonfarm fell 2.7 million . . . in one month.

December 2008 was the worst month on record for t.n.f.

But more people lost their jobs in the first full month following the 2008 election than in any other month in the data series. For a country which supposedly saw Obama as a savior, the response of business was clearly otherwise: nearly 30 million Americans went on to make first time claims for unemployment in 2009 because they lost their jobs in his wake, 13.3 million more than in George Bush's best year 2006 when such claims came in just over 16 million. You can call business a bunch of spineless cowards who took the everyman for himself approach. But isn't that what the healthcare industry did when faced with ObamaCare? Play along to get along, or face the consequences. Few are the fighters for principle who sacrifice themselves for a cause. The only people we have who even make a pretence of doing that do it safely atop places like Berkshire Hathaway (taxes), Apple (global warming), Microsoft (birth control), the Oval Office and the well of the US Senate where no man can touch them.

total nonfarm employees, n.s.a., 2/07-2/14, monthly arrows

The data show that the bottom for total nonfarm did not drop out until December 2008. Nearly 3.7 million Americans lost their jobs in December 2008 alone, the most on record. November 2008 had been only a warning of what was coming. By the end of that month, in which the general election had occurred on November 4, just over a million total nonfarm employees lost their jobs. The dust settled at 135,656,000 on December 1st. Then as December unfolded, the bottom fell out with total nonfarm dropping to 131,965,000. And one year later, despite "jobs saved or created", the February 2009 stimulus, cash for clunkers, TARP and the GM, Chrysler and AIG bailouts, scores of big bank failures and trillions of dollars of cheap loans by the Federal Reserve to all and sundry banks and businesses here and abroad, total nonfarm fell another 4.2 million to 127,736,000.

And where are we today? On February 1, 2014, after 5 full years of Obama, total nonfarm is 136,183,000, barely 200,000 jobs ahead of where we were at this same point in 2007. While the trend has clearly been positive for total nonfarm, with a consistent pattern of higher, if muted, highs and lower lows alternating summers and winters as is typical of the data series, the profile of total nonfarm remains terribly weak.

usually work full time 2/07-2/14, n.s.a.

Consider that those who work usually full time today are 2.7 million fewer in number than at this same point in 2007, the record year for full time jobs and for total nonfarm jobs, despite adding 15 million to the population.

part time for economic reasons 2/07-2/14, s.a.

And while those who work usually part time are up nearly 2.4 million, those working part time for economic reasons remain up almost 3 million, seasonally adjusted, February 2007 to February 2014.

For the last four full years monthly job growth has averaged barely 167,000 new jobs per month. Compare that to a Clinton or Reagan when job growth clipped along at an average of 235,000-250,000 per month for years.

I predict jobs will come back when Obama goes away, unless of course Hillary Clinton becomes president. Right now I can't think of a better candidate to complete the job of eradicating the middle class. She'll burn through them like she does through jet fuel and vodka.

Oops: Last Fall NOAA Predicted Above Normal Temps November Through January

Reported here:

Surprised by how tough this winter has been? You’re in good company: Last fall the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that temperatures would be above normal from November through January across much of the Lower 48 states. ... The big red blotch in the top map represents parts of the country in which the Climate Prediction Center forecast above-average temperatures. The frigid-looking blue blotch in the bottom “verification” map shows areas where temperatures turned out to be below average. “Not one of our better forecasts,” admits Mike Halpert, the Climate Prediction Center’s acting director.

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How come the experts are always surprised?

This is another climate model failure, you know the kind, like the ones which claim global warming continues even though it stopped fourteen years ago.

Obama Delays Global Warming Until 2016

Seen here.

Global Warming Promoter Michael Mann Isn't Like Galileo, Trofim Lysenko Is More Like It

So says Robert Tracinski, here:

Mann is attempting to install himself as a kind of American Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko was the Soviet scientist who ingratiated himself to Joseph Stalin and got his crackpot theories on genetics installed as official dogma, effectively killing the study of biology in the Soviet Union. Under Lysenko, the state had an established and official scientific doctrine, and you risked persecution if you questioned it. Mann's libel suit [against Mark Steyn] is an attempt to establish that same principle here.

Mann has recently declared himself to be both a scientist and a political activist. But in attempting to intimidate his critics and suppress free debate on global warming, he is violating the fundamental rules of both science and politics. If it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science. If it is a crime to dissent, then there is no politics.

Antarctic Global Warming Scientists Rescued, But Rescue Ship Also Gets Stuck In Ice: Story Never Mentions It's Summer In Antarctica

Chinese Snow Dragon stuck in ice after rescue

Why would they go there at this time if they didn't think they could get to Antarctica?

The story is here.

Evidently the rescue ship is Chinese, but the scientists were transported from their stuck vessel to an Australian vessel which subsequently has been dismissed from the area despite the troubles of their rescuers' vessel, also now stuck.

Reminds me of the tow truck which came to retrieve a neighbor's dead vehicle the other day. The tow truck itself got stuck, and had to be towed by another tow truck. Needless to say the neighbor's vehicle didn't get towed until yet another tow truck came yesterday.

And that's how icy it is, from Antarctica to Michigan.

Global Warmists Stuck In 5 Meters of Sea Ice In Antarctic SUMMER Now Require RESCUE

Warming scientists stopped by 5m of SUMMER Antarctic ice

Story here, which never mentions it's the Antarctic SUMMER, and you have to read the picture caption to know how DEEP the ice is:

They went in search evidence of the world’s melting ice caps, but instead a team of climate scientists have been forced to abandon their mission … because the Antarctic ice is thicker than usual at this time of year. The scientists have been stuck aboard the stricken MV Akademik Schokalskiy since Christmas Day, with repeated sea rescue attempts being abandoned as icebreaking ships failed to reach them. Now that effort has been ditched, with experts admitting the ice is just too thick. Instead the crew have built an icy helipad, with plans afoot to rescue the 74-strong team by helicopter.

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Yeah, "thicker than usual this time of year": five meters of ice. Do you think these warmists went there expecting to be stopped in their tracks by that?

When tabloid journalists start telling the truth . . . what? Hell will freeze over?

Latest Tanana River, AK, Ice-Out In 97 Years Today, Surpassing 1964 Record By Hours

Story here, where they live-blogged the event linked to the official Nenana Alaska "Ice Classic" webcam.

Up there you pays you money and takes you chances. But it's only $2.50 for a ticket, on which you predict the date and time of the ice-out, which seems to occur as early as April 20 and as late as, well, today. If you're the closest, you win the kitty, this year over $318K.

Previously scientists were wont to point to seemingly earlier and earlier ice-outs on this river as evidence of the phenomenon of global warming. The long record in this location, however, has shown a cyclicality of its own which on days like today produces silence from that community. 

It was like watching paint dry overnight, but one guy did show up all alone in the parking lot to entertain everyone for a moment by mooning the cam, which is fixed on the tripod-like marker placed out in the ice every March for the event. 

We Need All The Global Warming We Can Get: An Ice Age Is Coming

So WUWT here:

"[T]here have been 5 interglacial events in the last 500,000 years. At ~10,500 years our current cooler but benign Holocene interglacial is coming towards its end and the reversion of our planet to a real ice age is foreseeable."

Global Warming Skepticism Bothers CNBC More Than Calling ObamaCare Fascist?

For quite some time now CNBC has chosen to showcase Whole Foods' co-founder John Mackey for his global warming opinions rather than for his characterization of ObamaCare as fascist. So many targets, so little room in a headline.

From the story:

As for regulation to reduce global warming, he said, “We can probably eliminate poverty on the planet earth in the next 50 years if we will just continue to follow the tenets of free enterprise capitalism to the greatest extent possible. So I just don't want to see that change.”

Mackey’s taken some heat for some of his other publicly stated opinions. In a recent interview on NPR, he characterized President Obama’s health care legislation, ‘Obamacare’ as “more like fascism.” He backpedaled in subsequent interviews.

Global Warming To Blame For Hurricane Sandy, Now Record Low Temps In China

Amazing, but true. Coastal waters freeze, trapping ships!

Story here.