Farmers' Almanac Proves Itself More Accurate Than Climate Scientists - Investors.com

Farmers' Almanac Proves Itself More Accurate Than Climate Scientists - Investors.com

Farmers' Almanac More Reliable Than Warming Climate Models

Posted 02/21/2014 06:14 PM ET

Bad Science: It turns out that a 200-year-old publication for farmers beats climate-change scientists in predicting this year's harsh winter as the lowly caterpillar beats supercomputers that can't even predict the past.
Last fall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) predicted above-normal temperatures from November through January across much of the continental U.S. The Farmers' Almanac, first published in 1818, predicted a bitterly cold, snowy winter.
The Maine-based Farmers' Almanac's still-secret methodology includes variables such as planetary positions, sunspots, lunar cycles and tidal action. It claims an 80% accuracy rate, surely better than those who obsess over fossil fuels and CO2.
The winter has stayed cold in 2014, and snowfall and snow cover are way above average. USA Today reported on Feb. 14 that there was snow on the ground in part of every state except Florida. That includes Hawaii.
"Sometimes trying to figure out why something happened is as hard as making the forecast of what will happen," CPC Acting Director Mike Halpert said in a Feb. 14 interview. Such uncertainty is what we are supposed to be basing our industrial and economic policy on.
As Bloomberg notes, the CPC underestimated the "mammoth December cold wave, which brought snow to Dallas and chilled partiers in Times Square on New Year's Eve." The Almanac didn't, though Caleb Weatherbee, its prognosticator, apologized for being a few days off on two of the season's biggest storms.
The CPC seems to have completely missed the "polar vortex" that swept down and caused every state except Florida to experience snowfall and brought about 4,406 record low temperatures across the U.S. in January, along with 1,073 record snowfalls.
As John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has noted, global temperatures collected in five official databases confirm that there's been no statistically significant global warming for the past 17 years — contradicting the predictions made by 73 computer models cited in the United Nations' latest (wrong) global warming report.
In recent years we've seen predictions of snowless winters, an ice-free Arctic, and island nations disappearing under the rising seas. We've also seen climate expeditions stick in ice that wasn't supposed to be there and polar bear populations rising.
Maybe Al Gore should check the Farmers' Almanac.