If CO2 Is To Blame, How Do You Explain the Dirty Thirties?

Remarkably few maximum temperature records set in recent decades despite global warming and the heat-island effect

During the Great Depression, CO2 levels were 25 per cent lower than today’s but severe climate change led to the Dirty Thirties

By Gwyn Morgan

The collapse of global commodity prices was sudden and severe. Workers coming off a decade of unprecedented prosperity suddenly found themselves jobless and unable to provide for their beleaguered families. 

For a time, they maintained hope that the downturn would be temporary, but as the first year stretched into the second, many lost hope. Some who had come from provinces of high unemployment to participate in the Alberta boom began their glum journey back. Laidoff workers saw a glimmer of hope when commodity prices appeared to bottom out. At the very least, it seemed, things wouldn’t get worse.

Then nature unleashed a crushing conflagration. Searing winds swept across drought-stricken farms and forests. A young boy comes running breathlessly into the house shouting to his mom, “There’s a big black cloud in the sky.” They hurry outside to behold a terrifying sight in the western sky that would force the family out of their home and into an uncertain future.

This is not, as it may seem, the story of the global oil price collapse combined with the Fort McMurray wildfire. The commodity price collapse in this story was caused by the economic earthquake of 1929 that launched the Great Depression. And the conflagration was the extremely hot and dry weather that turned the fertile prairie “breadbasket” into a drought-stricken wasteland. That black cloud was caused by hundreds of millions of tonnes of topsoil being blown away by the wind.

Impoverished farmers, hoping for an early end to the drought, were encouraged by a couple of years of improved weather. But it was only a temporary respite. The summers of 1936 and 1937 brought an abrupt reversal that proved even hotter, drier and windier. Tens of thousands of farms were abandoned in what is remembered as the Dirty Thirties, displacing 250,000 people whose only skill set was farming.

Inexplicably, the devastatingly hot conditions reversed in 1940, with the arrival of a cooling period that would last until 1975.

Since the Fort McMurray disaster, some have blamed the very product the people work to produce as the cause of the hot, dry weather that nurtured the wildfires. But analysis of temperature data over the past century shows some startling facts. First, the 1930s were by far the hottest period. Of the 10 highest temperature days ever recorded in Canada, seven occurred in the 1930s. And none of those top 10 temperature records were set during the past decade. Yet the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in the 1930s was some 25 per cent lower than today’s levels.

While theories abound, scientists have not been able to explain why, during a period of such low CO2 levels, such an abrupt shift from a long period of moderate temperatures and ample rainfall to devastatingly hot and dry conditions could occur. Likewise, scientists struggle to explain the equally sudden shift in 1940 that saw a 35-year-long cooling period even as greenhouse gas emissions rapidly increased.

See my theory on 30 year temperature cycles. It may help to explain this.

But whatever the answer to that question, one thing is crystal clear: Tying any single extreme weather event to atmospheric CO2 concentrations simply isn’t historically or scientifically credible.

The Fort McMurray fires took about one million barrels per day out of production. But did that reduce global consumption of fossil fuels? Of course not. Countries including Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola and Ivory Coast quickly filled the void.

Not only do these countries have appalling human rights records but, as we have become painfully aware, some of the proceeds from their sales are funnelled to extremist groups who shatter the lives of people throughout the Middle East and North African region and foment terror across the west.

Those who celebrated the Fort McMurray disaster as divine environmental justice need to know this: Shutting down the Canadian oilsands altogether would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by a minuscule one-10th of a per cent, only to be replaced by oil from countries whose environmental and human rights records are vastly inferior to Canada’s.

My vote goes to the made-in-Canada oil produced by those resilient, hard-working Canadians who have been forced to endure job loses, destructive wildfires and environmental extremist schadenfreude as they proudly anchor a crucial economic cornerstone of our country.

I’ll take the values contained in their made-in-Canada oil over that Middle Eastern and North African stuff any day.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired Canadian business leader who has been a director of five global corporations. He was the founding president and chief executive officer of Encana. 

Not being one to take someone else's claims without first checking their veracity, I list below the Record Maximum daily temperatures for each month for several stations across Canada. These are actual data, not massaged and they are very interesting. All stations have data going back to at least 1928.

These temperatures are in degrees Celcius

Agassiz CDA, B.C.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Extreme Maximum (°C)

17.2

21.7

25

32.2

36

36.7

38.3

39.4

35.6

28.3

21.1

17.2

Date (yyyy/dd)

1974/ 15

1906/ 10

1900/ 31

1900/ 29

1983/ 29

1925/ 25

1958/ 27

1898/ 10

1898/ 08

1923/ 01

1949/ 04

1935/ 01

Notice 8 of the 12 records occur before 1936. None occur after 1983.

Calgary A, Alta

Extreme Maximum (°C)

17.6

22.6

25.4

29.4

32.4

35

36.1

35.6

33.3

29.4

22.8

19.5

Date (yyyy/dd)

2003/ 07

1992/ 27

2004/ 30

1926/ 29

1986/ 30

1926/ 26

1919/ 15

1914/ 03

1967/ 01

1889/ 05

1975/ 04

1999/ 27

Notice: 6 records occur before 1927 incl 4 of 5 between Apr - Aug. Recent records are almost all wintertime.

Regina A, Sask

Extreme Maximum (°C)

10.4

15.6

24.4

32.8

37.2

40.6

43.3

40.6

37.2

32

23.6

15

Date (yyyy/dd)

2002/ 08

1932/ 28

1910/ 23

1952/ 28

1900/ 28

1988/ 05

1937/ 05

1949/ 06

1940/ 03

1992/ 01

1999/ 07

1939/ 08

Notice: 8 of 12 records before 1953, again most recent in winter

Toronto, Ont

Extreme Maximum (°C)

16.1

14.4

26.7

32.2

34.4

36.7

40.6

38.9

37.8

30

23.9

19.9

Date (yyyy/dd)

1967/ 25

1976/ 25

1946/ 28

1842/ 22

1962/ 18

1964/ 30

1936/ 08

1918/ 13

1953/ 02

1963/ 07

1950/ 01

1982/ 03

Notice: only 3 records before 1937, but all 9 remaining between 1946 -1982. This is a clear example of the heat-island effect in big cities

Montreal/St Hubert, Que

Extreme Maximum (°C)

13.9

15.3

23.7

30.6

33.3

35

35.6

35.6

33.8

28.9

22.8

17.1

Date (yyyy/dd) Notice: another heat-island effect here. Even so, only 2 records after 1981.

1995/ 15

1981/ 22

1977/ 30

1976/ 18

1962/ 19

1933/ 28

1955/ 10

1955/ 04

2002/ 09

1949/ 11

1938/ 07

2001/ 06

As a climate specialist, I would have expected many more record maximum temperatures to have occurred between the 1980s and 2010. Instead, only 15 record temperatures out of 60 occurred since 1979 and only 4 of them were in the 21st century - 3 of those 4 occurred in winter.

Any records that might have been set in the past year are solely the responsibility of the record strong El Nino.

The heat-island effect is the obvious rise in temperatures in a city because of the expansion of that city. Concrete, cement, and glass raise temperatures considerably more than grass and trees. The few records in Montreal and Toronto going back to the early nineteen hundreds are a testimony to that effect in Canada's two largest cities. The effect is still occurring and should have resulted in many more records in recent decades, but in fact, there are very few. 

Curious, huh?