I’m traveling this weekend, posting will be light to nonexistent. Guest authors are welcome to post submissions.
Feel free to talk about anything withing the blog policy.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Has there been any reliable proof of the existence of a link between the ozone hole/s and man-made ozone-depleting substances? Wasn’t there observation of the ozone hole dilating before the rise of anthropogenic ozone-depleting chemicals?
I don’t trust any assertions coming from the human-bashing environmentalists. The ozone story smacks of global warming, DDT, biodiversity crisis, etc.
As a UK citizen, it would be interesting to know if a US citizen could take Obama to court over the blatant lies he told in his recent climate speech, perhaps based on the charge of fraud or willful deception?
Just wondering, has anybody here seen this kind of massive cut off low that is forming in the atlantic seaboard today? It is projected to start spinning and moving east to west all the way into texas by tuesday.
Is this another sign of the weakening jet stream?
Here is the weather animation.
http://weather.utah.edu/index.php?t=gfs004&r=NA&d=TS
Whatever happened to Climategate III?
All,
Don’t know if you have seen this but it is something.
The claims made here are mind numbing. Hard to watch.
He starts by mentioning Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann are there.
Side note — The way the guy squirms, did the guy have to take a leak?
AGU Chapman Conference — Climate Science: Richard Alley
Published on Jun 28, 2013
AGU Chapman Conference on Communicating Climate Science: A Historic Look to the Future
08 June 2013 — 13 June 2013, Granby, CO, USA
Presenter: Richard Alley
Sunday, June 9, 2013, 1:00 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.
Session: New and Bleeding Edge Topics in Climate Science I
Abstract Title: State of the Climate System
For some reason that first one did not start at the beginning.
This is one of the first excellent articles that I read on climate, after the publication of the hockey stick scare, and have recovered it from a pdf format so that others can read it in a much more readable format.
Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead
By WALTER SULLIVAN
New York Times
The world’s climate is changing. Of that scientists are firmly convinced. But in what direction why are subjects of deepening debate.
There are specialists who say that a new ice age is on the way-the inevitable consequence of a natural cyclic process, or as a result of man-made pollution of the atmosphere. And there are those who say that such pollution may actually head off an ice age.
Sooner or later a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable. Hints that it may already have begun are evident. The drop in mean temperatures since 1950 in the Northern Hemisphere has been sufficient, for example, to shorten Britain’s growing season for crops by two weeks.
As noted in a recent report of the National Academy of Sciences, “The global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
Vulnerability to climate change, it says, is “all the more serious when we recognize that our present climate is in fact highly abnormal, and that we may already be producing climatic changes as a result of our own activities.”
The first half of this century has apparently been the warmest period since the “hot spell” between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago immediately following the last ice age. That the climate, at least in the Northern Hemisphere has been getting cooler since about 1950, is well established-if one ignores the last two winters.
It had been forecast by some specialists that last winter would be exceptionally cold, but as all ice skaters know, it was unusually mild in the New York area. In Boston it was the warmest in 22 years and in Moscow it was the second warmest in 230 years.
A major problem in seeking to assess the trend is to distinguish year-to-year fluctuations from those spread over decades, centuries and thousands of years.
Lack of agreement as to the factors that control climate change make it particularly difficult to assess current trends. Of major importance, therefore, is the debate as to the cause of such changes and the role of human activity in bringing them about. Among the major hypotheses are the following:
1. Solar Energy Variations
The amount of solar energy reaching the earth’s surface at anyone place and time of year varies because of changes in the earth’s orbit and the tilt of its spin axis (The extent of that tilt determines the extent of seasonal changes).
There are also slight variations in the amount of energy radiated by the sun. They
follow the 11-year sunspot cycle and relate chiefly to solar ultraviolet radiation.
Dr. Walter Orr Roberts, former head of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., believes he has found a correlation between this cycle and weather phenomena such as jetstream behavior and droughts in the high plains east of the Rocky Mountains.
The droughts, he believes, tend to occur either in step with the l l-year cycle or with one of 20 to 22 years.
Such links are doubted by Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr., climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Environmental Data Service. He sees no plausible explanation of how such slight variations in solar energy could affect the massive weather phenomena responsible for droughts and floods.
Tree-ring data from Nebraska and South Dakota, according to Dr. Mitchell, show that the pattern to which Dr. Roberts refers applies only to the last century. Whereas earlier-as far back as the 16th century – a major droughts occurred at irregular intervals generally longer than 20 years.
Triggering of the ice ages by cyclic changes of the earth’s spin axis and orbit was proposed as early as the nineteen twenties by a Yugoslav, Milutin Milankovitch. Because of tugging by the gravity of other planets, the orbit of the earth changes shape. Sometimes it is virtually circular. At other periods the earth’s distance from the sun varies during each year by several million miles.
At present, 6 per cent more solar radiation reaches the earth on Jan. 14 than it does six months earlier or later, tempering northern winters. This variation In the shape of the orbit occurs in a cycle of about 93,000 years.
The tilt of the spin axis with respect to the earth’s orbit around the sun varies from 22.0 to 24.5o degrees over a period or some 41,000 years. The aim of the axis with respect to the stars also rotates once every 26,000 years, causing precession of the equinoxes.
For many years the combined effects of these variations, seemed too subtle to account for the ice- ages, but recent discoveries have won converts for modernized versions of the Milankovitch thesis.
From the chemical composition of Pacific sediments, from studies of soil types in Central Europe and from fossil plankton that lived in the Caribbean it has been shown that in the last million years there have been considerably more ice ages than previously supposed.
According to the classic timetable, four great ice ages occurred. However, the new records of global climate show seven extraordinarily abrupt changes in the last million years. As noted in the academy report, they represent transition in a few centuries, “from full glacial to full interglacial conditions.”
Many scientists now consider it established that expansions of glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere coincided with the northern ice ages. Land areas, however, are meager in southern latitudes comparable to those that were heavily glaciated in the north.
Dr. George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory has proposed a way in which small variations in solar energy falling on the middle latitudes-as in the Milankovitch concept-could affect the climate.
It is the extent to which northern seas and land areas become covered with snow and ice in the fall. When such cover is extensive, as in the fall of 1971, the white surface reflects sunlight back into space and there is a reduction in heating of the atmosphere.
This prolongs the northern winter and cools the globe. In 1971, according to images from earth satellites, autumn snow and ice cover increased by 1.5 million square miles.
The following year was one of freak weather throughout much of the world. The winter was exceptionally cold in North America, the Mediterranean and other areas. Severe drought struck many parts Asia and Europe.
The implication was that a change in solar input that was slight, but sufficient to increase autumn snow and ice cover substantially, could eventually lead to a major climate change.
From a reworking of the Milankovitch calculations Dr. Kukla has found that solar energy falling on the atmosphere in the autumn hit a minimum 17,000 years ago, at the height of the last ice age. It reached a maximum some 6,000 years ago, when the world became warmest since the last ice age.
While the theory is, as yet, far from being a full explanation for climate changes it suggests, he said, that a trend toward cooling will continue for the next 4,000 years even though, since 1973, autumn snow cover has diminished somewhat.
2. Pendulum Swings
Some scientists believe that the ice ages are a product of cyclic phenomena affecting the flow of heat from the tropics to the polar region through the sea and air.
Most of the solar energy that enters the oceans and drives the winds is received in the tropics and carried poleward. The polar regions radiate more energy into space than they receive from the sun, but ocean currents and winds bring in enough heat-or almost enough-to make up the deficit.
Until a few years ago some persons suspected that the presence or absence of pack ice covering the Arctic Ocean might play a key role in this delicately balanced process. An absence of pack ice, when ocean currents were carrying considerable heat into that ocean, would allow evaporation and the resulting moist winds would shed the snows of an ice age. Periodic freezing of the ocean would end the glaciation.
Recently, however, sediment samples extracted from the floor of the Arctic Ocean have shown that it was apparently never free of ice between the ice ages, even though before they began that ocean does appear to have been open.
In fact, according to Dr. G. Kenneth Hare, professor of geography at the University of Toronto, fossils from the Arctic islands of Canada, the Soviet Union and from Greenland all indicate an ice-free ocean with “luxuriant” forests along its shores.
Another proposal regarding built-in pendulum swings of climate is that of Dr. Reginald E. Newell, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. He believes ice ages are initiated when energy losses at high latitudes exceed energy gains in the tropics-a state that may exist at present.
An ice age ends, in this concept, when enough of the ocean becomes ice covered to curtail the escape of heat being carried poleward by ocean currents. At the present stage of such a cycle, he said in a recent article, surface water in polar seas would be growing cooler, “in the slow process that will lead to the next ice age.”
In a recent issue of the British journal Nature, Drs. Reid A. Bryson and E. W.
Wahl of the Center for Climate Research at the University of Wisconsin cite records from nine North Atlantic weather ships indicating that from 1951 to the 1968-1972 period surface water temperatures dropped steadily.
The fall was comparable, they reported, to a return to the “Little Ice Age” that existed from 1430 to 1850. It was early in this period that pack ice apparently isolated the Norse colony in Greenland and led to its extinction. The temperature drop in the North Atlantic carried it one sixth of the way to the level of a full-fledged ice age, according to Drs. Bryson and Wahl.
Unfortunately, they said, several of these weather stations are being discontinued so that monitoring future trends will be difficult. Dr. Bryson attributes recent droughts in Africa and elsewhere to a southward displacement of the rain-bearing monsoons.
A similar change occurred in about 1600 B.C , he believes. The monsoon rains no longer reached northwest India. Fresh water lakes that had been there for 7,000 years dried into salt beds and the Indus Empire that had spread over the region for 1,500 years was destroyed.
3. Man-Made Influence
There is general agreement that introducing large amounts of smoke particles or carbon dioxide into the atmosphere can alter climate. The same would be true of generating industrial heat comparable to a substantial fraction of solar energy falling on the earth. The debate centers on the precise roles of these effects and the levels of pollution that would cause serious changes.
Carbon dioxide in the air acts like glass in a greenhouse. It permits solar energy to reach the earth as visible light, but it impedes the escape of that energy into space in the form of heat radiation (at infrared wave lengths).
Dr. Mitchell has pointed out that a variety of factors determine the role of carbon dioxide on earth. For example, the extent to which that gas, introduced into the atmosphere by smokestacks and exhaust pipes is absorbed by the oceans depends on the temperature of surface waters.
This, in turn, is affected by climate, leading to so called feedback effects. Plants consume carbon dioxide at rates that depend on temperature and the abundance of that gas in the air, complicating predictions of their role.
The observatory atop Mauna Loa, the great Hawiian volcano, has recorded a steady rise in the annual mean level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, amounting to 4 per cent between 1958 and 1972. That, however was a period of global cooling- not the reverse, as one would expect from a greenhouse effect.
The Mauna Loa observatory has also recorded a steady rise in atmospheric turbidity-the extent to which particles overhead dim the brightness of the sun. The academy study finds that human activity over the last 120 years has contributed more to this atmospheric dust than have volcanic eruptions.
However, it says, the present atmospheric load of man-made dust is perhaps only one fifth what was thrown into the stratosphere by the volcanic explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. The role of atmospheric dust is complex, for it cuts off sunlight from the earth, but is itself heated by that light, warming levels of atmosphere in which it resides.
Until recently the idea that ice ages are initiated by intense volcanic activity was unpopular for lack of evidence for such activity. The hypothesis has gained more credence from the analysis of sediment cores extracted from the ocean floors by the drill ship Glomar Challenger.
According to University or Rhode Island scientists, ash was far more common in layers laid down in the last two million years than in the previous 18 million years.
If worldwide energy consumption continues to increase at its present rates, catastrophic climate changes have been projected by M. I. Budyko, a leading Soviet specialist. He says that the critical level will probably be reached within a century.
This, he has written, will lead to “a complete destruction of polar ice covers.” Not only would sea levels rise but, with the Arctic Ocean free of ice, the entire weather system of the Northern Hemisphere would be altered.
However, Dr. Mitchell has suggested, warming of the climate due to pollution might be enough to head off an ice age “quite inadvertently.”
CAN THE TRUTH BE
LEARNED?
More precise knowledge of the past is certain to aid in choosing between various explanations for tong-term climate changes. The Greenland Ice Sheet Program, with
American, Danish and Swiss participants, is drilling a series of holes into the crest of the Greenland ice in the hope, ultimately, of reconstructing a year-by-year record of climate for the last 100,000 years.
So far the ice has been penetrated 1,325 feet, extending the record back 1,420 years. The yearly layers can be counted, like tree rings, in terms of summer and winter variation in the relative abundance of two forms of oxygen (oxygen 16 and oxygen 18). Their ratio indicates temperature at the time when the snow fell to term that layer of’ the ice sheet.
The isotopes also reflect the long-term climate changes. A remarkable finding, reported in May 1 issue of Nature, is that the trends in Greenland for the period
850 to 1700 A.D ., closely match the British record for 1100 to 1950. California tree
rings show a climate record similar 10 the one in Britain.
The implication is a lag of 250 years between climate variations in Greenland and those in regions east and west of the Atlantic.
If, in fact, the climatic cycles of Greenland precede those of Europe and North America by 250 years, a powerful means of prediction would be available. However, as noted in the Nature article, it is by no means certain that the effect is persistent.
The Academy of Sciences report notes that any assessment of climate trends is crippled by a lack of knowledge: “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
The oceans clearly play an important-and little understood-role. Not only are they the chief source of water in the atmosphere but they harbor a vast reservoir of thermal energy. “When the dynamics of the ocean-atmosphere interaction are better known, according to the report, “we may find that the ocean plays a more important role than the atmosphere in climate changes.”
The report, including a wide range of proposals for national and international programs of research, was prepared by by the academy’s Committee for the Global Atmospheric Research Program, headed by Dr. Verner E. Suomi of the University
of Wisconsin.
In his preface Dr. Suomi notes that, by the end of this decade, space vehicles will be able, on a global scale to observe the sun’s output, energy reflected from the earth, distributions of clouds, snow and ice, as well as ocean temperatures. With these and other inputs a better understanding of how and why the climate is changing should become possible.
Source: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ny-times-1975-05-21.pdf
Walter Seager Sullivan, Jr (January 18, 1918 – March 19, 1996) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_S._Sullivan
[Original article publishewd May 21,1975]
In the UK we are having real great summer weather, it reminds me of the 1976’s summer, but note of caution, those temperatures were not seen since
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
If you live in the EU then you may soon find your food habits being regulated in the name of carbon dioxide. Extra carbon taxes on beef? Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/07/11/the-eus-fast-approaching-food-tyranny-eu-undertakes-to-dictate-human-food-diets/
http://livewellforlife.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Adopting-healthy-sustainable-diets-report.pdf
Hold on just one damned second mister. The Met Office assured us a few weeks back that the UK should expect wetter, cooler summers as a result of global warming. Now they got a heatwave. Before that they predicted sizzlers which turned out wet.
Oooops. My apologies Vuk. I forgot the rule about the Met Office. 😉
@Steve Oregon –
One really wonders what planet this coelenterate is on. This, in the face of all the data that proves the models are crap and it’s cooling, not warming? This guy has more balls and less brains than a sack of marbles.
Thanks Vukcevic and Jimbo . . . .
It’s a ‘balmy’ evening here in the UK. It’s just how it should be. All windows open, warm, no breeze, just wonderful. Eating dinner outside on the patio, glass of Sauvignon, glorious – up to the pub afterwards – just bring on the CO2!
A complete contrast to the last 23 years of summers in the UK. 1990 was the last time I saw the lawn so parched.
Here is a nice ALARMIST link from weather.com. http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/nickolay-lamm-west-coast-sea-level-rise-pictures-20130711
The article is Illustrations that show the photographer’s prospective in 100 to 300 years (5 feet), the year 2300 (12 feet), and the centuries to come (25 feet).
Ilma says:
July 12, 2013 at 10:40 am
As a UK citizen, it would be interesting to know if a US citizen could take Obama to court over the blatant lies…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
I think it has to be done by Congress not us.
FWIW there is a petition with ~ a million signatures demanding Congress prosecute U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder over various messes.
The problem with going after Obama is you are then stuck with Vice President Biden and that puts Biden in a great position to run for president for another 4 to 8 years.
Outing all the dirty linen in Washington, all the back room deals (including that of republicans) is a much better idea. Then may be we will get a viable third party. SEE: America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution for the best analysis I have seen of the US situation.
Fifteen minutes or so of Richard Alley was quite enough–irritating voice, mocking manner. However, thanks for including two inks. It made it easy to run both and have Richard talking over Richard.
Finding all that heat (at very tiny Delta T) in the ocean, even if significant, is the focus of his argument that the planet is still warming. That all those who say the warming has stopped are fools, in effect, including those on his side of this debate. I frankly find it hard to get excited over the sorts of Delta Ts in the 700-2000m depth range.
The tactic is explained by analogy to the advice for trial lawyers with regard to facts vs. law: If you have temperatures rising, then talk about temperature; if the temperatures aren’t rising, then talk about energy.
Cripes! Not two “inks”– two “links”.
Yupp..Climategate 3 kinda vanished….no explanations…hope its zoombies up before the IPCC show.
Kevin Kilty,
You are a better man than me, I managed 4 minutes.
As some others have posted the UK is at the moment enjoying its best summer weather since 2006. Which looks like it could be with us right to the end of the month.
The jet stream has become a little less waving during July, so it looks like this will end up been a warm month for the NH.
Since it is open thread, I thought I’d submit something I wrote a while ago. Maybe it could help, maybe not.
THE EYES HAVE IT
All amateur golfers share one distinctive trait; finesse shots continually come up short. Chips don’t always get there, balls are constantly finding bunkers or water, putts fall short more often than not. “I didn’t hit it”, “I hit it fat”, “I decelerated my swing”, “The greens are slow”, “The rough caught my club”, etc, etc, etc. We have heard all the excuses, much too often. But why, if we know the reasons, do we continually commit the same errors over and over. Think about this: the excuses for a poorly executed shot are not the reason why we executed the shot poorly. The reason does not lie in the mechanics; dare to say the mechanics were probably executed about right! The problem is that your brain tells the muscles to execute a shot that makes the ball end up at the last place your eyes have focused on. Let me explain. Most golfers have decent hand eye coordination, probably better than many of us think it is. When you focus unconsciously on a spot, your brain thinks that’s where you want the ball to end up. It then instructs the muscles to hit a shot just hard enough to make the ball end up there. Remember the bunker between you and the green? You were looking at the top weren’t you! You were thinking “I just need to clear that lip” yet because your eyes focused on the top of the bunker, your brain only allowed your body to hit a shot hard enough to end up there! Leaving your putts short? I’ll bet it’s because you drag your eyes back away from the cup so that the last place your eyes focus on is right in front and that’s where the ball comes to rest! Did you want to chip just to the edge of the green and let the ball run to the cup but instead the ball ended up right where you wanted it to land on the fly? Same reason. You start your back swing with the proper speed for the shot you think you are going to hit, but the brain takes over and tells the body to slow it down because it only wants to hit the ball hard enough so it ends up where the eyes have last focused! To remedy the situation try this: the next time you must chip over a bunker do not look at the bunker at all, focus on the top of the flag stick. Take your eyes from the flag stick directly to the ball, do not let them drag back over the bunker. When putting, after getting the line, take your stance and the last thing is to focus on the back of the cup and bring your eyes directly back to the ball, do not drag them back along the line for a last look at the final break before the cup. Hitting over water? Do not look at the farthest bank and say “I just need to get it there”. Focus on the flag, take your stance, move your eyes from ball to flag to ball without looking at the water at all. NEVER look at a hazard and say “I don’t want to go there” because that’s exactly where your eyes make the brain think you do want the ball to go. It’s really a mental thing but it does take conscious effort and concentration to focus on the correct target and hold that focus until the ball is on its way.
@ur momisugly Girma: Best to post a short summary in your own words with a few pithy extracts, and a link to the article. Copying entire articles is generally frowned on by the mods; also by the feds.
Theoretically what you just did is a criminal offense with a $150,000 statutory fine and possible prison sentence in the US. Hollywood paid good money for the law to be like that. You do respect the law right?
The Colorado University Sea Level Research Group apparently uses 64 tide gauges to calibrate their satellite data. Does anyone know which 64 tide gauge stations these are?
Even though the difference in temperature of the deep ocean warming is very low, the difference in energy gain is much greater due to the parameter of heat capacity. Basically meaning that the ability to absorb heat is much lower per degree temperature rise. The difference between water and air is that water is about 1000 times better at absorbing heat. That is why 90 percent of warming is going into the oceans.
what is even more interesting is that if the surface temperature is lower than normal (a la nina) then, because energy transfer is based on the difference in temperature, MORE heat energy goes into the ocean if the surface of the ocean is cooler.
And if the surface of the ocean stays cooler than normal? well that is because the deeper ocean is always just above freezing, even in the tropics. A small increase of surface mixing will always make the surface of the ocean cooler, and lead to greater heat energy flowing into the oceans.
here is an informative video on the subject.
Remember last January when Anthony said we shouldn’t worry about unusually warm temps in northern rural areas, then he had people guess why, and said one person got it right? What ever came of that?
Kevin Kilty says:July 12, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Fifteen minutes or so of Richard Alley was quite enough
skunky says:July 12, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Kevin Kilty, You are a better man than me, I managed 4 minutes.
Ok but we WUWT regulars have presumably built up sufficient resistance to being impacted.
I managed to bounce-scroll through most of it and catch quite a bit of ludicrous stuff.
I’ll wait to see if we can collectively check it all out for the worst of the worst.
Who knows someone may watch all of it? Maybe Willis? He’s very durable 🙂