Climate control – lather, rinse, repeat

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

We always talk about and are lectured to about how “weather is not climate”. Of course that’s a flexible meme, because now when the weather turns hot or bad, climate is to blame.

I had to go to Walmart today to pick up something, and as I walked down the aisles looking for things, this jumped out at me. Unfortunately, it was so ridiculous, it made me laugh out loud, and I got stares. So, I’m sharing this humor with you.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before some enterprising company did this.

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Posted in Humor, Ridiculae | Tagged | 34 Comments

Are regional models ready for prime time?

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

Climatedialog

Guest post by Marcel Crok

A few months ago we  made the launch of the international discussion platform . This week we start the third dialogue about the (added) value of regional climate models. We have three excellent participants joining this discussion: Bart van den Hurk of KNMI in The Netherlands who is actively involved in the KNMI scenario’s, Jason Evans from the University of Newcastle, Australia, who is coordinator of Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) and Roger Pielke Sr. who through his research articles and his weblog  is well known for his outspoken views on climate modelling. Below you find the introductory article on which the three experts had to base their guest blog. After reading that head over to the dialogue.

Introductory article: Are climate models ready to make regional projections?

Climate models are vital tools for helping us understand long-term changes in the global climate system. These models allow us to make physically plausible projections of how the climate might evolve in the future under given greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
Global climate projections for 2050 and 2100 have, amongst other purposes, been used to inform potential mitigation policies, i.e. to get a sense of the challenge we are facing in terms of CO2 emission reductions. The next logical step is to use models for adaptation as well. Stakeholders have an almost insatiable demand for future regional climate projections. These demands are driven by practical considerations related to freshwater resources, especially ecosystems and water related infrastructure, which are vulnerable to climate change.

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Posted in Climate News | Tagged , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Mike Mann’s global warming = tobacco claims on Al Jazeera

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

You just have to laugh. Mike, Dana, and some other guy named Rick Piltz, get face-time on Al Jazeera and the best they can do is cite “false balance” and “tobacco disinformation campaigns” to bolster their weak 97% argument? Of course, no skeptics were present, since even a 3% appearance time would be a “false balance” by their reckoning. Mann of course is famous for not debating skeptics, and running away when faced with the prospect of sharing TV time with a skeptic.

Mike and Dana, don’t you find it a bit hypocritical that you use an instrument of “big oil” (Al Jazeera is founded and funded by the government of Qatar, which owns the state controlled Qatar Petroleum with earnings of $51.6 billion in 2011) to push your ideas?

Video follows.

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Posted in 97% consensus | Tagged , , , , , , , | 45 Comments

Claim: How the IPCC arrived at climate sensitivity of about 3 deg C instead of 1.2 deg C.

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

Guest essay by Girma Orssengo, PhD

1) IPCC’s 0.2 deg C/decade warming rate gives a change in temperature of dT = 0.6 deg C in 30 years

IPCC:

“Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections.”

Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html

2) The HadCRUT4 global mean surface temperature dataset shows a warming of 0.6 deg C from 1974 to 2004 as shown in the following graph.

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Posted in Climate sensitivity, IPCC | Tagged , , , , , , , | 88 Comments

Friday Funny – great moments in 97% beliefs

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

C02_TCP_social_media_image_97[1]Heh, this is from a commenter at Slashdot on Cook’s fatally flawed 97% consensus paper. While a bit harsh, it’s also funny. He responds to:

Yeah! It’s like saying that 97% of priests believe in god anyway.

by Razgorov Prikazka (1699498) on Friday May 17, 2013 @11:52AM (#43753313) says:

I agree, and it goes further than just priests! Here are some interesting factoids for you:

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Posted in 97% consensus, Humor, Satire | Tagged , | 190 Comments

Another blow to the ‘extreme weather is climate’ alarmism meme – Australian cyclone activity down

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

We’ve mentioned many times the lack of major landfalling hurricanes on the USA being in a record drought. When the Atlantic hurricane season starts on June 1st, 13 days from now, it will have been (barring a miracle storm) 2,777 days since the last time an intense (that is a Category 3, 4 or 5) hurricane made landfall along the US coast (Wilma in 2005). Such a prolonged period without an intense hurricane landfall has not been observed since 1900.

hurrdrou0613[1]

Source: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.

We’ve also routinely talked about Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) being down. You can see the downtrends on the WUWT Extreme Weather Page.

Now Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has posted an updated graph (if you can call through 2011 “updated”) that shows a significant downtrend in all tropical storms, with no discernible trend for severe tropical cyclones. They write:

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Posted in extreme weather, hurricanes, Weather | Tagged , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

Tropical lizards safe from climate change forced extinction

Posted on May 17, 2013 by
Yellow-spotted tropical night lizard near La S...

Yellow-spotted tropical night lizard near La Selva Biological Station (OTS), Costa Rica. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some good news from Dartmouth College

Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards

Dartmouth study contradicts predictions of widespread extinction

A new Dartmouth College study finds human-caused climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards, contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.

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Posted in Climate News, Extinction | Tagged , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

The 97% consensus – a lie of epic proportions

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

To John Cook – it isn’t ‘hate’, it’s pity, – pity for having such a weak argument you are forced to fabricate conclusions of epic proportions

Proving that crap can flow uphill, yesterday, John Cook got what one could consider the ultimate endorsement. A tweet from the Twitter account of the Twitterer in Chief, Barack Obama, about Cook’s 97% consensus lie.

I had to laugh about the breathless headlines over that tweet, such as this one from the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet:

Wapo_strauss_cook_followers

Umm, no, as of this writing. WaPo reporter FAIL. Continue reading →

Posted in 97% consensus, Opinion, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 188 Comments

An analysis of night time cooling based on NCDC station record data

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

Guest post by Mike Crow

clip_image002

Figure 1 Night time temperature profile of a clear sky night in NE Ohio. 8:28pm Sunset/6:16am Sunrise

Climate science is all about surface temperature trends. The problem with this is that the CAGW is a rate of cooling problem, not a static temperature problem. Is Co2 changing the rate of cooling, thereby altering the expected surface temperature, are the hypothesized positive feedbacks actually there, are there any actual measurements of these parameters. I think there is. Every night the Sun sets on every location on Earth, and the surface starts to cool by radiating heat into the cold black of space. What can weather station data tell us about this?

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Posted in Climate data | Tagged , , , | 95 Comments

The Kepler spacecraft has a failure

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

Two of four reaction wheels seized up, critical for precise photometry

Excerpt from the Kepler Mission Manager Update. (h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard)

At our semi-weekly contact on Tuesday, May 14, 2013, we found the Kepler spacecraft once again in safe mode. As was the case earlier this month, this was a Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode. The root cause is not yet known, however the proximate cause appears to be an attitude error….

…We attempted to return to reaction wheel control as the spacecraft rotated into communication…but reaction wheel 4 remained at full torque while the spin rate dropped to zero. This is a clear indication that there has been an internal failure within the reaction wheel, likely a structural failure of the wheel bearing. The spacecraft was then transitioned back to Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode.

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Posted in Space, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 53 Comments

Washington Post Headline: “Worlds fish have been moving to cooler waters for decades, study finds”

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

This is an addition to the post Fishy Temperature Proxy by Anthony Watts.

INTRODUCTION

A new paper about fish migration patterns from 1970 to 2006 is getting some attention by the press. My Figure 1 is Figure 2 from Cheung et al (2013). Click it to enlarge it.

Figure 1 Cheung et al Figure 2

Figure 1

As usual, global warming enthusiasts in the press overlook some basic issues—like the sea surface temperatures for the Indian and Pacific Oceans from pole to pole haven’t warmed in 19+ years, and the Atlantic data show little warming for more than a decade. Further, the tropical Indian and Pacific sea surface temperatures haven’t warmed since 1986. It’s therefore difficult to make claims like “more evidence of a rapidly warming planet”, but that doesn’t stop proponents of hypothetical human-induced global warming.

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Posted in Alarmism, Sea Surface Temperature | Tagged , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

Climate models getting worse than we thought

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

New paper finds climate models are getting worse rather than better

IPCC AR5 draft figure 1-4 with animated central Global Warming predictions from FAR (1990), SAR (1996), TAR (2001), and AR5 (2007).

IPCC AR5 draft figure 1-4 with animated central Global Warming predictions from FAR (1990), SAR (1996), TAR (2001), and AR5 (2007). Graphic by Dr. Ira Glickstein

Via the Hockey Schtick: A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds that the latest climate models are performing even worse than the earlier generations of climate models in predicting

“…both the mean surface air temperature as well as the frequency of extreme monthly mean temperature events due to climate warming.”

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Posted in Modeling | Tagged , , , , , , , | 78 Comments

Fishy temperature proxy

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

UPDATE2: To see what is fishy about this story, see Bob Tisdale’s update here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/16/washington-post-headline-worlds-fish-have-been-moving-to-cooler-waters-for-decades-study-finds/

From the University of British Columbia

Marine species are gradually moving away from the equator into cooler waters, and as a result, species from warmer waters are replacing those traditionally caught in many fisheries worldwide. Scientific studies show that this change is related to increasing ocean temperatures. Credit: The Pew Charitable Trusts.

‘Fish thermometer’ reveals long-standing, global impact of climate change

Climate change has been impacting global fisheries for the past four decades by driving species towards cooler, deeper waters, according to University of British Columbia scientists.

In a Nature study published this week, UBC researchers used temperature preferences of fish and other marine species as a sort of “thermometer” to assess effects of climate change on the world’s oceans between 1970 and 2006.

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Posted in Oceans | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 71 Comments

Australia’s ABC comes round to the sinking islands/floating islands issue

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

UPDATED: Note that this tip was spurred by this discussion at Andrew Bolt’s today, and I failed to note the date of the ABC story was in 2010, and I apologize for any confusion, but there’s also relevant news today. Bolt writes: Look at this other drowning island, the Global Mail writer insisted. So I did…

Bolts adds:

A new paper published in the AGU’s house journal Eos Transactions shows why caution is often justified. Here … is the 1993-2011 sea level trend data from Tarawa atoll, part of Kiribati in the central Pacific:

image


Whoa! No sea-level rise there, then. And yet of course climate campaigners – and even the Kiribati government – understandably anxious to highlight the future existential threat to the islands, have used storm surges, flooding events and suchlike as evidence of current sea-level rise impacts. Which they are almost certainly not, at least not in Tarawa atoll anyway…

First this story from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (h/t to Paul Ostergaard)

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Posted in Sea level | Tagged , , , | 52 Comments

New research projects mitigation of sea level rise

Posted on May 16, 2013 by
English: Map showing the territorial claim to ...

Map showing the territorial claim Dronning Maud Land (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recent snowfall anomalies in Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica
Enhanced snowfall on the East Antarctic ice sheet is projected to significantly mitigate 21st century global sea level rise. In recent years (2009 and 2011), regionally extreme snowfall anomalies in Dronning Maud Land, in the Atlantic sector of East Antarctica, have been observed. It has been unclear, however, whether these anomalies can be ascribed to natural decadal variability, or whether they could signal the beginning of a long-term increase of snowfall.

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Posted in Antarctic, Sea level | Tagged , , , | 27 Comments

Like the IRS, the EPA plays favorites

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

From the WSJ (h/t to Chris Horner)

The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that the EPA under Ms. Jackson has a history of favoring groups that share the agency’s political agenda. “Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived,” according to the report.

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Posted in EPA | Tagged , , , , | 46 Comments

Groundwater unaffected by shale gas production in Arkansas

Posted on May 15, 2013 by

From Duke University , something sure to irritate people like Josh Fox, Joe Romm,  and Bill McKibben who are certain that fracking is terrible.

DURHAM, N.C. — A new study by scientists at Duke University and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) finds no evidence of groundwater contamination from shale gas production in Arkansas.

“Our results show no discernible impairment of groundwater quality in areas associated with natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing in this region,” said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

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Posted in Fracking | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 58 Comments

Arctic methane emergency called off?

Posted on May 15, 2013 by

Here’s the issue, as described in Wikipedia:

The Arctic region is one of the many natural sources of the greenhouse gas methane. Global warming accelerates its release, due to both release of methane from existing stores, and from methanogenesis in rotting biomass. Large quantities of methane are stored in the Arctic in natural gas deposits, permafrost, and as submarine clathrates. Permafrost and clathrates degrade on warming, thus large releases of methane from these sources may arise as a result of global warming. Other sources of methane include submarine taliks, river transport, ice complex retreat, submarine permafrost and decaying gas hydrate deposits.

There’s an outfit called the Arctic Methane Emergency Group which dedicates themselves to, well, emergency alarm stuff. Things like this:

Planetary catastrophe is inevitable without geoengineering to cool the Arctic

Hold on there folks, some new research on actual Arctic soils over the last 20 years has provided some fresh insight. It seems there is no need to panic after all.

From Science News

News in Brief: Warming may not release Arctic carbon – Element could stay locked in soil, 20-year study suggests

In a 20-year experiment that warmed patches of chilly ground, tundra soil kept its stored carbon, researchers report.

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Posted in Arctic, Methane | Tagged , , , , , , | 64 Comments

Skeptical Science kidz channel Inigo Montoya in new ‘consensus’ paper

Posted on May 15, 2013 by

All you can do is laugh.

Brandon Shollenberger writes at Lucia’s about the new Fuzzy Math consensus “proof” paper from the ever entertaining John Cook at Skeptical Science, rated with the help of 27 of the SkS kidz club. The method is simple:

“Each abstract was categorized by two independent, anonymized raters.”

With a simple premise like that, what could go wrong? Well for starters, they don’t seem to understand what the word “independent” means. Shollenberger continues:

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Posted in Ridiculae | Tagged , , , , | 104 Comments

Study: warming of Antarctic peninsula due to ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns

Posted on May 15, 2013 by

Map of Antarctic temperature anomaly From O’Donnell et al’s rebuttal to Steig 2009 – click for a  larger image

From the University of Washington, something we covered earlier in WUWT from the BAS, but UW is now just getting around to press releases. The Antarctic peninsula is essentially a different Koppen climate class than the main continent, and is at the whim of changes in ocean currents and the Southern Annual Mode,  plus Sea Surface Temperatures. At right is the image from O’Donnell et al’s rebuttal to Steig 2009. Between this paper, and the O’Donnell falsification of the Steig Nature paper which claimed continental level warming in the Antarctic, but was actually an artifact of Mannian math, issues of global warming in Antarctica have pretty much cooled.  – Anthony

Tropical air circulation drives fall warming on Antarctic Peninsula

The eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, a finger of the southern polar continent that juts toward South America, has experienced summer warming of perhaps a half-degree per decade – a greater rate than possibly anywhere else on Earth – in the last 50 years, and that warming is largely attributed to human causes.

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Posted in Antarctic, Southern Annular Mode | Tagged , , , , | 29 Comments