Lest readers think I’m the only TV meteorologist to speak my mind on climate issues, there are others, such as Jym Ganahl in Columbus Ohio.
The Daily Kos posted an article here calling for this:
Columbus Weatherman is a Kooky Global Warming Denier
Contact NBC4 and urge them to send weatherman Jym Ganahl to some climate change conferences with peer-reviewed climatologists. Let NBC4 know that they have a responsibility to have expert climatologists on-air to debunk Ganahl’s misinformation and the climate change deniers don’t deserve an opportunity to spread their propaganda:
NBC 4 phone # 614-263-4444
NBC 4 VP/GM Rick Rogala email: rrogala(ATSIGN)wcmh.com
And it was all over this story in a minor weekly newspaper in Columbus, OH., reprinted below. Jym could probably use a little support right now. His email: jganahl [at] wcmh dot com
From “The Other Paper” MEDIA MORSELS: Ganahl debunks the global warming
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| Be afraid of the sun, not carbon: Ganahl, seen here with what appears to be some sort of glacier, doesn’t buy the hype |
Just when you thought it was safe to assume that everyone had pretty much accepted climate change and moved on, here comes rogue NBC 4 chief meteorologist Jym Ganahl to blow your freaking mind.
“Just wait 5 or 10 years, and it will be very obvious. They’ll have egg on their faces,” Ganahl said this week of global warming advocates.
The “global warming hoax” is an obvious fallacy, Ganahl said in a YouTube video posted Jan. 23.
In the video, taped at a meet-up of the Ohio Freedom Alliance, Ganahl chats with Dave, the self-proclaimed No. 1 biker talk show host on radio, and—still odder—Robert Wagner, a former candidate for the 15th congressional district.
Although global warming is clearly “a fallacy,” Ganahl told the dudes, “It is remarkable how many people are being led like sheep in the wrong direction.”
Evoking Orwellian mind-control power of the media, Ganahl said it’s remarkable how easy it is to panic the unwashed masses.
Ganahl continued to evangelize offline this week.
Sunspots—and not carbon emissions—are to blame for the slow warming of the globe, Ganahl said. “It has nothing to do with us.”
“When there are sunspots, like freckles on the sun—dark spots—these are like turning on a furnace and the earth warms. When there are no sunspots, it is like the furnace is in standby and the earth cools.
“I have always thought we should celebrate and be thankful we live in a time when it is warmer, not curse it,” Ganahl said. “It allows us to grow food and feed the population—and the warming is slow and we can adapt to it.”
Cold, on the other hand, is to blame for a whole host of worldly disasters, including death of the Aztecs, the Vikings, and who knew?— the bubonic plague.
“Instead of screaming global warming, we should be preaching global cooling,” he said.
But with a new president who apparently buys into the whole carbon emission demonizing scam, Ganahl said, “It’s very scary,” and admittedly “very difficult,” to fight the mob mentality.
“Carbon dioxide is what we, as people, exhale. Enough said. Unless you eliminate people, you have it. It’s food for the plants and trees,” he said.
Our local Al Gore antithesis risked his career on his wild weather heresy—sort of.
Back in 2007, the take-no-prisoners field of meteorology was split over the issue of climate change. Prominent Weather Channel meteorologist Heidi Cullen called for those who deny the so-called truth about global warming to be stripped of their American Meteorological Society credentials.
Ganahl, who just celebrated 30 years at NBC, became the youngest person to be granted the AMS Seal of Approval, by the way, back in 1970.
Cullen’s call has thus far gone unheeded, but it stirred up a mini-schism among TV weather types.
“Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms,” Cullen said in a column written for the Weather Channel.
“And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy.”
Ganahl says he has kept his anti-global warming propaganda out of your living room, but he is prepared to sell on sunspots, and their relation to warming cycles, if you ever ask.
Asked if he’s worried that he’ll take a hit among the sheep for his climate thinking, he said he’s not concerned.
“Just tell them to wait five or 10 years, and I’ll have history to back me up.”
At Leif Svalgaard
Yesterday saw the, to me, most outlandish paper abstract to date. Solar winds setting off ENSO events. What would you think of that? Earth knowing them 5 months and more in advance? Mind you the authors themselves put a big if in there, posting a plot to go with it showing some very vague alignment.
Bob Tisdale (08:52:37) :
My question, is there a similar simple ratio that could be applied to downward shortwave radiation anomaly and SST anomaly, so that I can approximate the SST increase in the Pacific Warm Pool during that period of the 97/98 El Nino?
If I read the Pavlakis paper you cite correctly, they find that 7 months before El Nino, the clouds have cleared and more sunlight reaches the applicable equatorial region, leading to several degrees heating. I’m not sure [don’t know – but wouldn’t think so] that the global ratio applies locally to that region.
Sekerob (09:27:59) :
Earth knowing them 5 months and more in advance? Mind you the authors themselves put a big if in there, posting a plot to go with it showing some very vague alignment.
If the faith is strong, some people will believe anything. I think my little calculation that shows that the solar wind throws a mass equal to a BigMac w/Fries every second at the Earth might be appropriate here for a sense of perspective.
It never ceases to amaze me that the AGW Alarmists believe they have a Divine Right to the truth on this subject and label everyone else as ‘Deniers’.
Yet their arguments are based upon flaky science which claims to support their projections. However, projections and their allies, predictions, simply support theories and they remain theories until science proves them as factual (OR NOT).
At the same time, they point derisive fingers at those who argue against them and try to rubbish the scientific facts which have proved the cyclical nature of natural climate change over millions of years!
If the two arguments were tested in a court of law, where ONLY facts are permitted in evidence, the AGW arguments would be thrown out.
So, who are the true ‘Deniers’?
While I know that the Energy from the sun is not the only factor in the earth’s climate it is still a factor and probably the major factor. Without the sun there would be no climate change as the earth would be a frozen rock in space. To say that it is not or that it is negligible seems incredible.
From what I have read I also believe that the earth’s orbit, earth’s tilt and wobble, water vapor, methane, ocean currents, plate tectonics, elevation of land masses, chemical weathering, meteorites, volcanoes, vegetation, albedo, and cosmic rays – all are climate drivers, with varying degrees of impact at different times in earth’s history.
I read recently that the percentage of carbon 14 in the earth’s atmosphere changes with solar activity levels. Is there any way to use this information to get a history of solar activity, or am I mistaken?
“I doubt there is such certainty of cause, and am sure I have read Leif Svalgaard here that there is no heat reaching earth from sunspots. In fact my memory is that Leif said sunspots are actually cooler than their surrounds”
At the risk of being overly pendantic, the Solar OUTPUT is NOT the question.
It is the complex connection between Solar wind, shielding of cosmic rays hitting the stratosphere and the formation of Cirrus clouds, finally the cascade all the way down to stratus clouds. This cause cycling change in the overall albedo because of reflection from the clouds, which has the Sun controlling the overall ENERGY INPUT and OUTPUT from the Earth. (Temperature is SUCH a canard, drives me nuts.)
If we can clear this up, and point out that those who have this “confusion” about the mechanism, and think the “Sun Controls” people are saying the SOLAR OUTPUT controls, we have gotten somewhere.
Alas, it seems there is some great confusion on this matter.
I may add, that on both sides of the issue, using the O18/016 ratio in stalagtites/mites or ice cores as a proxy for “Global Temperature” has me CLIMBING THE WALLS! It is NOT, repeat NOT a proxy for Global Temperature.
It is ONLY a record of the number of thunderstorms in costal areas. (Geologists and Oceanographers have been using these ratios to trace certain ocean currents for some numbers of years.) It is perhaps a proxy for input/output numbers on atmospheric energy (as a total, integrated). Darn, there I go again, overly technical.
M.H.
Great photo: click
Thanks M.H. for saving me the time and cycberspace. btw, stratosphereic warming, loosening Artic cold fronts on the lower latitudes (-50 new all time record low confirmed in Maine… ?) are also a consequence of the higher cosmic ray incidence caused by the lower solar flux/wind and lack of Sunspots)
The funny thing about Jym Ganahl’s myopic view is that (it would appear) that for the next 3 solar cycles, Jym will ‘prove’ to be prescient, shessh ;)) Then, of course, the higher CO2 levels will themselves prove to be forcing and delay the next ice age some, while enhancing harvests ;))
I suspect he is wrong on the sunspots, but unlike AGW followers he isn’t trying to get anyone who disagrees fired or worse.
Mark Hugoson (10:05:38) :
It is the complex connection between Solar wind, shielding of cosmic rays hitting the stratosphere and the formation of Cirrus clouds, finally the cascade all the way down to stratus clouds. This cause cycling change in the overall albedo because of reflection from the clouds, which has the Sun controlling the overall ENERGY INPUT and OUTPUT from the Earth. (Temperature is SUCH a canard, drives me nuts.)
If this was happening, the albedo should vary with the cosmic ray flux. The problem is that it does not.
Re the Oz fire comments
Same conditions as caused the big fires here in So. Calif. The logging companies were kicked out long ago, forest/brush is allowed to grow unrestricted, a period of drought ensues (periodic and normal for the area), Santa Ana winds occur, and an arsonist or careless person lights a match. Poof, soot.
Then we spend a 150 million of taxpayer’s money clearing brush and paying the lumber companies to haul off the dead trees to Utah (no lumber company in their right mind would set up a mill in CA). However, the brush grows back in a year or two max, and we’re right back where we started from. Sheer idiocy in the name of environmentalism.
Oh, I forgot. We blame the fires on Global Warming!
Leif Svalgaard,
The problem with the deniers of solar influence is they keep looking for solar scimitars when it’s solar scalpels that are influencing the balance of the climate.
No, there hadn’t been much increase in the sun’s magnetic field since the 50’s, but Dr. Solanki’s work showed that the sun’s high energy started before the 50’s, bringing it to a level that was unequalled for the the past 8000 years, and not exceeded since about 11,000 years ago. Solanki is (or at least was and I assume still is) an AGW proponent, so he wasn’t trying to prove the GCR point at all. World temperatures are cumulative and slow moving and it takes time to reach a new equilibrium.
And, over the past 50 years, one British study (again, cited in the Svensmark Cosmoclimatology paper) reviewing weather and neutron flux records found about a 17% higher chance of overcast clouds on high cosmic ray days than on low. High energy neutron flux, being without charge, is not a proxy for solar magnetism but would seem to be a weak proxy for solar wind and the existence of GCR.
Only time will tell if the recent relative crash of solar magnetic energy will have the effect of making winters colder. Or has already made this one colder.
Seems the sun deniers are lost in CO2 gas or something.
There’s nothing political about the sun behaving in cycles. There’s nothing political about the Maunder Minimum nor the Dalton Minimum. And I doubt there’s anything political about multiturdes of scientists, risking backlash from the establishment, believing the sun is a major climate driver. How can anyone be so clueless as to deny the sun’s role in climate? The solar correlation is there.
Surely Ganahl may have poorly formulated the sun’s role, giving the impression that sunspots directly drive climate change. I think he meant to say that the sun’s behaviour drives climate change (sunspots are only evidence of solar change). It’s eventually going to play out, and all the namecalling in the world is not going to change the facts.
The politics is on the AGW warmists side. They’re the ones who call out the lynch mobs and resort to the name-calling.
“forest/brush is allowed to grow unrestricted, a period of drought ensues (periodic and normal for the area), …winds occur, and an arsonist or careless person lights a match. Poof, soot. ”
Speaking of unintended consequence: Where’s Flanagan? Hope nothing improvident has befallen the layabout.
Not only as you point out, but some anonymous peer reviewers are anything but impartial in their reviews. I have read reviews which include ad hominem attacks as well as (apparently) politically inspired comments.
I suspect that if the reviewer were not anonymous and had to put his/her name to the review, he/she might tend to be a bit more careful and impartial.
Pierre Gosselin (11:29:32) :
How can anyone be so clueless as to deny the sun’s role in climate? The solar correlation is there.
I can.
So the Daily Kos is now the arbiter of the 1st Amendment?
Really disgusting, regardless of whether Ganahl’s message is “right” or not.
Regardless of what Cullen says, I have NEVER heard a TV meteorologist say anything against AGW on-air. What they say on their own time is their own business. You can disagree with it, and make your own public statement about it, but denying them their right to say it is unconstitutional.
Not entirely sold on the ‘it’s all sunspot driven’ postulation either, that’s as bad as the CO2 AGW Alarmists. From what I can make out, 1934, the ‘hottest year on record’ was the year after a solar minimum for sunspots with a monthly mean for 1934 of 8.7.
Source: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch/spot_num.txt
Yesterday was sleet and snow showers on our part of Vancouver Island, today, bright sunshine; spaceweather.com and SOHO show the sun as spotless as ever. Methinks weather and climate is a bit more complex than TV meteorologists make out. Nice to see alternative views getting media coverage though. Just goes to show that the debate is never over.
Greg Goodknight (11:20:27) :
No, there hadn’t been much increase in the sun’s magnetic field since the 50’s, but Dr. Solanki’s work showed that the sun’s high energy started before the 50’s, bringing it to a level that was unequalled for the past 8000 years, and not exceeded since about 11,000 years ago.
There is good evidence that solar activity [magnetic field] was no higher in the 20th century than in the 19th, and that solar activity at the end of the 18th was even higher than at the ‘all-time] high in 1958. This evidence has been discussed numerous times in this blog. See for example page 7 of http://www.leif.org/research/Napa%20Solar%20Cycle%2024.pdf
Leif Svalgaard
Please forgive me but you will no doubt have addressed this before:
Do you accept that there is a correlation between the length of the short term (Schwabe) cycle and temperatures on earth?
ROTFL, great typo!
Alan the Brit (08:48:44) :
On the propaganda issue, the sober thinking environmentalists, i.e. those who probably won’t resort to violence & direct action of any kind, need to be offered a way out of their predicament without the huge loss of face that would ensue if not, that would simply make them more resistant to common sense thought processes & drag the whole thing out for longer. Some people will not be able to stand the humiliation.
First, they need to admit they were wrong, and apologize.
Then we’ll talk.
Lawsuits and/or jail time for the rest.
Leif Svalgaard
Leif, what part of the Earth’s climate works independent of the radiant energy from the Sun beside the Earth’s rotational energy and the internal heat energy?
“Jym could probably use a little support right now.”
Remember, if you’re emailing, to send a copy to NBC4 (or email them and send a copy to Jym. It will help him far more to have his boss see how he is supported….