From the Anchorage Daily News, some anecdotal evidence that we may not see an ice-free arctic this summer. I had previously blogged on the lateness of a 70 degree plus day in Anchorage, and now it looks like this may be one of the coolest summers on record there. A friend of mine that I have morning coffee with who is pilot that flew to Alaska’s western side to do some fishing told me a couple of days ago that the season is the “worst ever” and he’s an Alaskan native.
Gloomy summer headed toward infamy
CHILLY: Anchorage could hit 65 degrees for fewest days on record.
gbryson@adn.com
(07/24/08 00:10:35)
So if the cold and drizzle are going to continue anyway, why not shoot for a record? The mark is well within reach, Albanese said:
MEASURING THE MISERY
In terms of “coldest summer ever,” however, a better measure might be the number of days Anchorage fails to even reach 60. There too, 2008 is a contender, having so far notched only 35 such days — far below the summer-long average of 88.
Unless we get 10 more days of 60-degree or warmer temperatures, we’re going to break the dismal 1971 record of only 46 such days, a possibility too awful to contemplate.
Still, according to a series of charts cobbled together Tuesday evening by a night-shift meteorologist in the weather service’s Anchorage office, the current summer clearly has broken company with the record-setting warmth of recent years. Consider:
• 70-degree days. So far this summer there have been two. Usually there are 15. Last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 49.
• 75-degree days. So far this summer there’ve been zero. Usually there are four. It may be hard to remember, but last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 23.
So are all bets off on global warming? Hardly, scientists say. Climate change is a function of long-term trends, not single summers or individual hurricanes.
Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it’s “unequivocal” the world is warming, considering how 11 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 13 years.
LA NINA
Federal meteorologists trace a lot of the cool weather to ocean temperatures in the South Pacific. When the seas off the coast of Peru are 2 to 4 degrees cooler than normal, a La Nina weather pattern develops, which brings cooler-than- normal weather to Alaska.
For most of the past year, La Nina (the opposite of El Nino, in which warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures occur off Peru) has prevailed. But that’s now beginning to change.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site, water temperatures in the eastern South Pacific began to warm this summer — and the weather should eventually follow.
What will it take to get the traditional media to take on stories that counter the “scientific consensus” on global warming? A traditional news source that began to run with stories of the increased level of skepticism due to papers and evidence contrary to this “scientific concensus” would seem to me to making “breaking news” with reguards to the mainstream public perception that global warming is a real event. I wonder if it will happen, and how long it will take before a news outlet does it?
REPLY: I’ve been thinking about this, and perhaps the way to do it is for us to pool all our financial resources via a donation setup, and take out a full page ad in the NYT or WaPo. It has never been done before by a skeptic group. There’s enough people on this and other blogs that we could do it without it beign a hardship for anybody – Anthony
I for one would be willing to contribute if I knew it was being setup by somone such as yourself or another equally respectible person or group. Given the potential for impact I think you could get a lot of donations. I will research the cost of such a advertisement, or a series of 4 (1 per weekend for a month). They could include carefully chosen research to present to the public as well as other data, thankfully there is no need for name calling or character attacks the data will speak for itself and I think inspire some real debate.
“REPLY: I’ve been thinking about this, and perhaps the way to do it is for us to pool all our financial resources via a donation setup, and take out a full page ad in the NYT or WaPo.”
Sounds like a plan. Count me in.
I’m in.
I’d be willing to contribute
$1,000 to help for the ad (hopefully, one that includes
$20,000 for a FOXNEWS 90 min Debate, prize money goes to the winner.
Probably a cheaper method to start with is to issue press releases via business wire. The press release will be sent to major editors, be highly web searchable and maybe written up as an article for free. Cost is anywhere from $600 to $2,500 depending on the number of editors. Number of words limit is 400, need press release format, extra money for more words. I’ll pay for the first one, if <$1,000
Do one per month and I bet it will have a significant impact. Also, remember in marketing consistancy is more important than one big splash with no follow up. It will drive a lot of hits to the website, so be prepared.
“…11 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 13 years.”
According to Hansen, that is.
Cool is weather, warm is climate. Weather is not newsworthy, climate is. It is so simple I just don’t get why you can’t see it.
The media loves sensationalism.
Claim that an ice age is coming real soon now.
Measured responses are boring to the media.
Too bad the ad wouldn’t get the same exposure in a real NEWSpaper that it would get in a VIEWSpaper like the “Rag of Record” or the WaPo.
I’ll chip in $50 for an ad.
I was about to suggest that GISS be moved from NYC to Anchorage, to give it some perspective, but who knows what sort of mischief Hansen whould get into during those long winter nights with nothing to do but tweak the data.
James A /Anthony
… yep, sirs, if GATA (Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee) could do it , why not we, too.
A problem with Anthony’s proposal is that this is a known method of advertising that groups with more money than sense, such as the Natural Law party, use. There have also been a number of perpetual motion/cold fusion company launches using this technique.
I suspect that such an advert would be a center for derision, not something that many people would read with an open mind.
I think that challenges to debate are very powerful, and I have some hopes for the APC one. It has certainly started out well for the sceptics, with an apparent ban on one side being believed, and we should make as much of that as possible. The other thing I think is useful is to ensure that any AGW supportive piece in ANY media which is obviously unbalanced should be questioned and complained about. No exaggeration, just pointing out obvious problems.
I think that we have politics on our side here. Politicians,(at least in the western world!) have been lying and spinning stats for so long and so obviously to their constituents that most people respond to any news sceptically, especially when it is presented a a ‘directive’ from on high. Perhaps I am a cynic, but I am heartened by the number of people who are simply saying “No, I don’t believe it” to all sorts of news items. The more we avoid a hectoring or threatening tone, and the more our opponents descend to ad-homs and bare-faced cheating, the better we look.
We would be in a lot of trouble if the AGW crowd were polite, actually looked at our arguments, considered them, and discussed them sensibly. Then the debate would become technical and of interest to only a few. Thank goodness, there’s not much chance of that happening soon! The general public may not be able to consider the merits of off-centred statistical techniques very readily, but they can see who is bending the rules when a debate is announced with one side subject to a red-lined directive not to believe them…
What an interesting idea. Another project for Anthony.
Suggestion – do it post-election when it’ll be noticed more. Flesh it out and do a post with an outline for a media blitz and where we can send out checks. You got my $$$.
James A (09:42:46) :
A traditional news source that began to run with stories of the increased level of skepticism due to papers and evidence contrary to this “scientific concensus” would seem to me to making “breaking news”…
I agree and this is an argument I have put forward to the BBC for example during a complaint I was making about their bais in reporting.
Re: Ad in the NYT or WaPo:
I think it depends on if Those Opposed To Hansen (TOTH) want to stoop down to his level and attempt to begin a PR war or not. (I just made TOTH up by the way, and I’m running with it!)
Certainly they’ll have the ear of the media as well as a much better budget. Any real budget funded by corporations would seem tainted, and negative PR would defeat the purpose of the whole thing. So a big budget would be out. And a small budget might not get far unless you have a news type person ready to do a story on the ad itself.
—
As to chatting up extreme seasonal events, it’s more newsworthy than AGW busting worthy, just like last winter’s warm winter in Scandinavia didn’t prove AGW. Speaking as someone from TOTH, I’ll guess that Scandinavia will have a cold winter before Alaska gets a warm summer again.
Full-page ad sounds good — count me in. Not sure how it will affect media coverage but certainly draw more public attention. The publicity can’t hurt.
John McDonald (09:55:40) $20,000 for a FOXNEWS 90 min Debate, prize money goes to the winner
The problem with debating contests is assuring fairness in scoring. You might try polling the audience but that can be heavily loaded. Witness the Best XYZ Blog polls and some of the obvious cheating. There’s an old maxim in law: never ask a question that may not give you the right answer. Polling an audience or group of judges for the winner of a debate is pretty much doing that. Not to mention that most televised debates are often decided by the personality of the participants instead of the content. Sure you’d be willing to risk $20K?
Anything to get it through to everyone!
Dodgy Geezer (10:57:42) : I suspect that such an advert would be a center for derision, not something that many people would read with an open mind.
You got that right but the real purpose behind an ad is exposure. There will be an immediate web rebuttal that will help the exposure along. Just like that gratuitous caveat posted in the APS Forum on Policy and Science. The Internet buzz that went up did more for advertising the existence of Monckton’s paper than anything else. It’s the angry buzz that we would really be after.
Don’t expect the ad itself to sway many or even affect the media stance to any degree. The Gore for 2008 group ran a full page ad but didn’t get very far with theirs. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/politics/11gore.html?ref=politics.
Note to Anthony: this ad will need to be signed by prominent AGW scientists (or at least MOR AGW scientists) to force a reaction. We need to mitigate the inevitable ad hominem attack. It does little good to point out that such an attack is logical fallacy in argument. Juries are swayed more by it than anything else.
No doubt about it, Anthony’s plan for debate is the sort of thing needed at this time. Hopefully others will do it too. I think if we were to do it, it would be important to talk about imminent and developing global cooling due to the sun, and mention Chapman, Archibald, Abdussamatov, Janssens, and those two guys (I forgot their names) who were predicting sunspots to “vanish” by 2015. It may be low to stoop to a global cooling cult level, but it is what is needed to get newspaper and TV news attention next to Hansen and Gore, if we say the world is coming to an end and we all need to panic, unfortunately. Hey, if it is a Maunder-Dalton minimum lasting ’til 2060 like Abdussamatov thinks, maybe the world WILL come to an end (71 percent kidding about the last part)!
Cold winter, now a cold summer here in Alaska. That “dusting” of snow from Wednesday was still there last time I could see the peaks on Friday. Normally we get “termination dust” early to mid August, signalling the end of summer. We’ve had snow on the peaks every month this year. I live about 45 miles north of Anchorage.
Most long time Alaskans remember summers being like this in the past, we just got spoiled the last several years. Coldest summer ever though? If gas wasn’t so expensive I’d go run the V8 for a while…
I hate to be a contrarian on this one but I for one don’t think ads or a “debate” will really get very far. I think a discussion about consequences is a better place to start, particularly in the area of biofuels.
One of the premises of the AGW debate is that the consequences of more CO2 are potentially so severe that we must mitigate this gas even on the possiblity the models are correct. There seems to be a presumption there are no negative consequences to CO2 mitigation. Biofuels are the first large scale “solution” to be applied to the global warming “problem”. It can easily be argued (and there are many references that can support it) that the US biofuels policy actually increases greenhouse gasses. You can reference comments by someone from the World Bank who claims that prices for many comodity foods have been driven up by 75% by biofuel requirements and subsidies. These costs impact the poorest most severely and there have been calculations that as many a 30 million more people are starving as a result of food and agricultral acreage being diverted to biofuels.
Europe is in the midst of a debate on biofuels that the mainstreem US media just doen’t seem to acknowledge. I think with the right kind of push, it can gain some traction here. When the negative consequences to the AGW solutions become more apparent, I think people will want to be a little more certain of climate change’s premises before they embrace them more fully.
Desist immediately. You are all guilty of climate crime here. And you, Mr Watts, you’re next.
REPLY: Thanks for the tip, I’ve posted this.
Probably a cheaper method to start with is to issue press releases via business wire. The press release will be sent to major editors, be highly web searchable and maybe written up as an article for free. Cost is anywhere from $600 to $2,500 depending on the number of editors. Number of words limit is 400, need press release format, extra money for more words. I’ll pay for the first one, if <$1,000
It would be a far better method too. An ad could easily be dismissed because it’s been ‘paid for’ and insinuations even if patently false, will be made that coal companies, etc. are behind it all. Press releases are a far better route – indeed, that’s how Greenpeace, Sierra Club, WWF, etc get their ‘news’ out and partly why they receive such favourable treatment in the media.
Either Businesswire or PR Newswire – both have pretty good reputations in the media industry. Just stay away from Marketwire – the ones behind that ‘global warming causes earthquakes’ press release. They have a decent rep in Canada, but in the States and elsewhere are pretty much bottom of the barrel. Greenspirit Strategies in Vancouver could be a good source for advice in such matters – aka Patrick Moore, the turncoat Greenpeace Founder. He’s a long time client of Canada NewsWire (CNW Group, PRNewswire affiliate).