Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. From Roger Pielke, Jr.’s 2010 book The Climate Fix, Chapter 7 (Disasters, Death, and Destruction), p 174:
Consider that presidents declare 50 percent more flood disasters in years in which they are running for reelection than in other years. There is obviously a signal there. It’s just not a climate signal.
Indicative of the difficulties in analyzing proxies of climate data – sometimes politics intrudes. I wonder if Obama did the same thing…
