From the Sydney Morning Herald I ask: is there anything that global warming climate change can’t do? – Anthony
Forget global warming – the latest problem is global cooling.
Conservation group WWF has blamed climate change for the coldest August in Sydney for more than 60 years.
The freezing temperatures are proof of the urgent need to cut carbon pollution, according to WWF development and sustainability program manager Paul Toni.
“We can expect more extremes in climate,” Mr Toni said.
He said climate records had tumbled over the past year.
Australia had its driest May on record, Perth had its wettest April on record, and Tasmania recorded its hottest ever temperature, according to Mr Toni.
He said climate extremes were affecting southern Australia in particular.
“This is consistent with climate modelling showing the southern states will feel the effects of climate change most severely,” he said.
Mr Toni said if action was not taken, more volatile weather would be on the radar.
Gosh, Mr. Toni must be right, because, well, look, it “snowed” in Kenya last night, or at least that is what they call it in “The Nation”. See their report.
h/t to Carsten Arnholm
This is a rhetorical question, Anthony. There’s nothing that climate change isn’t responsible for. It’s a catch all, which makes any skeptics’ views just paid interference at the hands of ExxonMobilChevronTexacoBPTotalPhillipsetal.
Snow in Kenya ….?
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/466820/-/tkb4rf/-/index.html
Snow in Kenya seems on topic for this story, or what?
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/466820/-/tkb4rf/-/index.html
Freezing temperatures are proof of global warming!! Oh dear me, what is it going to take? Seems that even another Ice Age will be the fault of dreaded CO2.
“This is consistent with climate modelling showing the southern states will feel the effects of climate change most severely,” he said. — Erm- yes but that was warming not cooling I believe.
LOL, that’s all I can do. Wow, and I thought I was poorly educated and had low intelligence. CO2 is causing record cold now!!!
Many people noticed about 3 years ago that Global Warming was slowly morphing into Climate Change. As with everything else concerning “climate” this new label is problematic. For a decade, we’ve been lectured that Climate and Weather are different. According to many experts the baseline for Climate is 30 years. This baseline creates several problems for them in that they cannot use events with a shorter time span. The only parameter that they can use therefore is temperature.
Austrailian Climate Experts seem to have damned the torpedoes and have gone full bore into the “Climate Change” arena. And why not? They’ve had just as many problems with cold winters as they’ve had with drought. Global Warming probably doesn’t hold much water for farmers who have seen crops damaged due to frosts and parched earth.
The AGW Alarmists have lost control of thier narrative.
I made a formal complaint to WWF – dont expect Ill get any response
gee these alarmists must feel like their is a huge conspiracy with the environment as it keeps conspiring against them
It’s more than 20 degrees colder in Enterprise than last year and last month. It has been that way for the last 3 weeks, especially at night. The old time loggers appear to be correct. Along with the bats, bugs, and trees. Old man winter is here and will be colder than a witch’s you-know-what.
If global warming causes cooling, will global cooling cause warming? Great! So I’ll be here in my cold house tapping my fingers waiting for that warmth.
As the temperatures fall, Mauna Loa numbers continue march upwards.
its hail.. dont think it isvery uncommon.
Just once, I would like to see a prediction in advance. What kind of winter will we have? We always hear (after the fact) that the models predicted this would happen. What about before the fact?
Of course, if you predict every possible outcome, then one prediction has to be right, sweep the rest under the rug. You can also set the error bands wide enough that anything fits.
That’s hardly science.
Anthony,
We have satellite temperature data for northern and southern hemisphere. I wonder if there is a way to divide the earth into three temperature records, north, south and central? I have a feeling that a graph like that would yield interesting results.
Record low temperatures in Eureka, California, Eugene, Oregon, and across the Mountain West in the last two days. Many record-low-maximum numbers in the Northern Rockies were 5, 6, 7, 8, and even 9 degrees below previous records.
On the other hand, the “snow” in Kenya is pretty clearly hail. Maybe that part of this story could be edited, Anthony? It is better, in our ongoing conversation with the warmists, not to exaggerate on our side of things.
REPLY: The “snow” is not my word, but what the news article it is linked to says. So I edited to make that a bit clearer. – Anthony
The hoaxers would be better off to just give it up. Before long, everyone on the planet will realize “pay more in taxes and government will pretend to control the weather” is what is really going on.
In the end, the sun will win.
Well, I think this is a natural move for the AGW crowd. Since the idea of runaway global warming is unraveling before their eyes they are shifting to ‘Climate Chaos’ as the justification for their draconian efforts to impose uniformitarianism on the planet’s climate system.
‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change’ to ‘Climate Chaos’ is where they are headed. I expect to see more of this and within the month they will have college students parading around with signs saying “STOP CLIMATE CHAOS” instead of “STOP CLIMATE CHANGE”.
ScienceDaily has another article that is intended to lend support for the ‘Tipping point’ theory. I think they intended to imply that the current ‘tipping point’ danger is due to human CO2, but which, in actuality, ends up acknowledging not only is the past climate is not uniformitarian, but that it is chaotic in nature, exhibiting sudden changes in temperature. The end result is it undercuts the claims that late 20th century warming is ‘unprecedented’. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080902075735.htm
Well, the more we give socialist governments our hard earned money as taxes. The harder they will think up more and more inventive ways of spending it, then demanding more….. It’s our own fault really.
After all, it hasn’t warmed for a decade and doesn’t look like warming for another…. Yet the political acceptance for the Theory of AGW grows even more stronger…. See, it has nothing to do with climate.
Maybe I’m being pessimistic…. But I think they’re laughing at us.
They are nothing if not consistent. For years now the focus has gradually shifted to emphasize weather extremes. They would also make George Orwell proud in their ability to change history. Before this year the focus was all about warming; now they’ve created a cushion by allowing that we’ll have some slight cooling for the next decade. And let us not forget that it is the IPCC. But at some point, all those models showing projected warming will come up against cold (very cold) hard reality after a couple decades of persistent cooling.
And remember, global warming isn’t done, it’s just on hold. It’s being masked by other weather related phenomenon. So no matter what happens, even if we have many years of a cooling trend, sooner or later, you will get a warming trend, and proof, once again, that we are destroying the planet.
BTW, another term for such “snow” is graupel (also commonly spelled grauple). Quite common when temps are around the freezing point; sometimes precedes real snowfall. We had one episode last winter here in the Buffalo area where the precip kept alternating between snow, graupel, and ice – a real bear to shovel.
Mike B.,
I encourage you to do it yourself. I did. And, it is very interesting. Go to the RSS ftp site that can be found on Anthony’s resource page (look above in the masthead). Download the data into excel and graph your heart out.
Supposedly attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” I think eventually all of the people are going to wise up about global warming; that it is a big sham and lie.
Does anyone have links where WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Audabon Society, etc. are exposed? They portray themselves as champions of warm fuzzy animals, but how do they REALLY spend all those dues and donations? Hefty salaries, jet setting to lectures and seminars, as well as protecting whales from the decks of luxury, auxiliary powered sail boats?
I confess, I was suckered by them back in the day fifteen years or so ago. Now my money goes to hunting oriented conservation like Ducks Unlimited and Missouri Conservation. Not sure they aren’t selling out now too. What’s really the right thing to do?!?!
Will the last honest person leaving the building please turn out the lights?
^Sonic frog.
So we’re killing the planet. What you gonna do about it?
Pray? Not use your car? “Go Green!?” Drive a hybrid? Do a rain dance?
CO2, in millions of years prior, and now…was, is, and never will be the driver of climate.
If you’re guilty do something. But please don’t brainwash other vulnerable, ignorant people into worrying about something they can’t change.
If you were wise, you’d put your mind to other concerns. Like helping the poor, for instance. I think that’s better than willing a problem away.
But may be I’m wrong…and you’re absolutely right. Your paranoia might be the savior of our planet one day. Or a ridiculous waste of time.
Unless they’ve changed when I wasn’t looking (entirely possible), the Nature Conservancy always took a pretty good, capitalistic way of environmentalism. They purchase land with the money you give, and take it off the market from development. They’ve bought a lot of land, all over the world, and turned it into buffer zones. A pretty good plan, to me, and IMO are the only one of the major ‘environmentalist’ groups that isn’t ‘watermelon’.
I finally understand the cycle. Man made CO2 raises temperature which causes climate change and then climate chaos and then cooling so that humans must burn more fossil fuels to stay warm which increases the CO2 in the atmosphere which raises the temperature which causes climate change then climate chaos and then cooling so that humans must burn more fossil fuels to stay warm which increases……..
According to whackypedia, Nyahururu is at an elevation of 2303m. So cold temperatures there are not something completly strange. And one should not choose his clothing uniquely on the latitude where one travels, as I have bitterly found out in San‘a’ capital of Yemen (altitude 2200m and with really cold nights, near freezing)
The IPCC specifically said warming. The whole theory is based around climate models which don’t work.
Climate Change In Australia In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their fourth assessment report, concluding that: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal
http://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/
Logic no longer matters; it’s all emotional response.
The climate ‘experts’ ought to set an example by cutting their own carbon emissions …. by ceasing to exhale.
Has anyone compiled satistics on “unusual” weather events? Are they acctualy increasing (as everyone keeps saying)? I thought there was a blog entry here somewhere, but I could not find it.
The shift to Climate Change was a good tactical move on the part of the greens. They knew global warming didn’t have legs. With climate change, everything can be included, too warm, too cold, to dry, too wet, too many storms, too few storms, snow in Kenya, it all fits. If Kilimanjaro suddenly regained all its snow, it would still be a sign of climate change. The sad part is that skeptics have been saying all along that climate changes, we should have registered the trademark to keep it out of the hands of the greens.
I’m waiting for Hansen to explain how rising CO2 causes warming and cooling. We are very near a tipping point, the point where rational thought is finally and irrevocably done away with.
On another topic, Nature Conservancy in Canada still seems to be pretty apolitical on the CC and AGW front. They just keep acquiring land through purchase or donation, quietly doing their work. I’m surprised that Greenpeace and Sierra et al, haven’t condemned Nature Conservancy for their lack of alarmism.
Climatic autumn is now entrenched in Nor Cal. What it means for the next while are a series of offshore wind events and high fire danger. However, there are indications that the hemispheric flow patterns will start to change next week. By mid month, late Fall weather patterns may arise, leading to extremely early onset of the rainy season.
The warmers want it both ways; If the earth gets warmer its our fault for producing too much CO2. If it gets colder that’s our fault too and for the same reason. What happens if it stays the same? Will that be our fault too?
What a bunch of hogwash.
Well anyway I hope the population is not dumbed-down enough to believe that warming causes cooling.
“He said climate records had tumbled over the past year.”
What exactly does that mean
Good thing that Al Gore wasn’t around to save the climate in the 1930s.
We never would have had the Dust Bowl, and Steinbeck never would have written “The Grapes of Wrath.” On the other hand, he might have invented the Internet a lot sooner.
Global warming morfed into global change.
Well yes. But no.
The alarmists have been extreeemly efficient in brainwashing the whole mostly western world to believe in “Global warming Global warming”.
Their own SUPER efficient media manipulation now backfires.
Every little family now have learned “Global warming”. They cant take it back for real. Even though articles here and there now says “Global change” its just a minority that rides with that change.
No, when cooling gets massive, the great majority will hold the alarmists up to “Hey, they said global warming!!” . They cant take it back for real. Too late.
To KW, I have a strong feeling that sonicfrog was being ironic. :o)
Pamela Gray (07:01:47)
‘Old man winter is here and will be colder than a witch’s you-know-what.’
LOL I haven’t hear that saying since the 60’s. We always added sitting on a cast iron toilet.
M White (11:04:44) :
“He said climate records had tumbled over the past year.”
What exactly does that mean
Perhaps they knocked over a file cabinet? A ‘tipping point’ of sorts.
The AGW morons are confused and befuddled, desperately hanging on to their climate ideology any way they can. The “climate chaos” idea is an outward expression of what is going on in the AGW camps: chaos. Their world is splitting apart. How much longer they can keep up this charade is anyone’s guess.
Lol, It’s hail !
Quenia has many thunderstorms …
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/118604main_lightning_map_m.jpg
REsponse to Hoodlumman (06:37:24) :
In the original claims made for Global Warming there was only one natural disaster omitted…Meteor strike.
They covered all the bases from the start, so there was no way out and no where to hide.
I will no longer donate to WWF and until they pull their polar bear adds they make it easy to use them in my classroom as a bad example. I do this when talking about the interface between science and society. In this case as they are clearly an interest group that is willing to lie about science as a way to make money.
OKAY — FOR ALL OF YOU THAT NEED SOME EDUCATION:
“Climate Chao” was the term used.
I’ve read (and this was _years_ before GW was a subject) a couple of books and a few articles on chaos theory…. and, as an engineer, understand the implications of _positive feedback_.
Until you study both of these subjects a bit you have no right to an opinion on dynamic-systems, especially any involving Thermo-dynamics*.
I’ll not spend a lot of time on this in this post…. as you either already understand or won’t believe _me_. As I said, Go Read Young Man!
Pumping of more Energy (heat) into a system increases its Total Net Energy (average warming of the system = Global Warming). Dynamic systems are very often (more often than is believed even by ‘experts’) _not_ Linear (go study this one yourself). There are realms, as the net total energy in the system changes where things are not Orderly and Predictable but instead become Chaotic.
Further: It is well known by technicians, engineers, and scientists (again, before the idea of Global Warming ever entered anyone’s head) that Positive Feedback with-in a system creates Oscillations (chaos) and if left un-corrected the system will destroy itself. (You have most likely all heard this as ‘Screech-back’, ‘Howling’, or ‘Feed-back’ of a sound-system at a performance or presentation of some sort.)
We’re talking about a _VERY_ large system here!
As I said: Don’t take my word… go use your mind and do some study.
—
It is the lack of a really good general education to the populace which is truly ruining this country and this world; and especially a lack thereof on the part of our “leaders”. We are living in a technological era — if we do not understand it then ‘Our reach has truly exceeded our grasp’… and the human race will get what it does to itself.
Tnx,
Mark Shuford
*And I realize this is a _very_ scary word to those of you ignorant of it…. It has cause many a Sophomore Science/Engineering Major to change his major to one not involving Physics.
In Reply: David Segesta (11:01:10) :
“I hope the population is not dumbed-down enough to believe that warming causes cooling.”
— David S.
But it is exactly the point that the world is so dumbed-down that it doesn’t realize this.
May I ask, most politely: Do you have a technical back-ground. Do you strive to learn something new (_not_ from the newspapers or Tee-vee) every-day?
As referred to in my previous post: Chaos in “linear” systems has been well recognized and studied for many years; years which go much further back than “Global Warming” has been an issue.
In fact: IF IT WERE NOT FOR CHAOS we would, long, have been able to predict the weather! This was with relatively low levels of chaos. The more severe fluctuations now happening are due to greater chaos, caused by higher Net Energy (Heat) in the atmospheric system.
And to re-iterate: The material I read on Chaos Theory, and especially on feed-back in systems, was studied a good fifteen (15) years before ‘Global Warming’ was mentioned… and having this background, I at once recognized the significance and high probability of truth of its occurring.
Tnx,
Mark Shuford
Which “more severe fluctuations” would those be? All we’ve really done is gotten better (in some cases) at measuring. And some folks have gotten much better at exaggeration.
One of the early chaos theoreticians, Edward Lorenz, pursued chaos in a weather/climate prediction algorithm in 1961, and as much as I hate using Wiki to argue scientific concepts, the summary is perfect:
“An early pioneer of the theory was Edward Lorenz whose interest in chaos came about accidentally through his work on weather prediction in 1961. Lorenz was using a simple digital computer, a Royal McBee LGP-30, to run his weather simulation. He wanted to see a sequence of data again and to save time he started the simulation in the middle of its course. He was able to do this by entering a printout of the data corresponding to conditions in the middle of his simulation which he had calculated last time.
To his surprise the weather that the machine began to predict was completely different from the weather calculated before. Lorenz tracked this down to the computer printout. The computer worked with 6-digit precision, but the printout rounded variables off to a 3-digit number, so a value like 0.506127 was printed as 0.506. This difference is tiny and the consensus at the time would have been that it should have had practically no effect. However Lorenz had discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome.
Lorenz’s discovery, which gave its name to Lorenz attractors, proved that meteorology could not reasonably predict weather beyond a weekly period (at most).”
Mark Shuford, are you dyslexic, or simply unaccustomed to a computer keyboard and its concomitant functions?
Mark (12:57:01) :
That seems a bit harsh. Anthony does a pretty good job of encouraging people who are willing to think to post here. Compared to some of the comments I see on newspaper forums, the noise level here is pretty low. Low enough so I can ignore the truly clueless posters or point them to some introductory URLs.
BTW, I’m intrigued at your use of capitalization and hyphens. We didn’t use such decorations when I took thermo ages ago. Are you posting outside the states or had a German professor for Thermo?
I guess I understand what you say, I’ve seen several systems dependent on energy, is http://physics.ucsd.edu/neurophysics/courses/physics_173_273/Chaotic_Circuit_03.pdf what you had in mind? Kinda cute, I’m tempted to make one.
Earth is orderly and predictable? Since when?
However, I have trouble with your concern about the energy put into the Earth system, it just doesn’t seem we’ve added anywhere close the amount of energy to drive a system that has maintained the current level of chaos to something so extreme it destroys itself. We’re talking fractions of a degree. over the short term, a few degrees over a few centuries. Don’t sweat the CO2 much – its IR absorption window is nearly saturated. And don’t believe James Hansen when he talks about tipping points.
A chaotic system does not make it unpredictable, it just limits what you can predict. For example, I can’t tell you the high temperature will be on Anthony’s next birthday. However, if I knew what his birthday was, I could give a range of temperatures that will almost certainly be right.
I’m rather under the weather and not clear-headed at the moment, so I will not attempt to discuss technical points at this time; other than to point out that some view from both sides are needed. There had been some rather extreme statements from one side — I chose to make some rather extreme (but not completely un-supported) statements from the other side.
Yes I agree Anthony has done a pretty good job on balance — that can’t be said of all the posters, however. I’m trying to put some weight in the other pan.
I’m not 100%, or even 90%, sure on any of this. No on can be. We don’t have data over a long enough period — Man’s life-time is short.
It only seems clear to me that Man must have, having the capacity to do so on a large scale, contributed to un-balancing changes in some way. It seems only wise to err on the side of caution. (Besides, there are other reasons to implement change — I’ll not go into that here…)
—-
I have been heavily influenced by the German language. Also by older, more traditional uses of English. (It is also true that “Olde English” has not yet disposed of capitalization of nouns.)
I much prefer hyphenated compounds in many cases where it has become the norm to use un-hyphenated forms; I feel they are often clearer in meaning by breaking the word into its parts.
—–
As to:
“Mark Shuford, are you dyslexic, or simply unaccustomed to a computer keyboard and its concomitant functions?”
Would you wish to make yourself clear on you meaning here? Or are you simply unaccustomed to the fact that people are not readers of minds?
If, by some chance I have read your mind correctly, you may refer to my use of some small sections of ALL CAPS phrases. This is about the only way to indicate emphasis when typing something up with ascii/text only — that and under-lining, setting off with dashes, bracketing (with various punctuation marks). _I_ do not assume that everyone want to read stuff in HTML, so I do not format stuff using such; I could as well format using trof or LaTEX — would that make you happier?
If this was my correct guess, the complaint is generally aimed at Internet usage AGAINST PEOPLE WHO LEAVE THE CAPS-LOCK DOWN THE WHOLE TIME THEY ARE TYPING — THUS LOSING THE EMPHASIS WHERE IS IS DESIRED BY LEAVING NO WAY TO INDICATE EMPHASIS. (And don’t complain on that block of text — you do recognize satire, I hope.)