Quick post, I’m in between sessions here in Washington DC.
Dr. Richard Lindzen just gave a keynote talk on climate sensitivity and the state of climate science. Here is the powerpoint below:
Powerpoint link, “hot off the press” so to speak, minutes old.
More later
George E. Smith (10:09:46) : My second discomfort is the very subject of Prof Lindzen’s talk; “climate sensitivity” which evidently is a creation of Arrhenius himself, who blessed us with his CO2 global warming thesis.
CS is (apparently) the increase in surface temperature (maybe lower troposphere ?) caused by the “forcing” due to doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Well, my discomfort begins right at the word “forcing”. When I took physics there was no force, energy, whatever named “forcing”. What thing is it? As soon as the word “forcing” hits the stage, we are subject to the preconceived notion that it can not be resisted, whatever it is. Personally (while I know it’s too late to ever be done) I would just love to purge the whole debate of the word “forcing” and “force” people to speak in terms of defined energies and properties of matter…
Just what, exactly, is the physical property that is “forcing”?
There isn’t one.
The New Zealand May figures are out, supporting what several of us have observed anecdotally in a number of posts. The forecast is for yet another snow event in the next few days. Most unusual. Dunedin has recorded some record rainfall totals and several stations report precipitation of nearly three times the ‘long-term average’.
“Much of New Zealand shivered last month in the lowest recorded May temperatures.
The national average temperature of nine degrees was 1.6 degrees below the long-term average for May.
NIWA says extremely low temperatures, between two and 2.5 degrees lower than normal, were recorded over most of the South Island, lower parts of the North Island, King Country, Waikato, Auckland and parts of Northland.
Most other locations experienced well below average temperatures between 1.2 and two degrees lower than normal.”
It felt like it!
Full story here.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/record-cold-in-may-and-more-chill-come-2766669
May 15th climate outlook till fall on this site
http://www.capecodweather.net/climate/198-climate-forecast-system/810-may-15th-climate-forecast-system-outlook
Not much global warming for the rest of the year, the model shows below normal temps. forecast for June/July/August in the central US, the May 1st Forecast showed above normal temps. in Alaska until that all changed with the latest revision, above normal temps. are forecast for the southwest, after the summer there won’t be much deviation from average over much of North America
I think there is another “it” but it is decidedly lacking in blood (no Sun and no CO2) and therefore will not get a front page cover. The Sun is romantic and has far more front page”ness” than, say, the Earth-bound quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) of the mean zonal wind, which in turn is thought to be sourced from equatorial wave events like the Kelvin Wave, equatorial Rossby, Rossby-gravity, or inertia-gravity waves, as well as mesoscale gravity waves. What is not clear, but is being investigated and reported on, is the relative distribution of these various drivers on the QBO. This is a plausible mechanism that can be followed like a crumb trail to ENSO, PDO, Jet stream behavior, and weather pattern variation. All these drivers of drivers of drivers of weather pattern variations are by and large a self-contained system of variation and oscillations. Yes, the Sun provides a constant energy source and a very small amount of energy variation (so small that it is not necessary to include the mathematical equivalent in the equations being proposed). But it is the Earth and its complex system of drivers that is begging for discussion, and has the chops to stand up against the far weaker AGW theory.
But if we want to go there, it won’t be easy. The article I am reading is HEAVY READING and I will likely need a tutor just to get past the introduction. Or maybe even crayons.
Squidly (10:55:36) :
Milwaukee Bob (09:51:23) : … What we need to be doing is spending our personal energy on independence from “them”, not trying to prove them wrong, scientifically. And by “independence” I mean food, water AND energy.
Bob, you could not be more correct! You are absolutely right on this! We need to remove ourselves from “them”, and let “them” bring themselves down.
Well, at the risk of starting a competition for my local yard waste… Every time it’s trash day I see all the power I need for the whole house just sitting around waiting to be fed to a home brew gasifier…
http://www.gekgasifier.com/
has an “open source” project to do just that and has a car powered by one. I have the sporadic fantasy of a car with one of these in the trunk with a well painted white filler spout poking up labeled “Mr. Gasifier” 😉 with me filling up at the neighbors yard waste pile…
There is even case law that says once trash is set out it belongs to no one (you have no right to privacy in your trash…)
In this picture:
http://www.gekgasifier.com/wp-content/gallery/v3-0/gekv3_fullfrontw_auger.jpg
The white thing in the background is a Capstone Microturbine generator from the looks of it. I think it’s a 30 kW job and takes darned near any quality gas. So you can power you home and business with one if you wanted to… (Capstone also sells a combined heat and power kit along with a ruggedized version for use at sea on oil platforms. I have no idea the cost, I just own a bit of their stock from time to time and think they have a cool gizmo).
So, ball is in your court. Energy independence is yours if you want to buy / build it. Well proven technology and readily available parts. Again, I don’t know the cost; but old style gasifiers were not much more than an iron tube with a grate, some fire brick in it and a fan or two.
The old way: http://www.gengas.nu/byggbes/index.shtml
I just walked in the house from the Heartland Conference today where I heard the guys speak! And I walk into the Earth 2100, WOW!
Adolfo Giurfa (17:21:59) :
PeterS (15:37:16) : Really great! LOL
If we take temperature data from the nineties we could ‘prove’ that the sales of mobile phones give a strong correlation with global temperature and therefore the phones caused global warming.
Wait. Did HE invented the mobile phone, as did with the internet?
OMG! plot the growth of the internet vs AGW !! IT’S ALL GORE’S DOING!!!
Clearly the internet causes AGW! 😉
Wait a minute. This gasifier thing. My great-grandfather had one! But for some reason his was tucked away in the hills. It produced gas for the car and his afternoon cocktail.
I just walked in the house from the Heartland Conference today where I heard the guys speak! And I walk into the Earth 2100, WOW!
I watched bits and pieces of that while my mate channel surfed. What a crock.
Purakanui (19:08:09),
Degrees C or F?
MattN (12:51:02) :
“With media coverage added to the mix, any attempt to falsify AGW, no matter how well done, will have little power. ”
So, someone like FoxNews needs to “buy in” and promote this
Most of the media is just interested in a ‘good’ story in order to sell newpapers etc. The AGW camp has been giving them what they want, nothing sells better than a good disaster. Most of the media is not going to be interested in the sceptic side which is saying, the climate is normal there’s nothing to worry about. Until we can find some scandal to report e.g. getting someone high up in the IPCC to admit privately that it’s all a con, then the media won’t be that interested.
Meanwhile, it looks like our pets are doomed as well!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5429593/Climate-change-could-kill-your-pet-warns-the-RSPCA.html
Jumping to the ground, almost with one motion, Perkin shoved the head of the sledge into the track gear of the tank; the tread stopped suddenly, and as Perkin leapt out of the way, the tank swung around in place, unable to move forward. . .
The problem, for the Realists, is that there is an armada of Alarmist tanks, and only a few, poorly-armed Perkins.
However. . .
Surely there are a few rich Realists and/or friendly organizations (like Heartland, AEI, etc.) who could start ponying up some bucks to get Realist climate programs on TV, on a regular basis, enough to start to counteract the flood of alarmism. The message has to be:
“Man is not affecting the climate. It is a FALSE ALARM! CO2 is good for plants, good for the Earth, and good for you! The Alarmists are trying to steal your livelihood, and the future of your children! Don’t let them get away with it!”
Enough exposure to this message, and people might start to question their representatives. It would be the equivalent of putting sledge hammers in the treads of a lot of Alarmist tanks.
But would it be enough?
A dire prediction indeed. But although the Alarmist armada appears overwhelming, there is still a chance for the Realist resistance to stop it. It will take a concentrated campaign, and it needs a prominent leader, a spokesman whom the media cannot ignore.
Who will step up?
/Mr Lynn
It’s summer.
It’s summer in California.
It’s summer in California and it’s supposed to be 80F and dry with the AC going.
I just pulled the patio furniture in and did the check for what’s closed up.
Why?
It’s 59F at a bit before 9pm and it’s started to sprinkle. You know, start of rain. We just don’t DO that here, now.
You want to know what’s the bazooka that will take out the AGW thesis? Folks scrambling from rain and snow, when it supposed to be warm and dry in California and not yet snowing in New Zealand.
When the average Joe & Jane Sixpack is saying WTF is this doing messing up my day? It sure isn’t warm. It has a visceral impact…
GW my wet patio! Now I’m just hoping it doesn’t turn into a hard rain and stays a trace / sprinkle… (And I was all set to go out and enjoy a nice Radeberger Pilsner watching the sun set… )
How did Anthony’s presentation go? And all the others? I’ll look for a thread on it tomorrow. All will be at this page eventually :
http://www.heartland.org/events/WashingtonDC09/proceedings.html
Regards,
The commenter formerly known as ‘Just Want Truth…’
Smokey (18:25:53) : Tell me that’s not photoshopped!
Pamela (lots): I guess the other thing that would be useful is a theory that defined every Jan01 to be exactly the same as every other Jan01 second by second and so on throughout the days of the year….oh, wait hang on,,,damn leap year…. ok ok I’m sure we can work this out… etc etc 🙂
E.M.Smith (19:05:30) :
It’s the thing on the other side of a nonhomogenous differential equation. That’s the “forcing,” which usually corresponds to the “force” that drives the system.
A note or two on the Orange County Register piece.
Since the publication of the City Heat piece last August,
I have been working with the OCR on controlling the
publication of AGW fantasies. The various editors there
know all three OC temp. stations are bad, and that the
main Santa Ana station is among the worst anywhere.
About a month or so ago I got an agreement that the
OCR would publish something like all of you saw today.
My most recent suggestion, but no agreement yet, is
for a followup piece this coming August. Suggested
title is “City Heat: Not So Hot”.
Working with the OCR is not so hard. Now the
LA Times, that is another thing.
In the interest of fullest disclosure:
I am both a customer of and a supplier to the OCR.
Occasionally they even publish some of my writing.
E.M.Smith (18:39:10) :
> FrancisT (09:41:38) : I’ve taken out what seems to be the key graph of Dr Lindzen’s presentation at my blog.
> http://www.di2.nu/200906/02a.htm
> Thank You! Those of us with a house full of Macintosh and Linux boxes but sans Micro$oft Powerpoint appreciate being able to see what this posting is about ….
http://www.openoffice.org/ has gotten fairly good at handling PowerPoint, it handled Lindzen’s .ppt fine for me.
——
slowtofollow (21:27:12) :
> Smokey (18:25:53) : Tell me that’s not photoshopped!
It is, and is from a competition. It’s actually a submarine console,
see http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp
Mr Lynn (20:34:11) :
A dire prediction indeed. But although the Alarmist armada appears overwhelming, there is still a chance for the Realist resistance to stop it. It will take a concentrated campaign, and it needs a prominent leader, a spokesman whom the media cannot ignore.
I must admit to being overly pessimistic at times, but array of forces who’ve got glowing dollar signs in their eyes from the potential profits of carbon demonization is large and firmly in control of the process. 33,000+ scientists dissenting from the prevailing view have barely made a ripple. At this point the only response that might have a chance at derailing this thing is a presentation by coalition of comedians like Drew Carey, Penn & Teller, and others that would highlight the ludicrousness of investing trillions of dollars and large aspects of our personal freedoms and financial prospects on the slim chance that we might save people a hundred years from now from some bad weather. Fighting this in the arena of peer reviewed science and logic is like going allin against a cold deck. They control all the cards. But the pomposity, hypocrisy, covetousness, and hysteria of Gore, Hansen and the political class on this is rife for ridicule and if the presentation is made funny enough, they will be hard pressed to keep it from receiving wide exposure. On the other hand, people have been making fun of political correctness for many years and it still hangs like the Sword of Damocles over every aspect of our lives, but there I go again….
Excellent talk by Lindzen. Excellent comments, sparked by Pamela.
Rebutting the “science” of AGW is important. WUWT is very good at that. Ditto “getting the message out.”
But the problem is essentially a political one. There is only one effective way to deal with political problems (unfortunately), and that is to organize political opposition.
Good science can be helpful, media efforts like this blog can be helpful, but the bottom line is that political power grows out of organized (unified, single-voiced) people. There need to be groups formed and meetings attended. Small numbers will not suffice. There needs to be a critical mass of organized opposition.
I think there is a root problem infesting the whole of Science. It’s never been absent but over recent years it’s got a lot worse and has affected Climate Science most of all. And you see it in Wikipedia’s handling of anything “fringe”. Abuse, misrepresentation, personal attacks of anyone challenging “the System” – all the really interesting material gets this treatment. Thus I realized that even here at wonderful WUWT, certain topics were off-limit (probably, quite reasonably, to protect the Climate Science material which is already under enough fire). CSICOP has a lot to answer for in this respect. But CSICOP just represents the tip of the iceberg.
Those who realize the materialistic dead-end into which Science has been painting itself, go through private, individual paradigm-shifts – and go into the desert like Moses, or disappear elsewhere into one of these “fringe” areas – like Rudolf Steiner, or what Lynne McTaggart writes about in “The Field”. Brilliant scientists there.
Meanwhile, we all see a “dark age of Science” gradually encroaching what used to be fertile pastures. And yes, Thatcher had a big hand in this… by cutting research grants from everything except research promoting AGW… in whatever field it might happen to be.
My own skeptics’ Climate Science primer (click my name) was written to stem this tide. But after a year of doing Climate Science, I’m now convinced we need the Solar System Barycentre thesis on board if we are ever going to understand the driving forces of Climate (not Weather) – and I now think that we cannot understand the mechanisms whereby the SSB works without a paradigm shift into hyperdimensional physics (Zero Point Field stuff). But that’s TWO paradigm shifts away from WUWT, keeping company with even more heretics, and I haven’t written it up because other work calls!
Purakanui (19:08:09),
Degrees C or F?
C, we have been wholly metric for many years now
Innocentiousxii;-)
It’s called “Climate Change”! So if the climate system warms, they’re right, if the climate system cools, they’re right! Heads I Win Tails You Lose! However I do agree that a significant cold spell will concentrate the grey cells of all concerned.
Adam Soereg;-)
If we show that the surface temperature record is flawed, we remove THE most important card from the house, beacuse the satellite data show little or no warming in the lower troposphere!
Lief Svalgaard;-)
Interesting comment about Solar angular momentum & the fact that this phenomenum will take billions of years to take effect. It’s similar to the observations that the Moon, which keeps us on our angular tilt, is moving away from the Earth at a rate of 50mm per year, (no one has said whether this could be a cyclical motion – excuse the pun) & some clever chap has calculated that in 2½ billion years, the Moon will be so far away that the Earth will either tilt to the vertical, of turn horizontal. As if I am worried about that, or the Solar angular momentum issue at that time frame.
Adam Soereg:
“Any model which is completely relying on the theory of man-made global warming .. can not be used as ‘proof’ for the very same theory. ”
So true.
K.R. Frank
If we are looking for targets to lampoon, what about Generation Investment Management LLP? This business was set up by Al Gore and David Blood a former Goldman Sachs asset manager to exploit the fears about AGW which Gore promotes.
The company should be called “Blood and Gore”. Let’s call it that!
Regards
Stoic