Over at Slate.com, Joshua Zaffos has an article about how “Red states are getting a new shade of redder: The people who deny climate change are most likely to suffer from it.”

Of course, the piece is partisan and smears Republican climate skeptics.  Take this quote about Republican senator-elect Joni Ernst:

Ernst also ducked on climate change this fall, saying during a debate, 'I don't know the science behind climate change,' a variation on the popular 'I'm not a scientist' mantra being repeated by evidence-dodging Republicans. Her hometown of Red Oak sits within Iowa's 3rd Congressional District. Based on Allred's analysis, it's the country's 22nd-largest district by agricultural area and is projected to experience a roughly 9-degree temperature spike by 2100. That's the largest modeled increase of any congressional district in the country, and an approaching disaster for Iowa's farmers.

Senator-elect Ernst's hometown of Red Oak also sits smack-dab in the middle of Montgomery County, which likewise sits smack-dab in the middle of Iowa's 7^th climate division (the “Southwest”).

So this region is “projected to experience a roughly 9-degree temperature spike by 2100”?  Well, since records began in 1899 for Red Oak, IA in the NOAA-NWS database, there has been no sign whatsoever of a significant trend in annual temperatures.  And here is the NOAA-NCDC temperature record for the entire 7^th climate division over the past century.

No significant trend at all during the last 100 years.  Almost a perfect non-correlation over the last three decades as well.  Yet modeling predicts a temperature increase of 9 degrees over the next 85 years?

Perhaps some conservative politicians are aware of climate uncertainty and cycling in their neck of the woods, and how predictions are hard – especially about the future?