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Why the Yale and George Mason University poll attempt to tie “extreme weather” to global warming is rubbish [Reader Post]

Anthony Watts

Since warming hasn’t been cooperating lately, in desperation, Yale and George Mason University are trying to use a poorly wording and loaded poll to convince us that “weather is climate”. Problem is, the data does not support it.

Here’s the poll released today:

Just looking at the cover tells you a lot, it’s about the imagery of fear and terror, not facts.

Here’s a quote from the many news stories being circulated today in the MSM:

“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Well by all means, let’s “connect the dots”, but let’s use history and data rather than sloppy questions like this:

What’s hilarious about this question is that the memory of such events is aided by the stories in the mainstream media, and what we are seeing is a positive feedback loop. More on that below.

These are probably the most pointless and loaded questions ever to be put into a poll about weather, why? because short term memory is better than long term, and they play into this fact, biasing the results strongly. Plus, it has been shown that bad weather itself affects memory:

“We predicted and found that weather-induced negative mood improved memory accuracy,” he wrote in the study, which is published in the currentJournal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Another study from the University of Toronto has also shown a link between bad moods and ability to remember details.

Forgas speculated that a worse mood helps us to focus our attention on the surroundings and leads to a more thorough and careful thinking style, while happiness tends to reduce focus and increase both confidence and forgetfulness.

Yale makes no mention of this psychological tendency to remember better in bad weather in their study, nor do they correct for it. So then, it is no surprise to see results like this for weather in the last year:

I’d really like to see what the last 10 years looks like in a similar question…but they wouldn’t dare do that, because it would not give the results they seek.  Plus, the type of severe weather events listed above, have regional distributions. For example, the south far more likely to have tornadoes and hurricanes that the Pacific Northwest. And in any given year, a strong wind and a strong rainstorm are common events just about anywhere, yet they try to make normal weather part of the “extreme” weather pattern, without defining what “extreme” weather is to the person being polled.

But, by saying “we are taking a poll about extreme weather” and then including winds, rain, snowstorms, heat waves, cold snaps, etc, which are regular occurances, lumping them with tornadoes, hurricanes, etc…they bias the poll by association. Its a clever trick, and it is also dishonest.

And in a hat tip to the slimy “forecast The Facts” campaign against TV weathercasters that don’t “toe the line” on saying garbage like this, here’s the poll’s hat tip to that paid political ploy run by the Center for American Progress:

In stark contrast the the agenda filled Yale poll by Anthony A. Leiserowitz, a Gallup poll from last week says that American don’t seem much concerned about global warming at all. In fact it is dead last in the concerns.

This is why warmists need a new ploy, if they can make global warming about everyday weather, they’ll have a golden hammer. In my opinion, it is psychological terrorism.

Ok let’s look at that positive feedback loop of opinion aided by the MSM I mentioned earlier. For that, I’m reposting portions of:

Why it seems that severe weather is “getting worse” when the data shows otherwise – a historical perspective

Published in April 2011

Bouziotas et al. presented a paper at the EGU a few weeks ago (PDF) and concluded:

Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis.

Note the phrase I highlighted: “Despite common perception”.  I was very pleased to see that in context with a conclusion from real data.

That “common perception” is central to the theme of “global climate disruption”, started by John P. Holdren in this presentation, which is one of the new buzzword phrases after “global warming” and “climate change” used to convey alarm.

Like Holdren, many people who ascribe to doomsday scenarios related to AGW seem to think that severe weather is happening more frequently. From a perception not steeped in the history of television technology, web technology, and mass media, which has been my domain of avocation and business, I can see how some people might think this. I’ve touched on this subject before, but it bears repeating again and in more detail.

Let’s consider how we might come to think that severe weather is more frequent than before. Using this Wikipedia timeline as a start, I’ve created a timeline that tracks the earliest communications to the present, adding also severe weather events of note and weather and news technology improvements for context.

Compare the reach and speed of communications and news reporting at the beginning of this timeline to the reach and speed of communications and news reporting technology around the beginning of the 20th century. Then compare that to the beginning of the 21st century. Compare again to what we’ve seen in the last 10 years.

With such global coverage, instant messaging, and Internet enabled phones with cameras now, is it any wonder that nothing related to severe weather or disaster escapes our notice any more? Certainly, without considering the technological change in our society, it would seem as if severe weather events and disasters are becoming much more frequent.

To borrow and modify a famous phrase from James Carville:

It’s the technology, stupid.

Which speaks to the phrase: “Despite common perception” which I highlighted at the beginning. The speed of weather tracking and communications technology curve aids in our “common perception” of severe weather events. The reality of severe weather frequency though, is actually different. While we may see more of it, that happens because there are millions more eyes, ears, cameras, and networks than ever before.

1. There are less Tornadoes in the USA



12-month running sums of hurricane frequency (Dr. Ryan N. Maue, FSU)

3. And now, back to our original seed for this long thread, no effect in global flooding events:

Destructive floods observed in the last decade all over the world have led to record high material damage. The conventional belief is that the increasing cost of floods is associated with increasing human development on flood plains (Pielke & Downton, 2000). However, the question remains as to whether or not the frequency and/or magnitude of flooding is also increasing and, if so, whether it is in response to climate variability and change.

Several scenarios of future climate indicate a likelihood of increased intense precipitation and flood hazard. However, observations to date provide no conclusive and general proof as to how climate change affects flood behaviour.

Finally, this parting note.

While our world has seen the explosion of TV news networks, Internet News websites. personal cameras and recording technology, smartphones with cameras, and the ability to submit a photo or movie or live video feed virtually anywhere, anytime, giving us reporting of weather and disaster instantly on the scene, where tornadoes live on TV is becoming a ho-hum event, there’s one set of elusive phenomena that still hasn’t seen an increase in credible reporting and documentation:

UFO’s, Loch Ness monster,  and Bigfoot.

We still haven’t seen anything credible from the millions of extra electronic eyes and ears out there, and people still marvel over old grainy images. You’d think if they were on the increase, we’d know about it. 😉

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And this article is also germane:

The Amazing Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming, 1900–2010

Proponents of drastic curbs on greenhouse gas emissions claim that such emissions cause global warming and that this exacerbates the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including extreme heat, droughts, floods and storms such as hurricanes and cyclones. But what matters is not the incidence of extreme weather events per se but the impact of such events—especially the human impact. To that end, it is instructive to examine trends in global mortality (i.e. the number of people killed) and mortality rates (i.e. the proportion of people killed) associated with extreme weather events for the 111-year period from 1900 to 2010.

This is due to better warnings, and yes, the MSM (especially TV and radio) is key to getting those warnings out.

Here’s another germane article:

Another blow to warmist hysteria over weather is not climate unless we say it is: “2011 damage is qualitatively indistinguishable from 1974″

Simmons, K., D. Sutter, R.A. Pielke, Jr. (2012), Blown away: monetary and human impacts of the 2011 U.S. tornadoes. Extreme events and insurance: 2011 annus horribilis (Edited by C. Courbage and W.R. Stahel) The Geneva Reports: Risk and Insurance Research , Published March 2012.

Pielke Jr. writes on his blog:

1. When using our dataset, it is best to use the damage numbers as tabulated by the US NWS as they are consistent over time

2. That said, 2011 damage is qualitatively indistinguishable from 1974 and 1954 1953 at >;$20B

3. That would give a simple baseline expectation of 1 in 20 for 2011, but half or twice that would not be implausible given the uncertainties, so between 1 in 10 and 1 in 40

4. For 2012 and looking ahead there are two big question marks, one more certain than the other. Urbanization is increasing, which means that the chance of large losses increases (somewhat at the expense of smaller and medium losses of course). And there has been a notable and significant decline in the incidence of strong tornadoes in recent decades

Here’s the summary from the report:

The decades leading up to 2011 convinced many that the tornado threat had been reduced to the point that 100 fatality tornadoes and 500 fatality years were in the past. After all, neither figure had been exceeded in the U.S. in over 50 years. The National Weather Service implemented a nationwide network of Doppler weather radars in the 1990s. Warning lead time doubled, and then almost doubled again, providing sufficient time for families to receive a warning and take shelter. Television stations used sophisticated graphics to cover tornadoes with ever-increasing accuracy. Street level tracking software allowed TV viewers to know the exact location of a tornado and how close it might get to their home.

In this environment, a tornado that killed 10 or more people was national news and could grab the attention of the public for days and perhaps weeks. In 1999 one of the most powerful tornadoes ever documented struck a metropolitan area and resulted in 36 deaths, which while tragic, was only a fraction of the toll that might have been expected from a tornado like this at the start of the 20th century. The benchmark for what constituted a major tornado event was much different than 1974, when the 3-4 April “Super Outbreak” killed over 300 people. Things were different now, or so many people thought.

We begin by summarising the damages and fatalities from U.S. tornadoes in 2011. Next, we examine the tornado outbreak as it relates to the historical record. The next section looks at the role that extreme weather played, followed by a discussion of some of the vulnerabilities that are known to increase fatalities from tornadoes. We then consider what can be done to limit damages and fatalities from future tornado outbreaks. Finally,
we discuss whether or not this was an event that can be expected to occur again and then we conclude.

…Three previous seasons—1953, 1965 and 1974—now rival damage in 2011. Normalised damage exceeded US$20 billion in 1953 and 1965 and exceeded US$10 billion in 1974. The 1953 season provides perhaps the best historical comparison with 2011, as much of the damage in 1965 and 1974 occurred in just one outbreak. Damage in 1965 is attributable to the Palm Sunday outbreak, while damage in 1974 occurred in the 2-3 April “Super Outbreak”. 1953 had multiple damaging outbreaks in different parts of the country. One of the worst tornadoes of 1953 occurred in Worcester, MA, and ranked first in normalised damage until the Joplin tornado of 2011.

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Every time warmist academics try to push these ridiculous opinion polls as proof of “global warming makes weather more severe and more frequent” all it takes is a casual look at the data to know they are blowing hot air.

Crossposted from Watts Up With That

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