January Technical Event Eclipses More Important Climate News

This little exercise is meant to convey the gee wiz nature of many headline writer’s treatment of “weather” . . . and to use it as a launching pad for the darker side  . . . the subtle perpetuation of faulty narrative and the suppression of more important news about the weather.

In isolation, the headline in last Wednesday’s QC Times is arguably innocuous. Everybody likes to expound about the weather.  And “everyone” also likes to talk about how bad it was “back in the day.”  You know, the stories of plodding through three feet of snow to school everyday, up hill, both ways.  Less so, we talk about how nice it was.  But the fact is it is quite common to experience nice weather in January in the Midwest.

And this particular headline is not the worst we have seen from the QCT in terms of perpetuating “global warming” hysteria. It refers to a record high, however much it is of lesser importance to other data about the weather available that day.  Yes weather in the Midwest can be dramatic.  It is also normal to be so.

As far as the experience of 60 degree weather (plus or minus a couple of degrees) in the Midwest . . .  well it is no rare occurrence. Anybody with  more than a couple of decades under their belt has heard the term or experienced, “January thaw.” It is so normal that it is in the lexicon. But call me a global warming denier if it is not true that the younger generations are not provided more perspective on the normalcy of climate change.  It may be simply the headline writer’s penchant to look for “records” but we think it more reflective of intent to perpetuate a shoddy narrative.

As the accompanying chart prepared by Veritas will illustrate, the following headlines would be every bit as true and appropriate for the occasion:

Warm Out, Cold Returns 

Frigid Weather Returns After January Thaw

Bare Record For The Day, Bundle Up Tomorrow

January Days In The Pink  — Official National Weather Service data for Moline, Illinois indicates that fifteen  January days had records associated with them that are as high or higher than the 62• “record”  set for the date.  Records only go back to 1872. Earlier than that in earths history, in other interglacial periods such as we are in now, the temperature in the area may well have been higher yet.  Weather change (and climate) happens.

OK so the temperature that day, while pleasant, was more a technical event than anything. Maybe the headline writer just took the chump shot. Not unusual and no biggie. But what did the QC Times decline to emphasize that week that was just as interesting, and more important . . . Moisture!  We have heard much in the media of  an area drought the past year, invariably linked to global warming. Well to start the new year off right, January’s official precipitation was 2.86 inches for the month. Normal for the first 31 days of the year is 1.49 inches.  The extra 1.37 inches above normal represents a   92 %  “overage” compared to “normal.”   We would have suggested one of the following accurate statements as headlines for just two days later:

Precip. In January Nearly Twice Normal

January Moisture Way Above Average

So Far Moisture 92% Above Normal

We did not check, but no doubt there have been wetter January months.  Weather change happens.

But still much more importantly than these perhaps mere inattentions,  what did the QC Times fail to report regarding “the weather” or “climate” that indicates bias or a shoddy journalistic sense of what is far more significant news?

How about a report from the Research Council of Norway on the 24th of January

Global warming less extreme than feared? Temperature rise is levelling off . . .

. . . After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise . . .

Those  folks cannot be accused of being, or marginalized as, global warming deniers.  Nor can  James Annan, a reported important member of the “hockey team” school of thought that lent credence to Al Gore’s infamous “hockey stick graph.” That virtual icon purports to illustrate the earth’s high sensitivity to man caused increases in atmospheric CO2, also referred to as anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

In an article referenced here, the New York Times Dot Earth Blog quotes Annan .

 . . . the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’

By the way, Moscow is having its worst winter on record. Napoleon and the German Army did not know they had it so good.         R Mall

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