Chesapeake Bay Propaganda Tool Designed to Scare

New online tool shows climate change in Chesapeake region, county by county

A new online tool developed by researchers at Cornell University in New York offers a year-by-year, county-by-county snapshot of those changes.

The interactive analysis focuses on the Northeast, so it incorporates much of the Chesapeake Bay’s watershed — Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia — but ignores Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Still, the website’s centerpiece — a clickable map that enables users to find climate data ranging from 1950-2013 in each county — underscores that the vast majority of the watershed is getting hotter and rainier.

Just about all of the watershed’s counties included on the map have experienced warmer annual average temperatures since 1980, according to the data Cornell used to develop its tool.

Some examples:

• In Franklin County in south-central Pennsylvania, the average annual temperature has risen at a rate of 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1950. But that rate jumps to 0.7 degrees when measured since 1980, suggesting things are getter hotter faster.
• In Maryland’s Prince George’s County, the typical low temperature has warmed up a full 1 degree per decade since 1980.
• In New York’s Chemung County, average annual precipitation increased at a rate of 2.3 inches per decade from 1980-2013.
• In Sussex County in Delaware, the typical daily high temperature ranged from 64 degrees in 1958 to 69.5 degrees in 2012. But the overall trend suggests it is increasing at a rate of 0.2 degrees per decade.

What lovely cherry picking! 0.3 degrees per decade! Can you feel a difference of 0.3 degrees? Prince Georges County MD is a growing urban center, and we can expect the Urban Heat Island effect to increase the temperature. 0.23 extra inches of rain per year in Chemung County, where the annual rainfall is 33 inches. 0.2 degrees per decade. 2 degrees per century! Be  afraid! Be Very Afraid!