Global Warming Science: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming

Washington State Senators Out of Touch With Reality

[last update: 2009/11/04]

I wrote to my Washington State senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, urging them to vote against the Kerry / Boxer “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S.1733)”. Their replies showed a religious belief in global warming and disregard for reality. The following sections compare their words to real data.

Sea Level

Murray: “The Pacific Northwest has much to lose from climate change, including increasingly severe storms and rising sea levels.”

Cantwell: “Washington is projected to sustain sea level rises up to two feet by 2040”

The reality: (sea level plots from NOAA http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/index.shtml)

Not sure what Cantwell’s been smoking – not only would the current negative trend have to reverse itself, the trend would have to be +20 mm / year to rise 2 feet by 2040.

Temperatures

Cantwell: “cascade mountain temperatures could rise 10 degrees or more by 2090”

Reality: The NASA GISS database does not have many stations in the Cascade Mountains. The highest elevation station is Longmire in Mount Rainier National Park. The following figure shows the historical temperature data (from: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/) The warmest year was 1934.

The following figure compares the linear trend from the long term data (orange – about 1.5 degrees by 2090) with Cantwel’’s projection of 10 degrees by 2090 (red). Like her sea level rise projection, Cantwell is obviously hallucinating (or wearing Gore Goggles).

Precipitation

Cantwell: “In Washington, climate change is expected to alter the region's historic water cycle, threatening drinking water supplies”

Reality: No change in recent precipitation trends. The following figure shows the total annual precipitation for Washington State (from NCDC: [http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/wa.html] ).

Much of western Washington’s summer water is dependent on mountain snowpack. The following figure shows April snowpack since 1930. The only significant decline took place during the Pacific Climate Shift of 1977 and since then “snowpack increased 19% during the recent period of most rapid global warming (1976-2007)” [ftp://ftp.atmos.washington.edu/stoeling/manuscripts/SWEpaper30Oct_rendered.pdf].

Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

Although these senators have probably never heard of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Washington State temperatures are highly correlated to the PDO, not to CO2.

The following figure shows the average annual temperature for Washington State (from NCDC: [http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/wa.html] – the warmest year was 1934.)

The following figure shows the annual temperature from above, changed to green, and superimposed on the monthly PDO index values (PDO from http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/)

CO2 does not play a role in Washington’s climate.

See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Washington_usa.htm for a comprehensive examination of Washington’s climate.