While climate scientists continue to debate the causes and possible consequences of climate change in general, what Americans really want to know is if climate change will impact their daily lives.
For this reason, The Heartland Institute has started a project that analyzes the impact of climate change at the state level. Mind you, climate models, contrary to their promoters’ claims, fail to model global climate fundamentals accurately. They don’t even get measured temperatures and trend lines right. They do even worse in tracking and forecasting changes at a regional scale than they do in their global assessments. Thus, climate models are virtually worthless in assessing what types of climate-related challenges individual states currently and may soon face. For that, one needs to turn to the data, which is the foundation for all good science.
Looking at Wisconsin, one finds that climate change not only poses no existential threat to the well-being of Wisconsinites. It has actually benefitted them in various ways.
Like much of the United States, Wisconsin’s average temperature has increased modestly since the late 1800s. In the Badger State, the increase has been 2℉. However, some of the rise in average temperature is due to factors unconnected to long-term climate change.
Many surface station sites, primarily those in or near urban and suburban areas that have experienced growth over the past century, are reporting biased temperature readings. They are reporting higher average temperatures and a faster rate of change than temperature readings from nearby rural stations that have not been impacted by the development of artificial heat sources.
More pavement, buildings, concrete, and heat generating and shedding machinery have compromised the accuracy of temperature measurements. Evidence of the urban heat island effect on Wisconsin’s reported temperature rise is confirmed not just by a comparison of rural and urban stations, but also because of when the reported rise is being recorded -- at night.
The artificial surfaces accompanying development absorb heat during the day only to release it slowly overnight, as evidenced by infrared cameras. So, Wisconsin’s temperature increase is largely a by-product of a slight increase in nighttime low temperatures.
The good news is the modest warming has not been accompanied by an increase in extremely hot days, which, in fact, have declined in recent decades according to the Wisconsin State Climate Summary assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Rather, the increase in state temperatures, not accounted for by urban heat bias, is due to a decline in extremely cold temperatures during the winter. That’s right, Wisconsin’s historically bitterly cold, life-claiming winters have become moderately less severe with a slight rise in nighttime winter low temperatures. This is a welcome development because research consistently shows cold temperatures take far more lives than hot temperatures. Over the decades, deaths caused by very cold temperatures have declined in Wisconsin. Who could complain about that?
Temperatures and the timing of temperature changes have effects beyond the thermometers. The moderate warming in Wisconsin has been accompanied by a slight increase in summer and winter precipitation. The number and frequency of droughts have declined over the past century as precipitation frequency and amounts have increased.
This rise in precipitation has also not been associated either with an increase in the frequency or severity of flooding in the state or increased tornado strikes.
Additionally, the lengthened spring growing season with fewer late-season crop killing frosts coupled with higher carbon dioxide concentrations have been a boon for Wisconsin’s important agriculture industry. Wisconsin’s cheese production has increased by 87 percent since 1990. Corn and soybean production increased by 45 and 477 percent, respectively, over the same period. Cranberry production, which has been regularly monitored since 2007, has increased by 43 percent.
Of course, botany and agronomy explain the increase in production. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is plant food, helping plants grow faster and larger.
In the end, Wisconsin, like the entire world, is going through a period of climate change. But regardless of the role humans may or may not be playing in the present modest shift, contrary to the impression often given to Wisconsin’s residents by the mainstream media, there is no crisis.
Contrary to the endless predictions of an approaching climate Apocalypse, living conditions in Wisconsin have improved amidst modest warming.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., (hsburnett@heartland.org) is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization.
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