Administration Snow Job in North Dakota

In the world of politics, often there is no shame.  On Earth Day (April 22), in a series of carefully worded statements, the President and other administration officials preyed on the misfortune and misery of thousands of flood-ravaged North Dakotans to propel the administration’s global warming agenda.  Here is a smattering of the day’s hyperbole:

Vice President Gore:  Our research effort is continuing to pin down what many scientists have said is a link between extreme weather events...that have long been predicted [emphasis added] to become more common in a world where temperatures are rising even slightly...They [the scientific community] do say and have said for two decades that the probability that [extreme floods] will occur increases along with climate change.

President Clinton:  We do not know for sure that the warming of the earth is responsible for what seems to be a substantial increase in highly disruptive weather events; but many people believe that it is...I think every American has noticed a substantial increase in the last few years of the kind of thing we’re going to see in North Dakota today.

Asst. Secretary of State Eileen Claussen:  While we cannot say with certainty that the flooding that is now occurring along the Red River signals the onset of climate change, it is entirely consistent with the predicted effects. We can expect that a continued warming of the Earth’s atmosphere is likely to result in much more of such occurrences of extremely severe weather...I think we can say, with some confidence, that there will be more cases like [the Red River flooding] as the Earth starts to warm.

While in the midst of shoveling muck, the last thing these flood victims want to hear from the President is, “Yeah, we told you this was going to happen—not only that, but it’s likely to happen again soon, and, by the way, to stop it we’re going to raise your taxes.”  Now, even though we can’t be sure that any given president will want to raise your taxes to combat a nonexistent or benign global warming, or that any given tax increase will do a lick to change the future climate, many, many people have been saying for many, many years that it’s a great idea!

These remarks also imply that scientists have been warning us about greenhouse warming causing weather extremes for decades.  In fact, only a few climatologists have jumped on this bandwagon, and only recently (over the past year or two), when it became clear that the model-projected warming wasn’t happening as quickly or as intensely as predicted.  But when extremes (cold, floods, blizzards) bought media play and bureaucratic capital, then extremes became the issue.

Let’s look at the science. What is the hypothesized connection between Red River flooding—waters borne almost entirely from spring snow melt—and increased greenhouse gases?  By now you know the drill: Warmer air evaporates more water, a moister atmosphere produces more clouds and precipitation, more precipitation yields more blizzards...yadda, yadda, yadda...pay more taxes.

In this case the “logic” is not off a little—it’s completely backwards.   In the extreme high latitudes (say, poleward of 70 degrees), the cold air is so dry that you simply can’t squeeze much snowfall out of it.  That’s why the South Pole averages less than two feet of snow each year.  But as you move into the warmer middle latitudes, moisture is no longer the limiting factor—temperature is.

Let’s examine the climate data for Grand Forks, N.D.  Since 1949, winter (December through March) temperatures have shown a statistically significant increase, from a nippy 8.5°F to a balmy 13.5°F (Figure 1).  Finally, a location that supports the global warming theory!  So, snowfall there should be increasing, right?

Figure 1.  Winter average temperatures (°F) in Grand Forks, N.D., have been increasing since the late 1940s.

In Figure 2, we plot the relationship between snowfall and temperature.  Their correlation is negative and statistically significant.   In this region, warm winters have less snow than cold winters.

Figure 2.  Relationship between snowfall and winter temperatures in Grand Forks, N.D.

Why hasn’t this scientific fact worked its way into the administration’s Earth Day press blitzkrieg?  There are two possibilities, both of them grim:

1)   Federal climatologists advising the administration on global warming matters either don’t know this basic fact, and/or

2)   Scientific facts only matter when they support the administration’s prevailing policy, and federal climatologists don’t want to get yelled at for telling the truth.

As this winter’s Kyoto summit to amend the Rio Treaty and foist a binding carbon tax on U.S. citizens approaches, every global weather blip, which in more reasoned times would be characterized as simple natural variability, will portend our climatic fate and be used to build the body of evidence for global action against industrialized nations.