Guest post by Steven Goddard
On the same day when President Obama and Prime Minister Brown separately warned of imminent economic catastrophe, the new US Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu issued a different catastrophe warning. The LA Times quoted him saying ““I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he said. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.” And, he added, “I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going” either.”
This is a terrifying warning of drought, coming from a cabinet level official whom the LA Times describes as “not a climate scientist.” And perhaps a little surprising, since it was only two winters ago when the “world’s leading climate scientist” Dr. James Hansen, forecast a “Super El Niño” with severe flooding for California. Dr. Hansen has also warned of a return to wet El Niño conditions during the current year or so.
One of the commonly made claims from the AGW camp is that global warming is causing more El Niño events. Roger Pielke Sr. just did a web log on this topic.
El Niño Impacts: Weaker In The Past, Stronger In The Future?
“What about the future of El Niño? According to NCAR senior scientist Kevin Trenberth, ENSO’s impacts may be enhanced by human-produced climate change. El Niños have been unusually frequent since the mid- 1970s.
El Niño is famous for bringing copious amounts of rain and snow to California. I have spent several El Niño winters in the Bay Area where Dr. Chu lives, including the big one in 1998 when the rain was nearly continuous for months. Living Redwood trees were sliding across Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz mountains. I remember a wonderful weekend in LA in February, 2005 during their second wettest winter on record when they received six inches of rain in three days. It didn’t stop pouring for five seconds the entire weekend. According to NOAA:
(LA 2005) had its 2nd wettest rainfall season since records began in 1877 and the wettest season in 121 years. Over 37 inches of rain (37.25) fell downtown, just failing to reach the record 38.18 inches set during the 1883-1884 rainfall season. Average wet season rainfall for LA is 15.14 inches, making the 2004-2005 season 246% wetter than the 1971-2000 normal.
Snowfall in the Sierras is also normally high during El Niño years. Below is a graph of Lake Tahoe snowfall from 1918-2008 – official data taken from here. Not much of a trend, except to note that the Dust Bowl in the 1930s was dry, as Steinbeck and the Okies observed.
From: this spreadsheet El Niño years bring lots of water to the cities, farms and reservoirs, and allow for periods of high agricultural productivity. So I am not sure what it is that we are supposed to be terrified of – famously dry La Niña years in California, or famously wet El Niño years caused by “global warming?” The official horror story morphs so fast, it is often difficult to keep up. Reading Steinbeck, one might get the impression that dry periods are part of the normal climate cycle in California, rather than a recent invention caused by the burning of fossil fuels. President Roosevelt said at the time – “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.“Heavy rain and snow is forecast for California today.
Perhaps we now have the “Chu Effect” working in concert with the Gore Effect?
From weatherstreet.com
DJ Said:
I think you mean climate change don’t you. That’s the new in term among the hysterical alarmists.
The funny thing is that the last time I was back in Australia the country folk I spoke to said that things are looking like they did back 60-70 years ago.
There are some folks who have got a clue out in the country. Now I understand their distrust for those city-bred smarty pants.
“” E.M.Smith (16:16:55) :
gary gulrud (14:28:37) : Looks like I’m an amateur attempting banter with professionals.
Now wait a minute. I’ve been called a lot of things, but rarely ‘professional’. I insist you take that back or buy me a beer! ;=}
(liked your McCabe PDO cite, btw) “”
“Professionals” do not have jobs; they have “practices”, and they practice on their “clients”.
And since they are just practising, they aren’t too good at it; so no “professional” will ever give you a money back guarantee. Further evidence of their expertise, is that they have to have malpractice insurance to cover their a*** when they screw up.
Then finally, professionals are always protected by laws that prohibit you from horning in on their racket, and trying to “practise” yourself. So if you don’t belong to their club, you will be prosecutred for practising without a licence.
So don’t ever call me a professional; my stuff has to work or I get fired. If my customers don’t buy my products of their own free will; we go broke, and I get fired.
the mineral from which asbestos comes is common in the hills around here. I’ve sat on a big chunk of the stuff.
I can’t remember the fibrous rock in that area. Is that chrysotile?
In Colorado, the only thing we like about southern California is that it is down stream. (when we flush) I still remember the Left coast suing us over water from the Colorado River. (so they could flush)
I have trouble sympathizing with a state that waters the medians of it’s freeways. If God wants our medians green, He makes it rain.
We do have our own nutcases. High plains desert and Blue grass do not mix. My neighbor spills more water down the storm drain whenever he waters his lawn than I use in a month. His yard looks better. My bank account looks better. See comment about green medians above.
Xeriscape. Green. Conservation. As in conserving small pieces of green paper with pictures of dead presidents and statesmen.
Too simple a concept for most politicians.
Graeme Rodaughan (04:45:55) :
Added my warming is a myth vote.
DaveE.
E.M. Smith, re
“(Sidebar: the mineral from which asbestos comes is common in the hills around here. I’ve sat on a big chunk of the stuff. We also have cinnabar that seasons a local river with mercury (fishing prohibited), that runs into the bay, that people fish in,…”
Yup, that asbestos is wicked stuff…I have some dealings with that as an attorney…mostly construction-related. Contractor goes excavating in dirt then hits some of that and people nearby sue just in case they breathed a little bit.
We also have people down here who fish in creeks where signs are posted saying do not fish-water is not clean; and people swim in lagoons near Malibu where the green scum is also brown…
Retired Engineer
I also wondered about why California wastes water on the freeway medians and sides when I first moved out here. Then found that it is part of that P3 recycling plan: the water is from a poop-processing-plant effluent. Also, it is used to water golf courses, and by law all dust-control watering during construction must use recycled water, if available. No kidding, folks. That P3 recycle is everywhere.
We had a construction job where the union workers threatened to walk off because they discovered that the dust-control water was P3 effluent. The owner caved and used potable water. The P3 effluent water is unmetered and free, but the owner had to pay for the potable water. The workers were concerned that they would get very ill from the water spray entering their eyes and lungs, and into shallow cuts that most construction guys have on their hands.
And all that median-watering helps to consume CO2 from our ever-warming atmosphere. In fact, the man-planted greenery in So Cal should make every warmist happy…we are doing our part to counter the deforestation in other parts of the globe. We have a town called Woodland Hills, with lots of trees. I met a lady whose dad developed Woodland Hills, and planted the thousand and thousands of trees where there was nothing before.
I wonder if we will see any increase at Mauna Loa’sCO2 measurements later this summer, as California grows zero crops due to insufficient water, and the CO2 remains in the sky. 😉
Can we sue the State Water Department for failure to provide water, thus contributing to global warming? 😉
John Galt (08:28:08) wrote: BTW: Shade trees are a wonderful thing. In the summer, the leaves help keep the sun off your home…
And maybe add the new research, John, which shows leaves have an inbuilt capacity to monitor and control their own temperature, thereby creating a cooler zone below them in hot weather. (“Magic” is as nothing compared to the wonders of natural things.)
Tree leaves control their own temperature
>I think you mean climate change don’t you. That’s the new in term among the hysterical alarmists.
Climate scientists have always talked of climate change AND global warming.
It is the “sceptics” who made the big switch in response to research by Luntz who worked for the republican party. Thanks to the internet the truth is know by those who care to look (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange).
Your understanding of history and terminology is worse than the climate knowledge I see here.
>There has been global warming since the last Ice Age, when Chicago was buried under a mile of ice.
CO2 went up from 180 to 280ppm over that period. That explains a large part of the warming.
This is document extensively in the peer review climate science literature.
malcolm (12:52:13) :
Very good, that’s exactly what you’ll read about in http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?ref=rss&a=151 – an article by Joe D’Aleo on “Pacific Decadal Oscillations Closely Tied to ENSO”. He also has found that global temps correlate better with the PDO than with CO2. Expect 30 years of cooling….
White slows the radiative transfer, keeping the house interior temp more stable. Black increases transfer, so temp swings more inside. As far as the sides of the house, most of the time each side isn’t in sunlight, winter or summer (especially at night), so we lose more heat than we gain with black. With white, less gain in the short sunlight time, less loss in the long darkness.
Congress should pass a law mandating white roofs and white walls. Or would that be racist? Insensitive at least. Maybe green.
I recall several decades ago, I was reading up on solar water panels, and an article said that dark green paint was as effective as black. Placing my hand on different colored cars in a sunny Houston parking lot, I’d say that’s about right. Pearlescent white is the coolest.
Has anyone seen this yet? Met O announces global cooling to 2014.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/4534358/Snow-Britain-Further-snow-and-ice-forecast-for-rest-of-the-winter.html
“Despite global warming there could be further colder-than-average winters in the years ahead as the climate cools naturally, the Met Office believes. Mr Britton said that the last 10-year assessment – carried out in 2004 – suggested a decade where global warming would be held back by a natural cooling trend. But beyond 2014 the climate will resume its warming trend, he said.”
If that really came from Met O it is the biggest whopper they’ve come up with yet.
In August 2007 after a failed “prediction” in January and again in April for the warmest year on record, Met O stated:
“Climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre will unveil the first decadal climate prediction model in a paper published on 10 August 2007 in the journal Science. The paper includes the Met Office’s prediction for annual global temperature to 2014.
Over the 10-year period as a whole, climate continues to warm and 2014 is likely to be 0.3 °C warmer than 2004. At least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record”
The emperor has no clothes.
E.M.Smith (14:42:47) :
Guess what: About that time, they fell off a sunspot peak like we are now. (I know, I’m risking setting off a Leif Bomb 😉 They fell off a local peak about 1870-80 and into a dip.
1880 is an interesting period…there is a left over angular momentum disturbance from the Dalton group of 3 (the first one fired, the second fizzled) but it looks like SC12 could have been a single cycle grand minimum that has certainly happened in the past.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/files/2008/12/ultimate_graph2.jpg
I can’t remember the fibrous rock in that area. Is that chrysotile?
Asbestos forms in Serpentine, along the Great Serpentine belt in the Mother Lode. Most asbestos in Ca. is long-fiber.
You cannot mine the stuff because there are chrome kidneys that are classified as strategic minerals in the Serpentine. So we import our chrome from Rhodesia last I checked (10yrs ago).
So we had asbestos mined that was short-fiber, the one that is dangerous to breathe.
See what happens when government acts because it looked good on paper?
AGW is an accident looking for a place to happen.
Just don’t paint your cedar shingles with latex paint, they will surely rot as moisture is trapped underneath the plastic paint.
Contractor love ignorant homeowners who paint their redwood or cedar decks with latex. They can see the money forming before their eyes.
DJ: “It is the “sceptics” who made the big switch in response to research by Luntz who worked for the republican party.”
Thanks for that link. I had a suspicion that focusing on ‘climate change’ rather than ‘global warming’ was a sceptic strategy, since we are often treated to such claims as ‘the climate is always changing’, which suggests an underlying meme.
Whatever the case, this accusation is an interesting case of projection and scapegoating. A sceptic invents the strategy, and the blame is then transferred to the warming side.
On the warming side, the IPCC has been in existence for almost 20 years now, so the phrase ‘climate change’ as a synonym for ‘anthropogenic climate change’ is hardly new. It’s hard to see how sceptics could overlook this fundamental fact.
Smokey says:
In addition to DJ’s note that rises in CO2 did indeed have something to do with the warming since the last ice age, it is also worth noting this: If your logic is to attribute the warming in the 20th century to still being due to warming out of the last ice age, we could note that if we had warmed for the last ~15,000 years since the last global maximum at a rate of ~0.7 C that was seen in the 20th century, then the Earth’s average temperature would be somewhere around or a little bit above 100 C, i.e., the above the boiling point of water, by now!
Ric Werme: Brilliant. Thanks heaps.
But I’m shocked. It’s pretty clear then that a good part of the 1950-2000 temperature trend has nothing to do with carbon forcing, and is due to PDO/ENSO interactions.
To ignore that, and attribute all the recent trend to carbon forcing, seems like unbelievably sloppy science. A classic case of model mis-specification. I can’t imagine even a bright second year econometrics student would make that mistake.
Or have I missed something? I’d hate to think AGW trend estimates were reliant models with such a basic error. Is there a trend estimate that has the PDO/ENSO component removed? Surely that would be a basic and essential building block for a credible policy making.
That’s exactly the Obama, enc., strategy as we speak, concerning the “stimulus” package qua “agenda”. It’s urgent, but most especially for those pushing it:
The only important thing for today’s LIberals [Faux Liberals] is The Agenda in itself, totally apart from anythng else, such as real effects – importantly including the untoward side-effects of The Agenda as applied.
If The Agenda is “moved forward”, they are “making progress”. If The Agenda is achieved, then they “win”, thus allegedly making themselves meaningful as existent beings. That’s really the important thing to Faux Liberals about pursuing The Agenda – making themselves [seem/feel] meaningful, in the face of being alive and thus having to live.
Unfortuneately, this tactic never achieves the satisfaction or placitude they seek, so they must keep doing the same sort of thing over and over, obsessively, kind of like a super bad “Groundhog Day” scenario.
It’s got to be Hell in there for a Faux Liberal “mind”. It’s bad enough for the rest of us on the outside who then have to deal with the practical effects of The Agenda.
It riles the experts to say so, buit I have seen white-painted weatherboard (clapboard USA?) houses still standing after a bushfire (wildfire USA) has gone through and eaten every other house of various other materials for breakfast…
Dunno quite why these experts get so het when this little piece of bush lore is mentioned.
Mr Chu appears to be taking the most extreme AGW predictions and running with them. That is most alarming. In a Westminster system, his job would equate to a top government minister? Sounds like he’s bought the whole story, and has effectively given up hope of any possibility of remedial action, the situation is so critical. Funnily enough, I can still find California oranges here in my local supermarket in Australia.
Also concerning the Trenberth. This is what he says:
” While our exploratory analyses are suggestive and form useful hypotheses for future work, climate models do not yet simulate El Niño well enough and are too different from each other to have any confidence in their projections.”
DJ Said:
You got one thing right. I am an AGW sceptic.
Both climate change and warming since the last ice age are facts of life, but I have a great deal of doubt that CO2 has anything to do with either.
I put my name to my statements.
I see you lack both the courage and decency to do the same.
Brendan H,
There is no skeptic ‘strategy,’ other than to say: prove it. Prove your AGW. Or at least provide strong empirical evidence that AGW has measurably forced the climate out of its natural historical variation. The status quo has nothing to prove; AGW believers do. That is called the Scientific Method. I swear, you folks must live in your own little bubble, believing that the status quo needs to falsify the new hypothesis on the block.
It is the other way around. The AGW hypothesis has the burden of falsifying the accepted theory that the climate varies naturally within its normal historical parameters; so far, it has failed to show this.
To repeat once again, it is up to the purveyors of any new hypothesis, such as AGW, to show convincingly that their newly invented conjecture is more credible than natural climate variation.
Runaway global warming promoters have abjectly failed to provide any solid, empirical evidence [computer models don’t count] to advance their AGW/CO2/climate catastrophe agenda.
But you folks did succeed in one thing: agreeing with the skeptic position that AGW is political, by bringing ‘republican’ into an otherwise scientific discussion.
And Joel… please. I see what you did there. By framing your argument that “at a rate of ~0.7 C that was seen in the 20th century,” you want us to assume that the .7 degree rate has been a uniformly consistent rise throughout the past 11,000 years. Don’t be silly. The fact that the .7 degree increase was almost completely retraced back to the long term trend by the end of 2008 falsifies that premise. Global temps are now at their 1980 level. Do I have to provide yet another chart?
RC would welcome you with open arms. But folks here at the “Best Science” site [which trounced RC by almost 10 – 1] own your failed AGW/CO2 hypothesis.
You’re not making any headway. Time to stop digging that hole.
Brendan H wrote:
I had a suspicion that focusing on ‘climate change’ rather than ‘global warming’ was a sceptic strategy, since we are often treated to such claims as ‘the climate is always changing’, which suggests an underlying meme.
You don’t like “climate changes”? How about Historical Variability: ice age to Roman Optimum. It’s up to the warmists to prove that the current conditions are unnatural and catastrophic.