Brendan Fitzgerald’s article “Does anyone trust science anymore?” January 24, melds half-truths, undefined terminology, and under-critical reporting. The initial quote of Michael Mann, “hopefully every scientist…is a skeptic,” was hopeful. The next sentence has Mann revealing his own muddled bias as he elevates consensus to scientific fact, and then re-labels skepticism as denial.

Later in the article, the reporter introduces the idea of an “inflated idea of how many people disbelieve global warming.” Whether promoting manmade global warming or not, there are no informed scientists who “disbelieve global warming.” The globe has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1800s, and since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago. This is a straw man set-up. As far as the general public is concerned, the Pew Research poll of January 11-16, 2012, finds public concern with global warming continuing to drop. It ranked last of 22 topics-of-concern. Consensus is not scientific proof; it takes only one negation to disprove the “truth.”

The quoted 2010 Stanford University survey of 1,300 climate scientists is a half-truth, as presented. The article notes that only 908 respondents of the 1,300 were used. This is a bit better than the 2009 University of Illinois survey of 10,000 scientists, winnowed down to 77, of which 75 agreed with two survey questions. Unmentioned is the reported “skepticism” of the British Royal Society, France’s National Academy of Sciences, India’s National Action plan, and others.

Unmentioned are the behind-the-scenes comments of Mann and others in Climategate 1 and 2, which indicate an organized effort to keep dissenting/skeptical climate papers from ever being published. Mann considered his methodology “proprietary,” thereby preventing others from verifying his work. Statisticians McShane and Wyner reported in Annals of Applied Statistics 2011 that such temperature proxies as tree rings and ice cores are no better than random numbers. Similar rebuttals were made by the 2006 Wegman Commission, and by McIntyre and McKitrick.

Unmentioned is the controversy behind Mann’s “divergence problem,” whereby he abandons tree-ring methodology when it showed cooling beginning in 1981, and then on used warming data from instruments for the “hockey stick.”

“Multiple investigations cleared Mann of wrong doing.” None, to my knowledge, ever investigated his science claims. He was cleared by Penn State only of procedural wrong doings. The attitude of UVA is interesting in terms of academic freedom. It has reported to have spent around $1 million in legal fees to protect Mann’s documents from FOIA requests. Uniformed police officers and plain-clothes detectives are the answer to dissent at UVA…Thomas Jefferson’s “Academical Village.”

Charles Battig, M.D.
VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy
and Environment
Albemarle County

LORD LAWSON had barely removed his microphone when the vitriolic attacks began.

The veteran politician had just taken part in a calm debate about the merits of extracting gas from shale. During the discussion on the BBC’s Today programme he stated his firmly held view that there has been no global warming so far this century.

It was the catalyst for an outpouring of venom on message boards and social networking sites. In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”

Former Chancellor Lord Lawson celebrates his 80th birthday in March and might be forgiven for wondering, at his time of life, if he really needs to endure all this. His supporters insist he is turning the tide in the bitter debate over the impact of global warming but such is the might of the green lobby there must have been occasions when he felt like a lone voice.

Climate change is a complex issue and it could be decades before there is a definitive answer as to its impact on the planet and the extent to which pollution caused by man is harmful. At the moment there’s much that we can’t explain but it is certainly an emotive issue that polarises opinion.

However Lord Lawson, an inherently decent man with a compelling argument, finds himself pilloried. Yesterday there was an apparent campaign by green activists to have him banned from the BBC.

In the past he has spoken about attempts to smear his organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think-tank which challenges many misconceptions about global warming and warns against hasty policy decisions based on exaggerated research.

In this propaganda war in which his opponents seem intent on destroying his reputation there have also been mutterings about the funding of the organisation, although it receives no cash from any oil or energy companies.

Dr Benny Peiser, director of Lord Lawson’s organisation, says: “It does get personal. Some use a bullying strategy rather than engage in proper debate.”

The foundation chooses not to have a Facebook site or Twitter page. “They can encourage personal attacks,” says Peiser, who launched the fight back against global warming alarmists seven years ago.

He claims there’s growing public disillusionment with the narrow agenda being pushed by the green lobby. Polls appear to support that, with one showing more than one in three Britons believe global warming claims are hyped.

Lord Lawson’s organisation is not allied to a political party but he has found himself coming under fire from the Government. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has called some of the Foundation’s work “misinformed, wrong and perverse”.

Lord Lawson says no one is certain about the impact of global warming on the environment. He says: “There is no scientific basis for some of the alarmism.”

He adds: “While it is scientifically established that increased emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the use of carbon-based energy such as coal, oil and gas can be expected to warm the planet, it is uncertain how great any such warming would be and how much harm, if any, it would do.”

Many scientists now believe that climate change is much more likely to be part of a cycle of warming and cooling that has happened regularly every 1,500 years for the last million years, without causing major harm.

Lord Lawson fears that economies are being harmed by an obsession with so-called renewable fuels, which are expensive. They might be trendy and appear to have all the right green credentials but they are costing us all a small fortune in hidden taxes and higher fuel bills to fund their introduction.

It’s claimed that by 2020 every family could be paying an additional 300 pounds a year and that energy produced from wind farms is five times more expensive than conventional fuels.

The peer and his growing band of supporters insist that it’s premature to turn our backs on fossil fuels, including shale gas which can be extracted cheaply in large amounts by a process known as fracking.

Yesterday Lord Lawson described this fuel as “exciting”, adding: “There is now the prospect of cheap gas in abundance all over the world.”

Lord Lawson, who was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor from 1983 to 1989 and an MP for 28 years, is not the only one to have suffered for his views on climate change. Anyone who dares to challenge the often zealous green lobby is apparently fair game.

Entertainer and mathematician Johnny Ball has been vilified for opposing the commonly held view about global warming.

He says: “For daring to take this contrarian view I’ve lost bookings, had talks cancelled and been the subject of a sinister internet campaign that only came to an end following the intervention of the police.”

Ball shares many of Lord Lawson’s views, saying: “Logic tells me that we will eventually be proved right. The argument that we are going to hell in a handcart because of global warming is failing at every turn. The furore over climate change has been totally overstated. Nothing has happened in the past 20 years but the green lobby is incredibly powerful.”

He has been forced to threaten legal action against one campaigner for his “vitriolic” attacks. Ball, who opposes the creation of huge wind farms, says: “Nigel Lawson deserves immense respect because the supporters of this doom and gloom theory have behaved outrageously.”

Environmental campaigner David Bellamy also claims he has been victimised for taking an alternative position. He has said: “The sad fact is that since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming I’ve not been allowed to make a TV programme. The idiot fringe has accused me of being like a Holocaust denier.”

There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy..

Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade - indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections - suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted - or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before - for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

2009 ClimateGate email: Warmist MacCracken suggests that Phil Jones start working on a “backup” in case Jones’ prediction of warming is wrong

ClimateGate FOIA grepper! - if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong

In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability--that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us--the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.

We all, and you all in particular, need to be prepared.

Best, Mike MacCracken [Note that Obama’s chief science advisor, John Holdren, is copied on this email]

According to research jumped on in Reuters based on no domain knowledge by clueless bureaucrats on the dole (sound familiar?):

- A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases,a report said Monday.

The study, by Britain’s Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun’s output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius.

Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth’s climate warms.

The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Current global pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common.

“This research shows that the most likely change in the sun’s output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases,” said Gareth Jones, climate change detection scientist at the Met Office.

Astrophysicist Meteorologist and Climate Forecaster Piers Corbyn responds:

This UK Met Office and BBC promoted statement (Reuters) is extremely delusional and dishonest and a cover-up of reality.

(Full article)

Their ‘expectation’ that the world will warm by 2C this century ‘due to increased greenhouse gas emissions’ is proven drivel based on their own failed self-serving fraudulent models.

They deliberately choose to know almost nothing about solar influences on earth’s weather and climate and create ‘information’ designed to deceive.

It is the largely predictable vast changes in solar charged particle flux and sun-earth magnetic connectivity which control weather and climate.

That is why we at WeatherAction.com long range forecasters:

1. Confidently predict that the world will continue general cooling to 2035 - see presentation in submission to UK parliament enquiry into Dec 2010 supercold which we predicted

and

2. Systematically predict and will continue to predict extreme weather events and situations many months ahead around the world

The CO2 driver theory of weather and climate is delusional nonsense propagated by a self-serving failed sect.  Their ‘theory’ fails to explain past weather and climate; all its predictions over the last ten years have failed and it cannot and never will predict anything.

The dangerous delusional CO2 sect must be destroyed before it’s diktats destroy the world economy and thousands more lives are lost from the chosen refusal of governments across the world to allow the application of scientific advanced forecasting of extreme weather which can help reduce disruption and destruction and save money and lives.

Thanks,
Piers Corbyn, MSc ARCS FRAS FRMetS,
WeatherAction.com long range weather and climate forecasters

See also some very different concluding solar research by David Archibald here.

Hello Everyone,

Oregonians will finally get a chance to hear what three Oregon scientists would have told them in November, if it had not been for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.  At the very last minute, they pulled the plug on the scientific meeting of the American Meteorological Society, scheduled to occur at OMSI.

Here is the new schedule and official announcement from the AMS:

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
(Cancelled November Global Warming Meeting Rescheduled)

WHAT: The much talked about Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting on anthropogenic (human caused) global warming has been rescheduled! Come take a look at the science, both the logic and the evidence. Is human caused global warming the greatest scientific myth of our generation?

WHEN: Wednesday, January 25th 2012 from 7-9 PM. Please plan to arrive early. A large turnout is expected. There will be a no-host social hour in the Shilo restaurant from 5-7pm. Come eat dinner and/or have a beverage. Catch up with friends and colleagues!

WHERE: Portland Airport Shilo Inn Convention Center Ballroom 11707 NE Airport Way, Portland, OR 97220. Hotel directions: http://tinyurl.com/7jmpz3m

COST: FREE and open to the general public. Media is also welcome. Please re-forward this communication to all those who may have originally received it in November.

GUEST SPEAKERS: Former Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor, Meteorologist Chuck Wiese and Physicist Gordon Fulks, PhD.

AGENDA: Come hear Mr. Taylor, Mr. Wiese and Dr. Fulks explore what they consider to be the many problems with the theory of catastrophic human-caused climate change. They will also present their own forecasts for the next decade, century, millennium and beyond. There will also be a public Q & A session at the conclusion of the meeting.

Here is a little history:

In November, what do you suppose panicked OMSI into an irrational decision that was even condemned by The Oregonian newspaper?  Apparently, Professor Phil Mote of Oregon State University and other leaders of the Global Warming cartel in Oregon were concerned that we would threaten their claims that our planet is headed for catastrophe unless we continue to fund their climate hysteria.  With OMSI also heavily involved in the hysteria and related crony capitalism, they saw no option but to silence the opposition.  The utter stupidity of this was, as The Oregonian pointed out, to call attention to the arguments against climate hysteria.  Despite their call for “Balance,” it was crystal clear to everyone that the climate cartel was worried that we three musketeers would convince other scientists and the general public that man-made global warming was a “hoax.” It was a risk they could not take.  (The Oregon AMS changed “hoax” to “myth” in their meeting title above to please OMSI and their own board members who support the hysteria.)

What was so dangerous about the truth that would cause OMSI and Mote to blunder in the way they did?  A few years ago, they were riding very high with everything going their way.  With only token opposition from then Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor and a global temperature that had risen slightly over the 20th century along with carbon dioxide, it was easy to convince the unsophisticated that man-made carbon dioxide was to blame.  All they had to do was get rid of George, and they could live happily ever after.  A debate was arranged at OMSI between Taylor and Mote, and the ensuing controversy forced George out of his position at OSU as State Climatologist.

But rather than quiet the opposition, this brought it more out into the open, with meteorologist Chuck Wiese, astrophysicist Gordon Fulks, and others taking up the battle in Oregon.  Subsequent events, especially ClimateGate I and II, showed widespread bad behavior in the climate cartel that brought into question their abilities and honesty.  The climate itself favored skeptics by refusing to warm as alarmists continued to predict.  Privately, alarmists lamented their inability to explain climate variations over the last 15 years, while publically they embraced ever more ridiculous theories such as Global Warming ‘could mean colder winters.’

To find out the truth as best we know it, please join us at the Airport Shilo Inn on Wednesday January 25 from 7 to 9 pm.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA

P.S. I am grateful to the Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society for making this meeting possible.  They have risen above the bad behavior of their national organization which has a policy supporting climate hysteria.  We hope that their courage will extend beyond this one meeting into a new era of openness where opposing ideas can be discussed without any demands for political correctness.

To accomplish this, they will need to divorce themselves from their still close links to the climate cartel and especially to OMSI.  Although OMSI normally offers them free space for their meetings, this ‘no cost’ comes at a very high price: control of the agenda.  ‘Agenda-driven science’ is the scourge of modern science, with problems extending far beyond climate science.  They should realize that any ‘science’ where the result is predetermined by political authorities is not science at all.  Furthermore, any ‘science’ that cannot be questioned is not science at all.

Does the Oregon AMS Board really understand this?  Time will tell.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a federal agency that does a lot of excellent work related to weather, climate and the oceans. In fact, it is the primary sponsor of CIRES here at the University of Colorado where I serve as a Fellow. However, NOAA has been publishing information related to disasters that is extremely misleading and scientifically inaccurate.

The graph above (enlarged) shows NOAA’s tally of “billion dollar disasters” which NOAA defines as “the 1980-2005 events which resulted in at least $1 billion in overall damages/costs at the time of the event” (emphasis added, source here in PDF).  The bolded part of that sentence is where NOAA’s methodology has a serious flaw, as $1 billion does not mean the same thing today as it did in 1980.  In fact, adjusting just for inflation means that $1 billion today would have been the equivalent of $400 million in 1980. And that is not all, because there has been considerable development across the nation since 1980, meaning that there is more property and wealth to be damaged, $1 billion in damage today is actually equivalent to about $170 million in 1980.

Events which would have caused $1 billion in damage today, but did not when they occurred are not included in the NOAA listing. So by focusing on a $1 billion threshold, as $1 billion comes to represent less and less over time, NOAA has built in a strong bias in their analysis which creates the illusion of trend. If the point of the analysis is to say something about trends in weather, it will always be better to look at weather data, not damage data. 

Think of this analogy: Imagine if you had a shopping cart and added up the number products in your basket costing more than $5. In 1980 you would not have very many, and today you’d have a lot. Would a index of “number of products costing more than $5 in a basket” tell you anything about the overall cost of food?  No.

The New York Times recently published an editorial that serves as a good example of how NOAA’s data is misleading (Nature however is not fooled):

A typical year in the United States features three or four weather disasters costing more than $1 billion. In 2009 there were nine. Last year brought a dozen, at a cost of $52 billion, making it the most extreme year for weather since accurate record keeping began in the 19th century.

To be sure, 2011 saw some very extreme events in the United States. But was it the “most extreme year for weather” since the 19th century? Not by a long shot, whether the metric is dollar damage or loss of life.

The NOAA “billion dollar” data has only 1 event from 1980 costing $1 billion, a major drought.  I have quickly compiled a list of other events that would have certainly resulted in more than $1 billion in damage were they to occur today and a second list of events that lack detailed accounting, but would be worth a further look (note that a rigorous analysis would implement the methodology of economic normalization that we have applied in a range of contexts).

1980 Disasters Greater than $1 Billion in Normalized 2011 Dollars But Not on the NOAA List

Certain additions:

Hurricane Allen - Aug 9, 1980 - $2.0 billion
Grand Island Tornadoes - June 3, 1980 - $1.7 billion
Western Wisconsin Derecho—July 16, 1980 - $3.8 billion
California/Arizona Floods—February 13-21, 1980 -$2.0 billion

Other candidates for inclusion but lacking a rigorous quantitative accounting:

Hawaii storms—January
Hampton Roads “Circus” Blizzard— January
Texas/Alabama/Louisiana Storms—May
Midwest Floods—June
Panorama Fire—December

There are thus 4 events that clearly would have been $1 billion events had they occurred in 2011 and I can find 5 other candidates for which data is lacking, but which could possibly have reached $170 million in damage in 1980 (especially if data collection were as intensive as today).  Regardless, of whether the total is 4 or 9 missed events or somewhere in the middle, NOAA’s data misses at least 80% of the billion dollar disasters in 1980. Not good. No doubt that a reanalysis of the years 1981 to present would turn up many more such events that failed to meet the contemporary billion-dollar threshold but would certainly do so today.

It is extremely misleading to use economic impacts as the basis for making claims about weather and climate. NOAA should take immediate steps to improve the scientific quality of its tabulation of “billion dollar disasters” lest it find itself accused of misleading the public and decision makers with scientifically unsound information.

Driven by plunging temperatures, hundreds of manatees stampeded south on the Intracoastal Waterway over the past two days toward the warm water of power plant discharges in Riviera Beach and Fort Lauderdale.

Cold snaps have emerged as a leading killer of manatees over the past three years, exceeding deaths by boat collisions, according to figures kept by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“Manatees are tropical animals so they start to suffer when the water temperature goes below 68 degrees,” said Kathryn Curtin, a contract biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey based at Port Everglades.

An aerial count Wednesday in Broward County found 63 manatees heading toward Port Everglades, where the Florida Power & Light plant sucks in water for cooling and emits it at a higher temperature. A total of 472 manatees were counted in Broward Wednesday, and that number could climb to 800 or so if the cold weather continues, said Pat Quinn, the county’s manatee coordinator.

In Riviera Beach, where the power plant is offline for modernization, FPL provides heated water anyway for manatees that have learned to expect it. The company turned on the heaters for the first time Tuesday night, said Paul Davis, Palm Beach County’s manatee coordinator. Although hard numbers were not available, he said there were probably hundreds in the county, particularly around the plant.

At Port Everglades, manatees could be seen swimming around a basin popular with mothers with calves. Curtin said calves are particularly vulnerable to cold, making new mothers among the first to show up at the power plant when temperatures drop.

The Fish and Wildlife commission said Wednesday that cold weather killed 112 manatees last year, 282 in 2010 and 56 in 2009, much higher numbers than in previous years. Over the same three-year period, boats killed 258 manatees.

“We are concerned about the number of manatee deaths the past three years, including those resulting from exposure to cold weather,” said Gil McRae, director of the commission’s Research Institute. “Over the next few years, we will use data from monitoring programs to better understand any long-term implications for the population.”

The cold also makes manatees more vulnerable to collisions with boats, because they travel between power plant refuges and sources of food that could be miles away. Although Palm Beach County has extensive stands of sea grass, Broward does not, forcing manatees to travel long distances for meals.

At Port Everglades, Curtin works in a program that tracks manatees by the unique pattern of prop scars on their backs. She said 80-90 percent of manatees have these scars, which allow researchers to track manatees’ movements, calving and other aspects of their life histories.

Power plants became more important to manatees as natural sources of warm water dried up, due to human consumption or development.