The New York Times said yesterday that heatwaves in the past were “virtually unheard of in the 1950s”, temperatures approaching 130 degrees didn’t used to occur, and summer temperatures have shifted towards more extreme heat.
It’s Not Your Imagination. Summers Are Getting Hotter. – The New York Times
Every single claim in the article is patently false, and the exact opposite of reality. The authors intentionally started their study in a cold period, after the extreme heat of the 1930’s.
Then they chose a baseline which included the coolest period on record, and declared the record cool to be normal.
The EPA graph above is helpful, but isn’t very accurate. Summers were much hotter during the 1950’s, and heatwaves have been plummeting in frequency, intensity and duration over the past century..
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/ghcnd_hcn.tar.gz
If New York Times writers actually read the New York Times, they would have known that temperatures approaching 130 degrees occurred in Australia in 1896, including several days of 129 degrees in “proper shade” 500 miles west of Sydney.
They would have known that New York also had a massive heatwave in 1896, another in 1901, and that California was 134 degrees in 1913.
TimesMachine: July 12, 1931 – NYTimes.com
The New York Times headlines from the 1901 heatwave were quite remarkable.
Later in July 1901, the heatwave expanded to Europe
And continued into August.
UNPRECEDENTED HEAT IN ITALY.; Vineyards Shriveled Up — People Forced to Sleep in the Open Air.
The study quoted by the New York Times was written by James Hansen, who in 1999 knew perfectly well that the 1930’s and 1950’s were very hot, and that the US had been cooling since the 1930’s.
Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
in the U.S. there has been little temperature change in the past 50 years, the time of rapidly increasing greenhouse gases — in fact, there was a slight cooling throughout much of the country
- James Hansen 1999
NASA GISS: Science Briefs: Whither U.S. Climate?
If they would have read their own paper, they would have known that James Hansen is lying about 1950’s heatwaves, which were among the most severe in US history.
CROP DISASTER SEEN IN MIDWESTERN HEAT – The New York Times
Hansen’s transition to the dark side of climate fraud accelerated after 1999, when he started cooling the past and warming the present.
Since Hansen retired, Gavin Schmidt has taken over as chief fraudster at NASA – further cooling the past and warming the present.
Hansen also predicted that Lower Manhattan would drown between 2008 and 2018, and still believes it.
“The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
When did he say this will happen?
Within 20 or 30 years. And remember we had this conversation in 1988 or 1989.
Does he still believe these things?
Yes, he still believes everything. I talked to him a few months ago and he said he wouldn’t change anything that he said then.
It is unfortunate that current New York Times authors don’t do any research, don’t read their own paper, and simply parrot lies and idiocy from the same government funded frauds – over and over again.
Another reason why Bill Nye the older people must die guy, said what he said. Any citizen of NYC that was around in the 50’s would recognize the lies for what they are based on their own experience.
Going even further back there were the 1932 Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid.
From the International skiing history association site:
https://www.skiinghistory.org/news/lake-placid-1932
“Naturally, it was a horrible snow year.
The weather was the warmest on record. The upper reaches of the nearby Hudson River, which had reliably frozen solid every year during the 146 years for which weather records had been kept, did not freeze during the 147th year in the winter of 1932. A major thaw hit two weeks before the Games, with temperatures rising from below zero to 50 degrees in 24 hours, ruining the bobsled and cross country courses, the jumps, and the ice, and the training schedules of skiers, sledders and skaters alike.
The weather moderated; tons of snow were dug out of the woods and put onto the courses. Miraculous feats of organization and endurance testified to Godfrey’s ability to get things done. George Carroll quoted Godfrey (in the February 1960 Ski) as saying, “ It was a case of never-say-die. We simply refused to admit defeat. Everyone, our own Olympic staff, the International Committee, village, town and state officials labored day and night.””
BTW, no sunspots and very low solar activity for 11 days now.
“….New York Times authors don’t do any research, don’t read their own paper, and simply parrot lies and idiocy
That’s why their revenue has been declining year after year. The only growth they have is in online subscribers – 2 million now, supposedly. They’re downsizing their newsroom like crazy; $19 million in severance costs just last quarter
I remember the heat of 1954 — in western Pennsylvania.
In the “Science Briefs” image, Hansen et. al. Wrote: “… U.S. climate has been following a different course than global climate,
…”
What a very strange notion. Climates are local – The Mediterranean, say versus The Savanna – and thus to speak of a “global climate” is stupendously stupid. Look up stupendously stupid in a picture dictionary and Hansen’s image will be there.
They make things up to cover the failures of the things they made up before. Soon this becomes confusing.
Telling the truth is easier, you don’t have to remember all your lies.
I remember the 1954 heat wave in Illinois very well. Until a few years ago, the measured temperature records for the western part of Illinois showed July 20, 1954 as the hottest temperature on record in the state. It was 114 degrees. It was before air conditioning and I was sitting under a shade tree in our back yard that day. I can still hear my mother, who is still living at age 97 and also remembers this, telling my father that they said on the radio that it had reached 114 degrees that day. Simple story, simple memory. Those records no longer exist on official books.
Ronald Reagan: “But Dick, the Soviets do lie and steal and cheat, don’t they?”
Richard Allen: “Yes sir, they do.”
Ronald Reagan: “I thought so.”
@ NYT. I hope you guys are feeling suitably embarrassed. What’s it like to be exposed as being part of the problem and NOT being the solution? Tony Heller has just made mincemeat out of you, your article and the NYT’s reputation. If you had an ounce of collective responsibility you’d apologise and start publishing facts instead of climate propaganda.
It does not matter how much you are exposed
when you controle the narrative due to your monopole
and therefore the majority.
These people have been caught lying many times,
they have been caught warmongering and witch hunting,
and nothing ever happened to them.
Why should they start to feel ashamed all of a sudden
and why because of such a harmless thing as AGW?
When they are responsible for promoting war and death and don’t give
a shit about it they’ll never do it for minor things.
CheshireRed, your expectation is reasonable but they cannot be embarrassed into doing any such thing. Intellectual honesty and simple human decency do not govern the Left but don’t be surprised when you discover that The New York Times writers consider themselves “deeply moral“. They are transforming the world and they all have been taught that “if you want to make an omelet, you must be willing to break a few eggs“.
“…..Karl Marx and his vision of universal human liberation” gag me with a pitchfork
Truth is, Marx sat in the British Library for 25 (30?) years gathering material for Capital, which he didn’t even complete in his lifetime because he lacked the discipline to complete a major work like that. His references were totally out of date by the time it was finished, and others since have proved that he faked and mis-quoted from a lot of his material.
Yes, factory working conditions were pretty brutal in early 19th century, but they were quickly improving; Child Labor laws and factory safety laws (what we would now call OSHA) were being enacted – pushed largely by religious and Christian groups, the very ones that Marx hated.
Marx never visited any factories, so he wouldn’t know conditions were improving. He excelled at writing pamphlets, at coming up with inflammatory one-liners; and his inspiration seemed not be “human liberation”, but constant revolution and centralizing of power (around him)
Yes, the conditions in the early factories were horrible but the people leaving the countryside for the industrializing cities knew what they were doing and why. The pastoralism of the Lake Poets was not going to feed them and their families. And neither was Karl Marx.
Friedrich Engels would have been best positioned if he paid more consistent attention to the Ermen and Engels’s Victoria Mill factory in Manchester.
In the US it was Upton Sinclair. Required reading for a history class at IU the subject of which was “The Robber Barons”. Typical leftist drivel. I mean real history but with a decidedly anti-capitalist bent. That was 1975.
Kind of funny at a campus where the old limestone halls were built during the depression with murals painted by artists employed by the New Deal WPA showing skilled and unskilled labor at work.
Yeah, there’s a rebuttal to that book called “The Myth of the Robber Barons”.
The railroads mostly lost money. Yes, they were given land grants in the West to help finance the long stretches of rail, but they were just like any other real ‘operating’ business – you had to buy expensive machinery and pay fuel and labor and try to get enough customers.
Upton Sinclair book that was required reading was ‘The Jungle’. Not only did it describe the though conditions for laborers in Chicago that were mostly immigrants. It also was quite an expose on the conditions and practices in the meat packing houses in Chicago.
As I recall there were also references to communist immigrant meetings in the work.
Democrat socialists have no shame. They will lie, cheat, steal, and kill in support of socialism. They are un-American and are enemies within our borders.
I think it’s also important to note that in developed countries heat related deaths have only ever been decreasing, thanks to technology powered primarily by fossil fuels. http://humanprogress.org/static/1934
B… great point!
AND… “fossil” fuels provide the chemical feedstocks for medicines of many kinds, plastics, fabrics, clothing, fertilizer, and on and on.
Inner city heat waves in 1901 must have been truly unbearable
In addition to stagnant, stifling, humid air, New York and London (and most big cities) also had heaps of decaying horse manure and attendant hordes of flies
Essentially no powered vehicles, no air conditioning, even electric fans were rare
It’s a wonder the casualties were not many times greater
Colorado history reflects that. Even in lesser cities like Denver, or much smaller towns of Boulder, Greeley and Fort Collins, people of means were escaping into the mountains during hot summer months, leading to the early development of places like Evergreen, Estes Park and Red Feather Lakes.
The high in Boulder is supposed to be 77F today (it’s 72 right now). One could escape that heat by heading to Estes Park, but it’s only 60F there.
72, eh? Well, anyway, Boulderites must keep their bug-out-bags ready if a sudden killer heatwave descended on the city. Their Subarus, Audis and Priuses would make it to Estes Park in no time, and keep them comfortably warm in the mountains. And they could always bundle up when they got there.
High here in central Indiana 78 F. Nice day with a breeze so I spent 5 hours of catching up on yard work. Still more to do but I put a dent in it. The very frequent heavy rains/ T-storms we had for the last 4-5 weeks until this last week made it tough to get much done outside. Of course going on a two week vacation didn’t help matters any either.
77? That’s C?
I had to work in a tin shed lifting 35 lb buckets on Jan 3
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=122&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=1990&p_c=-1156218423&p_stn_num=076031
That’s 116 in old money.
In the east they went to places like the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island to beat the summer heat.
About two miles from my property there is a narrow spring fed gorge that housed a resort where 19th century citiots fled the Summer heat. It is now is a gated historic village, and a real throwback to small town liiving.
Mid day temperatures in the NE United States…end of July…barely able to climb out of the 60s.
It is even cooler than normal in Southern Arizona. Going for 102 today and 100 tomorrow. This is be outdoors weather here. Temperatures have been below normal for most of July and the trend is expected to continue through August.
Media’s the same all around the country. It’s like no history exists in their world. Here in Los Angeles like this, we’ve had a pretty good stretch of warmer than normal weather (big deal) and there’s been a lot of attention in the media to it – like headlines.
In looking at – http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we04.php – looks like there are 24-25 daily high temp records which were set prior to 1900 which are still standing, for the summer months of June – August (92 days). That’s a large percentage.
I noticed these popping up on the weather page of the LAT’s last week:
Jul 24 103 (1891)
Jul 25 109 (1891)
Jul 26 100 (1891)
On the sidebar, there would not have been any ‘urban heat island effect’ at the time, what-so-ever. To tie those old record highs today, the tems should be adjusted upward some 4-6 degrees F – or, the 1891 temps adjusted downward, some 4-6 degrees, ya think?
People suck!
My employer bought 1,000 passes to the Indianapolis Zoo. The announcement to reply by RSVP secure the tickets one wanted was up for a week before I knew about it because I was on vacation. When I got back I saw it but didn’t move on it. Then another announcement coming over my qualcom in the truck when I was working came out stating there were only 200 slots left motivated me to get on the phone and coordinate with my wife, two girls, and 2 1/2 year old Granddaughter. So I RSVPed for 5 tickets/bracelets. Now fuckwads at work who didn’t get their act together in time are pissed at me because I got five slots. Screw them. You snooze you lose. There was not limit set on tickets/bracelets. Just that those the employee brought had to be immediate family.
When I was younger I used to give people the benefit of the doubt and considered them good until proven otherwise. Now the default position given no references or endorsements from those I respect is that they’re A-holes until proven otherwise.
Having lived in New York City during much of the 1950s, I can testify that very hot summers were far from unheard-of.
The raw ignorance of the under 40 age reporters is staggering.
The Gray Lady’s current crop are apparently unaware that
some 12 states across the northern tier of states set their respective
all-time, that is ALL-TIME high temperature recorsd during the second
week of July in 1936. From Nebraska across the Midwest to New
Jersey brand new records were born. In Wisconsin for example,
the city of La Crosse endured ten consecutive days when the
temperature exceeded 100 deg F. On July 12, 1936 the
thermometer soared to 108 deg. That’s a respectable maximum
for Phoenix. But on that same day Wisconsin Dells topped out at 114
deg, the all time state record.
So far this summer the thermometer has yet to reach even
95 deg anywhere in Wisconsin. Not to be confused with
heat indices.
HL
This is a tremendously effective critique. Too bad Drudge didn’t pick it up.
Apparently, the James Hansen data the NY Times article is based on is some sort of global heat wave data that is the equivalent of the U.S. annual heat wave graph that you show us. I’d like to use your argument about the NY Times misinformation, but I don’t see how I can do that using the U.S. regional data to make the point. Can you provide an equivalent global heat wave graph that would better represent the input data that resulted in the NY Times article?
The US is the only large area with long term historical daily data. This sort of analysis is impossible outside of the US, Japan and a few areas in Australia.
People who make claims otherwise, are lying.
Nonetheless, I don’t see how I can use a graph of the U.S. regional data to dispute the NY Times article or the study by Hansen that it’s apparently based on. Unless I’m missing something.