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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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