By Paul Homewood

Andy “Don’t Believe The Data” Dessler claims that the EPA heatwave index is cherry picked, because it is based on 90th percentiles:

One of the things you learn as a scientist is the ability to look at a plot and think, "that just doesn't look right." That's the feeling I got when I saw this plot that Lomborg is currently pushing. pic.twitter.com/L6Lz8jEuFw

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) August 21, 2021

He prefers 95% percentiles, which he claims are not cherry picking!

Only one slight problem, Andy!

The EPA have also looked at 95%, and come to the same conclusions as before; there has been a marked decline in heatwaves for most of the US:

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-high-and-low-temperatures

Note that the trend is measured from 1948, so the extreme heat of the 1930s is not even reflected here.

There is one other consideration here. Dessler has also used Berkeley Earth homogenised dataset (BEST). His calculations indicate just how divorced from reality BEST is, with temperatures far above what the actual data suggest.

Finally, let’s look back to the graph for Texas, which I showed in my earlier post:

Note that the average of “hot days” is 20 a year – in other words, 95% percentile to all intents and purposes.

On all counts, Dessler’s own analysis is fake.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

JUNE 22, 2022

No Andy, EPA Are Not Cherry Picking