“NOAA’s timely and accurate seasonal outlooks and short-term forecasts are the result of improved satellite observations, more detailed computer forecast modeling, and expanding supercomputing capacity,” said Neil Jacobs, Ph.D., acting NOAA administrator. (below)

“Cold extremes decrease and warm extremes increase in a warmer world, and cold extremes tend to be more sensitive to global warming than the warm ones.” (emphasis added) Science Bulletin, below

Humility in the face of unknowns is a worthy attribute. And when it comes to the Earth’s climate, in the whole and regionally, a prediction can be worse than no prediction.

Enter climate models, the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and politics. And a very bad result for the South this winter. The lack of weatherization in Texas for traditional power plants, in particular, might well have been influenced by the climate narrative of warmer winters.

That’s how most of the media are treating a new study, anyway. Even the Wall Street Journal ran a news piece titled “Study Finds No Pause in Global Warming.”

“In light of adjustments to global temperature data that allowed some reporters to cite 2014 as the warmest year in recorded history, it is fitting reporter Seth Borenstein be nominated for the inaugural Brian Williams Award For Science Reporting.”

On January 16, 2015, Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein published “The heat is on; NOAA, NASA say 2014 warmest year on record.” Within days of this publication information was cited that NASA and NOAA data showed 2014 global temperatures weren’t statistically different from the years 2005 and 2010.

The land surface temperature data used by NOAA and NASA is subject to errors in measurements at temperature stations that were rural 100 years ago and are now in urban areas due to population growth. This is called the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE), which results in local temperature increases due to accumulations of concrete and asphalt.

“… as we suffer through the hellish summer of 2011 … one lesson from the book is clear: Get used to it.” (Andrew Dessler)

A decade ago, the Texas A&M climate alarmist Andrew Dessler, long followed at MasterResource for his exaggerations and bad temperment, wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle: “Texas is Vulnerable to Warming Climate” (July 10, 2011; updated August 17, 2011).

How does Professor Dessler’s op-ed read today? The short answer: not very well. The mad scientist should chill with some A/C (72^o, not 78^o) and focus on the real here-and-now problem: the state’s overbuilt wind and solar capacity that has wounded the Texas electrical grid (as in price spikes and greenouts).

Here is Dessler’s opinion-page editorial with my comments.