The Temperature Conundrum Of The Climate Change Debate
“Two views of the same temperature database yield different conclusions about the climate and weather. The narrative of how bad the climate has become is hardly supported by long-term storm data sets, as we show. ”
Welcome to the year climate debate is outlawed and the emergency dictates harsh and mandatory actions. Just as the language about climate changed in recent years from global warming to climate change to now climate emergency, so too have government actions to address the problem ramped higher. What once were aspirations for a clean energy future have become requirements. A green energy future in 2050 is no longer acceptable; it needs to happen sooner, regardless of the cost or disruption. Bans on the sale of fossil fuel-powered internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are now spreading across the world, as this is perceived as the only way in which we can reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to keep the planet from overheating. The problem is that we may merely be substituting the carbon emissions of ICE vehicles for those coming from electricity generating stations. Moreover, we may be inflicting meaningful cost increases on lower income people, who can least afford it, through the mandatory substitution requirement.
The issue of how best to address the world’s carbon emissions has transitioned from the responsibility of the market and the private sector to governments at all levels. For those political leaders with a free market economic bent, they see nudging the market to price preferred solutions as the least disruptive and economically repressive path to cleaner energy. On the other hand, those politicians who believe the population is incapable of making the right choices despite market signals, mandates and financial incentives are their tools, even though they inflict hardship on the general public for the benefit of a privileged few.
There is a fine line between targeted investment to foster research and development of new, untested but promising, clean energy technologies and crony capitalism. The former has led to many socially- and economically-altering technologies – think of all the products that came from our space program, the military’s development of the Internet, or even the aid to develop hydraulic fracturing. Unfortunately, our history is replete with crony capitalism failures, as government demonstrates, time and again, it is not good at picking industry winners and losers.
As we have progressed from crawling to walking to running, and now driving at 100 miles per hour down a road to a less carbon-intensive economy, the idea we might want to take time to reassess our speed seems out of the question. But as every successful explorer has demonstrated, it is important to not only know where you are heading, but also to assess the path to the destination. Stopping periodically to check where you are and whether the path you are on is still the most desirable one for getting to your destination is a sound strategy.
A recent analysis from several British climate data purveyors provides an interesting perspective on the state of the path to controlling climate change in the United Kingdom. The release of the annual temperature record for Central England happened at the turn of the year. The temperature record is compiled by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre. The Met Office web site has a brief description of the Central England Temperature (HadCET) dataset, which highlights its significance.
“These daily and monthly temperatures are representative of a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Lancashire, London and Bristol. The monthly series, which begins in 1659, is the longest available instrumental record of temperature in the world. The daily mean-temperature series begins in 1772. Manley (1953, 1974) compiled most of the monthly series, covering 1659 to 1973. These data were updated to 1991 by Parker et al (1992), who also calculated the daily series. Both series are now kept up to date by the Climate Data Monitoring section of the Hadley Centre, Met Office. Since 1974 the data have been adjusted to allow for urban warming: currently a correction of -0.2 °C is applied to mean temperatures.”
To help people unfamiliar with the U.K. to understand where the temperature data originates, we have included a map of Britain (next page). London is the star on the map, and directly west is Bristol. Lancashire is a small town, but also the region surrounding Parsons north of Liverpool and close to Blackpool on the coast of the Irish Sea. That triangle covers a healthy portion of central England.
Exhibit 11. England’s CET Covers Much Of Central U.K. SOURCE: Vidiani.com
Paul Homewood, an avowed U.K. climate data watcher, assessed the latest CET data and arrived at a somewhat different conclusion than the people hammering on the hottest day/month/year phenomenon for the country. At times, the handling of the temperature data by the Hadley Centre has been controversial. Researchers at the center were also involved with climate researchers at the University of East Anglia in a scheme to have studies submitted to scientific journals refuting the climate orthodoxy rejected. This was a major scandal within the climate scientific community, but has largely been erased from history. While the CET data is adjusted to reflect urban warming, there are still occasions when temperature instrument locations make them susceptible to extreme readings.
If one goes to the Met Office web site, there is a graph of temperature anomalies relative to the 1961-1990 average. The red line on the chart is actually a 21-point binomial filter, which is roughly equivalent to a 10-year running average. As can be seen, other than for a brief period around 1725, the large positive temperature deviations have occurred in recent years. Moreover, the largest concentration of negative deviations occurred prior to 1700. From that point forward, the negative deviations became fewer and with reduced magnitude. The positive deviations began to dominate the reported data starting after 1900, which coincides with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This chart would certainly support the argument that the world is in a warming trend, which has grown even warmer over the past 25 years.
Exhibit 12. U.K. Long-Term Temperature Anomalies SOURCE: Met Office
All the historical data is publicly available on the Met Office web site. As a result, Mr. Homewood created the following chart (next page) showing the actual average temperature for each year and a 10-year average (red line). If one looks at the red line, it is clear how dramatic was the warming experienced between about 1700 and 1740. In fact, the average temperature in 1698 was 7.67° C, which jumped to 8.83° C the following year. For the six previous years, the annual average temperature ranged between 7.29° C and 8.52° C. For earlier years, the average annual temperature ranged from the 7’s to 10.15° C (1686). That peak temperature actually stands out in the chart.
Exhibit 13. Recent U.K. Warming Ceased In 2006 SOURCE: Paul Homewood
As we look at 1700 to 1740, the 10-year average temperature rises by nearly 2° C. From roughly 1815 to 1835, we see another period with a nearly 1° C increase. Another period when the 10-year average temperature rose by about 0.7-0.8° C was in the late 1800s. The rate of increase in these earlier periods compare with the average temperature increase of about 1° C from 1990 to 2006. It is interesting that the 10-year average temperature trend declined after 2006 and has only turned up in recent years. We do note that between 1990 and 2020, 22 years out of the 30-year span had annual average temperatures above 10° C. This is shown in the chart of annual temperatures for the years of this time span.
Exhibit 14. Recent 30 Years Show Moderate U.K. Warming SOURCE: Paul Homewood
Mr. Homewood asks what is the “normal” climate for England? He wrote: “The Met Office would say this is the 30-year average, but this is only an artificial construct for convenience. Currently the 10-year average on CET is 10.40C, which is barely above the 1991-2020 average of 10.25C. The difference is well within any margin of natural variation.” To demonstrate that reality, Mr. Homewood points to the fact that annual average temperatures rose from 8.86° C in 2010 to 10.72° C the following year, which he suggests would reflect “weather” and not climate.
To address the weather issue, Mr. Homewood plotted the highest and lowest monthly average temperature for each month since 1991. He used this to show how variable English weather can be.
Exhibit 15. Highlighting England’s Variable Weather SOURCE: Paul Homewood
He then had some fun. What if all the hottest and coldest months occurred in the same year, he asked? In that case, the annual average high temperature would be 12.8° C. Likewise, the coldest monthly average would be 7.3° C. Superimposing these averages on the record of annual temperatures for 1991-2020 produces the following chart. As the actual annual averages appear to be somewhere in the middle of the hottest and coldest range, does this suggest that current temperatures are more or less a reflection of natural climate conditions?
Exhibit 16. Recent U.K. Temperatures Are Moderate SOURCE: Paul Homewood
Further to the point about normal temperatures and/or weather in England, the Met Office data in one presentation sorts the annual average temperatures from the coldest to warmest year. Mr. Homewood copied part of that table and presented it along with his other charts. As one can see at the bottom of the chart, 2020’s temperature marginally trails 2006 and trails by a greater margin the 2014 temperature. Interestingly, 2020 is not much warmer than 1949. Moreover, if one looks at temperatures that are about a quarter of a degree cooler, there is a wide range of years: 1733 (10.50), 2004 (10.50), 2007 (10.50), 1834 (10.51), 1921 (10.51), and 1959 (10.52). There are also a number of years when the annual average temperature either increases or decreases by a wide margin, suggesting that weather plays a greater role in the temperature data than many climate scientists wish to acknowledge.
Exhibit 17. Ranking U.K. Yearly Temperatures SOURCE: Met Office
But just as temperature data creates challenges for the climate emergency argument, the question of extreme weather events also plays havoc with the accepted narrative that our climate is getting worse. Long-term data series for wildfires, hurricanes and tornadoes show declining trends. Yes, the amount of damage from storms has increased, but that is largely a function of population migration and economic growth in coastal states. Everyone wants to live where they can see the water. That means, not surprisingly, by living on the coast, you are at increased risk from storm damage. The latest figures from Munich Re, an insurance company that reinsures other insurance companies, shows that property damage from natural disasters in the United States doubled in 2020 to $95 billion. An official with the insurer told The New York Times that climate change “plays a role in this upward trend of losses,” but he also pointed out that continued building in high-risk areas has also contributed to the growing losses. This is an important point because governments can reduce this trend through revised building codes and land-use restrictions. Yes, these steps will boost building costs and inflate real estate values for existing structures, but that may be cheaper than current insurance losses.
Here are charts showing trends for these various extreme weather events.
While 2020 was an active tropical storm year in the North Atlantic, the accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) was substantially higher than in 2019. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the fifth consecutive season with above-normal activity. Twelve of the 30 named storms made landfall on the U.S. coast, breaking the record of nine set in 1916. However, that was not the case in the Pacific Ocean. There were only 17 tropical storms in the region, making it the least active year since 2010. Combined the ACE for all of the Northern Hemisphere was well below normal and last year.
Exhibit 18. Global Storms In 2020 Below 2019 Pace SOURCE: GWPF
A long-term chart (next page) of ACE for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres shows significant variation over time. Again, it is difficult to find a pattern of recent years being worse than earlier.
Exhibit 19. Long-Term Record Of Global Storm Energy SOURCE: GWPF
Based on the work of Dr. Ryan Maue, the following chart shows a 12-month running sum of all hurricanes and major hurricanes. The top time series is the number of global tropical storms reaching at least hurricane-force (maximum wind speed exceeds 64 knots). The bottom time series is the number of storms that reached major hurricane strength (96 knots or greater). Except for the spikes in 2016 and 2019, since the early 1990s the trend in global and major hurricanes has been lower.
Exhibit 20. Hurricane Frequency Shows Downward Trend SOURCE: GWPF
The trend in the total number of hurricanes through roughly 180 years of history also shows a declining trend.
Exhibit 21. L-T Number Of Hurricanes Shows Lower Trend SOURCE: GWPF
When it comes to the annual count of tornadoes, 2020 started out above the average of 2005-2019. After April, the count began trailing the average and ended up substantially below. Based on the preliminary data reported by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the number of tornadoes in 2020 was 1,245 compared to a normal value of 1,392 for the 2005-2019 period.
Exhibit 22. 2020 Tornadoes Showed Below Average Year SOURCE: NOAA
Importantly, the 2020 U.S. tornado season experienced no EF-5 tornadoes, which are the most powerful tornadoes. It has now been seven years since the last EF-5 tornado struck in the U.S., which occurred in Oklahoma in May 2013. According to NOAA, there have been a total of 36 EF-5 tornadoes in the U.S. since 1970, with 14 occurring in the 1970s. Only nine have occurred in the past 20 years.
Exhibit 23. No Powerful Tornadoes For Seven Years SOURCE: GWPF
If one listens to the mainstream media, the world is in the midst of an incredible period of climate disasters. That argument is built by focusing on one or two visually spectacular events, but it requires ignoring the bulk of the data from the rest of the world. According to data from the United Nations, while there was an uptick in the number of climate-related disasters in 2019, the trend for the past 20 years has been downward as shown in the accompanying chart.
Exhibit 24. Climate-Related Disasters In Downtrend SOURCE: GWPF
Equally significant, and actually the best news possible, is that the number of deaths from natural disasters has reached historically low levels. Deaths in the past several years have been below even the least-deadly years of the late 1980s and 1990s. This is certainly good news, and much better than what was experienced during the 2000-2010 period. The argument of the climate emergency promoters is that things are getting so bad that we have only a handful of years to stop carbon emissions before the planet’s climate is destroyed. The recent period of extremely low death tolls would seem to belie that argument.
Exhibit 25. Natural Disaster Deaths At Record Low SOURCE: GWPF
Weather events make for newsworthy stories, and are something the media and fearmongers are happy to grab onto. We should be careful, however, not to confuse weather with climate. The world is in a global warming period, primarily because we are in an inter-glacial period of geologic time. During such a time, we are moving from one ice age to the next, so gradual warming is to be expected. It will, in time, also lead to gradual cooling as we move toward the next ice age. That is a natural phenomenon and not necessarily driven by carbon emissions and their warming power. It doesn’t mean that carbon emissions are not contributing to the rise in overall global temperatures, but the warming trend has not been shown to be driving storm frequency or severity, as long-term trend analysis of the data confirms. Nothing in the data negates the argument that as a society we should be working to reduce our carbon emissions. Clean air and clean water are goals for which we should be constantly striving. But as we work to reduce carbon emissions, our actions should be weighed against the positive social and economic contributions fossil fuels are making in the lives of the billions of people in developing economies. Improving their lives should remain a high priority in assessing government policies. Mitigating climate-related risks should be a part of the calculations undertaken by all governments as they assess the risk/reward of policy actions.
It is distressing to see that the new Congress will operate without the traditional mandate to assess the cost of climate-related policies it is considering legislating. We can reduce carbon emissions at a reasonable cost without destroying industries with misguided policy prescriptions. In fact, the commodity market has helped achieve such progress. In the U.S., low-cost natural gas has displaced coal, sharply lowering our carbon emissions without dramatically altering the functioning of our energy and electricity markets. Last year, Covid-19 helped U.S. carbon emissions to drop by 9.2%. Importantly, this has put the U.S. back on track to meeting its Paris Agreement commitment, something we are soon to re-engage.
Exhibit 26. Covid-19 Helped Cut Emissions In 2020 SOURCE: greentechmedia.com
By allowing market forces to work, our energy revolution not only allowed the U.S. to become more energy self-sufficient, but it enabled us to have greater influence in the geopolitics of the Middle East that has led to the improved relationships between Israel and its various Arab neighbors. Market forces have also enabled the U.S. to become an exporter of natural gas, which has helped facilitate the development of a global gas market. That has enabled other countries around the world to make a similar coal-to-gas conversion and reduce their carbon emissions.
Exhibit 27. Getting The U.S. Back On Paris Commitment SOURCE: insideclimatenews.org
Twenty-twenty’s carbon emissions improvement continues the downward trend in U.S. carbon emissions that began in 2005. In fact, the U.S. has demonstrated the most successful improvement in reducing carbon emissions of any major country, and especially one that accounted for a substantial portion of the globe’s emissions. As the 2020 data shows, the greatest share of the emissions reduction came from the transportation sector, which is largely due to the lockdowns and restrictions on travel, especially air travel. Electric vehicles (EV) will reduce pollution in this sector, but eliminating all transportation sector emissions will be impossible without some new technologies for planes, trains, ships and heavy-duty vehicles. EVs represent AN answer to carbon emissions, but not THE answer. Recognizing that the solution will entail employing multiple technologies is the mature approach. The climate emergency movement will not let that happen. Such an outcome will prove more costly, disruptive and repressive than many can yet imagine.