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Rats !

[last update: 2017/09/01]

Rats – Do They Love it Warmer?

“America Is on the Verge of Ratpocalypse”, at least according to the New Republic:

“The reason the rats are so bad now, we believe, is because of the warm winters,” said Gerard Brown, program manager of the Rodent and Vector Control Division of the D.C. Department of Health …[ and ]… Clearly, the coming ratpocalypse is no longer a city-centric problem. It is threatening the health of millions across the country, costing billions of dollars, and is being fueled by global climate change that the U.S. primarily created. [https://newrepublic.com/article/144392/america-verge-ratpocalypse]

Many articles on the Internet make a similar statement – increased rats are due to “warmer winters”.

The article in the leftist New Republic also states: “And yet cities—which are expected to hold 70 percent of the world’s population by 2050— are largely dealing with their rodent crises on their own. Why isn’t the federal government stepping in?” Of course, they want the govmint to take care of everything. (Leftist? A recent New Republic article: “The Socialism America Needs Now”). Although the rat article is about US cities, they make an irrelevant statement regarding 70 percent urbanization globally in more than 30 years, even though they don’t mention that the US urbanization is already 80 percent as of 2010.

Rat Data

The following figure shows rat occurrence by city

(from: [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-america-roach-rats-infected-cities/]):

Figure 1

Temperature Data

So just how rapidly are these winters warming?

The following figures show average minimum January temperature for several of the cities in the above figure, plotted at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/ These plots show the climate division each city is in, since many cities do not have long-term climate data due to urbanization resulting in the discontinuing of the use of urbanized stations. (State climate zone maps are available at: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/regional_monitoring/CLIM_DIVS/states_counties_climate-divisions.shtml ) The horizontal red line in the following figures is the freezing temperature.

Philadelphia (the most rats in Figure 1):

Boston (the second most rats in Figure 1 – no red line: JanMin is always below freezing):

Chicago (in the mid-range of rats in Figure 1 – no red line: JanMin is always below freezing):

Atlanta (the fourth least rats in Figure 1):

Miami (the second least rats in Figure 1 – no red line: JanMin is always well above freezing):

Phoenix (the least rats in Figure 1):

The above graphs show that January minimum temperatures have generally not increased, but are within the variance of annual temperature fluctuations. The Phoenix January minimum temperature exhibits some increase in recent decades – and that is the city with the least rats!

The New Republic article also stated: “Extreme summer heat and this past winter’s mild temperatures have created urban rat utopias.” Extreme summer heat? Phoenix has the most extreme summer heat of any US city and it has the LEAST rats. (It also has the most warming in the JanMin temperatures.)

The following figure shows an Excel graph of the rat data from Figure 1 plotted against average minimum January temperature from the NOAA site, along with the linear trend line. The data clearly do NOT support the theory of warmer temperatures increasing the rat populations.

Seattle

Why are there so many rats in Seattle? (At least according to KUOW [http://kuow.org/post/why-are-there-so-many-rats-seattle]): “Truitt says the rat problem has grown worse in the eight years he’s been on the job. That’s due partly to the rapidly growing human population in this city, but climate change is also a factor. “The summers, they’ve been longer and the winters haven’t been as cold, have you noticed that?” Truitt says. “Not a lot of freezing going on in the winter time. So they’re just having more and more babies.”

Warming winters? Really? Not according to the data.

The following figure shows the average minimum January temperature for the last 25 years – no change (blue trend line is flat). The red line is the freezing temperature.

Washington Puget Sound Lowlands (Seattle)

If you plot just the last 8 – 10 years (Truitt’s time on the job), the data show a cooling trend of > 1 degree per decade. And almost every winter has a minimum January temperature above freezing – so of course there is “Not a lot of freezing going on in the winter” – there never has been much freezing in Seattle in the last couple of centuries.

Ratpocalypse due to climate change? Like all of the global warming climate change alarmist scenarios, the data don’t support it.