Links tagged “droughts”

Meteorologist Anthony Watts: "New data shows the global climate-related death risk has dropped by over 99% since 1920. Despite the near constant caterwauling from climate alarmists that we are in a “climate emergency”, real-world data, release at the end of 2020 shows that climate related deaths are now approaching zero. The data spans 100 years of “global warming” back to 1920 and shows “climate related” deaths now approaching zero. Above is an update of the graph in the 2020 peer-reviewed article by Bjørn Lomborg: Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies."

Bjorn Lomborg reports: “Back in the 1920s, the death count from climate-related disasters was 485,000 on average every year. In the last full decade, 2010-2019, the average was 18,357 dead per year or 96% lower. In the first year of the new decade, 2020, the preliminary number of dead was even lower at 8,086 — 98% lower than the 1920s average.

But because the world’s population also quadrupled at the same time, the climate-related *death risk* has dropped even faster. The death risk is the probability of you dying in any one year. In the 1920s, it was 243 out of a million people that would die from climate-related disasters. In the 2010s, the risk was just 2.5 per million people — a drop of 99%. Now, in 2020, the preliminary number is 1 per million — 99.6% lower.”

Extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. comments on new study: "It also has a nice one-paragraph summary of most recent IPCC conclusions on "natural hazards (not disasters)."

Delingpole: In 1859, Los Angeles County recorded temperatures of 133 degrees F. (The ‘record-breaking temperature claimed by Newsom was a relatively balmy 121 degrees F). According to the 1859 San Francisco Chronicle, cited by Tony Heller:

"In…eastern parts of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties, the mercury rose in the shade to the startling figure of 133 degrees.

Cattle full in flesh perished in the fields and birds dropped lifeless from the trees in the withering blast."

It wasn’t just warmer back in 1859. Even as recently as 1983, it was significantly hotter at this time of year in downtown Los Angeles – 4.1 degrees F hotter, in fact, than the recent claimed ‘record’ temperatures.

In fact last month’s heatwave in LA was not unusually severe by historical standards, as the local temperature charts below will  demonstrate. So how come according to the charts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) this August saw record-breaking temperatures in the Los Angeles region (known as Division 6 – South Coast Drainage)?

NYT July 19, 1994: BEGINNING about 1,100 years ago, what is now California baked in two droughts, the first lasting 220 years and the second 140 years. Each was much more intense than the mere six-year dry spells that afflict modern California from time to time, new studies of past climates show. The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur. ...

Dr. Stine, who reported his findings last month in the British journal Nature, says that California, like Tiwanaku, presents “a classic case of people building themselves beyond the carrying capacity of the land,” which is determined not by wet times but by dry ones. “What we’ve done in California is fail to recognize that there are lean times ahead,” said Dr. Stine, “and they are a lot leaner than anything we’ve come up against” in the modern era.

End NYT excerpt

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Todd Myers: "The largest number of acres burned in the past five years was in 2018, when temperatures in E. Washington were cooler than this year. By way of contrast, 2017 was an extremely quiet fire year, but average temperature was 3 degrees warmer than the busy 2018 fire season. Additionally, 2014 was an extremely bad fire year, but average Summer temperatures were lower than the very quiet year of 2017. Precipitation was also very similar. Simply pointing to temperatures and even precipitation obviously doesn’t tell the whole story, nor is it a useful surrogate for fire activity."