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”
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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
@ur momisugly 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?
@ur momisugly 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
@ur momisugly 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.