Via Eurekalert, a press release about projections of “Melting Marches” from the Heidi Cullen frozone team who says loss of freezing zones is “worse than we thought”. Minnesotans for Global Warming say “YES!”.
New Climate Central projection map shows local and national retreat of freezing temperatures in March
PRINCETON, NJ. On the last day of the month, Climate Central has just published an interactive animated map showing what we might expect in Marches to come as the climate warms. Developed by Climate Central scientists, the map uses special high-resolution projections covering the Lower 48 states to show where average March temperatures are expected to be above or below freezing each decade this century. The map also compares projections under a low, reduced carbon pollution scenario versus a high one that extends current trends.
Under the high scenario, Climate Central’s work shows majority or complete loss, by the end of the century, of these freezing zones in every state analyzed. Minnesota, Montana and North Dakota would lose the most total below-freezing area, while seven other states, from Arizona to Wisconsin, are projected to lose all they currently have. A table on the group’s website lists details state by state.
The projections promise earlier starts for gardeners, farmers, and golf enthusiasts. At the same time, they would mean earlier snowmelt. In the American West, early snowmelt years have already been linked to drier rivers and forests later in the summer, and very much higher wildfire activity – projected to intensify with further warming. Scientists also expect challenges for irrigation supplies and cold-water stream life like trout.
“These maps imply future changes the research community is only beginning to appreciate,” said Climate Central scientist Dr. Ben Strauss.
Climate Central is a nonprofit group of journalists and scientists dedicated to communicating the best and latest climate science.
Claude Harvey: “If folks buy into that new line, I may go into the “asteroid strike” insurance business”
Claude, you clearly don’t understand the psyche which underpins this clap-trap. This is a remodelling of “original sin” the judeo-Christian concept that every sin shall be punished.
The way it works is through a combination of guilt and cultural preconceptions. By convincing people we are “guilty” of CO2 … and so tapping into our basic judeo-Christian cultural preconceptions, we are COMPELLED by our ingrained preconceptions to believe that their will be a negative outcome.
Late me explain in more detail. Everyone hates cars … even car drivers hate other cars that clog up the road. They pollute, they are noisy and they kill. Link CO2 to this “evil” of civilisation and the cogs in our brain inevitably believe we will be punished for this “evil”.
If e.g. you were to link CO2 to something positive … like living … children, childbirth, things that our judeo-Christian culture sees as positive, then we do not see these as “evil” … if anything they are “good” and to be encouraged.
The other great thing about global warming as a scam, is that you can extremely easily associate with our judeo-Christian “hellfire & damnation”.
So back to your insurance scam. Asteroids would be completely useless, because there is no way to tap into our guilt complex.
if I were trying to invent a scam, I’d take something we all like but dislike, something we all want, but know we don’t like others doing: mobile phones on trains, alcohol(drug)-use, sex. Next I would find some tenuous argument to link our normal (harmless) activity with the harm.
E.g. I’m sure many people would be receptive to the idea that alcohol consumption pre-pregnancy led to alcohol and drug use by their kids. This also has the Global Warming advantage of taking decades to disprove, opening up a huge gap between the initial scare (where the money is made) and the final conclusive proof it is BS.
I went to Climate Central for details. They seemed elusive.
They cite a hundred sources for their data and the studies they used and improved down to a ten mile projections
But AFAI can tell the refinement amounted to interpolation and the crucial input temperatures were the average of 16 climate models projections for 2090.
Looking at their sponsors and references etc. leads to a web of international organizations likely to be shells. Several of them say they are trying to help the UN meet its UN Millenium Goals.
This began to remind me of a very common technique. Ten people create a hundred organizations with ten members each. The hundred organizations issue papers and findings which primarily cite material and studies from the other ninety-nine. And they all heartily endorse each other.
About the UN. Since the UN Millenium Goals were themselves set based upon projections the whole thing becomes circular.
It is quite impressive. And the findings are robust.
Or are they baloney. I get those two words mixed up.
Climate Control may be doing good work. Their web of associates may be doing good work. But it looks as if nothing they say can be checked. It all seems a quagmire.
Has this stuff even been peer reviewed? If it has then I’d start to worry.
“Climate Central is a nonprofit group of journalists and scientists dedicated to communicating the best and latest climate science.”
Sounds like they’ve exceeded their mandate somewhat.
2090 looks nice. Is there any way we can speed up the process? I’ll be dead by then, and I’m getting tired of the cold weather.
McMillen 01:28:43 Aye, there will be plenty of tour buses heading out to Chichen Itza that day. But will they return?
Chichen Itza. That was my first good look at a Pre-Columbian site. And even then – was it 1973, can’t remember – large parts were cleared and beautifully maintained.
Hope you enjoy your 2012 trip. Wear a mask. It might fool the spirits.
Seeing drivel like the prediction for March 2090 above I fully expect see the Obama administration creating a new government agency called The Office of Climate Prophets.
Twenty years ago, I was startled by the lack of quality of kids accepted by various universities, kids who had struggled to achieve mediocrity in my senior high school classes. I know a number of them became climate scientists! They still struggle to achieve mediocrity!
Mike McMillan (01:28:43) :
Should be plenty of tour buses headed out to Chichen Itza. Don’t wear blue jeans.
Khakis only, and no personal adornment — other than a HEEDS
http://www.submersiblesystems.com/
for unfortunate contingencies…
“LarryD (21:23:14) :
And we should have any confidence in these models because?
Garbage In, Garbage Out.”
Larry, you seem to have forgotten. The warmaholics have redefined GIGO. When it comes to their models GIGO now means Garbage In, Gospel Out.
“They don’t. They claim to predict the climate not weather. Given that you don’t seem to know the difference but honour us with your comments anyway, I’d guess [snip]”
Here’s the problem Tom, Climate (whatever that is) usually has a range that goes beyond the synoptic scale. One cannot predict the “climate” with any degree of accuracy for areas below the synoptic scale -at least the so-called GCM cannot. Climate scientists predict ranges of possible temps on a global scale. It use to be that the time scales were usually marked by centuries, not decades; and these were global averages, not regional or synpotic scale.
But today’s Alarmists have shortened the time window to seasonal variations, and the physical scale down to counties. Yet, not one climate scientist (or thier models) can predict changes in atmospheric or oceanic oscillations (and some of these oscillations do have phase changes that go out beyond the magical 30 year window). If they cannot do even that, how can they with a straight face predict “climate changes” for areas on a much smaller scale and a much longer time period?
It is the Alarmists who are now in the weather forecasting business. Perhaps you should give them a call.
JP (03:59:11) : Here’s the problem Tom, Climate (whatever that is) usually has a range that goes beyond the synoptic scale. One cannot predict the “climate” with any degree of accuracy for areas below the synoptic scale -at least the so-called GCM cannot.
While that is certainly the case for earlier coarse resolution GCM’s there is no reason in principle why it should be true of modern GCM’s with sub-synoptic scale resolutions – provided the factors that determine those climatic scales (e.g. surface inhomogeneities like elevation, changes in surface characteristics, albedo etc.) are included.
By the way – the best definition of the ‘climate’ of a GCM is via an ensemble average
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_average
which in principle has all scales. Since the real atmosphere consists of a single realization, one then has to do some work to relate it to ensemble averages. This gets fairly technical so I won’t get into it.
Studies like these, and other more familiar GCM simulations, are all based on the assumption that if we look at temperature datasets covering a sufficiently long period, say a couple of decades, the signal becomes bigger than the noise, and a trend shows up. Once a trend has been identified then the next assumption is that it can be extrapolated into the future.
Lubos Motl has written an interesting article on reference frame that criticises the first assumption.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/self-similarity-of-temperature-graphs.html
The conventional, climate science view, is that the shorter a temperature graph is, the more noise to signal there will be. As we zoom out to larger and larger time scales, and as the signal becomes larger relative to the noise, we would expect the longer time scale graph to look very different to the short time scale. A good analogy would be a graph of the DOW Jones stock market index compared over 5 years and 100 years. Over the shorter period we see huge swings and little trend. Over 100 years however, the great bear markets look like tiny dips in an otherwise continuous upward trend.
Lubos has taken central England temperatures since 1659 and randomly created 100 graphs covering all different time scales, with the longest being 128 times greater than the shortest. These are vastly different timescales and the graphs should look very different – but they don’t. Lubos challenges the reader to guess which graphs represent the longest and which the shortest. The point is – they all look the same.
According to Lubos, “One implication of these facts is that if you can get a (modestly) statistically significant trend by looking at 16 years – their annual mean temperatures – it doesn’t mean that this statistical signifance proves that the “trend” is anything else than noise. Such “trends” are actually omnipresent at all time scales and virtually all of them that you can see in my homework are noise – and their extrapolation has always failed.”
JP (03:59:11): Climate scientists predict ranges of possible temps on a global scale. It use to be that the time scales were usually marked by centuries, not decades; and these were global averages, not regional or synpotic scale.
False. See the Köppen classification as an example of ‘old time’ climatology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Köppen_climate_classification
Well due to this type of Fantasy report you how have the following in preparation, the Robin Hood fund.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/28/un-climate-change-meeting-london
To quote
“The prices we pay for our goods do not reflect one key cost: the damage that their production does to the planet’s climate system,” said Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the LSE. “We need to find ways to extract payment from those who cause that damage and then use that money to fund developing nations so that they can protect themselves from the worst effects of global warming.”
“Tom W (04:38:00) :
[…]
By the way – the best definition of the ‘climate’ of a GCM is via an ensemble average
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_average
which in principle has all scales. Since the real atmosphere consists of a single realization, one then has to do some work to relate it to ensemble averages. This gets fairly technical so I won’t get into it.
”
Clouds still don’t work. Influence of aerosols still unknown. Humidity still parameterized.
Do not forget that no one has ever been tested for accuracy in generating a computor model that is 80 years out. It is like measureing the distance to the moon with a 12 inch ruler.
I think the year 2090 was chosen with care, as there is unlikely to be anyone of us around then, who read the original prophecy.
I am sure if I increased temperature at a regular rate of one degree per decade I could achieve the same sort of result. But why should I do that, unless I had an ulterior motive, such as demonstrating ‘a need’ to raise taxes to supposedly fund a cure for my scientifically unsupported hypothesis.
It all comes back to the alarmist argument of: i) We are really good at forecasting weather tomorrow – true, ii) we are not so good at forecasting weather in two week’s time – true, but iii) we are really good at forecasting climate in 50 years time – ?1?!?
We are being deluged with this sort of nonsense. The problem is – as in any fascist or communist society – if you hear the same BS often enough, you begin to believe it, especially if your job depends on you demonstrating that you believe it.
This is one of Wendy Schmidt (the activist wife of Google’s founder) pet projects and should be taken in same grain as pronouncements from Greenpeace, Al Gore and the rest of the kool aid drinkers
The report from the Minnesotans For Global Warming is that we had a very mild March here, well above normal. It’s practically spring by our standards. We had mid70s the last two days. All the snow is off the ground around the Twin Cities, and the woods and swamps are chirping, croaking, and buzzing happily.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we might not have a snowy April! Last year we had several inches of snow the first week of May, and Duluth had a big ‘un. Minnesotans will tell you –usually pretty quickly if you’re a visitor– that August is the only month guaranteed to not snow here.
“Tom W (04:56:11) :
[…]
See the Köppen classification as an example of ‘old time’ climatology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Köppen_climate_classification
”
Looks rather more trustworthy than the pile of junk that is IPCC AR4.
I predict that there will be fewer financial supporters of Climate Central this year and in the decades to come. Dr. Strauss may be fooled by AGW models, but they don’t fool all those who contribute to non-profits.
Re: Mike Haseler (02:30:04) :
“So back to your insurance scam. Asteroids would be completely useless, because there is no way to tap into our guilt complex.”
You make a good point, Mike, but you’re wrong about the “no way” part. I’ll precede my “asteroid insurance” offer with a study showing that every individual who ever suffered a direct hit by an extraterrestrial object was masturbating at the time. I’ll use tree rings from fossilized, asteroid-flattened forests as my irrefutable data base and tease out the “man-made” signal with sophisticated statistical manipulations. By the time I’m finished rolling out that fog bank the guilty throng will be begging for coverage.
To put this in perspective, we can go back to NOAA’s winter forecast for 2009-2010. In late summer/early autumn they predicted a dry, warm winter for much of the United States, including the region where I live. It was, in fact, completely wrong. We experienced below-normal temperatures for Decemeber through February and set a record for total snowfall in February. Interestingly enough, it was Joe Bastardi of Accuweather who correctly predicted this region’s winter weather conditions. Bastardi is now predicting a much colder 2010-2011 winter–and possibly the coldest “since the early to mid 90s–as the weakening El Nino completely fades away later this summer.
Time will tell who is right and who is wrong, but based on Bastardi’s track record, I’m NOT putting my money on Climate Central.
Tom, excellent idea. However, the devil is in the detail in that finding the single realization within the ensemble average requires accurate selection of all factors that determine those climatic scales. And while a number of them may be known (elevation and surface characteristics) or predicted accurately (solar cycles and others that stretch out to the Milankovich and beyond), some are so unpredictable (volcanic erruptions and asteroid impacts come to mind) that selecting accurate factors that give the proper realization is perhaps unobtainable.
But certainly an interesting area of research and the eventual ability to predict all factors is certainly a justifiable quest of science.
“…scenario extending current trends”
Paging Wipp & Ward.
http://commons.bcit.ca/physics/rjw/pers/womenrun.htm