by Brent Baker
Anecdotal discomfort over science for Al Hunt. On CNN's Capital Gang, Hunt dismissed the contention of Patrick Michaels that global warming has been minimal and will be in the future. Hunt pointed out it was “96, 97 degrees every day” during the past week in Washington, DC. But a quick check of temperature records for the same dates shows it was hotter in DC decades ago – even 121 years ago.
Hunt's amateur climatology occurred after the August 17 programs played a tape of Kate O'Beirne interviewing Michaels for the “Newsmaker of the Week” segment. Michaels, a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and the state climatologist for Virginia, contended: “It's going to warm up at about, for about 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 100 years, which isn't very much. We're going to prosper, we're going to adapt, we're going to live with it.”
Hunt, Executive Washington Editor of the Wall Street Journal, derided Michaels: “You know, I've never seen a state climatologist before, and I guess I should be impressed. But boy, the good professor's timing's not very opportune. Washington, D.C., this week, 96, 97 degrees every day. Arizona, record heat waves. One expert told me in Tokyo in recent decades, the average temperature has increased 7 degrees. Something's going on.”
What's going on is lazy journalism which assumes whatever is occurring now is the worst ever.
I don't know about Arizona or Tokyo, but checking last week's National Weather Service data for Washington, DC, as listed in the Washington Post, I discovered:
• Sunday, August 11. High temperature: 94. Record: 101 in 1900.
• Monday, August 12. High temperature: 97. Record: 99 in 1926.
• Tuesday, August 13. High temperature: 100. Record: 101 in 1881 (As Rush Limbaugh would say, for those Rio Linda, that's before the gas-guzzling SUV)
• Wednesday, August 14. High temperature: 99, finally a record high
• Thursday, August 15. High temperature: 96. Record: 103 in1988.
• Friday, August 16. High temperature: 95. Record: 102 in 1997.
• Saturday, August 17. High temperature: 96. Record: 105 in 1997.
(All temperatures, of course in Fahrenheit, and as measured at Reagan National Airport in Arlington County, Virginia, the closest monitoring station to the District of Columbia.)
Applying Hunt's logic, I'd say we've been experiencing a global cool-down since 1997.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
