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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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.
@ur momisugly 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.