Michio Kaku goes cuckoo for global warming fueled snowstorms

What mitchio Kaku does not seem to understand is that the atmosphere has cooled to a level where it was almost 30 years ago at the beginning of satellite recording. It is this very cooling that is causing so much of the moisture in the air to come down in the form of rain and snow. I’m sure that once we go into another El Niño dryer weather will return.of course if this la nina lasts for any significant period of time it will also lead to drier weather because the atmosphere just can’t hold as much water when it’s colder.

I these people which to make fools of themselves who am I to prevent them the opportunity. It is always dangerous for us to speak outside of our professional boundaries. Climatology is an earth science that uses mathematics, physics and chemistry. In many ways it is like my field geology, just way younger and far less mature. It is obvious Kaku is ignorant of most earth science and of history. He forfeits his right to use the title scientist.

Shut off the Natural Gas !!!
Here are some questionable leftist anti-natural gas claims (propaganda) in this article:
http://www.propublica.org/article/natural-gas-and-coal-pollution-gap-in-doubt
Most of these articles we read now seem to include the belief of “man-made global warming” as “the truth” with no discussion. The Koolaid is everywhere!
Keep up the good work Anthony, in posting the “cool” facts!

He’s also talking up the ‘supervolcano’ under Yellowstone. Looks like he’s desperate to raise his media profile. Maybe he’s angling for a raise or something?
http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/27/physicist-michio-kaku-on-super-volcano-all-you-can-do-is-run/

First, they bemoaned the lack of snow and loss of snowpack due to global warming. Now they bemoan getting dumped on (thus replenishing the snowpack) due to global warming. The air was too dry, now the air is too wet. The rivers were too low, now the rivers are too high, the land was too dry, now the land is too wet, the soil was too warm, now the soil is too cold, the wind was too still, now the wind is too great. I give up. It’s just too tiring to argue with stupid.

I wonder if he will pontificate on the dangers of dihydrogenmonoxide as well?For sure its deadly and somehow connected to climate.

The list of mathematical constructs in science grows and grows
Spacetime does not exist
Missing Temperature does not exist
Blackholes do not exist
Dark energy does not exist
Dark matter does not exist
They are all imagined mathematical constructs built to cover the simple fact that observations do not match theory. So we see the ultimate endgame of such abuse
Warming is cooling

The picture is very similar to a famous Norwegian painting Nøkken (The Neck), a water spirit. It lures people into drowning.

Michio Kaku is a hack who has watched too many episodes of Star Trek.
He believes we need a world government to reach the point where our society becomes a Level 1 society, able to leave the planet.
In is disturbed mind there is also a level 2 and a level 3 society.
At level 3 we are immortal.
We explore our universe by sending out robots.
He believes we can reach level 1 within the next 100 years but a global nuclear war could spoil the party so we need this totalitarian concept of rule to protect ourselves from ourselves..
In his theory there is no sense of reality whatsoever..
Corruption for example is part of any doctrine. He doesn’t mention this in his concept of the future. He believes humanity is now squandering valuable resources.
Well, free trade and exchange of business concepts and idea’s is exactly what propels our civilization and what brings us to incredible levels of progress and wealth accumulation. Without that there would not be any innovation.
What Michio Kaku stands for at best is a very poor science fiction story and the best thing to do is to ignore him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ygPK1D1BJ4&feature=player_embedded

Now I remember this kook. He’s on every crackpot unprovable theory claptrap program. History channel now even presents a movie about a day in the life of a dinosaur family, complete with all their habits, actions, feelings, thoughts and desires. There is drama, heartbreak, terror, and tenderness. All carefully narrated by some nut like Kaku.
[ryanm: Bill Nye must have been busy.]

Nothing has been mentioned about land clearing or removal of vegetation. The more vegetation, the less chance of erosion and ultimately, landslides. Land clearing has been phenomenal in Queensland over the last 30 years, encouraging floodwater to speed up, soil becoming supersaturated, hence erosion, often severe enough to cause the damage seen in Queensland, Sri Lanka, the Phillipines and Brazil.
Drainage classes taught me that a vegetated drain handles twice the volume of water of a bare drain. A large, mature Rivergum tree in Australia has an uptake of up to 5000 litres of water per day. Floodwater also speeds up through the use of obstructions such as levee banks, roads and fencing, forcing water into narrower channels that often break when pushed to their limits, causing more damage.
River mouths that were once deltas with many smaller outlets to the ocean, have often been urbanised in such a way that some of these are silted up or reclaimed for development, adding to the flooding problems during ’50 or 100′ year events.
The Fitzroy River in the Australian Kimberley near where I live has these flooding events every few years, with little damage. When in full flood this river, normally a half mile wide channel at most, becomes up to 20 miles wide, covering a wide flood plain with slower moving water. No land clearing here.
Global Warming? …bulldust

Okay, I know I should make my posts more science and less personal observation, but Kaku is just about the most annoying person I’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing. I mean, the content – the made-up science, the unjustified and history-ignoring authoritarianism, they’re bad enough – but the smug presentation, grating self-superiority and irritating cadence breaks make it almost impossible for me to even watch anything he’s part of.
I just can’t do it any more. I have to turn it off when he starts talking.
Yeah, he knows all about exactly how civilizations beyond everyone else’s grasp work, he knows all the limits of science and technology, everyone else in physics does things his way, and everyone who doesn’t accept his plan for the future is a terrorist.
Seriously, someone put him in a straitjacket before he starts attacking people on the street for not following his plan.
/rant

Below is what we were told by climate scientists in the past and what we are being told now. AGW explains both apparently. When will these people just put their hands up and say we don’t know? We are not so sure now?
—————
June 4, 1999
“Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990604081638.htm
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/abs/399452a0.html
March 2000
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
—————————
Nov. 17, 2010
“Global Warming Could Cool Down Northern Temperatures in Winter”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117114028.htm
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009JD013568
December 2010
“Expect more extreme winters thanks to global warming, say scientists”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/expect-more-extreme-winters-thanks-to-global-warming-say-scientists-2168418.html

Something must be done! Squawk! Bleat! Send money or the penguin gets it!”
Succinct question for the AGW True Believers:
If cold weather today proves Gorebull Wurming is real, what did identical cold weather prove before nasty people started burning teh eevul modern fuels? Eh?

Michio Kaku has gotten a reputation as a “pop physicist,” sort of like Carl Sagan; I see him on the Science Channel all of the time now. I can’t imagine that colleagues of his take him all that seriously these days. Guys like him end up on television when they can’t accomplish anything very meaningful in the classroom or the laboratory.

R. de Haan says:
January 27, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Thanks Ron, that video explains everything!

There is no single smoking gun that can point us to the origin of these monster spinstorms. But we can focus our attention on two likely culprits.
The first is pure ignorance. There are many who talk a lot about “science” but really have very little idea of what they are talking about.
But the second is intentional fraud.
As the global consensus amongst climate “scientists” are that they are not ignorant, but their own logic, we must change the null hypothesis and they should prove it is not fraud!

Just watched the video of Michio Kaku monologue above.
He is all Type 3 fiction and Type 0 science. The monologue is a Type 1 talk to gawking Type 0 teenagers who are familiar with Type 2 Hollywood productions.
Kaku doesn’t neglect to mention all the most advanced Type 3 keywords in his talk: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Madonna, rock music, blue jeans, telephones, internet, space, Captain Kirk, and of course, Star Wars (“a Type 3 civilisation”), and many, many others.
Then, he commits a Type 10 error while discussing a Type 1 exploration and colonisation. He suggests that that will be as easy as creating and sending a programmed robot to the Moon. One robot can build a factory, which can go on building millions more robots just like it -like the growth of a single cell organism, du’h- and they in turn go and explore “other moons”, and so on, “like a sphere expanding at the speed of light”.
With trillions of these sloshing around the place, there comes a stage where the robot would land on a moon and wait. “Simply wait! For a Type 0 civilisation to become Type 1”. Now, just where have we seen this before? Well, that was precisely the basis of the movie 2001, where a Type 3 civilisation does that to our ape ancestors.
The Type 10 mistake that Kaku makes is that replicating robots is a very, very bad idea, let alone sending them to other moons or planets for exploration and colonisation. We already know that these robots will come back to bite us (see, Arnold Schwarznegger, “Terminator”, 1984, Hollywood). Had he been fully informed of Hollywood literature on the subject, he’d know that Stargate SG1 and Stargate: Atlantis fully studied the idea and found it to be a very dangerous course of action. Indeed, as Stargate et al have found, the self-replicating robots (“the replicators”), originally created by the Ancients, turned into an existential danger for the Ancients, the Asgard and us humans. See, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LULVxYTdx3g&feature=related
Now, did Michio Kaku say something about global warming?

We should remember that this fellow led a protest against the Jupiter-bound Galileo probe’s gravity-assist flyby of Earth on the grounds that navigational errors might (in an alternate universe) cause its RTGs to enter Earth’s atmosphere, dispersing miniscule amounts of radioactive material over planetary expanses, causing little (but not zero) harm. He’s a pompous quack who has done no original research but who figured out long ago how to play the “expert” card for the media. He deserves to be ignored.

I’m currently in western New York state in a small town experiencing my first northern winter in 35 years. It’s wonderful. Just like when I was a child before the winters got warmer and dryer. I’d forgotten how starkly beautiful it is when there’s a foot or two of snow on the ground and weeks on end without temperature rising above 32F. The problem with the north Atlantic coast is the same as always. They have the Gulf Stream keeping it warmer near the coast. Heavy snowfalls are rare enough so they just aren’t adequately prepared for them when they happen.

Mooloo says:
January 28, 2011 at 1:50 am
“The bit you are missing is that if AGW is true “when the air cools” implies less cold. You are trying to get more water into the atmosphere when hot (fine), then turn off AGW so it cools like normal (bollocks).”
My experience is that there is less snowfall in bitter cold weather. The air gets very very dry from the low temperature. The most snowfall (and lasting accumulation) is when nightly lows are in the low 20F’s and daily highs are in the high 20F’s. A bit closer to the Great Lakes (I’m about 60 miles away) is notorious for heavy snowfalls known as “Lake Effect” snow. The above freezing lake water injects a lot of moisture into the air then when it moves out over land with below freezing temperature it drops right out in heavy snowfall. By time those air masses get to where I’m at most of the moisture has been frozen out.

Gerard says:
January 27, 2011 at 10:44 pm
‘Drought = climate change
Rain = climate change
lack of snow = climate change
volumes of snow = climate change
hot = climate change
cold = climate change’
Thanks Gerard, excellent summary of the current state of crimatology. I’ve put it onto my facebook page as flame bait, along with this:
http://www.yourroadmaptohome.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/gk324_flying-pig-rgb-final_lr_web.jpg
I await the apoplectic responses 🙂

Kaku is entertaining enough if you enjoy those ‘what-if-maybe’ type of popularised science programs. In fact, Kaku now seems to be omnipresent, since I can’t seem to switch on any sciency documentary without him popping up to give his opinions on everything from multiverses to time travel or worm holes.
Such programs rank scientifically alongside one I saw recently, where scientists were asked to ‘reverse engineer’ a ‘captured’ ufo to come up with credible mechanisms that would account for ‘witnessed’ behaviour. No, Kaku didn’t appear in that one, but the level of scientific rigour is about the same – take a few basic ideas of physics and toss them around to see what you can come up with. Basically, a schoolboy would come with as much – if he understood the physics.
So Kaku’s arm waving on weather-is-global warming should be treated alongside his predictions that we are splitting off into parallel universes moment by moment.

Last year was, in fact, tied with 2005 as the hottest year recorded since 1880,
No it isn`t if New Zealand is anything to go by, they finally obtained the real temperature data.

This is all a bunch of BS, Washington, Philly, NYC GET SNOW! They always have. This is not even close to the worst storm, the 1993 storm was far, far worse than anything since. Birmingham, AL got 17 inches, Washington DC got 14 inches shutting the city down for days. Places farther north got 2, 3, even 4 FEET of snow.
I know a lot of you are not from the US, but trust me, the only are of the east coast having exceptional weather is the south (GA in particular) which rarely gets more than a dusting of snow that melts within hours, and that little bit causes them to freak out. Nothing too far out of the ordinary anywhere else.

Then there is the Blizzard of 1996, more localized but still damn potent. I remember having walls of snow about 8 feet high in Central PA that winter. They had to bring in giant vaccum hose dump trucks to get the stuff outta here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_of_1996
When you have a Storm of the Century every 3-5 years you might need to reaclibrate your Panic Mode scales just a bit.

Another science blogger attack’s Kaku’s misrepresentation of possibility of an eruption at Yellowstone here:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/26680
Looks like this guy’s a sensationalist publicity hog who would rather be in the spotlight than be right.
Madman2001

Michio-kaku was seen jumping up & down, running in circles & exclaiming “I’m CUCKOO for AWG-puffs, CUCKOO for AWG-puffs, CUCKOO for AWG-puffs.

Pamela Gray says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:32 pm
“First, they bemoaned the lack of snow and loss of snowpack due to global warming. Now they bemoan getting dumped on (thus replenishing the snowpack) due to global warming. The air was too dry, now the air is too wet. The rivers were too low, now the rivers are too high, the land was too dry, now the land is too wet, the soil was too warm, now the soil is too cold, the wind was too still, now the wind is too great. I give up. It’s just too tiring to argue with stupid.”
What a scream! But you need to add the meta-whine that everything was perfect just yesterday and that evil humans (parents?) are responsible for all changes in weather or climate. Also, you might consider adding that today droughts and floods are too close together and cats and dogs are living together.

Agree with Louis Savain and many others.
This guy is in showbiz/politics with a science flair. I can’t stand it when scientists’ first concern is to appear “competent” through maintaining a conventional attitude. I have to say, though, that the only field that compares to the fraud of AGW is theoretical physics. So, maybe it’s a natural fit.

Kaku is writing fort CNN, so of course he is writing at a basic level. Maue does not actually rebut any of the points Kaku makes, except to demonstrate that he (Maue) does not know how to use the word dichotomy. What meteorology textbook is Kaku contradicting? Why does Maue think increased water vapor has no impact on snow fall?

Looks like the sun is blank again…I wonder if anyone is measuring the cosmic radiation and overall cloud cover?
Anybody got a recent cosmic radiation count?

Before Kaku, before Sagan ,there was Irwin Corey:

Trouble is, he makes as much sense…
I read that Supervolcano thread…
I’m not giving Corey enough credit…

Ah what a shame. Along with Cox, I consider Kaku to be a brilliant science communicator.

This statement proves to me that Kaku has gone completely cuckoo:
“Similarly, the main consequence of global warming is not warming at all but instead increasingly violent swings in the weather, with droughts and famine in one area occurring at the same time as flooding in another, and snowstorms in one region at the same time as hot spells in another.”
So, according to Kaku the consequence of global warming is that it doesn’t actually warm, and this non warming will cause increasingly violent swings in the weather?
Maue is wrong to call this a false dichotomy – it is more like an oxymoron.

This isn’t the 1st time Kaku has delved into AGW. Kaku is a semi-regular guest on Coast to Coast AM if it’s still called by that name. I heard him giving his opinions to Art Bell (the co-author of “the Coming Global Superstorm”) one night on the radio. Kaku’s ideas about AGW were weak even by celebrity standards. Ever since I heard that segment Kaku has been suspect in my book.

“The model is not an extremely extreme event.”
I wonder about the consequences if it were actually “extremely extreme?”
“Jones noted that the largest damages would come from flooding — the models estimate that almost one-fourth of the houses in California would experience some flood damage from this storm.”
Ten feet of rain would cause flood damage?
Houston, we have a problem.
—————————————————————————————-
ARkStorm: California’s Other ‘Big One’
ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2011) — For emergency planning purposes, scientists unveiled a hypothetical California scenario that describes a storm that could produce up to 10 feet of rain, cause extensive flooding (in many cases overwhelming the state’s flood-protection system) and result in more than $300 billion in damage.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110117142512.htm

Mucho Cuckoo. 😉

eadler says: January 27, 2011 at 9:25 pm . “An increase in temperature means that the air can hold more water, and [increased] evaporation rates will [mean more] . . . . rain or snow.”
That is logical reasoning – a logical theory. Now let us test the theory per the discussion at hand concerning the last two winters. Water vapor is not evenly distributed across the world, nor are sea temperatures. The ocean areas that gave up the water vapor for the storms in the last two winters did not have positive anomalies. In fact, quite the opposite. The Gulf of Mexico and the western Atlantic Ocean were negative last winter, but they provided moisture for the significant snowfall. The Pacific was remarkably positive last year, but the west coast was noticeably dry. This year, the Pacific and the Gulf and western Atlantic all have negative anomalies; yet they are providing moisture for these remarkable storms. We are having snow all the way down to Florida because the temperatures over land have been cold. England is getting snow rather than rain because of cold temperatures. Of course, a complete discussion of these two winters would require mention of Arctic air movements, but this winter’s CAGW proclamation blaming the snow on Global Warming does not hold up under scrutiny.
Also, you mentioned that precipitation amounts in extreme events would increase. However, records for rainfall in the U.S. are over a half-century old – they are not being eclipsed today.

Eadler quotes Masters… LOL
Sounds like GEnnis from the Gleube and Mail… 😉

Jimash says:
January 28, 2011 at 8:19 am
“I have been deeply disappointed with Dr. Kaku since I found out that he accepted “hand-wavy” pseudo-facts about climate change. Deeply.
The official climatologist of the State of New Jersey says it is the NAO.”
The occurrence of the NAO is not a contradiction of the theory that says AGW intensifies the effects of storm systems. These storms were North Easters bringing moisture from the ocean air above warm waters of the east coast, dropping the snow on land as the ocean air cooled. This is a physically sound theory which fits the storm patterns.

Kaku must have set some sort of record for wildly contradictory statements in this made-up stew of nonsense. He is obviously a few sandwiches short of a full picnic. I note that the Geography people aren’t very thrilled with his mad assertions about Yellowstone either.

Well we have the example of the paper of Wentz et al; “How Much More Rain will global Warming Bring ?” SCIENCE July-7, 2007.
Frank Wentz, who is with RSS in Santa Rosa CA (Remote Sensing Systems) is a commercial purveyor of what UAH does with satellite data (not the same data, RSS gets their own, and uses it their own way) . In my view, the SCIENCE paper is among the most important papers ever in “Climate Science”.
It is actual real measured atmospehric data from satellite observations. Tehy found that the rate of increase in Total atmospheric water with Temperature (presumably either lower tropo, or surface) is 7% per deg C rise.
Now that is also the prediction of the Clausius Clapeyron equation, as Bill Illis mentioned here some time back; and is also in agreement with the GCMs which no doubt actually get their super computer simulated values by actually using the c-C equation.
Wentz et al, also found that total global evaporation and precipitation rates, had the same 7% per deg C rise. This disagrees with the far more believable GCMs which are simulated by super computer; and which say the evap precip pair are only 1% to 3%; shall we say 2% +/-50% which of course is the same hallowed 3:1 fudge factor that attaches to all Climatism simulations. Why should we believe Wantz et al’s actuyal observations, when we have such fine models to simulate it.
It should be obvious to all that evap and precip must be the same over time, because we don’t want the oceans to be over our heads, instead of down in those big holes where they are now.
So it is a no brainer that higher global temperatures will lead to more precipitation; but not necessarily where you want it.
I’ll leave it to those who understand AMO/PDO/ENSO and the like to ‘splain why it gose where it gose. I’m totally ignorant of any of that; and figure I can afford to be, since others know what it all does.
As for MK, it has always disappointed me that Physicists at that level of understanding of the arcane; seem content to remain relatively ignorant of Physics/chemistry, down at the level of communicating with the lay public.
Who cares if there are an infinite number of universes; that maybe are joined for our convenience by time travel and worm holes; or that the most fundamental things are strings that wiggle and vibrate.
Hey if you hand any 2 year old kid ANYTHING that wiggles or vibrates; it will inside of two minutes, have separated that wiggly thing into multiple elements; which by definition MUST be more fundamental than the wiggly thing.
So I think quarks are somewhat fundamental; they simply sit there and look stupid; they do not wiggle or do anything else to indicate they are alive; or made up of simpler bits.
So Brian Green or MK or not; I’m not a fan of strings or worm holes, and in my lexicon UNIverse implies there is only one; no matter how bizzarre it may turn out to be. If it is not part of the universe we can see (by any conceivable means, real or imagined) then it is not a part of the field of science; which is the study of things we can “see”.

Bob from the UK says:
January 28, 2011 at 12:41 am
…
Sunpots high, rivers low, sunpots low rivers high.

Pretty interesting correlation! But, I’se confoozed.
What’re “sun-pots”??
;p

Back to the real world. And speaking of frigid cold winters, the period 1975-1978 was saw some of the coldest and snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters of the 20th Century. And what is remarkable is that this was a period of not only El Nino (1976-1977), but it occured during the Great Pacific Climate Change (ie the PDO went from negative to positive). In my hometown, the winter of 1978 brought a record 136 inches of snow. And the borreal Winter of 1976-77 brought unusually cold temps as early as Saint Nicholas Day (Dec 6th 1976, the low was -2 deg F and the high was only +1 for South Bend Indiana).
And to make matters even more interesting, there was a double dip La Nina (1971-1974) that preceeded the 1976 El Nino. And in late April 1974 one of the worst outbreaks of severe weather hit North America (The Day of the Killer Tornado). Also of interest, devastating floods hit the Ohio River Valley during the La Nina periods, 2 severe droughts hit the Midwest as well (1974, 1975). The summers of 1977 and 1980 were some of the hottest on record for North America.
Dr. Kaku’s speculations are just that. If one was to get accurate weather information going back to colonial times, and from Europe as well, one will see that somewhere weather “extremes” occur.

E-Adler;
Please quit trotting out Masters as a competent climate authority. He’s a meteorologist who happens also to be a rabid Global Warming Believer. So what? There are 10 meteorologists who Doubt or Unbelieve for every Masters.

“… There are two requirements for a record snow storm:
1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).
2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.”
Jeff Masters has been an AGW groupie for a long time. His assertions concerning water vapor are not completly correct. The term “near record” amount of moisture is a misnomer. The is a saturation point for every air parcel. Any forecaster who is old enough to remember plotting and analyzing Skew-T log P charts know that the mixing ratio is the metric used to measure absolute humidity. And as far as I know, no one keeps records of mixing ratios. For severe thunderstorms to form, a mixing ratio of at least 12g of water vapor to 1kg of water vapor is the norm. In really extreme cases, mixing ratios can go as high as 16-18g/1kg of dry air. But that usually occurs when the surface temp is over 28 deg C.
A typical New England snowstorm will see temps vary as much as +5 deg C to – 5 deg C. With a saturated surface condition, the mixing ratios would hit a limit around 8g of water vapor/1kg of dry air. As far as moisture aloft is concerned, we move into the dynamics of an occluded frontal system. Besides the inflow of warmer moist air of the Gulfstream, there is the moisture aloft released by intense vertical shear, positive vorticity advection, and upper level cold air advection. The injection of frigid cold air from Canada upstream and warm moist air from the Atlantic only increase this dynamic. But, the true genesis of these dynamics come from the Pacific. And in a warming world, the southern branch of the Polarjetstream would migrate northward. Most of the really frigid air would remain bottled up in the northern source regions with the northern branch of the polar jetstream.
In a warming wolrd where the Hadley Cell expands poleward, most of the dynamics for both classical Midwest snowstorms and Nor’Easters would fail to materialize. This was the IPCC predictions not only a decade ago, but also in 2007. My how quickly things change.

JDN says:
January 28, 2011 at 6:17 am
Agree with Louis Savain and many others.
This guy is in showbiz/politics with a science flair. I can’t stand it when scientists’ first concern is to appear “competent” through maintaining a conventional attitude.
I have to say, though, that the only field that compares to the fraud of AGW is theoretical physics. So, maybe it’s a natural fit.”
Did you know that Mike Mann entered Yale graduate school as a student in theoretical nuclear physics and then switched to climate research?

eadler says:
January 28, 2011 at 9:06 am
Jimash says:
January 28, 2011 at 8:19 am
[referring to the recent heavy snowfalls ]
“The official climatologist of the State of New Jersey says it is the NAO.”
The occurrence of the NAO is not a contradiction of the theory that says AGW intensifies the effects of storm systems. These storms were North Easters bringing moisture from the ocean air above warm waters of the east coast, dropping the snow on land as the ocean air cooled. This is a physically sound theory which fits the storm patterns.
But the “warm waters” are colder than last year. Warm waters can hardly be any colder they are.
And as far as the general temperature goes it has been way below normal mostly since October. So where is this AGW doing it’s magic ?

Seems to me the good Doctor has discovered an new element: Dollarium.

Jose Suro says:
January 28, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Seems to me the good Doctor has discovered an new element: Dollarium.
+++
Dollarium Tremens… 😉

“I am a physicist.”
====================
Really??
Eadler….please state your qualifications and training.
All us non-physicists and inquiring minds…want to know.
And the physicists do too.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

The truth is that we will never reach the level of a catagory 1 civilization as long as we take the hubris of a charlatan like Obama for granted when he states the following:
“We will advance a high speed railway network so travelers will be able to travel without a pad down and we don’t need those planes anymore.”
Completely denying the terror attacks on the trains in Madrid, London and Casablanca.
and
“We will be the first Nation that will have 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015”
at the same time banning the incandescent light bulb.
“We will further promote the use of bio fuels”
He makes this criminal promise when half the world is ablaze because people can no longer afford food.
“We will generate 80% of our energy with alternative energy by 2035”
He makes this promise while the Spanish economy crashed because of their attempt to generate their energy by alternative means like wind and solar.
Instead of kicking this incredible hack out of office people cheer and his ratings go up. U N B E L I E VA B L E
This guy is wrecking the economy and nobody stops him.

Oliver Ramsay says:
January 27, 2011 at 11:37 pm
eadler says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:25 pm
“I am a physicist, and the explanation seems like correct science to me. An increase in temperature means that the air can hold more water, and evaporation rates will increase . When the air holding this water cools, the moisture precipitates as rain or snow, depending on the temperature. So the distribution of precipitation in a sample of storms will go in the direction of increased rain or snowfall. It is reasonable that the amount of precipitation in extreme events would also increase.
——————————
It’s disconcerting that a self-professed physicist would consider that paragraph ‘science’, never mind ‘correct science’. Typically, the clause ‘the air can hold more water’ is derided into oblivion in ninth or tenth grade ‘science’ class.”
It is wrong to say that warm air will hold more water than cold air. The N2 and O2 in the air determines the temperature of the water vapor. The temperature of the water vapor determines the maximum possible concentration of gas phase vapor. It is true that water vapor doesn’t need air to hold it in the gas phase, and in that sense the air is not holding the water. You are quibbling over semantics.
The temperature of what? You mean the average global lower troposphere? Maybe it’s the global average sea surface. It’s got to be some average or other or else we’d be talking about weather, not climate.
Remember, all events are ‘extreme’ nowadays. You’ll be wanting some of them to produce less snow and /or rain. Let’s not forget wind.
The sea surface temperature is one of a number of variables that determines the evaporation rate. If this temperature is higher, then it is likely that more water will evaporate into the air, and that the air temperature above the sea surface will also be warmer.
When you say “Let’s not forget about wind”, it begs the question “What will happen to wind speeds in a warmer world?”. Unless you claim they will decrease, the effect will be more moisture in the air.

Crispin in Waterloo says:
January 28, 2011 at 8:58 am
EADLER Says:
An increase in temperature means that the air can hold more water, and evaporation rates will increase . When the air holding this water cools, the moisture precipitates as rain or snow, depending on the temperature.
++++++++++++
I agree that air, being warmed, contains more water vapour per cubic metre at a given relative humidity. Your reference to extra precipitation taking place when the air cools is relevant, though incorrect.
The problem with the assertion that a warmer world will cause more precipitation (everywhere?) is that the temperature to which the air cools also increases. The Delta-T is the same, agreed? After all, it is warmer at both ends of the process, right? So what is the difference between the water vapour contents in both cases if the temperature drop is the same?
The claim that increased snowfall/rain is caused by ‘warmer air because the globe is warmer’ was always propped upon the misundertanding about the lower temperature, hoping, I presume, to capitalise on peoples general ignorance about all things thermodynamic. Ditto for the ‘increased evaporation’ into air that has already picked up more moisture. Plain ignorance!
So, look at the basic physics: higher (slightly) initial temperature, higher (slightly) final temperature = no change in precipitation at all attributable to global warming (or cooling) within the normal Earthly temperature ranges, right? Only a huge change in temperature and ice cover can produce meaningful changes is total precipitation.
Next, have a think about how long it takes air to pick up moisture when warmer. It is nearly immediate – on the scale of a few minutes to hours. The changes from year to year would certainly be undetectable by human senses.
It is plain and obvious to me that the El Nino and La Nina-driven shifts in precipitation are being ignored in order to trumpet the possibility that a warmer world is causing (near) record snowfalls and rainfall. The prophecy that these events will ‘continue to get worse’ is pure speculation. As the mis-informed, mis-understanding, mis-interpreting prophets are unaware of the causes, how can they be aware of the effects? They would do just as well to ‘look into a liver’ [Ezekiel 21:21] and try to ‘divine’ something that way. After all, it fits the rest of the behaviour profile.”
You are wrong about the claim that the same amount of moisture precipitates for a given temperature change regardless of the initial temperature. The water vapor content at a given relative humidity increases exponentially with temperature. This means that more water will precipitate at higher temperatures for the same decrease in temperature.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-vapor-air-d_854.html

JP says:
January 28, 2011 at 12:15 pm
“I am a physicist, and the explanation seems like correct science to me. An increase in temperature means that the air can hold more water, and evaporation rates will increase . When the air holding this water cools, the moisture precipitates as rain or snow, depending on the temperature. So the distribution of precipitation in a sample of storms will go in the direction of increased rain or snowfall. It is reasonable that the amount of precipitation in extreme events would also increase.”
Eadler, you are talking about theoretics. Have you ever wondered why some parts of the Pacific and Atlantic (as well as the Indian Ocean) go through periods of extreme drought despite having surface temps as high as 30 deg C and high absolute humidities? There is much more to meteorology than theoretical abstractions.

I am sorry, but I don’t understand how an ocean suffers from drought. If you mean that evaporation from the surface is increasing I can understand that. This happens when the surface gets warmer, and windier.
Drought is a phenomenon that happens on land, when the temperatures over the land get higher for long periods of time, and precipitation has decreased. This causes a loss in soil moisture. Higher temperatures will result in increased drought in some areas, and an increase in storm intensity in other areas. Climate is not uniform across the globe.

Whoops,
In my post
eadler says:
January 29, 2011 at 10:54 am
The first sentence of my reply to Oliver Ramsey should read:
It is NOT wrong to say that warm air will hold more water than cold air.

RdH;
Did he really say “pad down” instead of “patdown”? BAAAD Teleprompter!
His “green energy/jobs” rhetoric is just Climate Warmism in thin disguise.
As for the jobs and investment, while this particular Stupidity Bubble lasts they will go to the lowest bidder(s). Clue: they reside in Asia.

Oliver Ramsay says:
January 30, 2011 at 12:56 am
@ eadler,
I purposely didn’t say that the holding water thing was “wrong” because, given the amiguities of the words ‘can’ and ‘hold’, it’s possible to interpret the sentence variously.
Bearing in mind that this arises in the context of discussion of specific weather events, I find it pointlessly vague to say “warm air holds more water, so it rains more, or maybe snows”.
Water vapour is not a guest of the atmosphere, it is a constituent, as are liquid water and ice crystals. As you say, it’s the temperature of the water vapour that determines when it will precipitate, but it’s ironic that you appear to be turning your back on thermalization of the atmosphere by greenhouse gases and ascribing temperature control to the ‘non-radiative’ molecules. Of course, there’s also a lot of heat transfer aloft with condensation and evaporation. Not a big contribution from N2 in that regard.
Anyway, more water evaporates from the surface because it’s warmer than it was before. The air rises and cools and droplets and ice crystals form; even over the tropics snow falls but it doesn’t show up on the banana trees because it warms up as it falls and either becomes rain or vapour long before it reaches the surface.
So, when the surface water is warmer, the surface air is warmer and so is the air higher up. With an adequate water source specific humidity will rise with warming, not necessarily relative humidity. Water vapour ascends a little higher before it precipitates but comparable proportions will reavaporate in descent, just as snow becomes rain within the cloud.
There are so many details in each and every occurrence that a generalized ‘more warmth, more snow’ line doesn’t look like science, it just seems glib.
Another poster also claimed that an increase in temperature and an increase in moisture in the air would make no difference in precipitation.
My reply also applies to your objection. It was :
“eadler says:
January 29, 2011 at 6:13 pm
“Crispin in Waterloo says:
January 28, 2011 at 8:58 am
….
You are wrong about the claim that the same amount of moisture precipitates for a given temperature change regardless of the initial temperature. The water vapor content at a given relative humidity increases exponentially with temperature. This means that more water will precipitate at higher temperatures for the same decrease in temperature.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-vapor-air-d_854.html“

It does seem strange that we are attacking the persons credibility here as much as the science, which does make me uncomfortable.
The Joy of Michio is that he thinks outside the mainstream, something which every scientist should do more often. I do not agree with his position on climate change, nor do I agree with many other things he does say but he is passionate about science and one of the true eccentric great thinkers.
Michio will be proven right on many other things, the singularity of science, the human mastery of genetics allowing people to live for many many years.
He will be proven wrong about climate change but let’s remember he is a champion for the unthinkable and the out of mainstream science. I for one am grateful for that.