Real Climate Science

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has determined that a drought in Africa is the worst in century, and they know this because a guy in his 30s who sells tourist handicrafts told them so.

Victoria Falls slows to a trickle, fuelling fears of climate change – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Here is the same story from 1950.

08 Feb 1950, 5 – Sioux City Journal at Newspapers.com

h/t Steve Milloy

This actually happens every year this time of year.

Drought, Heat, and Victoria Falls: A Climate Story with a Twist | Weather Underground

River Flows | Zambezi River Authority

Apparently 1992 may also have been more than a century ago.

02 Sep 1992, 17 – The Guardian at Newspapers.com

Africa also had their worst drought in century in 1966, during the ice age scare.

20 Jan 1966, 12 – The Daily News-Journal at Newspapers.com

Experts predict 50C temperatures in Australia, due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Australia reached 51C in 1906.

Not surprisingly, BOM hides all of the hot weather before 1910.

Climate change and variability: Tracker: Australian timeseries graphs

One of the hottest days on record in Australia was January 7, 1906.

08 Jan 1906 – THE HEAT WAVE – Trove

08 Jan 1906 – EXTENSIVE HEAT WAVE. – Trove

This was near the end of 15 years of the Federation drought.

03 Mar 1906 – The Capricornian. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1906. – Trove

30 Nov 1899 – DROUGHT IN QUEENSLAND. – Trove

Drought of 1891 to 1903 reconstructed shows today’s conditions likely to have more devastating effects – ABC Rural – ABC News

There was also a tremendous drought in Europe at that time.

17 May 1893 – GREAT DROUGHT IN EUROPE. – Trove

And in the US.

Spokane Falls Daily Chronicle – Google News Archive Search

Minnesota also had some of their worst fires that decade.

08 May 1890, 6 – Minneapolis Messenger at Newspapers.com

The New York Times described the the January, 1896 heatwave in Australia as the hottest of hot waves on record.

TimesMachine: August 18, 1896

09 Jan 1896, Page 5 – The Sydney Morning Herald at Newspapers.com

23 Jan 1896 – THE HEAT WAVE. – Trove

24 Jan 1896, Page 5 – The Sydney Morning Herald at Newspapers.com

The year 1896 brought record heat all around the world, including Arizona’s longest spell over 120F.

India was 51C.

08 Jan 1896 – HOT WEATHER. – Trove

Europe

18 Jul 1896 – Great Heat in Europe. – Trove

17 Jul 1896 – HEAT-WAVE IN EUROPE.

New York

1896 Heatwave

28 May 1896, 4 – Ironton County Register at Newspapers.com

National Geographic reported that Alaska’s largest glacier retreated 40 miles by 1896.

The National Geographic Archive | April 1896 | page 1

The Bureau of Meteorology used to have this web page describing the world’s record heatwave in 1923, and 50C temperatures in 1960 and 1998.

30 Mar 2009 – BOM – Australian Climate Extremes – Trove

They have since hidden this page.

Bureau of Meteorology – The page you requested was not found on this server

BOM’s excuse for hiding huge temperature anomalies before 1910, is that they claim the thermometers back then read about one degree too high.

Exxon knew that billions of people depend on their product to survive. And they delivered it. The headline is misleading, because Exxon’s activities have nothing to do with climate change.

Exxon wins New York climate change fight – BBC News

The American Meteorological Society has taken climate superstition to a new level. Far too much junk science to cover in just one blog post.  This post covers their first claim, that “climate change” caused the 2018 Four Corners drought.

New Research Examines Climate Change’s Role in 2018 Extreme Weather Events | YubaNet

I grew up in the Four Corners area, on the edge of the Jemez Mountains. Proxy studies done there show a long history of droughts and wet periods, going back 1,200 years. The AMS has determined however that the most recent drought was due to “climate change.”

Millennial precipitation reconstruction for the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico

I have been fighting this superstition for a decade.  Many of the current residents of New Mexico moved there during the 1980s and 1990s, which were some of the wettest decades on record – so they assumed that was the normal climate.

I wrote an editorial in the Santa Fe Newspaper in 2012 discussing this misconception.

Reader View: Drought is normal for New Mexico – The Santa Fe New Mexican

Some of the most popular tourist attractions around Santa Fe are the giant Aspen groves, which are the result of massive forest fires during the droughts of the 1890s.

Spokane Falls Daily Chronicle – Google News Archive Search

Minnesota also had some of their worst fires that decade.

08 May 1890, 6 – Minneapolis Messenger at Newspapers.com

This is what the burn area looks like now.

The September, 1925 issue of National Geographic had an article discussing Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, which was abandoned by the Anasazi after decades of drought in the 13th century.

The National Geographic Archive | September 1925 | page 1

Drought is the normal climate for the west.

Graphic: California’s droughts in the past 1,200 years – The Mercury News

The New York Times used to know this.

History Of Ancient Fires

Studying fire marks in giant sequoias, Thomas W. Swetnam and co-workers have discovered that major conflagrations sweeping across many mountain ranges in California and the Southwest were a long a common feature, occurring at least twice a decade and apparently linked to oceanic currents much farther south

In Unexpected Places, Clues to Ancient and Future Climate; Warming? Tree Rings Say Not Yet – The New York Times

Severe Ancient Droughts: A Warning to California – The New York Times

They also used to know about the Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age.

In Unexpected Places, Clues to Ancient and Future Climate – Warming? Tree Rings Say Not Yet – NYTimes.com

One hundred fifty-five years ago, California had a massive flood after two decades of drought. 

California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe – Scientific American

In 2016, Wired announced the California permanent drought.

Thanks El Niño, But California’s Drought Is Probably Forever | WIRED

A few months later California had their wettest winter on record.

NWS: Northern California now on pace for ‘wettest water year on record’ – SFGate

I was in Los Alamos, New Mexico during May, 2018 – when the drought ended.

Everything was very dry, but during my three days there there was heavy rain and the fairways got so soft that my ball almost sank completely below ground on my drive on the 18th hole.

I took these pictures later that summer in Colorado and New Mexico.

Phoenix had their wettest October on record.

By Christmas, Los Alamos was buried under record snow.

And by New Years, the snow covered the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

In February, Arizona had their snowiest day on record.

State of Emergency in Flagstaff after snowiest day on record | 12news.com

And the ski area at Flagstaff had their longest ski season on record.

It’s gonna be May. – Arizona Snowbowl

My global warming superstition peaked in June 1994. I was living in Albuquerque when four days of record heat in the Southwest convinced me that we had ruined the climate. A year later I was living in Boulder during the coldest and snowiest spring on record, matched only by Spring 2019.