Don Hooper, a New England regional representative for the National
Wildlife Federation, wrote an op-ed in the August 27 Boston
Globe describing his 500-mile bicycle trip across Iowa
in July as part of the NWF's 10-rider Global Warming Action
Team. "I was on a quest to see firsthand if global warming
was ready for prime time as a presidential election issue,"
explained Hooper. "Heady and optimistic, I hoped America's
heartland electorate was nearing the tipping point in its alarm
over the catastrophic consequences of global warming."
Hooper and other team members, who wore "Cycling Against
Global Warming" jerseys, wanted to find out if Iowans were
aware of the warming that was supposedly taking place right
under their noses. "We tried to keep a light touch, often
asking open-endedly, 'Has global warming visited Iowa?'
'Is it real?' "
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Hooper quoted a "soybean farmer from parched, cracked-soil
Rolfe" who obviously believes that global warming has visited
Iowa: "Something worrisome is happening out there; it's
real all right. We've got to address it." But he also
quoted a Rock Rapids hardware store manager who supposedly was
still in denial. The store manager called global warming "a
liberal, sky-is-falling fantasy; you should've been here
in February when it was 15 below."
Overall, Hooper says that his "persistent but unscientific
survey … found that a majority of Iowans believe global warming
is real." But he also noted that "until Iowa, I hadn't
really considered the implications of obstinate denial."
But it is fair to ask who's in denial. Is the hardware store
manager quoted above in denial? Or is Mr. Hooper himself in
denial — or perhaps uninformed?
I find it amusing that Mr. Hooper's op-ed, which is titled
"An issue that heats up the heartland," was published
just a few days after we learned that the warmest year on record
in America is no longer 1998 but 1934. As reported by an August
15 Los
Angeles Times article: "A slight adjustment to
U.S. temperature records has bumped 1998 as the hottest year
in the country's history and made the Dust Bowl year of
1934 the new record holder, according to NASA." In fact,
four of the ten warmest years on record in America are now in
the 1930s.
The adjustment was made because NASA researchers, after being
tipped off by a Canadian blogger, checked the data and "found
that the agency had merged two data sets that had been incorrectly
assumed to match."
It is significant that the change in the U.S. temperature record
that caused the re-ranking is very small. "When the data
were corrected, it resulted in a decrease of 0.27 degrees Fahrenheit
in yearly temperatures since 2000 and a smaller decrease in
earlier years," the Los Angeles Times explained.
"That meant that 1998, which had been 0.02 degrees warmer
than 1934, was now 0.04 degrees cooler."
The Times also pointed out that "re-ranking did
not affect global records," and it quoted Gavin A. Schmidt
of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies as saying
"the global numbers show that there is no question that
the last five to 10 years have been the hottest period of the
last century." The Times also quoted Schmidt as
saying that "the changes were pretty negligible."
Which is precisely the point! If a small adjustment in the U.S.
temperature record can change the hottest year in America from
1998 to 1934, then the upward trend in global warming is very
small indeed. In fact, that trend is so small that in America,
as already noted, four of the ten warmest years on record are
in the 1930s.
When Mr. Hooper bicycled through Iowa in July, he had no way
of knowing that the U.S. temperature record would be adjusted
a month later. But, hopefully, he knows it now. And he should
ask himself just how alarming the slight warming that has occurred
over the last century can be — and if a soybean farmer in Iowa
can actually see the difference with his own eyes.
