This year has been the coldest year ever, claims a science blogger who has been protesting the
National Climate Assessment using maps and other statistics to debunk dire warnings about global warming.
"This is the coldest year on record so far in the United States," posted blogger Steven Goddard on his
Real Science blog Thursday, along with a chart and a map to show the differences in temperatures this year in the United States.
Goddard, who has a dedicated fan base among those who do not believe the government's warnings on climate change, posted several entries on his site Thursday to debunk the national report, including a segment that he called the "real" state of climate change.
In
that entry, Goddard stated that global sea ice and Antarctic sea ice are at record highs, claiming that there has been no global warming for two decades. He says tornadoes and hurricanes have been at record lows, noting it has been nine years since there has been a major hurricane. He also said there was record springtime ice on the Great Lakes after the harsh winter and more snow cover on the Northern Hemisphere since 2004.
He also wrote that winter temperatures have been plummeting since 2000.
There is no denying the winter of 2013-2014 was one of the coldest on record in the country. Former NASA scientist and noted climatologist
Dr. Roy Spencer has noted that the primary winter months of December through February averaged temperatures that set this past winter apart in the contiguous 48 states as the second-coldest winter in the past 35 years.
Aside from a
polar vortex that dropped the mercury into the below-zero regions, the average temperatures for the winter months were around 32.2 degrees, Spencer said, making this past winter the second coldest in the past 35 years. The winter of 2009-2010 was actually slightly colder, said Spencer, with temperatures averaging about 32 degrees.
His analysis was based on National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stations that measure temperatures every six hours or so, and starts in 1973, the first year with a large amount of temperature data archived by the
National Climatic Data Center.
But six of the past eight winters have been below the 41-year average, said Spencer, concurring that winters have gotten colder in recent years.
But even if this year has indeed already been one of the coldest on record, those numbers are likely about to be shattered.
The past few weeks have made the January polar vortex a distant memory for people in the Southeast and Plains states, which are sweltering under an unusual May heatwave, reports
NBC News.
Cities from Lincoln, Neb. to Charleston, S.C., are breaking records with temperatures climbing to the mid-90s, temperatures that normally come later in the summer months. In Wichita, Kan., the mercury climbed to 102 degrees just weeks after the last snowfall of the winter fell.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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