Originally posted at ClimateREALISM

A May 11, 2023 opinion piece in Yale Climate Connections (YCC) titled, “Climate change and droughts: What’s the connection?” link climate change and droughts in the United States. The opinion is provably false. There is no evidence climate change is making droughts in the United States worse.

The YCC article opens saying, “For tens of millions of Americans, drought has become an ever-present natural disaster.”

To bolster this claim, the article cites this August 10, 2021 graphic from the U.S. Drought Monitor:

The YCC goes off the rails by citing a U.S. drought map from nearly two years ago, while making arguments about drought in the present. When you access the map that they should have referenced for their May 11^th, article, dated May 9, 2023, an entirely different picture emerges, as seen in figure 2 below:

Unsurprisingly, YCC seems to have chosen the August 10, 2021, map for their article because the plethora of deep reds fits the narrative that climate change is causing drought, whereas the most recent map shown in figure 2, undermines this claim since virtually all the drought in the Western United States has dissipated. This is a very inconvenient truth for the story the YCC opinion piece is trying to tell.

Later in the article, the author asks and answers this question:

Is global warming causing more droughts?

Scientists see a clear correlation between droughts and global warming. But a correlation between two events does not always mean one caused the other.

…

It can be tricky to attribute an increase in droughts to global warming because droughts are variable. In other words, they can occur every year or every few years, last for years or decades, and cause varying levels of dryness. That makes it difficult to distinguish random events from those possibly shaped by human-caused warming.

So, which is it YCC? Is there a clear correlation, or is it tricky to make a correlation? The answer lies in real-world data, not in the opinions of pundits and doomsayers.

In this graph of data, seen in Figure 3, provided by the National Centers for Environmental Information, (NCEI) it shows the contiguous United States percentage area product of very wet and very dry data, derived from standardized precipitation values, which are based on the U.S. Climate Divisional Dataset.

There is no upward or downward trend in this data. However, examining the data carefully shows that some of the biggest dry spikes are far in the past, such as in October 1952, when 78.42% of the contiguous United States was listed as very dry. This happened well before “human caused climate change” was ever even a subject, during a period when the Earth was in a cooling trend. No drought since has matched the one experienced in 1952, or multiple dry periods that occurred even earlier in the 1930s and early 1900s.

Despite the historical record, YCC makes this claim:

In a 2020 study in the journal Science, for example, researchers observed how human-caused climate change is contributing to the 21st-century megadrought in the Western U.S. and northern Mexico by evaluating trends in modeled temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation data between 1901 and 2018. According to the study’s findings, human-caused warming accounts for 46% of this drought’s severity.

The key difference is this: “…modeled temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation.” Model outputs are not the same as and do not match real-world data. Modeled data should never be used as a substitute for actual data when examining the past where actual data is available.

From Climate at a Glance: Drought, here are a few facts that YCC should have considered before falsely implying that climate change is increasing drought.

At the same time Yale was claiming the second hottest year on record, the U.S. had record low area of drought on May 23, 2017, when only 4.52% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought. On April 9, 2019, that record was beaten when only 4.36% of the contiguous U.S. was classified in drought by the U.S. drought monitor.

The U.N. IPCC reports with “high confidence” that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, while the IPCC reports having “low confidence” about any negative trends globally.

Droughts have always occurred, and they always will. The available evidence shows that recent years display no trend of increasing drought. If droughts aren’t worsening then climate change can’t be causing worse droughts. Instead, global and U.S. drought data show recent droughts have been less frequent and severe than the droughts of the early and mid-twentieth century. The recent drought history of the United States reflects natural variability, not a long-term trend upwards amid modest warming. Indeed, he United States recently underwent its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions.

The author of the YCC editorial ignored these easily discoverable facts, perhaps out of ignorance—which is doubtful since she is trained as a meteorologist—, perhaps out of laziness, or most likely, because it undermined her predisposition to promote an alarmist climate change narrative, in this case by connecting recent droughts to climate change. In any case, it was shoddy journalism. Instead of “seeking truth and reporting it” she, and YCC which published her story, promoted unwarranted fears over demonstrable facts about climate change and drought.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.

By Jo Nova

With South Africa only weeks away from the start of winter, the head of the State owned Eskom warns there will be the worst blackouts on record, which is really something because some people are already going 10 – 12 hours a day without electricity at the moment.

The country is allegedly at Stage 6 blackouts with “Stage 8” appearing to be a near certainty (if not there already). But apparently they are making plans to invent a “Stage 16” just in case they need it.

“Luckily” South Africa may meet Climate Goals to cut emissions by 2030, though possibly destroy their civilization in the process.

Johannesburg – South Africans should brace themselves for the possibility of being plunged into the worst darkness ever since the start of load shedding, as load shedding up to stage 16, meaning an unspecified 32 hours of power cuts, is anticipated to avert the total collapse of the grid owing to mounting demand.

A document titled “voluntary” NRS048-9 edition 3, which would in unforeseen emergency circumstances allow Eskom to implement drastic load shedding beyond stage 8, is currently being finalised by the National Regulatory Services Association of SA, a voluntary association assisting with regulating load shedding.

“Most municipalities and Eskom-supplied areas have adopted a two-hour load-shedding schedule. On a two-hour load-shedding schedule, you would expect to be off for 32 hours in a 32-hour period (under stage 16),” she said.

Not so reassuringly, the Eskom spokesperson said it would only be implemented “if there were emergencies threatening to collapse the grid, something that might be possible during winter.” She further maintained that the country was only at stage six blackouts and “doesn’t seem to be moving towards that direction of 16.” Thus confirming that they were thinking about it.

Unfortunately an energy expert said that things have been worse than stage six for a long time and Eskom just lie and call it “stage six” regardless.

See-Anne Rall, IOL

As more insurance companies are changing their policies regarding damage to items from load shedding, experts believe the country is teetering on the edge of a total blackout.

On Monday, Eskom announced the implementation of Stage 6 load shedding following the failure of two generating units. Eskom said breakdowns are currently at 18 016MW of generating capacity while the generating capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 3 987MW.

Group chief executive at the Whitford Group and energy expert, Adil Nchabeleng, said the country has technically moved beyond Stage 6 load shedding with some areas having no electricity for well over the hours as per Eskom’s load shedding schedule.

In an interview with “Morning Live“, Nchabeleng said Eskom was lying to the public. Nchabeleng said some areas go for up to 12 hours without electricity. “Half of the country, almost 80% of the country is without electricity at every given time,” he said.

Things are so bad, two years ago the government ordered in 1,220 megawatts of floating Turkish Karpowerships which will burn low sulpfur HFO, or “oil” as normal people would call it. Though apparently the ships will have to anchor off Mozambique, because environmentalists didn’t like it and Eskom “demanded indemnity against any adverse outcomes from corruption allegations have stalled the deal.” Life gets so complicated when corruption and green fantasies run rife.

In a kind of parody, when a small town spent $5m US to build their own 4.3MW solar farm they barely started operation when State owned Eskom took them to court and  “won on a technicality” thus stopping the town from using their own solar-plant to reduce their own blackout times. So the solar plant produces nothing at times while the country is racked with an energy crisis. The script writers in Yes Minister didn’t even see this coming.

In the ensuing case, Eskom argued that RFS had not been granted authorisation to carry out its own blackout programme.

The monopoly explained that Frankfort still needed to draw power from Eskom’s grid.

The town’s solar panels were not enough to cover its needs, and its system did not have batteries in which to store excess power and draw on it at time of need, it said.

Why? The town might set an example for other towns:

If the town were allowed to dispense with Eskom’s blackout schedule, others could follow suit, causing anarchic fluctuations in supply and demand that could cause the national grid collapse, the company contended.

“If the floodgates are thus opened, Eskom’s ability to ensure the safety of the grid… will be severely compromised,” it said in its affidavit.

So solar power is NOT the solution to an energy crisis. Tell the world, eh? Though possibly the real fear is that people might figure out their own solutions? Energy companies, no matter how crooked and badly run, really seem to own The People, and these poor businessmen sound pretty desperate.

“If they are not going to allow us to use the solar… or to use our own electricity, we don’t have any choice, we will have to take the law into our own hands,” warned Pretorius, who grows cereals and relies on electricity to power the irrigation system.

“It’s a matter of survival.”

Control your climate with blackouts?

It’s hard to believe Bloomberg thought this was a good story to run. They really see this as some kind of “success”:

South Africa is ahead of its target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

Best wishes for our South African friends!

Thanks to Stephen Neil and Climate Depot