Reprinted here by request from Harold Ambler – Anthony
What follows is an open letter to the Salon writer Peter Dizikes, who recently published an article about a new book by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt on climate change.
The water level of Lake Powell, like that of all reservoirs in the American West, has fluctuated since the day it was dammed.
Dear Mr. Dizikes:
I recently saw your overview of Gavin Schmidt’s new book as well as your interview with him on Salon.
I was surprised to see that you consider the effects of manmade global warming to be “oddly invisible.” Having studied the subject for a couple of years now, while performing my own research, it has been my observation that newspapers, magazines, and television news sources show images of supposed manmade climate change on a daily basis. Such images include: floods, polar bears, glacial calving, etc. If anything, images of global warming might be said to saturate western media.
As with so many other products generated by the AGW industry, Schmidt’s book Climate Change: Picturing the Science is part of an ongoing effort to frighten the credulous. Its messages include: weather will kill you, our moment on Earth is unique, climate did not used to change.
Had you wanted to fulfill the responsibilities of an objective and hard-hitting journalist, you might have asked Schmidt about the image of Lake Powell on his book’s cover book. Now, of course, we are all told never to judge a book by its cover – but this is a visual book that demands to be judged on visual terms. There are a lot of people, unfortunately, who don’t know enough about the facts to perform this kind of analysis themselves. Failing to do so for them is a pity.
Were you aware, may I ask, of the controversial nature of the damming of the Colorado River that led to Lake Powell? Environmentalists were and are appalled by this particular dam. It has changed an important piece of the American natural landscape. But, like all manmade dams on Earth, it has changing water levels. Dammed lakes in the American west are particularly prone to fluctuating water levels, within single years, year to year, and on the decadal level. Water use varies as well, although it can be counted on to slowly increase. Using an image of lowered water level on Lake Powell, which is a reservoir, sitting in a desert, to indicate anything about climate change is perverse. I would even go to far as to call it anti-science.
The assumption that industrial production of co2 has altered precipitation patterns is exactly that, an assumption. Further, what you are going to find, in the next decade, is that global temperatures are going to remain flat (as they have since 1998) and/or start to decline. What you are also going to find is that science writers in the American media establishment are going to peel off, one by one, from the AGW heterodoxy.
Group-think has affected many societies negatively, and it has not disappeared during our own time. The fact that neither Mr. Schmidt’s editor, nor his publisher, nor you, nor the photographer, nor Mr. Schmidt himself would stop to reflect on the oddity of this cover is enough to give one pause.
Sincerely yours,
Harold Ambler
When the Colorado River Compact apportioned water rights to the upper (CO, NM, UT, WY) and lower (AZ, CA, NV) basin states, it over-estimated (16.4 maf/yr)
the annual flow. The average is actually 13.5 maf/yr, with a minimum of
4.4 maf/yr.
Water scarcity is built into the system.
Jerry Haney (13:23:57) ………..Here’s something from the present, that will help raise water levels in Lake Powell.
DUST STORMS SPEED SNOWMELT IN THE WEST
“An unusually high number of the (spring dust) storms has left a film of dust on the Rocky Mountain snowpack…This could be the new normal, scientists say.”
“The storms leave a dark film on snow that melts it faster by hastening its absorption of the sun’s energy. That, coupled with unseasonably warm temperatures, has sped up the run-off here…”
“…dust can speed up snowmelt by as much as 35 days.” i.e., 35 days earlier.
“Even without the dust storms, forecasts predict that global warming will reduce the soil quality in the western United States to dust bowl levels by 2050, said…a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. The Southwest’s temperatures are expected to rise by 10 degrees…!…by 2100.” 5-24-2009
Cattle were blamed back in the Dust Bowl 1920’s; so Congress reduced cattle grazing. Today, the blame extends to, “off-road vehicles, mountain bikers or energy exploration”.
Off Topic but a follow-up to the rings in the Ice in Lake Baikal in Siberia. Considering the interest this post generated, I thought everyone would like to see what is being considered the reasons.
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090601-ice-circles.html
Well, there you go. AGW believers are looking at Picture books….. What! Can’t they read?
Me, I prefer my science in a written form. So I’ve been reading Ian Plimer’s book, ‘ Heaven + Earth. Global warming: The Missing Science.’
It’s a good read which points out all the science and how it pertains to climate.
Without any comment:
http://www.goodneighborlaw.blogspot.com/
dhogaza (11:18:42) :
Here’s an authoritative piece on the lower of water levels in Lake Powell.
It’s not due to changes in water use or management, it’s due to extended drought.
And so there was a Mega Drought in the Southwest in the late 15th Century.
It caused great upheaval, lands abandoned.
There was no AGW then, and there isn’t much more than a fraction now.
As they say, One man’s feast is another man’s famine, ditto for climate change, then and now.
The book’s cover is key to it’s sincerity, or lack therof.
And so there was a Mega Drought in the Southwest in the late 15th Century.
It caused great upheaval, lands abandoned.
There was no AGW then, and there isn’t much more than a fraction now.
As they say, One man’s feast is another man’s famine, ditto for climate change, then and now.
The book’s cover is key to it’s sincerity, or lack therof.
If climate and weather can be differentiated by time-lapse metrics as in weather to being, merely, a badly-behaved, short-term aberration and thus irrelevant to the certainty of multi-decadal computer-modelled projections then I have a question for GavS!
Why are you using the photographic equivalent of Weather – the ‘cherry-picked’ still-photograph -when the multi-frame picture clearly demonstrates that that the Climate follows a different tack?
Gavin- What U doing wee man?
If you were to look at a picture of “Lake Powell” fifty years ago it would have been empty. Back then it was Glen Canyon and at the bottom was the Colorado River. Lake Powell was not full until 1980. How can anyone draw conclusions about the effects of climate change using a man-made lake and a period of less than thirty years?
Guess again Gavin.
Gavin’s picture of the low water level on Lake Powell is proof of man made global warming, as are the pictures of the Red River flooding this year- you have a problem with that?
At this U.S. Bureau of Reclamation web site, you can (among other things) create historical graphs of the water level of Lake Powell as measured annually during March of each year from 1963 to date:
http://www.usbr.gov/uc/crsp/GetSiteInfo
Scroll down to select Lake Powell as the Location and click on Choose Dates. That takes you to the next page where the full date range (1963 – 2009) is set as the default. Click on “View Charts by Selected Date” and then on “Pool Elevation” on the next page. It takes a few minutes (and I have a very high speed connection), but a nice historical graph of Lake Powell’s water levels is created.
Now compare that graph to the U.S. Drought Index graph posted by nofreewind (12:08:27) at:
http://drought.unl.edu/risk/us/%25droughtlg.gif
Clearly, there is a very strong correlation between droughts and changes in lake levels. It appears that droughts are indeed the dominant factor affecting lake levels, but if you dig deeper into the Bureau of Reclamation web site and start reviewing the “Consumptive Uses and Losses Reports”, you quickly learn that much, much more is going on (as other commentors have noted.)
John Galt (12:23:47) :
> I remember when some people sued to keep 2-cycle watercraft out of Lake Mead. The exhaust was destroying the natural environment, you see. But Lake Mead is a man-made lake.
Yes, and one that already destroyed the natural environment. I never visited there, but did see some of the books about Glen Canyon and knew about the controversy about flooding such a wonderful area.
Heh – there’s a book out about the reemergence of Glen Canyon, see http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Glen-Canyon-Vision-American/dp/0898867711 and the photos at http://www.glencanyon.org/photos/beforelp.php
I was quite surprised when I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 1974 or so and found that the Colorado was not “too think to drink and too thin to walk upon” as the National Geographic liked to describe the muddy water. Instead it was cold and clear and Bright Angel Creek was a trout stream.
Amazing. Who would ever use a water level, determined by people opening the spigot on a damn, to say anything about climate? Makes about as much sense as saying it’s dry and rainfall is down because I stopped watering my lawn.
“But the AGW industry still ahs a huge amount of social capital, and it will take a few years for it to dissipate.”
I think that was supposed to be “HAS” …
That NASA page has a comment submission form at the end, but apparently they dont actually display any comments, despite stating moderation rules. Who are they moderating for?
Also, they continue to claim the LIA was restricted to Europe, when we know from speleotherms that the LIA happened as far away from Europe as New Zealand (A. Lorrey, 2008).
I would say this article is a typical piece of damage control spin.
DJ (14:32:41) :
The most odd thing about climate change is that all the “sceptical experts” seem to lack any evidence of expertise.
But DJ you don’t need any particular scientific expertise to completely understand that AGW is a rort.
Sorry I shouldn’t feed the trolls but…..
MikeN (11:36:30) : How do you know temperatures are going to decline
PDO flip. Sun on holiday. Ocean temps dropping. Jet stream gone loopy taking the cold air way south. Ozone levels dropping letting the heat out. CR flux rising so according to Svensmark’s theory cloud cover increasing.
Oh, and if you like the barycenter solar system angular momentum Shiny Thing, the configuration of the planets are moving the sun in a particularly stable non-perturbing way that lets the solar energy go down leading to some mix of lower TSI, more clouds, volcanic particulate increase, electrical stimulation of the planet with who knows what effects, etc. etc. including a paper that correlates the PDO with solar angular momentum. But it isn’t proven yet…
Pick any or all of the above that makes you happy.
Oh, and the existence proof that we’ve had a “failure to advance” to the upside. That oscillator which ceases to advance, retreats…
One more anagram…
Boisterous hand-waving = Gavin’s showboat ruined
“…the AGW industry still has a huge amount of social capital…”
That capital is following the real capital into the dumper…
DJ (14:32:41) :
If I was Gavin I would have put a dead tree on the cover – http://www.pnas.org/content/106/17/7063.full
In reading through the paper you referenced I came across the following:
Therefore, we suggest that higher respiratory loads associated with warmer temperatures incited differences in mortality, reflecting carbon starvation, not sudden hydraulic failure as the causal mechanism required to predict tree mortality differences in a future warmer world. Such results are consistent with inferences from recent observational and modeling assessments (30, 31, 35).
I may be misinterpreting, but it seems to me that they are indicating that the mechanism of tree mortality was not climate change induced drought, carbon STARVATION. Given that the pinon trees they were studying are an old species, which have persisted in semi-desert environments for quite a while, might not the heightened vulnerability the paper seeks to demonstrate, be evidence that the tree has acclimated to higher level of CO2 throughout its’ long history on the planet and is having problems now because even at the recently elevated levels CO2 is still in deficit to long term average levels the planet has experienced?
,
I think we should review a picture a week from this book. I have a very strong feeling that they would be shredded one by one, as the cover photo has been here today. It would only bring satisfaction to those of us who enjoy what WUWT has to offer. Those who follow AGW refuse to look deeper than a photo that someone tells you represents Global Warming. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Mike Bryant, loved the anagrams. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Frank K, great questioning of Gavin’s time management skills. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ozzie Jon, tasteless but very, very funny.
Names should read Mike Bryant, Frank K, and Ozzie Jon. Strange.
typo: should be , but carbon STARVATION.
Sheesh, why not take a picture of a half-empty bathtub?
Barry Foster (11:04:30) :
LOL
I drew the conclusion that realclimate is an odd place, with odd perceptions, and run by an odd person.
pain full but close!
Gavin who?
This book is currently ranked #8,969 in Books at amazon.com, but it’s ranked #4 among Climate Changes books. The first three?
1. Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed by Christopher C. Horner
2. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming by Bjorn Lomborg
3. Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know by Patrick J. Michaels
At the end of this month, I expect it will drop to at least #5, behind this one…
Heaven and Earth: Global Warming – The Missing Science by Ian Plimer