More proof of global warming climate change global climate disruption has been seen with this latest snowstorm in Seattle.
Readers may recall this story from 2008 from where the mayor even refused to bring out salting/snowplowing for fear of environmental damage to Puget Sound.
Two feet of snow has never before been seen in Seattle, it dwarfs the SUV in the photo.
Photo by: Jackie Nichols Gladish of FEMA
Josh of cartoonsbyjosh.com writes:
There is a wonderful George Monbiot article here…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/jan/26/weather-forecasters-daily-mail
…on how the Daily Mail hired ‘Positive Weather Solutions’, a bunch of models, to do their weather forecasting for them… very funny.
But it is the kind of Climate Modelling that I think we can all approve of … Continue reading
This is quite something. Sixteen scientists, including such names as Richard Lindzen, William Kininmonth, Wil Happer, and Nir Shaviv, plus engineer Burt Rutan, and Apollo 17 astronaut Dr. Harrison Schmidt, among others, write what amounts to a heretical treatise to the Wall Street Journal, expressing their view that the global warming is oversold, has stalled in the last decade, and that the search for meaningful warming has led to co-opting weather patterns in the blame game. Oh, and a history lesson on Lysenkoism as it relates to today’s warming-science-funding-complex. I can hear Joe Romm’s head exploding all the way out here in California.
Excerpts:
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Over at Judith Curry’s excellent blog there’s a discussion of Trenberth’s missing heat. A new paper about oceanic temperatures says the heat’s not really missing, we just don’t have accurate enough information to tell where it is. The paper’s called Observed changes in top-of-the-atmosphere radiation and upper-ocean heating consistent within uncertainty.
It’s paywalled, and I was interested in one rough number, so I haven’t read it. The number that I wanted was the error estimate for their oceanic heating rates. This error can be seen in Figures 1a and 3a on the abstract page, and it is on the order of about plus or minus one watt/m2. This is consistent with other estimates of upper ocean heat content measurement errors.
I think I can conclusively demonstrate that their claimed error is way too small. To understand why, let me take a detour through the art, science, and business of blackjack.
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
SAME INTRODUCTION AS ALWAYS
The National Oceanographic Data Center’s (NODC) Ocean Heat Content (OHC) anomaly data for the depths of 0-700 meters are available through the KNMI Climate Explorer Monthly observations webpage. The NODC OHC dataset is based on the Levitus et al (2009) paper “Global ocean heat content (1955-2008) in light of recent instrumentation problems”. Refer to Manuscript. It was revised in 2010 as noted in the October 18, 2010 post Update And Changes To NODC Ocean Heat Content Data. As described in the NODC’s explanation of ocean heat content (OHC) data changes, the changes result from “data additions and data quality control,” from a switch in base climatology, and from revised Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT) bias calculations.
The NODC provides its OHC anomaly data on a quarterly basis. At the NODC website it is available globally and for the ocean basins in terms of 10^22 Joules. The KNMI Climate Explorer presents the quarterly data on a monthly basis. That is, the value for a quarter is provided for each of the three months that make up the quarter, which is why the data in the following graphs appear to have quarterly steps. Furnishing the OHC data in a monthly format allows comparisons to monthly datasets. The data is also provided on a Gigajoules per square meter (GJ/m^2) basis through the KNMI Climate Explorer, which allows for direct comparisons of ocean basins, for example, without having to account for surface area.
This update includes the data through the quarter of October to December 2011.
Let’s start the post with a couple of looks at the ARGO-era OHC anomalies.
ARGO-ERA OCEAN HEAT CONTENT MODEL-DATA COMPARISON
I’ve started the post with a graph that gets people riled up for some reason.
Figure 1 compares the ARGO-era Ocean Heat Content observations to an extension of the linear trend of the climate models presented in Hansen et al (2005) for the period of 1993 to 2003. Over that period, the modeled OHC rose at 0.6 watt-years per year. I’ve converted the watt-years to Gigajoules using the conversion factor readily available through Google: 1 watt years = 31,556,926 joules. Even with the recent uptick in Global Ocean Heat Content anomalies, the trend of the GISS projection is still 3.5 times higher than the observed trend.
Figure 1
OMSI - Image via Wikipedia
Readers may recall when I took OMSI to task for being debate deniers. That didn’t work out so well for OMSI what with the negative publicity and the packed room last night. Wish I could have been there. If anyone has this on video, please upload to YouTube and send a link – Anthony
Presentation by global warming skeptics draws big crowd in Portland
Written by Scott Learn, The Oregonian | January 26 2012
More than 400 people jammed into a Portland hotel ballroom Wednesday night to hear a panel of global warming skeptics assert that manmade increases in greenhouse gases are not driving climate change.
Mann alludes to his “dirty laundry” which cannot come out, requesting his correspondent to not pass the email or the data attached to it to anyone else (PE-22).
The Environmental Law Center of the American Tradition Institute
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Washington, D.C.
January 25, 2012
On Tuesday the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center sent the University of Virginia and Michael Mann copies of 40 emails selected as examples of the 27 categories identified as benefitting from the Court’s review of UVA and Mann’s claims that emails in the taxpayer-funded school’s possession are properly subject to the specific exemptions under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). These categories range from discussions of professional retaliation against other scientists who challenged Mann’s work, to those sent to or from Mann from or copying an email account covered by other FOI laws, such as the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Multiple indicators show global temperatures headed down this month, and fast.
by Joe D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
As shown above (see the datapoint in the square box), the UAH AMSU daily temperatures are the coldest for the globe at 600mb of all the years tracked since 2002 (warmest 2010, previously coldest 2009).
The new Dr. Ryan Maue reanalysis based global temperature anomalies has declined dramatically this month – almost a full degree Celsius!
Forecasts for temperature 8 days in advance are appended to the reanalysis values.
Is this a reflection of the stratospheric warming pushing the cold to middle latitudes?
The cross section suggests that initial warm burst has ended. Often they repeat as the cold reloads and dumps again.
The next time some alarmist caterwauls about hurricanes becoming worse and more frequent due to global warming, show them this study.
Mullet Pond: a nearly circular, 200-m-diameter cover-collapse sinkhole located on Bald Point near Apalachee Bay, Florida from which the paleo data on hurricane frequency was obtained. Image: Google Earth
Noting that “the brief observational record is inadequate for characterizing natural variability in hurricane activity occurring on longer than multi-decadal timescales,” Lane et al. (2011) sought a means of characterizing hurricane activity prior to the period of modern measurement and historical record keeping, due to the fact that “the manner in which tropical cyclone activity and climate interact has critical implications for society and is not well understood.”
Specifically, Lane et al. developed a 4500-year record of intense hurricane-induced storm surges based on data obtained from “a nearly circular, 200-m-diameter cover-collapse sinkhole (Mullet Pond: 29°55.520′N, 84°20.275′W) that is located on Bald Point near Apalachee Bay, Florida, USA, where (1) “recent deposition of sand layers in the upper sediments of the pond was found to be contemporaneous with significant, historic storm surges at the site modeled using SLOSH and the Best Track, post-1851 AD dataset,” where (2) “paleohurricane deposits were identified by sand content and dated using radiocarbon-based age models,” and where (3) “marine-indicative foraminifera, some originating at least 5 km offshore, were present in several modern and ancient storm deposits.” Continue reading
Guest post by David Archibald
Predicting the amplitude of Solar Cycle 24 was a big business. Jan Janssens provides the most complete table of Solar Cycle 24 predictions at: http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/SC24.html
Prediction activity for Solar Cycle 24 seemed to have peaked in 2007. In year before, Dr David Hathaway of NASA made the first general estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/10may_longrange/
Based on the slowing of the Sun’s “Great Conveyor Belt”, he predicted that
“The slowdown we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries.” He is very likely to have got the year wrong in that Solar Cycle 25 is unlikely to start until 2025.
Ever wonder why NASA’s Jim Hansen (and many others) see red at high northern latitudes?
Above 2011 Temperature Anomaly. Source: NASA GISS interactive plotter
With all that red up north, you’d think Jimbo, Gore, and Trenberth would want to get a look at that firsthand, instead of making a fossil fueled boat trip to Antarctica during peak of the southern summer melt season so they could give us grand proclamations about the melting there.
All the “hot action” is up north according the the latitude plot that accompanies the GISS anomaly map:
Funny how in the anomaly map above, with the great Texas Heat Wave this year, Texas is not red. WUWT? (The way it was portrayed in media, you’d think it was a permanent condition).
It seems to be all in the adjustments. Cooling the past helps the slope of the trend:
How GISS Has Totally Corrupted Reykjavik’s Temperatures
Guest post By Paul Homewood
From the University of Washington some apparent confusion about what sulfates look like.
Injecting sulfate particles into stratosphere won’t fully offset climate change
IMAGE:A polar bear walks along an expanse of open water at the edge of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, in 2011. The bears need pack ice to hunt for…Click here for more information.
As the reality and the impact of climate warming have become clearer in the last decade, researchers have looked for possible engineering solutions – such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or directing the sun’s heat away from Earth – to help offset rising temperatures.
New University of Washington research demonstrates that one suggested method, injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere, would likely achieve only part of the desired effect, and could carry serious, if unintended, consequences.
Andrew Revkin reports today on the engagement of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund created by Professor Scott Mandia, aka “Supermandia” as he sees himself in the photo below.
Professor Scott Mandia - Founder of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund
I was really rather surprised that Revkin covered this nonsense, particularly since the “fund” is primarily about Mandia’s adoration of Dr. Michael Mann, and his desire that his public emails from the University of Virgina not be exposed to scrutiny by the State Attorney General of Virginia to determine if he used research funds properly or not. PEER has made a number of public pronouncements defending Mann and claims that scientific integrity would be damaged if the attorney general is allowed to view those emails written on the public dime.
This probably explains why Mandia needs to wear hip waders as part of his costume.
The University of Virginia reportedly has spent upwards of a million dollars keeping those emails on double secret probation, so it would seem the old adage of “where there’s smoke there’s fire” might truly apply here.
In Revkin’s Q&A e-mail interview with Jeff Ruch (video interview), the longtime executive director of PEER, it emerges that they have some pretty odd thinking on FOI as it applies to universities: Continue reading
Guest post by David Middleton
Back in 1980, the great libertarian economist, Julian Simon, and the prepetually wrong Malthusian biologist, Paul Erlich, entered into a little wager regarding population growth and resource scarcity. They decided on using the inflation-adjusted prices of five metals to decide the bet. Simon allowed Erlich to pick the five metals. If the 1990 prices were higher, Erlich would win. If they were lower, Simon would win. With the help of a fellow perpetually wrong Malthusian, John P. Holdren, Erlich selected chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), Nickel (Ni), tin (Sn) and tungsten (W). Julian Simon won the bet. However, a couple of years ago, economist Paul Kedroski suggested that had the time period of the bet extended to 2010, Erlich would have been the winner every year since 1991…
Given its 30th anniversary, and with commodities in the news – especially oil – I thought it was an apropos time (and TED an appropriate venue) to revisit the bet’s context, outcome, controversies and implications.
Without getting into it too deeply, here are some things worth knowing. Given the above graph of the five commodities’ prices in inflation-adjusted terms, it will surprise no-one that the bet’s payoff was highly dependent on its start date. Simon famously offered to bet comers on any timeline longer than a year, and on any commodity, but the bet itself was over a decade, from 1980-1990. If you started the bet any year during the 1980s Simon won eight of the ten decadal start years. During the 1990s things changed, however, with Simon the decadal winners in four start years and Ehrlich winning six – 60% of the time. And if we extend the bet into the current decade, taking Simon at his word that he was happy to bet on any period from a year on up (we don’t have enough data to do a full 21st century decade), then Ehrlich won every start-year bet in the 2000s. He looks like he’ll be a perfect Simon/Ehrlich ten-for-ten.
In light of the fact that the world population clock recently crossed the 7 billion mark, I thought I’d see if there was a more accurate measure of the increasing scarcity (or lack thereof) of these metals over time.
It is being called by WaPo “The Biggest solar storm since 2005“. The sun erupted late on January 22nd, 2012 with an M8.7 class flare. The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the flare as seen below.
From NASA: The coronal mass ejection CME collided with Earth’s magnetic field a little after 10 AM ET on January 24, 2012. The influx of particles from the CME amplified the solar radiation storm such that it is now considered the largest since October 2003. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has categorized it as a “strong” — or S3 (with S5 being the highest) – storm. Solar radiation storms can affect satellite operations and short wave radio propagation, but cannot harm humans on Earth. Auroras may well be visible tonight at higher latitudes such as Michigan and Maine in the U.S., and perhaps even lower.
From spaceweather.com
CME IMPACT: As expected, a CME hit Earth’s magnetic field on Jan. 24th at approximately 1500 UT (10 am EST). A G1-class geomagnetic storm is in progress now, producing bright auroras around the Arctic Circle. Sky watchers in Canada, Alaska, and states along the US-Canadian border should be alert for Northern Lights after nightfall. Tip: The hours around local midnight are often best for aurora sightings. Aurora alerts: text, voice.
In Lofoton, Norway, the CME’s arrival produced a surge in ground currents outside the laboratory of Rob Stammes:
From the The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Death Valley's half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater turns out to have been created 800 years ago -- far more recently than generally thought. Credit: Brent Goehring/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
In California’s Death Valley, death is looking just a bit closer. Geologists have determined that the half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater, formed by a prehistoric volcanic explosion, was created far more recently than previously thought—and that conditions for a sequel may exist today.
Up to now, geologists were vague on the age of the 600-foot deep crater, which formed when a rising plume of magma hit a pocket of underground water, creating an explosion. The most common estimate was about 6,000 years, based partly on Native American artifacts found under debris. Now, a team based at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has used isotopes in rocks blown out of the crater to show that it formed just 800 years ago, around the year 1200.
Guest post by David Archibald
The story so far: in this recent post – Ap Index Neutrons and Climate, we had looked at the Dye 3 oxygen isotope-derived temperature record to see how big climate swings have been over the last few thousand years.
Figure 1: Dye 3 Temperature Record from Oxygen Isotope Ratios
As Figure 1 shows, the raw Dye 3 data shows plenty of noise and rapid swings in temperature.
Figure 2: Dye 3 Temperature Record 22 Year Smooth and less Millennial Cooling Trend
Guest post by Robert G. Brown
Duke University Physics Department
In 2003 a paper was published in Energy & Environment by Hans Jelbring that asserted that a gravitationally bound, adiabatically isolated shell of ideal gas would exhibit a thermodynamically stable adiabatic lapse rate. No plausible explanation was offered for this state being thermodynamically stable – indeed, the explanation involved a moving air parcel:
An adiabatically moving air parcel has no energy loss or gain to the surroundings. For example, when an air parcel ascends the temperature has to decrease because of internal energy exchange due to the work against the gravity field.
This argument was not unique to Jelbring (in spite of his assertion otherwise):
The theoretically deducible influence of gravity on GE has rarely been acknowledged by climate change scientists for unknown reasons.
The adiabatic lapse rate was and is a standard feature in nearly every textbook on physical climatology. It is equally well known there that it is a dynamical consequence of the atmosphere being an open system. Those same textbooks carefully demonstrate that there is no lapse rate in an ideal gas in a gravitational field in thermal equilibrium because, as is well known, thermal equilibrium is an isothermal state; nothing as simple as gravity can function like a “Maxwell’s Demon” to cause the spontaneous stable equilibrium separation of gas molecules into hotter and colder reservoirs.
It appears that only the zealots care much about global warming anymore, yet it doesn’t stop them from making grand pronouncements of gloom and doom or taking fossil fueled publicity stunt boat trips to Antarctica.
The Pew Research Center released its annual poll today, and global warming is not only last, it’s last in importance with the public in 22 topics covered. Those who think “Climategate” had no impact, think again.
Plus, energy problems get twice as much attention as global warming as a policy issue. Essentially, global warming is now “dead heat”.
They write in the press release:
As the 2012 State of the Union approaches, the public continues to give the highest priority to economic issues. Fully 86% say that strengthening the economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year, and 82% rate improving the job situation as a top priority. None of the other 20 issues tested in this annual survey rate as a top priority for more than 70% of Americans.
I’ve been looking at the Nikolov and Zeller paper again. Among other things, they claim to be able to calculate the surface temperature Ts of eight different planets and moons from knowing nothing more than the solar irradiation So and the surface pressure Ps for each heavenly body. Dr. Zeller refers to this as their MIRACLE equation. He says:
Why aren’t you all trying to disprove our MIRACLE equation rather than banging your heads against walls trying to prove or disprove who knows what and exclaiming you have problems with this or that? The question is how can we possibly have done it – there is no question that our equations work – if you haven’t verified that it works, why haven’t you? [...] Why aren’t you thinking: “hmmmm, N&Z have given us an equation that lo-and-behold when we plug in the measured pressures and calculate Tgb as they suggest, gives us a calculated Ts that also matches measured values! You can’t disprove the equation? So maybe we are cooking the data books somehow, but how?
This is supposed to be evidence that their theory is correct, and people keep telling me ‘but they’ve got real evidence, they can make predictions of planetary temperatures, check it out”. Plus it’s hard to ignore an invitation like Dr. Zellers, so I checked it out.
Figure 1. These are not the equations you are looking for.
They first postulate something called the ”Near-surface Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement” or “ATE” effect that makes the earth warmer than it would be without an atmosphere.
Excerpts from Bishop Hill: A major FOI victory
This post is a jointly written effort by myself and Don Keiller.
Readers may remember the Information Commissioner’s ruling last year that UEA had to release the CRUTEM data sent by Phil Jones to Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. This had been requested by Jonathan Jones and Don Keiller.
This ruling was obviously very welcome, but in fact it was not the end of the story. UEA had put forward an argument that CRUTEM data was held under agreements with national meteorological services and could not therefore be disclosed to outsiders. Along with his request for the data, Keiller had therefore also requested the covering email that Phil Jones had sent to Webster, which should presumably contain caveats about reuse and disclosure. However, when the Information Commissioner ordered UEA to release the data, UEA’s non-disclosure of the email was upheld, on the grounds that the information was, on the balance of probablilities, ‘not held’.
Josh weighs in on this story, writing:
What is it with the new measuring climate in terms of money? Just bizarre.
As Carl Sagan* might say, “billions and billions”. Continue reading
UPDATE: 1/23/12 11AMPST Exposed – Forecastthefacts.org is a George Soros funded activist website. See details below.
By Michael A. Lewis, PhD. and Anthony Watts
Some one or some organization is attempting to influence the upcoming annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
According to WCTV-TV’s story Urging American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change, a program called Forecast the Facts is attempting to lobby the AMS to change their 5-year policy on climate change to a new policy “drafted by a panel of [unidentified] experts” (emphasis added).
A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.
“This is an important moment in the history of the AMS,” said Daniel Souweine, the campaign’s director. “It’s well known that large numbers of meteorologists are climate change deniers. It’s essential that the AMS Council resist pressure from these deniers and pass the strong statement currently under consideration.”
The “Campaign Director” is identified as Daniel Souweine. The Forecast the Facts web site turns out to be a product of “Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL).”
From the you’ve got to be effin kidding me department comes news of the epic journey to Antarctica. What do they hope to prove? I don’t know, it seems like nothing but a publicity stunt, especially since the sea ice trend in Antarctica is up in the last 30 years:
Source: University of Illinois Cryosphere Today
I predict what will come of it will be much like this joke of a new report by Scott Pelley of CBS News who went to Antarctica at the peak of the southern summer to capture images of melting ice. Here’s the transcript. Antarctic summer is opposite that of the northern hemisphere and runs roughly from October through February.
Gore, Hansen, and Trenberth and more than 100 fellow travelers will depart from Argentina late next week and arrive in late summer in Antarctica, just in time to witness melting ice, put it on video, wail about the tragedy, and ask for money to combat climate change. Basically, they are going to lie with seasonal visual aids..
Scientists, celebrities to cruise with Gore to Antarctica
Lauren Morello, E&E reporter
E&E News
to help keep the www.surfacestations.org project going.
