Last week, I wrote, from a first-hand perspective as we travel about the country, about
the developing catastrophic drought centered in the US Great Plains. During my research, I came across a plethora of climate data, some of which I included in my post, such as the
US Drought Monitor.
Mumon has posted an excellent follow-up diary this morning prompted by a new Reuters report by Christine Stebbins, "Drought, water worries cloud skies for US farmers." I had planned on writing up the Reuter's report, but was happy to see it already addressed, as I had something else on my mind for today already, something born out of another, very different, "article" I came across this morning on Google News.
Of course, it wasn't really a news article, more a press release, or better yet, piece of propeganda put out the Cato Institute:
"Urban Heat and Urban Legends," by Patrick J. Michaels, a "senior fellow in environmental studies" and author of (drumroll please)
Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media. An interesting footnote here: Michaels has used his position of Virginia "state climatologist" to bolster his credentials when criticising scientific assertions of human-induced global warming, yet it turns out that
Virginia has no such official position.
But, back to Michaels' latest smoke and mirror's campaign. While not directly discrediting anthropogenic climate change, Michaels, like many fossil-fuel-funded critics of late, sees a silver lining in all that warm, sunny weather:
Is history repeating itself, or is global warming at work? It's hard to say. Several summers in the 1930s were known for intense heat across the nation.1930 was a scorcher: in rural Virginia, far from Washington's sprawl, people suffered a total of 21 triple-digit days. Even with the excess heat contributed by the growth of the city, Washington currently averages only one 100° day per year.
The fact is that we cannot completely discriminate between repetitive history and prospective warming when it comes to a single summer. The better place to look for warming is in the winter. Greenhouse-effect theory predicts that the coldest temperatures of winter will rise much more sharply than the hottest ones of summer. And indeed, for the last several decades, winter's lows have warmed out of proportion to summer's highs.
All of which illustrates the complexity of global warming. Would people accept--even welcome?--climate change that greatly alleviated winter discomfort at the cost of slightly higher summer temperatures?
So, since, according to Al Gore and his minions, we're the in the midst of global warming, we should be able to use actual statistics to prove Michaels' point, that yes, the summers are getting hotter, but, hey, relatively speaking, the winters are getting "milder".
Fortunately, the Climate Prediction Center has another nifty tool with which to play, and I came up with these two maps:
"
Which, of course, prove Michaels' point: Last winter saw average temperatures in much of the US from 6 - 10 degrees above normal, while this summer's temps only averaged between 3 - 7 degrees above normal.
Michaels, along with other "silver lining" global warming apologists, such as Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, make the argument that, so what if summers are getting hotter as long as winters are getting milder too? If it gets too hot, just go inside and turn the air conditioning up. For the most part, they believe Americans are going to be thrilled that their heating bills; no mention, of course, of how rising fuel costs balance out the shorter heating season.
Of course, while most newer homes and buildings in the South, West and Mid-Atlantic states are constructed with central air, a large portion of the pre-1970s housing stock in the Northern Tier states, which accounts for over 60% of all residential housings in the region, does not have central air, and is not easily converted. Residents who want to stay cool will be huddled around window units, or forced to visit local "cooling centers".
Last week, William Saletan, writing for The Washington Post, opined, "By cooling, we're cooked:"
Thank goodness for air conditioning. To keep old folks alive, cities from Washington to Los Angeles are opening artificially cooled buildings to the public.
Meanwhile, people are lining up to buy window units. According to the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute, shipments of air conditioners and heat pumps have tripled over the past three decades.
The percentage of single-family homes built with central air has gone from 36 to 87. The percentage of cars built with air conditioning has risen from 61 to 98. In 1970, 42 percent of occupied mobile homes had it. By 2003, that percentage had more than doubled.
It's a heartwarming -- or, more precisely, a heart-cooling -- story. Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. Air conditioning takes indoor heat and pushes it outdoors. To do this, it uses energy, which increases production of greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere. From a cooling standpoint, the first transaction is a wash, and the second is a loss. We're cooking our planet to refrigerate the diminishing part that's still habitable.
According to Saletan, Americans use 1/6th of our total energy consumption to power air conditioning. Stan Cox, a researcher with the Land Institute, "calculates that air-conditioning the average U.S. home requires 3,400 pounds of carbon dioxide production per year."
Getting back to those warmer winters, there are negative effects as well. Snowpack, the lifewaters of the Plains and Western agriculture, are melting months earlier, with average daily high temperatures upwards of seventeen degrees above normal in winter and early spring. With longer and hotter summers evaporating snow-fed rivers, lakes and reservoirs, sources for agricultural irrigation are drying up early in the growing season. The reserveroir that we are currently camped next to (in 103 degree heat, according to the host's thermometer) stopped servicing local farms and ranches over a month ago, as its water content dropped to 37% from full capacity in 2002. Now, everything around is brown.
Ironically, we're camped here another day precisely for one thing - electricity to run our trailer's air conditioning. We won't see another campground with electricty until northern Colorado (three states from now,) and a medical condition (MS) makes the heat not only unbearable, but potentially deadly.
So, what is the outlook for the coming "cool" season? From the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA:
September thru November, 2006
December, 2006 thru February, 2007
March thru May, 2007
What is missing in all these pictures? Well, for one thing, any blue, as seen in these temperature maps from December, 2001. Most seasonal outlooks include areas which are above "average" (yellow-orange-brown) and those which are below "average" (shades of blue and green.) These maps contain plenty of the former, and none of the latter.
Time to invest large sums in Carrier and Trane stock, if you're Michaels and Ebells. For the rest of us? We might be looking at moving our trailer to Hudson Bay, hopefully before Canadians close the border.