Happy to help Jack. WUWT readers you have less than 30 minutes h/t to John Goetz
FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:
As the debate continues about global warming, the month of December was the 14th coldest in 115 years in the United States… and some scientists insist the earth is entering a cooling trend.
- Wind chills brought temperatures in the Dakotas to 50 degrees below zero, while record cold in parts of Florida is damaging some of the orange crops, and South Carolina called an early end to shrimping season.
- Parts of Canada have seen actual temperatures of 30 below zero… And freezing temperatures and record snowfalls are pounding parts of Asia and Europe too.
- Britain has experienced the worst snowfalls in half a century.
- In India – it’s estimated at least 100 people have died due to the cold temperatures… with dozens more killed in Bangladesh.
- In China and South Korea, heavy snow and unusually cold weather have brought chaos to travelers – blocking roads and trains, canceling flights. After one recent blizzard in Beijing – officials had more than 300-thousand people clearing the streets.
Meanwhile some of the world’s top climate scientists suggest this winter is only the start of a worldwide trend toward cooler weather, which could last for 20 to 30 years. They base their predictions on changes in water temperatures in the oceans.
The scientists say much of the global warming in the last century was actually caused by these oceanic cycles when they were in a “warm mode”… as opposed to the current “cold mode.” They suggest there will be cooler summers ahead too.
It’s the kind of research that could undermine lots of what we’ve been told about the warming of the Earth being caused only by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Here’s my question to you: How has this winter affected your belief in global warming?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 6pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
Kum Dollison (19:46:40) :
Photon, it’s not up a “little bit;” it’s up a Lot. And, a little snow in the Winter doesn’t mean the earth is “cooling.”
I did not make any claim about snow and cold.
Could you explain why you said this about me?
photon without a Higgs (18:32:41) :
Kum Dollison (14:56:53) :
Even if the January anomaly finishes up a little that does not mean the earth is warming.
————————————————————-
That is what I wrote. You read a lot in to it.
The warming of one month does not describe climate, does it?
photon without a Higgs (20:24:31) :
typo,
2005, not 2004
From Oxford Dictionary;
climate
• noun 1) the general weather conditions prevailing in an area over a long period.
Looks like the prevailing weather conditions are changing Again.
Photon, perhaps I’m just tired, and misread your intention. We appear to agree that “weather” is not Climate. An El Nino doesn’t mean the Earth’s “Climate” is heating up, and a snowstorm in England doesn’t mean the Ice Age is upon us. But, bed-time is upon “Me.” 🙂 G’nite. Have a Good One.
MrX (16:20:48) :
“I’m in Eastern Canada. This is the warmest winter I can remember. Wonder why there’s a warm spell here and everywhere else is getting hit by record cold. Heck, it’s gonna above freezing this weekend in the middle of January. Crazy!”
Look at this to understand what’s happening.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/28/the-arctic-oscillation-index-goes-strongly-negative/
Jack
Finally someone at CNN has not been hoodwinked by Al Gore
Kum Dollison (20:40:56) :
It’s easy to jump the gun and misread a comment. I’ve done it before too.
It’s the kind of research that could undermine lots of what we’ve been told about the warming of the Earth being caused only by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The ENTIRE issue here boils down to: can here-to-for climate alarmists, admit they MAY be WRONG?? Nothing to do with science. Or politics. But the ability to admit error. Can alarmists do what evolved-even illuminated people really do? This is all that “climate science” is all about now.
EARTHQUAKES and “Climate”
NEGATIVECORRELATION !!!
See:
http://sites.google.com/site/earthquakepredictionbyjac/Home/negativecorrelation-1
Increased Volcanoes are to be expected in times of solar minimum, and it has little to do with climate.
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/SSNvsVOL.JPG
And since Earthquakes and Volcanoes are both Tectonic movement phenomenon, I suspect Earthquakes are likely increased as well in times of solar minimum.
doug newton (21:01:49) :
Northern California has been getting elevated snowlevels in the series of storms ever since the Big Chill hit here early December.
Now, we have 10-14 days of rain forecast. Snow levels 5000-6000 feet.
Perhaps this will finally silence the drought alarmists. We are so sick of hearing them cry doom. To hear them go on, you’d think the whole State had been turned into Death Valley.
Whether it’s weather or whether it’s climate is a silly arguement.
Did we not take measurements of weather to determine climate?
Do we not say weather is too chaotic and short term to be predictable but then we go on to measure this chaotic unpredictable weather and deduce from it “climate” 100yrs hence?
It’s inane, illogical and outright stoooopid.
In the end, IT”S THE SUN and the OCEANS reaction to the sun.
We ought to support research into this area by people like
Oliver K. Manuel (19:40:41) : then we may have a chance to get a grip on reality.
I very, very concerned about this cooling trend. This might be anthropogenic. We need to start holding conferences and figure out what’s going on. We might have got a sign wrong in some of our earlier models. I’ve something somewhere about inverted charts. The consequences of global cooling are even worse than global warming. Government help us!
Here’s my question to you: How has this winter affected your belief in global warming?
That’s the wrong question. I have always known (not “belief”; by doing the science, I’m an astrophysicist by training) that this GW thingy is a nonsense. So
my “belief” is non-existent, and my analysis has not changed. It has been vindicated instead.
I was asked in April 1990, by the CEO of a ski business, what my thoughts were on ‘global warming’, which had just hit the news.
My answer then was this: ‘I think it’s warming, but it’s one hell of a lot more complicated than they’re making out…’
If someone now asks, is my position on ‘global warming’ affected, I’d say ‘No, because I always saw the earth’s atmosphere as a dynamic, self-regulating entity which will therefore oscillate about means on different timescales.’
I saw incredibly odd climate in the hot, dry summer of 1976, the cold, cold winter of 1979, the ‘winters’ of 1988 and 1989 which started in Scotland in March after winter months more akin to spring and the ‘winter without snow’ in 1990 in the Alps.
My life has been 12 years in PDO cool phase, a cycle of PDO warm phase and now we’re starting a new cool phase. There’s been cold winters and cool summers; mild winters and cool summers; cold winters and hot summers; and mild winters and hot summers. Now maybe we’re starting on a few more colder winters and cooler summers.
I keep seeing the phrase, “warmest decade on record” stated as if that proves anything. Does it not occur to anyone that our “record” is pitifully short in comparison to the age of our planet? So we have satellite records for the past few decades and have pieced together sporadic climate records from other sources spanning back a few million years…on a planet that is some 4.5 BILLION years old.
As for the winter affecting my belief that AGW is a total fraud perpetrated by scamsters, not a bit. The so-called scientists, politicians and corporate interests behind this should all be arrested for the crimes they have committed against the rest of us.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574651610217495546.html?mod=WSJASIA_hpp_sections_opinion
and onother one on the ‘changing climate’
regards from nightshift.
I currently live in suburban London, where snow is usually experienced very infrequently . The current snowfall has not changed my belief or otherwise of CAGW as I feel that attempting to understand weather and climate is not an area where faith should be a relevant concept. Up until a few weeks ago I was a mere long-term lay observer of weather with the assistance of my own very rudimentary measuring equipment, with the understanding that the earth’s climate has always fluctated within a quite narrow range of parameters. Until I asked a serious question about standards for land-based weather stations on a blog run by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. I was immediately attacked as a troll by a regular poster, and his very intemperate response belied his self-description as a scientist. My reaction was to begin serious digging for information from that point and have been apalled by the outpourings of aggressive and ignorant bile by ‘warmists’; The actions of Al Gore and MR Choudry, the chair of the IPCC, actually disgust me, as it has becoome very obvious that those two, and many others, are nothing more than totally corrupt snake-oil salesmen of the very worst kind. I have also been quite dismayed by both the attitude of the print and broadcast media and the almost lunatic faith in warmism expressed by the majority of the world’s politicians. The spectacle of Mugabe being welcomed as a hero at the recent Copenhagen conference, and his ridiculous claims that ‘climate change had wrecked his country’s economy’ really underscored, for me at least, the very odd agenda the warmists and the Greens are pursuing. The logic of giving up our reliance on producing CO2, which is an essential world plant food, and winding economies back to almost a cave-dwelling level escapes me completely.
When one adds the ‘Climategate’ scandal to the mix and understands the depth of deception exposed, CAGW seems a non-starter.
Global temperatures (UAH) have actually been high for the last 6 months – no doubt due to the El Nino. This seems slightly anomalous with the generally cold winter reported in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in the UK it’s certainly the coldest winter (thus far) for decades. It’ll be interesting to see the satellite temperature trend when la nina conditions set in. For temperature trends it’s best to stick to satellite-derived time-series, otherwise you fall into the same trap as the AGW alarmists. I recall a picture in the Daily Mail some years ago offering a man walking on a beach in short-sleeves in winter as ‘proof’ of global warming; I guess it must have been a pretty big beach. Sadly I think that the jury is out at to whether we will see a persistent cooling trend (as opposed to a few decades with PDO cycles) in our lifetimes. It looks as if mother earth has been warming since 1850, and probably since 1650, due to the ‘little ice age’ ending. I have no idea as to whether the 3% or so of the “greenhouse effect” casused by C02 (significantly topped up my mankind) makes much difference. Common sense would suggest it’s marginal. I wouldn’t worry too much about missing the next ice age though; a wee bit parky methinks.
As of 5:15am EST there have been 30+ aftershocks in Haiti
U.S.G.S. shows them at:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php
If you go back a few days, there was a small smarm of shocks
around Puerto Rico… but nothing that appears to have been of
predictive value.
The devastation and rescue/relief efforts will dominate the main
stream media into the weekend.
Max Hugo (15:44:09)
Max, it looks to me that you have just averaged the figures from the reflected sw radiation matrix. I don’t think you can do this without weighting the matrix “squares” by their diminished size as they approach the poles.
To minimise the bias I just averaged the 60N to 60S entries in the matrix – still an increase but not so “way out”. I got 92.1, 98.2, 100.6, 100.1 watts/m2 for the last four months. For comparison last Jan09 was 99.8 for the same lattitude range.
It would be interesting to apply some correct spherical geometry weighting to this matrix of reflected shortwave radiation from NASA (but my maths is a few decades out of practice :-))
I agree — this is one of the best.
Craig James (16:36:14) :
Neil McEvoy……Take a look at the chart you linked to again. The scale has the coldest temps at the top. It is COLDER now than last year.
No Craig, you are mistaken. On the Celcius scale the temperatures are below zero so the lower numbers to the top are less cold. If you still don’t get it, click on the Kelvin scale.
CLIMATE CHANGE defined …
The dominant cause of global warming for the past several decades is greenhouse gas forcing (source: IPCC). Total GHG forcing increased from 1998 to 2009, but there was no corresponding global warming. Instead, what the globe experienced for the last 11 years was CLIMATE CHANGE, which was caused by something that dominated the dominant cause of global warming.
Hence, we can now define CLIMATE CHANGE as: the suppression of global warming by a cause (or causes) that dominates the dominant cause of global warming.