For those of you who don’t know him, Joe Bastardi is one of the lead forecasters for AccuWeather. He’s also a global warming skeptic.
Fox news invited Greenpeace to come on and support their press reports here and here that:
“Climate change is driving a new generation of fires with unknown social and economic consequences,”
and
“With climate models predicting increased heat waves in the coming years, we are fast approaching a global emergency.”
These are statements from Miguel Soto, Greenpeace Spain forests campaigner. I think he’d be surprised to learn, and possibly even deny, that the biggest contributor to the cause of California wildfires was an ocean cooling event, La Nina.
Fox news invited Greenpeace to come on, they initially accepted. Then late declined. Perhaps they heard they’d be up against Joe Bastardi. Watch the video as Joe takes apart the Greenpeace argument and more.
For further background, see my arguments on 60 minutes recent re-run about global warming and wildfires.
More rubbish from 60 Minutes tonight. “The Age of Megafires”
Here is the link to Joe’s piece on O’Rielly:
mincemeat? They didn’t even have the guts to turn up
Duh. Read the rest of the article loser! Sorry everybody!
I think there’s a small typo in the post. Miguel Soto is not “she”, check yourself (AFAIK he did not run yet a change of sex but everything is possible with greenies)
http://www.greenpeace.org/espana/photosvideos/photos/miguel-angel-soto-responsable
and yes, you can expect from Miguel any idiocy.
best
REPLY: Fixed thanks – A
Seems Greenpeace can’t argue with facts yet they can lie about AGW causing increased natural catastrophes and melting polar ice.
What’s the betting a lot of greenies deliberately spell Joe Bastardi’s name incorrectly…
I do not watch BOR so I did not see the show. I do agree that it is foolish for GreenPeace or 60 Minutes to link any single event to global warming.
Having said that, there will likely be more large fires in the future as droughts increase in many areas. Droughts have already been on the increase. See:
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/palmer_drought_severity_ind.jpg (WARNING: this is from IPCC 2007)
I went to Penn State with Joe and he is a superb forecaster and a great guy. I do not think he is an authority on climate change and BOR could have chosen a much better person to try to debunk AGW.
Joe has got the facts.Greenpiece doesn’t care about no stinkin’ facts….
UK Sceptic (09:54:25) :
These greenpeace guys are really “bastardi” :-),.. but in the real meaning of the term: Those of unknown parenthood and prone to sell their souls to the devil for a few coins.
Bastardi, differently, is a noble man, whose nobility impedes him of saying anything but the truth he acknowledges.
Scott, you can of course substantiate that the increase in droughts , if there are any, will be caused by Anthropogenic CO2?
Joe doesn’t need to be an authority on climate change (that person does not exist) to debunk AGW. He only has to ask one question to do that.
What is the source of the Temperature Anomalies graph behind Bastardi’s head? (It appears at about 1:20 in the video.) It looks suspiciously like the one published by Lord Monckton that Lucia made “mincemeat” of at: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/moncktons-artful-graph/
This video presented an issue that I have seen occur in increasing numbers in American Society: We are gradually loosing our critical thinking and analyzing skills and simply accepting what people in perceived positions of authority are saying as undeniable and undebatable fact. This may be happening in other international locales, but I can only comment on what I see here in the US. Those of us that work with the younger generations of our respective societies have a responsibility to teach them to develop critical thinking skills and to demand justification and reason behind decisions and not just emotional rhetoric.
Here you find an excellent article from another skeptic meteorologist, this time from the Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2009/09/a_skeptical_perspective_on_glo.html
Via Climate Depot.
I have seen some perfect forecasts from Joe, including long term winter forecasts.
And he did a great job debunking the GreenPeace claims.
Thanks for posting this.
I went to Penn State with Joe and he is a superb forecaster and a great guy. I do not think he is an authority on climate change and BOR could have chosen a much better person to try to debunk AGW.
Curious, who would you suggest?
Scott A. Mandia
Please review “Droughts have already been on the increase”.
See Niche Modeling and David Stockwell’s analysis of the Australian CSIRO’s Drought Exceptional Circumstances report. CSIRO’s global warming models pack predictions of drought were the OPPOSITE of historical trends.
Increased warming not only increases water vapor, but also cloud water and rainfall. See Roy Spencer’s Lag Correlations showing increased rainfall follows increases sea surface temperatures.
See the NIPCC Climate Change Reconsidered, especially Ch 6 Observations: Extreme Weather
David Madsen (10:12:48) :
“Those of us that work with the younger generations of our respective societies have a responsibility to teach them to develop critical thinking skills and to demand justification and reason behind decisions and not just emotional rhetoric.”
Bravo.
I seem to recall O’Reilly stating that he was a believer in AGW not too long ago.
Curiousgeorge (10:27:40) :
I seem to recall O’Reilly stating that he was a believer in AGW not too long ago
Only the beasts and God do not change.
It bears repeating: facts are a climate change advocate’s worst nightmare.
Scott A. Mandia (10:01:21) : That has nothing to do with AGW. First of all, you should spend some time at NOAA’s paleodrought page:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_data.html
“A number of tree-ring records exist for the last two millennia which suggest that 20th century droughts may be mild when evaluated in the context of this longer time frame.”
Second, you should know that Drought patterns are highly influenced by the PDO and AMO:
http://wwwpaztcn.wr.usgs.gov/julio_pdf/McCabe_ea.pdf
Lastly, AGW means more evaporation, means more precipitation, means less dry. Don’t be daft man.
I saw this live, and said to my wife “He’s destroying the arguments for global warming.” It was a tour de force.
Curiousgeorge (10:27:40) :
I seem to recall O’Reilly stating that he was a believer in AGW not too long ago.
Yes, he says so here: http://ecopolitology.org/2009/07/12/bill-oreilly-believes-in-global-warming-video/
Curiousgeorge
I seem to recall O’Reilly stating that he was a believer in AGW not too long ago.
O’Rielly invited Greenpeace on, so he was being fair and balanced.
Some good info about what causes droughts/wet periods for USA
http://wwwpaztcn.wr.usgs.gov/rsch_highlight/articles/200404.html
If GW is responsible for present droughts, what was responsible for 1930s extra strong droughts in USA, or 1947 droughts in Central Europe? There were never such droughts since.
Study and beat them with facts.
His line, “house of cards goes up in smoke,” is a keeper.
Anyone who is interested in weather / climate should get a subscription to Accuwx pro (IMHO). Daily commentary from Bastardi – very educational + tons of data / models available. I am a happy subscriber
@Sonicfrog (10:15:33) :
I think Pielke’s group does the best job of reasoned skepticism but even Pielke Sr. thinks there is at least some level of AGW. The link provided by Ron de Haan (10:13:54) where meteorologist Matt Ryan lists his top 10 reasons to be somewhat skeptical is pretty fair also.
@Andrew (10:38:33) :
Thanks for the links. Very insightful and the following passage from your fist link, had I stated it this way, would have been a much better reply from me.
The impact of droughts over the last few decades have shown that some regions and sectors of the population are becoming increasingly vulnerable to drought. Compounding these vulnerabilities is the uncertainty of the effects of human activities and global warming on climate in general and on drought in particular. A number of climate model simulations for doubled CO2 conditions suggest an increased frequency of drought in midcontinental regions (e.g. Gregory et al, 1997 , Mearns et al, 2000) whereas other model simulations and recent decadal trends in the instrumental record suggest wetter conditions, at least in the short term, due to an intensification of the hydrologic cycle associated with warmer sea surface temperatures. Better constrained answers to the question of the severity of future droughts requires improved understanding and modeling of the processes underlying the drought behavior exhibited in both the instrumental and the paleoclimate records.
You stated: That has nothing to do with AGW which does not mesh with the information provided in your links.
Of course, I do realize that warmer temps means more evaporation means more water when it rains. However, my reading of the literature shows that BOTH drought and flooding rains will increase with AGW depending on the region.
@ Nogw (10:38:02) :
“Only the beasts and God do not change.”
And the weather. I didn’t say he hadn’t or couldn’t change his mind. Just wondering.
Joe romm on climate Progress is convinced his ideology is stronger than science. He declared the fire caused by warming before they found it was arson. he also declared a plane crash was global warming before they found where the plane was down.
AGW ideology has all the answers. What are the questions?
Forest fires are fed by by seasonal variations and by dead growth fuel, the longer the interval between fires means more fuel from dead leaves/brush etc.
The greens have been very active in fighting the creation of fire breaks and regular planned burn offs.
Dry conditions following wet, warm following cool in a natural cycle, there is simply no evidence of an increase in wildfires has anything to do with AAM yet it makes for very good visual propaganda doesnt it?
The scary images of huge fires is worth its weight in gold to those who wish to instill fear into a population.
Supporters may be keen to suppose a link between future effects of AAM and forest fires but that means they have to rely on computer models of the future, all of which have been proven wrong.
Listen carefully to the propaganda, it concentrates on the future predictions and the ‘ifs/mays/coulds/perhaps’ abound.
Regular brush fires and forest fires are actually incredibly helpful to wildlife, for years scientists have known about the amazing regeneration of fire ravaged forests and brushlands, the African plains herds rely on the seasonal burn offs in the grasslands it replenishes the soil yet the greens have spent huge amounts trying to prevent planned burn offs and fire breaks.
Fire is life to forests and wildlife, it destroys and creates in a well known cycle essential for life on earth.
The cynical exploitation of a natural event for political gain by the greens will prove to be their undoing I think.
“I seem to recall O’Reilly stating that he was a believer in AGW not too long ago”
So was I for a very long time!
Scott Mandia:
Just who might be considered to be “an authority on climate change” and who gets to decide?
You seem to consider yourself qualified and I guess I reckon I’m as qualified to talk on the subject as Hansen, Mann, Briffa et al.
Scott:
“I think Pielke’s group does the best job of reasoned skepticism but even Pielke Sr. thinks there is at least some level of AGW.”
No, Pielke thinks there is a LOT of AGW, he just doesn’t attribute much of it to CO2, and that’s an important distinction. Pielke has taken pains to explain his position thus: much of the current warming is human caused, and in the main, this is due to land use changes, with CO2 playing a minor role.
Scott,
I think the key statement in “The impact of droughts over the last few decades have shown that some regions and sectors of the population are becoming increasingly vulnerable to drought. Compounding these vulnerabilities is the uncertainty of the effects of human activities and global warming on climate in general and on drought in particular. A number of climate model simulations for doubled CO2 conditions suggest an increased frequency of drought in midcontinental regions” is the “climate model simulations” part.
and the other key is “some regions”. Wouldn’t always be the case, some areas are going to experience more drought and other ares are going to experience less drought. The earth is a chaotic system after all.
it was gw bush’s biggest mistake not to put greenpeace on the axis of evil, as this organisatio really is a threat to the western world and democracy.
@David Madsen (10:12:48) :
“This video presented an issue that I have seen occur in increasing numbers in American Society: We are gradually loosing our critical thinking and analyzing skills and simply accepting what people in perceived positions of authority are saying as undeniable and undebatable fact.”
You are in one way correct, David. Many people accept most anything coming from those whom they believe hold a position of authority (called “directed deference”). However, it isn’t just beginning … it’s human nature and it has been around longer than any of us.
Al
Mike Abbott:
“What is the source of the Temperature Anomalies graph behind Bastardi’s head? (It appears at about 1:20 in the video.) It looks suspiciously like the one published by Lord Monckton that Lucia made “mincemeat”
Mincemeat you say? The graph shows a declining zig zag of observed temperatures superimposed against the IPCC projections. Lucia doesn’t even take issue with the declining observed temperatures, but with the slope of the IPCC projection. It turns out that Monckton used a gradient of 0.35C/decade and Lucia reckons in should be closer to 0.2C.
Devastating huh?
“You stated: That has nothing to do with AGW which does not mesh with the information provided in your links.”
WHAT???
Read again:
“When records of drought for the last two millennia are examined, the major 20th century droughts appear to be relatively mild in comparison with other droughts that occurred within this time frame.”
“recent decadal trends in the instrumental record suggest wetter conditions”
And this:
“BOTH drought and flooding rains will increase with AGW depending on the region.”
Lovely. A control simulation (no AGW) ought to show the same thing. At least if it is any good. There will always be places where drought increases and flooding increases. So you can point to anything that happens and say “consistent with AGW”. But what AGW means in general is the only thing which is observed (decreasing drought in general due to more precipitation). There is no discriminating regional drought trends as related to AGW, weather on that scale is to variable.
What about floods? Really, what about them? Only declining normalized damages:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2476-2008.02.pdf
Naturally things may happen with some AGW but as far as droughts and floods go, the natural “noise” is a huge envelope.
Now, in case you are wondering how increasing precipitation does not lead to more floods, the reason is because the increases across the US have been concentrated in the Fall (or Autumn if you prefer) when stream flow is lowest.
Small, D., et al., 2006. Trends in precipitation and streamflow in the eastern U.S.: Paradox or perception? Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L03403, doi:10.1029/2005GL024995, 2006.
Small, D., and S. Islam, 2007. Decadal variability in the frequency of fall precipitation over the United States. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L02404, doi:10.1029/2006GL028610.
Further, the precipitation that falls on the wettest days of the year remains proportional to overall precipitation-the increase in precipitation is not “concentrated” in heavy rainfall events which would lead to flooding:
Michaels, P.J., et al., 2004. Trends in precipitation on the wettest days of the year across the contiguous USA. International Journal of Climatology, 24, 1873-1882.
The fact is that irrespective of your view of AGW in general (I myself “kinda” believe in AGW) you should not go around spouting nonsense. There is simply no evidence for the things you are promoting.
Fox is a Republican propaganda instrument. Most of what is said there has to be questioned. If I were the guy from Greenpeace, I wouldn’t have attended neither. Fox is definitely not on the list of sources I would refer to, when I try to make my layman mind (which to date is not made at all) on that debate, polarised to a mind-boggling extent.
Andrew (10:38:33) :
Scott A. Mandia (10:01:21) : That has nothing to do with AGW. First of all, you should spend some time at NOAA’s paleodrought page:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_data.html
“A number of tree-ring records exist for the last two millennia which suggest that 20th century droughts may be mild when evaluated in the context of this longer time frame.”
And i thought global warming changed tree ring size… so it was water all the time? Who knew … 😎
Henry chance (11:58:41) :
AGW ideology has all the answers. What are the questions?
There are no questions allowed. There are only answers. The science is settled. You must live in poverty and give away any material possessions and money as penance for sin or the earth god will burn you!! /sarcoff>
It certainly looks like BO’R is starting to have some misgivings over AGW.
Jeff (09:48:45) :
Aside from what looks like unwarranted rudeness toward our host, it would be nice and polite to the rest of us to specify just which article you want us to pay attention to, otherwise you are just another drive-by troll.
Mike Abbott (10:12:43) :
Yeah, I thought that looked a lot like Monckton’s chart, too… I’m not sure Lucia actually made mince-meat out of it, but she certainly demonstrated extreme misgivings over it. If you’d like some other charts, Alan Carlin has a new website which is worth a visit. He seems to be having some misgivings, too:
http://www.carlineconomics.com/
Hmmm…. “misgivings” seems to be my word of the day….
Oort cloud (13:08:20) : It shouldn’t matter if the Dalai Lama is the source you’re hearing from. Can you show where Joe’s facts are wrong? Can anyone? If they can, they can, if they cannot well…
But the source is irrelevant.
Vincent (13:04:10) :
“Lucia doesn’t even take issue with the declining observed temperatures, but with the slope of the IPCC projection. It turns out that Monckton used a gradient of 0.35C/decade and Lucia reckons in should be closer to 0.2C.”
As I recall Lucia’s criticism of Monckton, it was that he chose a linear rate of increase over the next century, which arrives at the same temp in 2100 as IPCC, whereas the IPCC chose to use a non-linear curve which did not have quite as high a rate of increase early in the century, but ended up at the same point due to higher rates of change later in the century (how conventient).
Oort cloud (13:08:20) :
Here, Mr. Oort cloud, let me help you out:
FoxABCNBCMSNBCCBSReutersCNN is aRepublicanLeft-wing propaganda instrument.There. Fixed it for ya.
[To be fair, I don’t watch Fox or any of them. Heck, I don’t watch an hour of TV a month, and never the TV news spin. Also, IANAR. So there.]
We know, as philosophically so succinctly summarised by Richard Lindzen, for warmists its always whatever it takes- polar bears, Arctic ice, cyclones, floods, fire, famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, just whatever it takes, ….
“I went to Penn State with Joe and he is a superb forecaster and a great guy. I do not think he is an authority on climate change…”
If by authority you mean a theorist who devises abstractions based on models that either cannot be verified or fail verification tests, then you are correct. But Joe Bastardi eat and drinks not only current synoptic weather patterns, but he also delves deep into climate analogs. He is one of a few medium to long range forecasters that get it right more than wrong. And when he is wrong, he admits it and tells you why. People and businesses pay him good money for being right.
Climate Scientists are usually experts on very narrow or very broad subjects. Normally, there is no way to evaluate thier theories. And when thier predictions do get put to the test they fail. The 2007 IPCC projections are barely 2 years old, and already many need “adjustments”.
Oort cloud (13:08:20) :Yours it is an “ad-hominem” logic fallacy. It does not matter what colour or creed you are but what your arguments are.
I lived in California in the summers during the 1970s, in the years leading up to at least some scientists starting to fret about a new ice age. Do some googling on the California drought of the ’70s (which some people who lived through it would happily stick a “Great” in front of), and Bastardi is exactly right. Cool Pacific is what causes drought in California. It’s when you get an El Nino going that California gets drenched. I remember quite well the winter of ’82-83 there. . . . yeesh.
But that’s okay, when the next El Nino comes and California starts flooding, that’ll be global warming’s fault too. EVERYTHING is global warming’s fault, it seems, including the heartbreak of psoriasis.
Concerning droughts, one of the worst droughts to hit North American occured in Virginia. It lasted from 1620-1680. That drought occured during the coldest decades of the LIA. It is also well documented that the Dust Bowl years occured during a period when the AMO was in a persistent warm mode, but the Northern Pacific was in a cool mode. The resultant long term synoptic weather pattern caused persisitent easterlies from Arkansas throught the Plain States (ie the most Gulf flow was cut off).
In both cases, AGW was not the cause. For the Pacific Northwest and West Coast, look to the Pacific SSTs. Wet cold winters followed by dry very hot summers lead to summer wild fires.
Aaron,
“As I recall Lucia’s criticism of Monckton, it was that he chose a linear rate of increase over the next century, which arrives at the same temp in 2100 as IPCC, whereas the IPCC chose to use a non-linear curve which did not have quite as high a rate of increase early in the century, but ended up at the same point due to higher rates of change later in the century (how conventient).”
Yes, yes, yes, but this is hair splitting. Did not the IPCC predict rising temperatures, whereas the observations show declining temperatures? And this begs the question, why are temperatures declining? As Akasofu has said, how can we make future predictions if we don’t know WHY these temperatures are declining.
San Antonio, TX: Flash flood watch.
Lots of weird wet stuff falling from the sky.
Now I have to patch the roof and dry out my car (left the windows open).
Oh, Ryan Maue may make a copyright claim:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6383#comment-355659
But, but, but……they need to tax energy to give free handouts from Washington, The facts are getting in the way here of the great Washington power base.
Cap and Tax and free health care for all! woohoo, what a plan.
Greenpeace just showed their true face by not showing up. They rather take it the leisure-way, paid by their donators.
They just ordered a “super yacht” designed by the famous dutch Super Yacht Architect Gerard Dykstra (http://www.gdnp.nl/project/index.php?cat=miscboot&boot=4) for a whooping Euro 23 Million / US $ 32.2 Million!!
Why not a more humble pre-owned 60 meter sailing boat of, say, US $ 5 Million and refurbished for its tasks? These people are extremely irresponsible with money that other people trusted them with, and that was supposed to be used for different purposes. They are just like our European politicians, spending taxpayersmoney for their own little, and bigger, interests.
That picture of what the models predict the atmosphere should look like, and the picture of what it does actually look like, in a sane world no one would mention the computer models again.
Vincent (13:04:10) :
Mike Abbott:
“What is the source of the Temperature Anomalies graph behind Bastardi’s head? (It appears at about 1:20 in the video.) It looks suspiciously like the one published by Lord Monckton that Lucia made “mincemeat”
Mincemeat you say? The graph shows a declining zig zag of observed temperatures superimposed against the IPCC projections. Lucia doesn’t even take issue with the declining observed temperatures, but with the slope of the IPCC projection. It turns out that Monckton used a gradient of 0.35C/decade and Lucia reckons in should be closer to 0.2C.
Devastating huh?
Yes, I consider an overstatement of 75% to be devastating. Even worse, as noted by Lucia, “That graph” is still there on his website uncorrected. In any case, if Lucia did not make “mincemeat” out of Monckton’s projections, Gavin Schmidt sure did at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/moncktons-deliberate-manipulation/.
Mike Abbott (14:09:16) : You realize of course that Lucia can be right even if Gavin, who may get a rare and uncharacteristic score on this one, was wrong.
Don’t point to Gavin. He’s a dishonest hack. Dishonest hacks are not fit to rebutt even one-another. The demolition by lucia was more than enough.
It’s too bad O’Reilly is such a smug, [self-snip]. He might actually have something important to say, but his presentation just drives me away.
JP (13:36:58) : Yes, and that’s exactly what the McCabe et al. paper showed. I find it remarkable that people fail to see that there is no evidence for a AGW link to large scale drought!!!
I wouldn’t refer to any of the cable news sources.
Do you always speak in double-negatives (wouldn’t–neither)?
Jeff Alberts (14:28:58) Maybe so. But can we have an O’Reilly on our airwaves, please, just for old times sake?
The Mayor of Istanbool blamed global warming on the recent heavy rainfall with floodings. But actualy he is cuffering up for some mistakes.
1) bad sewer systems
2) suburbs build on wrong places.
actualy he is saying climate change and then he say’s 80 years ago the same happend.
“It was the heaviest rain in Istanbul in 80 years. Such natural disasters leave human beings totaly desperate. These are the problems stemming from climate changes in the world. We need to use natural resources more carefully. On the other hand, Istanbul’s topography is already known. All local administrations have responsibility to this end,” he said.
Cassandra, very good points! Here in the Mid West, a lot of Farmers in my area burnt off their Wheat fields after the Wheat was taken as with the straw. This produces pot ash and other minerals and puts them back into the soil. I’ve seen it more and more the past few years.
I’ve always believed the Sun affects this Planet in more ways than Man can understand. What Man does know, do you think it’s put into Alarmists Climate Models, I think not! Plus there’s so much more to this Complex Climate than Man can prove! There’s always more to learn!
I thought that the segment was highly politicized and could have been more effective had it just stuck to the facts. Too much time was wasted on politics and Obama and why Greenpeace didn’t turn up.
Mind you this is Fox News – what did I expect? Fair and balanced?
Speaking of Accuweather, I just saw this at their site.
http://www.accuweather.com/news-weather-features.asp?#extremes
Can someone tell me if I’m looking at what I think I’m looking at here.
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/194/frankfurtq.jpg
I think I’m looking at Frankfurt’s annual temperature history with some kind of filter, but I’m not sure. Strange looking graph. (I chose the airport location, but obviously, the early data pre-date aviation).
The other city mentioned was Dijon France, which I don’t find in the database. If someone can tell me if I’m using this thing right, I’ll look for something close to Dijon.
BTW, here’s the source.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/getstations.cgi
David Madsen (10:12:48) :
“This video presented an issue that I have seen occur in increasing numbers in American Society: We are gradually loosing our critical thinking and analyzing skills and simply accepting what people in perceived positions of authority are saying as undeniable and undebatable fact. This may be happening in other international locales, but I can only comment on what I see here in the US. Those of us that work with the younger generations of our respective societies have a responsibility to teach them to develop critical thinking skills and to demand justification and reason behind decisions and not just emotional rhetoric.
”
Seems to be the same everywhere. The last thing that governments want is independent thinkers in the population.
I’m sure I have heard youngsters talking about the ‘critical thinking’ classes – mostly focused on good old green issues of course, and how to make the masses believe them.
Critical Thinking Classes is best Orwellian doublespeak of course.
Control the ground, frame the discussion. Make sure you use ‘Warm Words’.
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=485
Yes, I really do need some help here. I’m having a “Microsoft Minute”. I get different results when I swear, I swear I tell you, I’m doing the same thing. I must have done something with the filter, because now I get a much smoother curve with a slight dip about 40 years ago and a slight rise over the last 20 years or so.
Maybe it’s best if I just plead for someone who knows what they’re doing to dig out a temperature time series for Frankfurt.
Anthony, what’s happening here: Roger Pielke Jr, debating Marc Moreno on Climate Tax? Do we have a Horse of Troy situation here?
I have regarded Pielke Jr to be a Skeptic. If a Skeptic is in favor of a Climate Tax,
what’s the use of being a Skeptic. One of our objectives is to fend of the legal measures to curb and tax CO2 emissions.
There is no difference between Pielke Jr and our German Scientist poster here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/07/german-climate-adviser-who-says-the-wests-carbon-quotas-are-used-up-once-co-authored-a-paper-saying-climate-models-are-flawed/
I regard this as a most damaging development.
If we would win the scientific arguments that the past rise in temperatures is caused by naturural cycles and “Skeptic scientists still endorse Cap & Trade or a Carbon Tax, this seriously undermines our cause. And so is a debate among Skeptics.
Would you be so kind to present your view on this matter?
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/09/inviting-marc-morano-to-debate.html
REPLY: Pielke Jr doe shave some lukewarmer leanings, I’m not sure why though he offered to step in for the WaPo reporter who ducked debate with Morano. Odd – A
timetochooseagain (14:27:19) :
Mike Abbott (14:09:16) : You realize of course that Lucia can be right even if Gavin, who may get a rare and uncharacteristic score on this one, was wrong.
Don’t point to Gavin. He’s a dishonest hack. Dishonest hacks are not fit to rebutt even one-another. The demolition by lucia was more than enough.
Yes, I realize where Lucia stands vis a vis Gavin. She has gone head-to-head with him and won a few rounds. However, in the case of Monckton’s graph they landed one-two punches. She showed that Monckton’s projections were grossly overstated and Gavin showed that the observed temperatures fell within the margin of error of the correct IPCC projections over the short time period covered.
My concern is this: By trotting out what Lucia calls “That graph”, Bastardi gives the alarmists the ammunition they need to attack the credibility of his otherwise excellent presentation.
By the way, Lucia recently punched holes in some of Tamino’s work (claiming it violated the 2nd law of thermodynamics) and was permanently banned from his board as a result. I don’t know who was right; differential equations beyond my comprehension were flying back and forth.
Oort cloud (13:08:20) :
Fox is a Republican propaganda instrument. Most of what is said there has to be questioned. If I were the guy from Greenpeace, I wouldn’t have attended neither. Fox is definitely not on the list of sources I would refer to, when I try to make my layman mind (which to date is not made at all) on that debate, polarised to a mind-boggling extent.
Hi Oort, the source is irrelvant – the facts are king. What are the facts of the matter? Look up “Poisoning the Well” for what you are being fooled by.
If Joseph Goebbels stood up in a burning theatre and shouted “fire” would you turn around and say “Hey don’t believe it – Goebbels is a complete Liar” or would you address the facts.
Graeme Rodaughan (17:32:08) :
Oort cloud (13:08:20) :
“Fox is a Republican propaganda instrument. Most of what is said there has to be questioned. If I were the guy from Greenpeace, I wouldn’t have attended neither. Fox is definitely not on the list of sources I would refer to, when I try to make my layman mind (which to date is not made at all) on that debate, polarised to a mind-boggling extent.
Hi Oort, the source is irrelvant – the facts are king. What are the facts of the matter? Look up “Poisoning the Well” for what you are being fooled by.
If Joseph Goebbels stood up in a burning theatre and shouted “fire” would you turn around and say “Hey don’t believe it – Goebbels is a complete Liar” or would you address the facts”.
Right Graeme, it’s the message and the facts that count.
Oort cloud, do you have a viable alternative for Fox News available?
Do you really believe CNBC or CNN would question the garbage from GreenPeace,
let alone discuss it?
Please provide me with “your list” of candidate News Broad Casters that meet your standards!
For the moment, Fox is all we have.
Cool Graph:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5b89255970c-pi
Ron, C3 headlines is a fine site for graphs & other info: click. Thanx for posting!
Scott A. Mandia (10:01:21) : “I do not think he [Bastardi] is an authority on climate change and BOR could have chosen a much better person to try to debunk AGW.”
Uh huh. Go figure you would say that. You probably would rather listen to another Penn State “authority” such as the broken hockey stick of Michael Mann.
Your politeness is disarming, Scott, but then you go on to insult the same person you compliment.
There is a little psychology at play here…but I will leave that alone.
And you could not be more wrong on Bastardi.
He is one of the brightest of his generation. Combining use of the models [while criticizing the physics] with analogues, and a damn good dose of common sense and passion…Joe runs circles around other specialists on autopilot today who are buried in their computers, extrapolations, and equations…to their peril of missing real world observations.
No he is not a climatologist…but he IS a scientist….and a damn good one at that…so I reject your assessment of him as “not being qualified” to debunk AGW on popular television.
Its all well and good, anyway. Joe is not needed to “debunk” AGW.
It “debunks” itself.
Res ipsa loquiter.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
As I recall Lucia’s criticism of Monckton, it was that he chose a linear rate of increase over the next century, which arrives at the same temp in 2100 as IPCC, whereas the IPCC chose to use a non-linear curve which did not have quite as high a rate of increase early in the century, but ended up at the same point due to higher rates of change later in the century (how conventient).
The IPCC’s curve is directly contrary to the known physics of GHGs. The highest rate of temperature change will occur initially and then decline.
The origin of the IPCC’s curve is in the climate models which have to be heavily ‘massaged’ otherwise most of the warming occurs initially, and since we already know how much warming has occurred in this initial period, this would preclude a high CO2 sensitivity, unless they use this kind of warming curve.
While Lucia is correct in her criticism, Monckton’s graph is more scientifically defensible than the IPCC’s.
Oort cloud (13:08:20) : Fox is a Republican propaganda instrument. Most of what is said there has to be questioned. If I were the guy from Greenpeace, I wouldn’t have attended neither. Fox is definitely not on the list of sources I would refer to, when I try to make my layman mind (which to date is not made at all) on that debate, polarised to a mind-boggling extent.
If you were Greenpeace, you wouldn’t attend?? Why??
You should never be afraid of the truth, unless you have something to hide.
I would support Greenpeace with my dollars if they were not so tainted by extreme left-wing ideologies. They regularly shoot themselves in the foot.
Notice O’Reilly tried to immediately discredit Greenpeace, and Bastardi ran to their defense: “I’m not here to disparage them. They have done some good things.”
Good for him. Again…prima facie evidence as to why Bastardi is such a good scientist:
He wants the TRUTH.
And….to quote the X Files: “The truth is out there.”
Listening to scientists like him might help you make up your mind, Oort Cloud, and keep you from getting caught up in the greatest scientific fraud perpetuated since the Spanish Inquisition.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Vis-a-vis Fox/O’Reilly-let me just say that I think that even disregarding politics the man is difficult to watch. He is disgustingly full of himself. And I say this as a guy who doesn’t disagree with him frequently although sometimes and pretty angrily. But again, we are not talking about O’Reilly. We are not talking about Fox. It’s not even about Joe Bastardi. We are talking about the facts.
So maybe we can get back to me ripping apart drought apocalypticism? 🙂
Oh crud, he’s rubbing that smugness on me!
Hey, thanks to Ron de Haan and Smokey for the mention! That’s cool a couple of Anthony’s readers know about my site.
I do like the visual and wish had more time to work with. For those interested, I think this link has most of the charts/images/graphs/cartoons that I’ve used over past 10 months.
http://www.c3headlines.com/chartsimagespdfs/
Jim, C3H Editor
C3H Editor (20:36:15) :
No problem Jim, you’re welcome.
For your information:
The Cool Graph came via Climate Depot.
The first time I landed on your site was via a link from Algorelied.com
I did not wear my glasses and did not see where to click in order to access the article
behind the header.
But now I am used to it.
The more skeptic blogs the better.
Keep up the good work.
Ron de Haan (16:59:06) :
Anthony, what’s happening here: Roger Pielke Jr, debating Marc Moreno on Climate Tax? Do we have a Horse of Troy situation here?
I have regarded Pielke Jr to be a Skeptic. If a Skeptic is in favor of a Climate Tax,
what’s the use of being a Skeptic. One of our objectives is to fend of the legal measures to curb and tax CO2 emissions.
There is no difference between Pielke Jr and our German Scientist poster here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/07/german-climate-adviser-who-says-the-wests-carbon-quotas-are-used-up-once-co-authored-a-paper-saying-climate-models-are-flawed/
I regard this as a most damaging development.
If we would win the scientific arguments that the past rise in temperatures is caused by naturural cycles and “Skeptic scientists still endorse Cap & Trade or a Carbon Tax, this seriously undermines our cause. And so is a debate among Skeptics.
Would you be so kind to present your view on this matter?
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/09/inviting-marc-morano-to-debate.html
REPLY: Pielke Jr doe shave some lukewarmer leanings, I’m not sure why though he offered to step in for the WaPo reporter who ducked debate with Morano. Odd – A
Thanks for your response Anthony.
A Skeptic in favor of Carbon Tax is like a Pacifist collecting guns.
“I am against fire arms and the death penalty but I am going to shoot you anyhow”.
It does not make any sense to me!
As for warming and droughts, it is instructive to study the ice core records:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Watch that red curve and its anti correlation with heat: it is dust.
Dust comes from dry land, therefore drought.
It is more than evident from this long term record that Warm brings Wet.
The variations we observe on our time scale are that:result of the chaotic nature of weather/climate.
From me, just some simple logic. The Greenpeace article refers to ‘climate change’, which is generally considered to have started in the late 1970″s.
Joe Bastardi’s recent La Nina sits on top of the curve…on all the intervening global warming/climate change.
An argument against climate change consequences has to be made without the climate change.
Although then his La Nina’s “cooling” temperatures will be seen to be actually relatively warmer.
He should compare this current fire season with an early 1970s fire season. And try to show that they are similar.
“Heat waves, droughts, cyclical climate changes such as El Nino and other weather patterns can also increase the risk and alter the behavior of wildfires dramatically. Years of precipitation followed by warm periods have encouraged more widespread fires and longer fire seasons. Since the mid 1980s earlier snowmelt and associated warming has also been associated with an increase in length and severity of the wildfire season in the Western United States.” Wikipedia
“Robust statistical associations between wildfire and hydroclimate in western forests indicate that increased wildfire activity over recent decades reflects sub=regional responses to changes in climate. Historical observations exhibit an abrupt transition in the mid=1980s from a regime of infrequent large wildfires of short (average of 1 week) duration to one with much more frequent and longer burning (5 week) fires. This transition was marked by a shift toward unusually warm springs, longer summer dry seasons, drier vegetation (which provoked more and longer burning large wildfires) and longer fire seasons.” Westerling et.al., 2008 (a Wikipedia reference)
Nobody has mentioned the bark beetles that can now survive the warmer winters. Overall, they’ve killed more trees than have the forest fires.
Lightning will continue. Unfortunately, arson will continue. And the resulting damage continues to increase.
HendrikE (14:01:10) :
“Greenpeace just showed their true face by not showing up.”
No, no no, they could not find a parking space for the rainbow Warrior in front of the Fox Studio.
anna v (21:29:40) : “Watch that red curve and its anti correlation with heat: it is dust. Dust comes from dry land, therefore drought.”
The wisdom of the ages, folks.
Colder climes are both more windy and more dusty.
Fear the cold, not the heat.
Al Gore, and his ilk, were not only wrong, they are liable.
No need to point fingers now. Just need a proactive scientific approach for our species for the future.
Godspeed.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
No ad homs intended, but this discussion thread is way off track and so was Joe, bless his heart.
1. California (and the entire West) is subject to summer drought. There are very few years when fuels do NOT dry out. PDO, El Nino, etc, do NOT alter the regular annual pattern of summer drought.
2. Fire is fueled by biomass. Fuels govern fire. Devastating wildfires can occur when daily temps are relatively low. It does not have to be 100 degrees F for wildfires to burn uncontrollably. Wind is an important factor in fire spread, but winds are perennial. There are no lengthy periods without wind in most of the West.
3. Biomass accumulates, especially in non-tropical environments. Photosynthesis creates biomass at a faster rate than decay can consume it. That’s a fact — the evidence abounds.
4. The longer the hiatus between fires, the more fuel accumulates, and the more intense and severe the subsequent fire.
5. It is incorrect to blame California’s fires on climate change, PDO, El Nino, or other climate/weather phenomena, or arsonists for that matter. The ignition agent may be various, but the causal agent is fuel.
6. Pre-Columbian residents understood that by burning landscapes on a frequent, regular, seasonal basis, they could reduce fuel loadings and prevent catastrophic fires. Post-Columbian residents have failed to manage/reduce fuels in any significant way, and so modern fires are more intense, more severe, and often catastrophic.
7. If California wishes to prevent or mitigate fires, then fuel reduction/modification is the ONLY way to do that.
8. Such reduction/modification must be practiced on a landscape scale to effectively reduce the intensity, severity, and size of fires.
Extra: Westerling et al are wrong. There has been no measurable change in snow pack, snow melt date, summer dry season, etc. Furthermore, the implicit assumption that fuel loadings 30 years ago were identical to today is fatuous, a-biological, and demonstrably false. Biomass accumulates; there is significantly more fuel today. Any fire analysis that fails to consider fuels is woefully inadequate.
Saw Joe Bastardi on CBS morning show being interviewed by Harry Smith. Harry kept trying to push AWG talking points and Joe would not let him get away with it. Harry finally cut the segment short.
You can find a critical analysis on the report of greenpeace Spain on wildfires and climatic change in the blog “lucaria”, especially in the following post:
The future in flames? Or the smoke does not leave us to see the fire?
http://www.profor.org/profor/wp2/?p=991
Do they increase the big fires in Spain?
http://www.profor.org/profor/wp2/?p=977
A non-news: the fires have diminished to the half this summer in Spain
http://www.profor.org/profor/wp2/?p=1078
MartinGAtkins (11:10:04):
“O’Rielly invited Greenpeace on, so he was being fair and balanced.”
Ha ha, that must be the first time then. Most uncharacteristically!
Scott A. Mandia (10:01:21) states that “droughts increase in many areas” and links to a map and time-series of the global Palmer Drought Index.
For the area I’m familiar with, Australia, the map is out of date.
Victoria is the only substantial area now in drought:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/rain_maps.cgi?map=contours&variable=drought&area=aus&period=36month®ion=aus&time=latest
Over the past century, Australia overall has enjoyed a slight increasing trend in rainfall with constant pan evaporation:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rranom&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=15
There were major droughts in 1895-1902, 1914-15, 1937-45, 1965-68, 1982-83, 1991-1995.
In any (say) ten year period, some part of Australia can be expected to experience drought — always has been so, always will.
p.s.
The greens, similarly and shamelessly, exploited the tragic fires around Melbourne last summer for political capital.
Mike D. (22:36:52) :
No ad homs intended, but this discussion thread is way off track and so was Joe, bless his heart.
1. California (and the entire West) is subject to summer drought.
I live in southern Greece and we do not count summer drought, it is a given. Often rains stop in May and start in September/October.
We speak of drought when the level of rain falling through the year is way below average, and water tables retreat even in the mountains ,
and rivers and lakes are drying.
I would suppose that would be the type of drought discussed for California ?
Mike D. (22:36:52) :
“3. Biomass accumulates, especially in non-tropical environments. Photosynthesis creates biomass at a faster rate than decay can consume it. That’s a fact — the evidence abounds.”
The AGW crowd hadn’t thought of that one yet: claiming that increased CO2 creates more biomass, i.e. fuel for fires (not food for an ever increasing world population, of course)
Ron de Haan (21:28:46) :
“what’s the use of being a Skeptic. One of our objectives is to fend of the legal measures to curb and tax CO2 emissions.”
Ron, I strongly disagree. We should be skeptics only because we believe we have the right scientific arguments. The politics is only a derivative and should never be the reason for being a climate skeptic.
Debunking the myriad nasty effects that are postulated to arise from warming is not the same as debunking AGW. And nobody is an authority on climate change. Those who pretend to be are always proven wrong with their forecasts.
During the ice age scare the doom-mongers predicted exactly the same endless climate disasters as for the current warming scare. Guesswork is no substitute for science and you can’t call yourself an expert when you are continually wrong. My guess is that some things will be better and some worse but history tells us that life prefers warmth to cold. Imagine the panic if the sea level started to fall instead of rise.
Bill O’Reilly just barely broached a fascinating subject before the segment was over and time for the advertisers to give us the real skinny, and that was when he asked Bastardi why the paradigm that CO2=AGW has such strength and staying power even if it is wrong.
Oh, I like a Bastardi/Pielke Fils debate. It will be over policy with the science ‘settled’. Heh.
=====================================
Ron de Haan (19:17:17) :
Cool Graph:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5b89255970c-pi
Ron, you are as bad as the alarmists in the way you cherry-pick. Take the starting 1997 and you see warming or take a starting date 1999 (10 years) and you see warming. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2009/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2009
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2009/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2009
It’s obvious that with a starting date of 1998 ( El NIno ) we see a cooling trend. A more honest assessment is that warming has “plateaued” which was not foreseen by any of the GCM’s.
I have followed Ron’s posts for quite some time and have detected an attitude that is reminiscent of the alarmists, in the sense that he is biased and strongly politically motivated.
Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, has turned against it. I’m not sure if he is actually a sceptic, but be believes Greenpeace has become too extreme. I think a lot of people would agree with him.
In the UK, our own Patrick Moore is certainly a sceptic.
Chris
@Vincent (12:42:09) :
Have you read Ruddiman’s piece on AGW that began thousands of years ago? It is very interesting and here it is if you want it:
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/met102/docs/Ruddiman_article.pdf
@Dave (12:50:45) :
The point I am making, and one can see on the image in my link from the first comment, is that droughts are increasing in areas that already have drought. These are precisly the places that need rain and are not getting it, esp. sub-Saharan regions.
@timetochooseagain (13:06:29) :
Your links are greatly appreciated (I always enjoy data to support an argument) but they discuss US locations. As the IPCC 2007 WGI and WGII reports discuss (and my image shows) is that droughts will be affecting places already experiencing drought. Scientists are especially concerned with sub-Sahara and southern Asia. More heat means more evaporation over land. Places that are dominated by sinking air such as those in the STHP belt, will not receive this moisture back from rains that cannot fall. Instead this moisture will fall on places that are already wet.
Scott 3:32:26
Please, the IPCC and its models don’t even get global projections right; it is amusing to watch you depend upon their regional projections. Besides, the globe is cooling so what is this ‘more heat’ business?
==================================
Chris Schoneveld (00:17:47) :
Ron de Haan (21:28:46) :
“what’s the use of being a Skeptic. One of our objectives is to fend of the legal measures to curb and tax CO2 emissions.”
Ron, I strongly disagree. We should be skeptics only because we believe we have the right scientific arguments. The politics is only a derivative and should never be the reason for being a climate skeptic.
Chris,
I agree and I should have formulated my remark in a better way.
jeroen (15:06:13) :
actualy he is saying climate change and then he say’s 80 years ago the same happend.
“It was the heaviest rain in Istanbul in 80 years. Such natural disasters leave human beings totaly desperate. These are the problems stemming from climate changes in the world. We need to use natural resources more carefully. On the other hand, Istanbul’s topography is already known. All local administrations have responsibility to this end,” he said.
Jeroen,
This is nothing more but a stationary depression.
It can happen any time.
There is a middle ground between policy advocacy and pursuit of truth in science. Good policy can only be informed by true science. In fact, that is not a middle ground, it is the only path; there is no alternative, no other way. These social scientists err magnificently but only because of the plasticity of human culture. The warming climate catastrophists are heroically, hubritically, wrong and the fall will be earthshaking.
=====================================
Scott Mandia (03:32:26) : So where exactly is the observational evidence that current drought fluctuations or future drought fluctuations will behave that way because of AGW? I’m puzzled because you seem to be suggesting that models suggest it, so that must be what happens.
Zhang:
Zhang, X., et al., 2007. Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends. Nature, 448, 461-466.
Concluded that the pattern of precipitation trend signs matched that of models forced by GHG’s, though not the magnitudes. Most of Sub-Saharan African was green, meaning an increase in Precip was expected and was observed. But most of the latitude bands covering the US were grey, meaning that the models were qualitatively WRONG-they say precip should have decreased, while in reality it increased. But near the Equator there was supposed to be a drecrease and generally there was. But is that due to AGW?? Good question. Maybe part of it is, but it’s doubtful that all of it is, since Zhang could not get an agreement in terms of trend magnitude.
Well, how well correlated is precipitation with GMST? The ESRL can let us make a map which (although covering a shorter period than Zhang and other studies) gives us a sense of how important Global Warming is to regional precipitation trends.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/data/correlation/
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/precipcorrelation.jpg
Now, the first thing which strikes you is that the correlation over the US-where Precip has a long term upward trend- is negative. The correlation over much of South Asia is positive again spiting the long term trend. And this is over the period that AGW is supposed to be most prominent! But none of this looks very good for AGW causing droughts in those places…
But most of the correlations, wherever they are, are very weak, meaning AGW has little influence on precipitation variability regionally at all!
Chris Schoneveld (03:19:55) :
Ron de Haan (19:17:17) :
Cool Graph:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5b89255970c-pi
Ron, you are as bad as the alarmists in the way you cherry-pick. Take the starting 1997 and you see warming or take a starting date 1999 (10 years) and you see warming. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2009/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2009
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2009/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2009
“It’s obvious that with a starting date of 1998 ( El NIno ) we see a cooling trend. A more honest assessment is that warming has “plateaued” which was not foreseen by any of the GCM’s.
I have followed Ron’s posts for quite some time and have detected an attitude that is reminiscent of the alarmists, in the sense that he is biased and strongly politically motivated”.
Chris,
You are drawing very strong conclusions and I reject them 100%.
I posted the graph from C3 as I frequently post many other links and clearly headed the link of the graph stating “Cool Graph”.
To conclude that I am “Cherry Picking” data only because I posted this graph is really bridge too far and I regard it as an insult.
The same goes for the rest of your remarks.
You only have to read the headers of the articles posted at WUWT to see that the political aspect is becoming a more dominant factor.
This, in my humble opinion, is inevitable since the core objective behind the AGW/Climate Change Doctrine is 100% political.
To underwrite the political aspect, may I point out to you that Marc Morano and
Pielke Jr. will have a debate soon.
The debate is not about Climate Science but Carbon Tax, read “POLITICAL”
And I am convinced it will be discussed here at WUWT.
Scott A. Mandia
If you believe the earth is substantially warming because of CO2 why in the world would you think that there will be increasing drought? This is in direct conflict with both the thermodynamics and the historical climate record.
Locally, maybe, but world wide wouldn’t you expect decresing drough and shirinking deserts as history and physics suggest?
Ron de Haan (07:15:45) :
“You are drawing very strong conclusions and I reject them 100%.”
Ok Ron, I will monitor you posts in the next few weeks and will report back.
I hope I was wrong
Chris
@ timetochooseagain (07:01:32) :
Thanks for showing me that link. I admit I have not used this tool before today and now I am tweaking around with it quite a bit.
I am now curious to read the Zhang article. Perhaps I have jumped the gun here and I am pleased that you have directed me to sources that I can use to increase my understanding. It just appeared to be basic common sense that warmer temperatures would cause more evaporation from land surfaces (drier conditions) and if these locations were in areas of subsidence, such as the Sahara, the water would not be returning as rainfall, thus leading to increased drought. Subsequently, this water would then fall on regions already getting wet leading to increased flooding. Perhaps, as is true with most things, things are more complicated than they appear.
Perhaps it should be one goal of WUWT to “convert me”. 🙂
Scott,
Thanks for the link. I think this idea was first floated a few years ago – that neolithic humans caused global warming by burning forests. I think common sense suggests that such a small number of humans could not have effected global climate, otherwise the modern industrial age would already have caused another Venus.
Scott A. Mandia (08:16:23) : I (seeing as I have two names here I hope this doesn’t confuse) am more than happy to point you in the direction of useful information whenever you are curious. I have to admit I’ve had less pleasant conversations with those who are alarmed about AGW, so this was a good break from the norm.
The “complication” is that AGW might change subsidence, to, as might natural variations.
But the extra water has to go somewhere and rainfall seems to increase globally even faster than models tend to assume (eg:
Wentz, F.J., Ricciardulli, L., Hilburn, K. and Mears, C. 2007. How much more rain will global warming bring? Science 317: 233-235. which found that precip increase 7% per degree C, in spite of models predicting only 1 to 3%, although other studies eg Smith, T.M., Yin, X. and Gruber, A. 2006. Variations in annual global precipitation (1979-2004), based on the Global Precipitation Climatology Project 2.5° analysis. Geophysical Research Letters 33: 10.1029/2005GL025393. interpret this quite differently).
If you want to locate papers, I recommend searching Google Scholar.
Greenpeace was right to decline. The California chicken vs the egg (climate change vs PDO/El Nino/La Nina) situation is too complicated for television sound bytes.
“COMPETING EXPLANATIONS: CLIMATE VERSUS MANAGEMENT.
Land-use explanations for increased western wildfire note that extensive livestock grazing and increasingly effective fire suppression began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reducing the frequency of large surface fires. Forest regrowth after extensive logging beginning in the late 19th century, combined with an absence of extensive fires, promoted forest structure changes and biomass accumulation which now reduce the effectiveness of fire suppression and increase the size of wildfires and total area burned.
The effects of land-use history on forest structure and biomass accumulation are, however, highly dependent upon the “natural fire regime” for any particular forest type. For example, the effects of fire exclusion are thought to be profound in forests that previously sustained frequent low-intensity surface fires (such as Southwestern ponderosa pine and Sierra Nevada mixed conifer, but of little or no consequence in forests that previously sustained only very infrequent, high-severity crown fires, such as Northern Rockies lodgepole pine or spruce-fir).
“In contrast, climatic explanations posit that increasing variability in moisture conditions (wet/dry oscillations promoting biomass growth, then burning). and/or warming temperatures have led to increased wildfire activity…
“Variability in western climate related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and intense El Nino/La Nina events in recent decades along with severe droughts in 2000 and 2002 may have promoted greater forest wildfire risks in areas such as the Southwest, where precipitation anomalies are significantly influence by patterns in Pacific sea surface temperature.”
Westerling et al
From below: “Climate, however, may still be the primary driver of forest wildfire risks on interannual to decadal scales.” Westerling et al
Mike D. (22:36:52):
“We describe land-use history versus climate as competing explanations, but they may be complementary in some ways. In some forest types, past land uses have probably increased the sensitivity of current forest wildfire regimes to climatic variability through effects on the quantity, arrangement, and continuity of fuels. Hence, an increased incidence of large, high-severity fires may be due to a combination of extreme droughts and overabundant fuels in some forests. Climate, however, may still be the primary driver of forest wildfire risks on interannual to decadal scales. On decadal scales, climatic means and variability shape the character of the
vegetation…and biomass (fuel) continuity…” Westerling et al
Fuel accumulation resulting from fire suppression has been occurring for a very long time. So why didn’t the severity of forest fires get out of hand long ago?
Are there papers evaluating the forest fire experience as it relates to the time since the last burning?
@ Andrew (10:06:20) :
I am fortunate to have access to just about every major science journal. I just printed the Zhang article. I will then look to those that you mentioned in your reply to me.
I am quickly discovering how much time this is taking up because I represent the loyal opposition and I feel the need to keep replying.
I may have to pick and choose my posts a bit better. It is quite obvious that I do not know enough about the link between AGW and droughts to have made a claim of correlation. Live and learn, right?
Fair is fair. Now mind you I don’t represent the whole of WUWT readership-far from it, as opinions vary greatly-but, well, you know how it goes.
I plan on writing up something about Hurricanes which, per a recent comment you made, may be of interest. The basic idea is that theoretical considerations suggest slight increases in Hurricane intensity and decreases in frequency, but that detecting whether this is the case in reality is tricky-Not least because of the paucity of reliable data. I personally doubt that Hurricanes are meaningfully linked to AGW-just as I doubt drought linkages-but in the case of Hurricanes I’ll admit that the uncertainty of the data and the uncertainty of models allow for the possibility that I’m way off base. I just don’t see it. 🙂
Anthony,
Joe Bastardi has published an Open Letter in response to his Fox presentation.
I think the content is worth reading:
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/09/california_fires_oreilly_facto_1.html
@ timetochooseagain (07:01:32) :
I read the Zhang et al. (2007) journal article and, at least as I read it, it appears to show the AGW is correlated to precipitation trends. Here are some selected quotes from the paper:
It is expected that wet tropical regions would become wetter and dry regions drier if there were an increase in tropospheric temperature from anthropogenic forcing but no change in lower-tropospheric relative humidity or flow. (This is what I stated previously as “common sense” and then second-guessed myself.)
A series of considerations show that the detection of an anthropogenic influence on precipitation is robust.
Here is the full abstract with my emphases added:
Human influence on climate has been detected in surface air temperature, sea level pressure, free atmospheric temperature, tropopause height and ocean heat content. Human-induced changes have not, however, previously been detected in precipitation at the global scale, partly because changes in precipitation in different regions cancel each other out and thereby reduce the strength of the global average signal. Models suggest that anthropogenic forcing should have caused a small increase in global mean precipitation and a latitudinal redistribution of precipitation, increasing precipitation at high latitudes, decreasing precipitation at sub-tropical latitudes, and possibly changing the distribution of precipitation within the tropics by shifting the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Here we compare observed changes in land precipitation during the twentieth century averaged over latitudinal bands with changes simulated by fourteen climate models. We show that anthropogenic forcing has had a detectable influence on observed changes in average precipitation within latitudinal bands, and that these changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing. We estimate that anthropogenic forcing contributed significantly to observed increases in precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, drying in the Northern Hemisphere subtropics and tropics, and moistening in the Southern Hemisphere subtropics and deep tropics. The observed changes, which are larger than estimated from model simulations, may have already had significant effects on ecosystems, agriculture and human health in regions that are sensitive to changes in precipitation, such as the Sahel.
David Madsen (10:12:48) :
“Those of us that work with the younger generations of our respective societies have a responsibility to teach them to develop critical thinking skills and to demand justification and reason behind decisions and not just emotional rhetoric.”
I see too much critical thinking being taught without a solid foundation of knowledge. Traditional science is given up too early in the curriculum for “sports science”. How do you expect the current generation that is entertained by a two minute clip on Youtube to engage in a complex scientific debate on climate change? Do they even know what CO2 is? Where it sits in the life cycle or that it really isn’t the evil nasty pollutant some would propose. Sound bytes are the news and critical thinking of today.
Joe does a great job telling people to find out for themselves – as opposed to the “believe us it’s real” brigade.
Scott Mandia (14:58:11) : It is not enough to simply skim the paper, you have to read carefully. You cannot just read what the authors chose to emphasize things you want to hear. What’s between the lines is also important. Look at this figure:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/zhang.png
The grey bars are latitude bands where the sign of model trends is wrong. Now, about the Sahel-remember that Zhang covered the period 1925-1999. What does the history of Sahel precipitation look like?
http://www.eoearth.org/media/draft/f/f2/Greening_Sahel_Figure_1.jpg
When Zhang say:
“these changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing.” They mean that their models do not have natural variability which can cause very much secular variability in regional precipitation. But that’s totally unrealistic! Look at the Sahel graph again: Multidecadal variability is rather clear in it. In fact, over the period of greatest AGW, Precip decreases and then increases back to the mean
When they say:
“he observed changes, which are larger than estimated from model simulations”
This is because the observed changes are not due to only the effects that Zhang includes!!!
Now, again, note how one can really distort the nature of the trends by looking at data over only a certain period. AGW is thought to become really important after 1970ish. Sahel precip has hardly changed since then! The irony is that Zhang previously had showed that Sahel precip is linked to the AMO, not AGW!
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Sahel_files/image008.gif
Now, let’s look at the sign of trends in the data I did correlation with earlier (and note where the results of that correlation disagree with Zhang’s results-time period matters!!!)
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/preciptrendsign.png
NOTE: (Blues and purples are negative trends, Reds, yellows, oranges and greens are positive, BUT THE SHADE IS NOT THE MAGNITUDE-it’s the correlation coefficient with a trend eg 1, 2, 3, 4…)
Look at South East Asia-Precip goes UP! Look at the Sahara: Some negative trends, nothing in Egypt really, and some places in the South West toward the West coast precip again goes UP! The trends are much more complicated than a very simple analysis would suggest. Note again the US. The long term trend is UP, but the trends from 1979-2007 DOWN! Why? Because precipitation varies greatly. Zhang is right that it’s hard to identify an AGW signal amid all this noise. But despite inflating the weak claim that the long term trends have the same signs over some of the globe as AGW suggests into “AGW signal in precip found” He should have said what the data show-some evidence for nature behaving as models suggest it should, but some disagreement to. And where Zhang found agreement, it was qualitative. You have to learn to separate what the Authors say from what they showed.
Could the mods get that one? Thanks.
[Reply: Get which one? Me not understand. ~dbs]
I sent a post with a bunch of links-probably got eaten by the filter.
[Now I get it. Post rescued. ~dbs]
Ah, there we go. Thanks.
Scott Mandia,
You emphasized the wrong parts, that’s all. Here, let me help:
Now let’s listen to Prof Freeman Dyson:
Prof WUWT gives Zhang et al. a D+ for this paper, which was obviously put together in an air conditioned office, not in winter clothes measuring the swamps and the clouds. And you can see how they write their paper with an eye on likely grant money. Naturally, their pals hand-wave a paper through when it’s written like this: “…these changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing.” O really? Because they say so?
Did the WUWT referee say they get a D+? Make that a D. They forgot to say “robust.”
Smokey-See my comment above-Zhang’s paper itself is good, he just drew non sequitors from the analysis.
timetochooseagain,
Did they say “robust” in the body of the paper? Just wondering.
You know more than I do about their paper, I just read the abstract. I guess what got me riled was their unequivocal statement that “these changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing.”
What have they found that makes natural climate variability impossible? Was anything they discussed found to have been outside the parameters of previous geologic extremes?
“these changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing.”
Logically this means they understand the climate so well that they have error bars for natural variability and these observations fall outside them.
Huh?
Smokey-I believe their attribution statements are premature to say the least. What they did do well was show that there are large parts of the world in which precipitation trends are totally contrary to models-that’s long term trends mind you also. It would be even easier to show wild disagreement over the period that AGW is supposed to have emerged from natural noise-the last thirty years.
Scott A. Mandia (08:16:23) : Perhaps it should be one goal of WUWT to “convert me”. 🙂
Jump on board, Scott. You seem like a reasonable guy with an appetite for the truth.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Francis (10:48:36) : Greenpeace was right to decline. The California chicken vs the egg (climate change vs PDO/El Nino/La Nina) situation is too complicated for television sound bytes.
“Greenpeace was right to decline.” That is a straw-man statement.
And yeah, its complicated, but it CAN be summed up in television soundbytes. Bastardi did it.
That is not the reason they declined. They cowered….because they know….deep down….that their premise is flawed.
Funny how that works.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
timetochooseagain (16:57:22) :
But despite inflating the weak claim that the long term trends have the same signs over some of the globe as AGW suggests into “AGW signal in precip found” He should have said what the data show-some evidence for nature behaving as models suggest it should, but some disagreement to. And where Zhang found agreement, it was qualitative. You have to learn to separate what the Authors say from what they showed.
Bold mine for emphasis. Why do I have the strong impression/opinion that this is the main job of peer reviewing? That the paper is logical and clear with no false/exagerated claims? Seems to me peer reviewing in climate climate “science” is a farce.
Serveral people have said they do not watch Bill Orielly which is a shame because he probably the most honest and fairest journalist there is. The left hates him and the right hates him and you can’t get a better recommendation when these two groups hate you. Watch him for a week and you will be hooked. I have listened to and whatched Joe Bistardi for years and he is a very knowledgable and educated meteorologist. I saw his data and graph and it is indisputable. This shows that those who stand to make millions and billions off of global warming will perpetuate it long enough to get cap and trade and other legislation through.
savethesharks (19:50:16)
Ah, but my premise isn’t flawed. (21:39:08) 10 Sep
Let’s set aside the fuel accumulation issue.
Greenpeace says California’s severe fires are due to climate change.
We’ll assume that’s 30 years of climate change.
Joe Bastardi says the severe fires are due to the cooling effect of the 2008 La Nina. But indelibly included with this 2008 La Nina is the 30 years of climate change (1979-2009) that went before.
“Climate, however, may still be the primary driver of forest wildfire risks on interannual to decadal scales.” Westerling et al (10:48:36)
That is, primary over fuel accumulation…which does needs mentioning after all.
So, there’s an obvious way to resolve this. All we have to do is compare the current fire experience with that from a La Nina year before the climate changed.
If Joe Bastardi is right, and climate change has had no effect, then the earlier fire season will be just as severe.
From the current fire superlatives being used, and from Westerling et al, I presume it wouldn’t be as severe.
So Greenpeace wins. Q.E.D.
Your analytical skills needs sharpening, Francis.
Never said “your” premise was flawed. Said Greenpeace’ was.
Go back and read it.
But now that you mention it…your post, too, makes no sense whatsoever.
Also…because this is soundbyte technology….Bastardi did not have time to mention that the subsidence from the cool Pacific waters also was created from the multidecadal shift to negative of the PDO.
Greenpeace does not win. It fails miserably.
And that is a shame becuase I would give them dollars if they were not so politically motivated.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
But I agree with you on the fuel accumulation issue.
Combined with the drought-induced PDO conditions in the SW….it is a recipe for disaster.
Joe Bastardi showed a graph from the IPCC when interviewed by Bill Oreilly about the California wildfires. I have searched the IPCC website for this graph, which shows the Earth has cooled in the last 10 years, but I can’t
find it anywhere on the IPCC site. (There are thousands of graphs on the IPCC site, by the way, so good luck if you want to search for it there). AccuWeather says it won’t supply the link, but will use this and other graphs in future broadcasts. Does anyone have a link where I can download this graph for my own records? Thanks.
I thought this site was to spread information, but I’ve been censored twice in two days and for no good reason at all. I’m not giving up my valuable time to type out stuff in this box just so you can delete it. OK?
Reply: Kate, you are not being censored. I checked the spam filter and didn’t find your earlier post. Sometimes WordPress has a glitch and a post disappears, but that’s not common. I just posted your last comment, along with a few dozen others. Charles the moderator is out of the country, and Anthony as usual has projects going on, so that pretty much leaves me at the moment. Nothing deliberate was done to delete any of your posts. I usually get up between 3 – 5 a.m. [GMT -7 during daylight saving time, GMT -8 otherwise] to approve the 4 – 6 dozen posts that are in the moderation queue. This is done 4 – 5 times a throughout the day. But there is a delay at times. We take pride in the fact that we don’t censor anyone here, with the exception of a very few who repeatedly break the house rules, and then it’s usually just a time out. Please keep posting. Like the others, your comments are valuable and appreciated. ~ dbstealey, moderator.
Reply: I am out of the country and not online much, but I have a vague recollection of looking over and perhaps deleting one of Kate’s posts. I’m sorry. It’s days later and I can’t remember why. We often go over hundreds of posts a day and no record is kept of deletions. If it was me, and this is likely, I believe I had good reason. I’m just apologizing for not being able to remember it.~ charles the moderator
anna v (22:29:05) : I agree. But as it is people will have to learn to separate wheat from chaff, so long as that is what Climate Science decides to put out there.
Kate (01:39:05) : The graph isn’t on the IPCC website because 1. The most recent report is now two years old 2. They wouldn’t show such a thing anyway.
That being said, the origin of the chart is explained by Monckton here:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/aug_09_co2.pdf
And what you should know is that the data which show cooling over that period is correct. However Monckton’s depiction of the IPCC projections is not so accurate.
@ timetochooseagain (16:57:22) :
First let me say that because of your comments I certainly have learned more about observed and predicted precipitation trends as they relate to AGW. My initial statements were that, with AGW, droughts would increase and so would floods. This assertion was based on reading the IPCC WG1 and IPCC WGII reports, viewing the PDSI image, and what I referred to as basic common sense. A warmer climate would cause more evaporation over land and sea and in regions over land that have semi-permanent high pressure (subsidence dominates) such as the already dry desert areas of Africa and SW U.S., drought would increase.
The Zhang et al. paper supports these assumptions if one reads the paper carefully. Despite your claim the Zhang et al. paper DOES include natural variability. Zhang considered three groups of simulations and compared those simulations to observed precip between 70 degrees north and 40 degrees south.
ANT denoted simulations included estimates of historical ANThropogenic forcing only which included greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols.
NAT4 denoted simulations included just NATural external forcings only.
ALL denoted simulations include BOTH of the above – natural and human forcing.
Please view: http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/zhang-1.gif
This clearly shows that the ALL simulations do a MUCH better job of matching observed precip trends than either ANT or NAT4 alone. In fact, here are the correlations: ALL = 0.83, ANT = 0.69 and NAT4 = 0.02. Is is for this reason that Zhang et al. conclude that changes in precip trends cannot be explained by natural forcing only. I think this is pretty clear and it certainly parallels what the IPCC reports suggest.
Now see: http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/zhang-2.gif
This image shows that the models are NOT superb in their predictions which I do not think anybody is suggesting. Regional precip pattern predictions are NOT a strong suit of the models which modelers have stated. What this image does show however, is that areas of green and yellow show where the model trends match those of the observed trends. It appears that in mid-latitudes the models have much work to do to get up to speed.
I also reviewed the Held and Soden (2006) paper referenced in the Zhang paper. They also support my initial “common sense” argument but I was much more interested in the following conclusions which are not so intuative at all:
A number of important aspects of the hydrological response to warming are a direct consequence of the increase in lower-tropospheric water vapor. Because the increase in strength of the global hydrological cycle is constrained by the relatively small changes in radiative fluxes, it cannot keep up with the rapid increase in lower tropospheric vapor. The implication is that the exchange of mass between boundary layer and the midtroposphere must decrease, and, since much of this exchange occurs in moist convection in the Tropics, the convective mass flux must decrease. In many popular, and in some scientific, discussions of global warming, it is implicitly assumed that the atmosphere will, in some sense, become more energetic as it warms. By the fundamental measure provided by the average vertical exchange
of mass between the boundary layer and the free troposphere, the atmospheric circulation must, in
fact, slow down. This large-scale constraint has little direct relevance to the question of how tropical storms will be affected by global warming, since the mass exchange in these storms is a small fraction of the total tropical exchange.
In contrast, assuming that the lower-tropospheric relative humidity is unchanged and that the flow is unchanged, the poleward vapor transport and the pattern of evaporation minus precipitation (E _ P) increases proportionally to the lower-tropospheric vapor, and in this sense wet regions get wetter and dry regions drier.
Since the changes in precipitation have considerably more structure than the changes in evaporation, this
simple picture helps us understand the zonally averaged pattern of precipitation change. In the extratropics, one can alternatively think of the diffusivity for vapor and for sensible heat as being the same, with similar consequences for the change in the vapor transport. If one assumes that the statistics of the flow are also unchanged, one obtains estimates of the increase in variance of E _ P (the increased intensity of “droughts and floods”) that are reasonable but overestimate the response of the model variances, perhaps because of the decrease in the strength of the mass exchange.
Of course, one or two papers does not a theory make, but it is certainly more substantial to the “debate” than trotting out Freemon Dyson who, although incredibly intelligent, is not an authority on the subject of climate change at all.
Chris Schoneveld (07:44:55) :
Ron de Haan (07:15:45) :
“You are drawing very strong conclusions and I reject them 100%.”
Ok Ron, I will monitor you posts in the next few weeks and will report back.
I hope I was wrong
Chris
Chris, with all due respect for the fine job you are doing on this blog, I really don’t understand what’s bothering you and I really have a serious problem with your remarks and your rather weak response.
Just for your information, if you read the latest CO2 report from Mockton,
you will find a similar graph to the “Cool Graph” I have posted.
Are you going to accuse Mockton too for “cherry picking”?
I am open for any comments, but please provide clear arguments instead of vague acquisitions.
No further heart feelings, just wrote down what I thought was needed to say.
Ron, I just checked Monckton’s latest report and he shows a number of temp graphs, one of which starts in 2002 and which he annotates as “seven and a half years’ global cooling at 4.1 F° (2.3 C°) / century” but at least he didn’t use – like your cool graph – the anomalous warm year 1998 as a starting point which many political skeptics seem to be doing like Marc Morano.
At least Monckton also shows a graph that starts in 1995/1996 which he annotates as a “decade and a half with no statistically-significant warming”.
Note, however, the implied bias if you compare the two annotations. The 1.5 decade of warming he calls “statistically insignificant” whereas in the graph of the 7 1/2 years of cooling he doesn’t mention the statistically insignificant trend but instead emphasizes the significance of it by extrapolating the trend into a 2.3 C°/ century cooling.
On the accusation that your posts are often referring to the politics of global warming, yes, I do find that striking. Maybe it is my personal dislike of bringing in politics on a scientific blog where I prefer to stay focussed on the technical/scientific arguments and leave the political implications to Pielke Jr and Climate Depot and the likes.
Hope this clarifies my earlier diatribe.
timetochooseagain : Thanks for the link, and the explanation of why I couldn’t find it.
——
This is something you may find interesting about the “melting” Arctic.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has been up in the Arctic performing what has become a ritual for those who regularly lie about the melting ice caps. He was on the Norwegian polar research vessel “Lance,” located at the Polar Ice Rim. One thing the “global warming” liars always do is pick their time to appear, which is always at the same time every year, namely at the end of the Artic summer. The Arctic starts to thaw at around the beginning of May, continues melting through a short daylight summer until about the middle of September, then plunges back into an 8-month long winter of re-freezing.
But the joke is on Ban Ki-Moon; Look at his position, from where he declared we are all doomed because of global warming. The closest point he could get to the north pole was 745 miles, which is 230 miles further south than the Fridtjof Nansen expedition of 1893.
Fridtjof Nansen 1861-1930
Fridtjof Nansen is one of the worlds most famous polar explorers, and he was also an outstanding scientist, later professor in both zoology and oceanography. He achieved world-wide fame and acclamation for his expeditions across Greenland and the ”Fram”s journey across the Arctic ocean. Nansen was a skilled cross-country skier, and by skiing across Greenland he earned a reputation for being a trailblazer. In 1890, he contacted the ship builder Colin Archer, and comissioned a vessel that would endure extreme ice. The ship was called ”Fram” and it was launched in 1892. Sailing the ”Fram”, Nansen tried to float across the north pole in 1893-1896. He never reached the north pole, but with Hjalmar Johansen he set the farthest-to-the-north record, 86º 14’. The ship itself drifted to 85º 59’ , also a record.
So 106 years ago the Arctic was much smaller than 2009, and you could sail 230 miles closer to the north pole than Ban Ki-Moon can today.
Chris Schoneveld (00:36:12) :
Ron, I just checked Monckton’s latest report and he shows a number of temp graphs, one of which starts in 2002 and which he annotates as “seven and a half years’ global cooling at 4.1 F° (2.3 C°) / century” but at least he didn’t use – like your cool graph – the anomalous warm year 1998 as a starting point which many political skeptics seem to be doing like Marc Morano.
At least Monckton also shows a graph that starts in 1995/1996 which he annotates as a “decade and a half with no statistically-significant warming”.
Chris, slide 9 of the Mockton presentation is exactly the same graph.
I already explained that I linked it without any remark or attempt to “cherry pick” whatever.
This is the last remark I make about this so let it be.
Scott Mandia (08:46:02) : The problem is that you falsely assume that “NAT” equates to the true measure of natural variability in the climate system, which is certainly not true on a regional scale. Look at the Sahel plot again. why does the trend suddenly change in the last two decades? It can’t be AGW, unless the decline was natural. That “NAT” does not reproduce the variability in precip is not problematic considering “ANT” and “ALL” don’t either. Because the models do contain external sources of natural variability like TSI and volcanoes, but they do not have the correct natural variability of climate itself. I don’t see why this is hard for you to grasp.
Another thing: The precip history of the SW US is available from NCDC. The trend from 1895 to 2008 is 0.06 Inches/Decade.
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/sw.html
I do not assume ANY of the models are perfect but how are we to discern natural vs. human if we throw out models? Models are the only way we can experiment with the data. Of course, if models were superb we would not be having this discussion.
Do you have a source that shows the strengths and weaknesses of the models used in the NAT4 simulations? You seem convinced that they are very poor.
BTW, what base period did you use to get your trend for the SW US? I get a very small negative trend for a variety of 30 year base periods.
Scott Mandia (12:02:30) : The trend does not depend on the base period, unless NCDC’s math is wrong. But I used the default base period 1901-2000. Likely, you are using it to diagnose the trend in January precip by mistake. I just did 1895-2008 as the base period, and the trend was the same. Switch “January” to “Annual”.
“I do not assume ANY of the models are perfect but how are we to discern natural vs. human if we throw out models?”
They don’t discern in the first place, so you question is quite odd. All I’m saying is that any realistic model (and there could be any number of reasons for a model being unrealistic) will show regional precipitation trends without any forcing, whether “natural” or “anthropogenic”. This is simply because the precipitation falling at any particular time and place is never going to be the same as that same place a year ago. Even if we assume that the global average behaves that way, you can still have regional increases and decreases. The paleo record is full of such instances. And there is clear multidecadal variability in precipitation regionally that is not associated with any forcing, at least no known forcing. Just look-again-at the Sahel. One needs only to know that models can’t reproduce observed varibility without GHG’s and note that the variability is not always consistent with GHG’s to show that models which say that there is nothing else going on are wrong. There is no specific reference for this, it should be obvious.
I’ll give you a conceptual example that relates directly to the Zhang case. In their model, they have precip decreasing in the latitude bands containing SE Asia etc. in models and observations. So why are the trends in SE Asia since 1979 positive? Well, there must be some natural variability or other factor which is absent from models. Similarly, the Sahel precip record follows the AMO, not AGW. Drought patterns across the US are the same way. I elucidated all of this in my above comments. It shouldn’t be that hard to put it all together.
The increase in fires is mostly the cause of arsonists. They are responsible for most of the major fires in California.