Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

"Uh-huh," Evans said. Nodding. He hadn't heard about these land use concepts, but it certainly stood to reason.

Raimundo continued, "A high percentage of weather stations that were out in the countryside forty years ago are now surrounded by concrete and skyscrapers and asphalt and so on. Which makes them register warmer."

"I understand," Evans said. He glanced away, through the glass wall. He saw film crews moving around the warehouse, shooting various things. He hoped the crews wouldn't come in. He didn't want to sound stupid in front of them.

"These facts," Raimundo said, "are well known within the field. So researchers take the raw temperature data from stations near cities and reduce them by some amount to compensate for the urban heat island effect."

Evans said, "And how is this reduction calculated?"

"Different ways, depending on who does it. But most algorithms are based on population size. The larger the population, the greater the reduction."

Evans shrugged. "That sounds like the right way to do it."

"Unfortunately," he said, "it probably isn't. Do you know about Vienna? It was studied by Bohm a few years back. Vienna has had no increase in population since 1950, but it has more than doubled its energy use and increased living space substantially. The urban heat island effect has increased, but the calculated reduction is unchanged, because it only looks at population change."* "So the heating from cities is being underestimated?" Evans said.

"It's worse than that," Jennifer said. "It used to be assumed that urban heating was unimportant because the urban heat island effect was only a fraction of total warming. The planet warmed about.3 degrees Celsius in the last thirty years. Cities are typically assumed to have heated by around.1 degree Celsius."

"Yes? So?"

"So those assumptions are wrong. The Chinese report that Shanghai warmed 1 degree Celsius in the last twenty years alone. That's more than the total global warming of the planet in the last hundred years. And Shanghai is not unique. Houston increased.8 degrees Celsius in the last twelve years.! Cities in South Korea are heating rapidly.* Manchester, England, is now 8 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. Even small towns are much hotter than the surrounding areas."

Jennifer reached for her charts. "Anyway," she said, "the point is that the graphs you see are not raw data. They have already been adjusted with fudge factors to compensate for urban heating. But probably not enough."

At that moment, the door opened and one of the four video crews came in, their camera light shining. Without hesitation, Jennifer reached for some charts, and brought them up. She whispered, "B-roll is silent, so we need to be active and provide visuals."

She turned toward the camera and said, "Let me show you some examples of weather station data. Here, for instance, is a record of the average temperature for Pasadena since 1930."!

Pasadena, CA 19302000 "As you see," Jennifer said, "a dramatic rise in temperature. And here is Berkeley since 1930."

Berkeley, CA 19302000 "A surprisingly incomplete record. But we are using raw data, so you can see missing years. And you see a clear warming trend. Indisputable, wouldn't you agree?"

"I would," Evans said, thinking that it wasn't much of a trendless than a degree.

"Now, here is Death Valley, one of the hottest, driest places on Earth. No urbanization has occurred here. Again, missing years."

Death Valley, CA 19332000 Evans said nothing. It must be an anomaly, he thought. Jennifer put up more graphs:

McGill, NV 19302000

Guthrie, OK 19302000 "These are stations from the Nevada desert and the Oklahoma plains," she said. "They show temperatures that are flat, or declining. And not only rural areas. Here is Boulder, Colorado. It's only of interest because NCAR is located therethe National Center for Atmospheric Research, where so much global warming research is done."

Boulder, CO 19301997 "Here are some more small cities. Truman, Missouri, where the buck stops amp;"

Truman, MO 19312000

Greenville, SC 19302000

Ann Arbor, MI 19302000 Evans said, "Well, you have to admit, it's not very dramatic."

"I'm not sure what you consider dramatic. Truman has gotten colder by 2.5 degrees, Greenville by 1.5 degrees, Ann Arbor by one degree since1930. If the globe is warming, these places have been left out."

"Let's look at some bigger places," Evans said, "like Charleston."

"I happen to have Charleston." She thumbed through her graphs.

Charleston, SC 19302000 Evans said, "So, a bigger city gets warmer. What about New York?" "I have several records from New York, city and state."

New York, NY 19302000

Syracuse, NY 19302000

Albany, NY 19302000

Oswego, NY 19302000 "As you see," Jennifer said, "New York City is warmer, but many other parts of the state, from Oswego to Albany, have become colder since 1930."

Evans was acutely aware of the cameras on him. He nodded in what he hoped was a judicious, thoughtful manner and said, "And where does this data come from?"

"From the Historical Climatology Network data set," she said. "It's a government dataset, maintained at Oak Ridge National Laboratories."

"Well," Evans said. "It's quite interesting. However, I'd like to see the data from Europe and Asia. This is, after all, a global phenomenon."

"Certainly," Jennifer said. She, too, was playing to the cameras. "But before we do that, I'd like your reaction to the data so far. As you can see, many places in the United States do not seem to have become warmer since 1930."

"I'm sure you cherry-picked your data," Evans said.

"To some degree. As we can be sure the defense will do."

"But the results do not surprise me," Evans said. "Weather varies locally. It always has and always will." A thought occurred to him. "By the way, why are all these graphs since 1930? Temperature records go much further back than that."

"Your point is well taken," Jennifer said, nodding. "It definitely makes a difference how far back you go. For example amp;"

West Point, NY 19312000 "Here is West Point, New York, from 1931 to 2000. Trending down. And amp;"

West Point, NY 19002000 "Here is West Point from 1900 to 2000. This time the trend is up, not down."

"Ah-ha," Evans said. "So you were massaging the data. You picked the interval of years that made you look good!"

"Absolutely," Jennifer said, nodding. "But the trick only works because temperatures in many parts of the US were warmer in the 1930s than they are today."

"It's still a trick."

"Yes, it is. The defense will not miss the opportunity to show the jury numerous examples of this trick from environmental fund-raising literature. Selecting specific years that appear to show things are getting worse."

Evans registered her insult to environmental groups. "In that case," he said, "let's not permit any tricks at all. Use the full and complete temperature record. How far back does it go?"

"At West Point, back to 1826."

"Okay. Then suppose you use that?" Evans felt confident proposing this, because it was well known that a worldwide warming trend had begun at about 1850. Every place in the world had gotten warmer since then, and the graph from West Point would reflect that.

Jennifer seemed to know it too, because she suddenly appeared very hesitant, turning away, thumbing through her stack of graphs, frowning as if she couldn't find it.

"You don't have that particular graph, do you?" Evans said.

"No, no. Believe me, I have it. Yes. Here." And then she pulled it out.

West Point, NY 18262000 Evans took one look and saw that she had sandbagged him.

"As you predicted, this graph is quite telling," she said. "For the last one hundred seventy-four years, there has been no change in the average temperature at West Point. It was 51 degrees Fahrenheit in 1826, and it is 51 degrees in 2000."