By Steven Goddard
[Update: See message from Professor North Below]
Some well known Aggie Jokes:
Did you hear about the Aggie who won a gold medal at the Olympics? He liked it so much that he decided to get it bronzed.
Did you hear about the Houston Cougar that transferred to A&M? He raised the IQ of both schools!
How many Aggies does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, but he gets 3 hours credit.
How do you get a Texas A&M graduate off your front porch? You pay for the pizza.
And here is the most recent Aggie joke. Check out this piece of work from the Texas A&M school newspaper.
Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010
It is not just Texas; it is global. The rising temperatures that have afflicted the state are only part of a larger problem. Earth’s temperatures are rising at an alarming rate, rates unseen for thousands of years. “The warming that has occurred in the last 100 years seems to be very unusual,” said Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences and oceanography. “We do not see warming changes like that for 10,000 years. The rate at which it is going up has not stopped.”Even though the global rise in temperature is small, 3 degrees Celsius over a period of 100 years, the implications of such warming are large. “3 degrees Celsius is about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and if you ask most people, they would say that it does not sound like very much,” said Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences and oceanography. “If you look at the global average temperature, it really varies a small amount.”
Every fact and statistic quoted are suspect. According to NCDC, Texas has not warmed over the last 90 years, or the last 110 years.
Next up is their claim that global temperatures have risen by 3C in the last 100 years. Even Hansen’s bloated numbers only show 0.8C in the last 130 years.
NCDC shows the same thing, only less.
HadCrut shows less than one degree rise over the last 150 years.
The authors seem to be confusing IPCC estimates for the next hundred years, with measurements from the last hundred years – which is clearly the context of that paragraph.
Then they go on to claim that summer temperatures have increased in Texas.
Global climate changes are having equal effect on Texas‘ climate, which is part of the reason for the increased temperatures over the summers.
According to NCDC, Texas summer temperatures are dropping:
And finally :
“Texas temperatures are going up pretty much like the earth’s temperatures are,” North said. “Generally speaking, the global average temperature changes about the same as in Texas, so it is probably going to be warmer in Texas in the next 50 to 100 years. Last summer was a really hot summer, and while I say that is a fluctuation, it does probably indicate things that we might expect in the next 20 or 30 years. And what you can expect in the next 50 years is that the heat we experienced last summer is going to be the average summer temperature.”
Not one shred of evidence to support that statement. If NCDC trends continue, summers will be cooler in 50 years in Texas. Now, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are only thinking about their little part of Texas. The closest USHCN station to College Station is in Brenham.
According to USHCN, Brenham was warmer 100 years ago.
One might expect that professors of atmospheric science would have access to the Internet, and would be able to look these things up for themselves – before presenting information to their students. Looks like another bad Aggie joke.
[Update: Professor North responded to an email from one of our commenters, James Allison, and stated this:
“Please correct the false impression left on your website. The item in the Texas A&M student newspaper was based on short interviews by phone. While there was no error in fact, the impression left is false. In the interview with me, I was referring to the temperature changes of our planet over the last century (about 0.7 deg C). The author switched abruptly to an interview with Professor Andrew Dessler who was not talking about the temperature over the LAST century but instead the IPCC prediction for temperature over the NEXT century (averaging over models about 3 deg C). I would not have known about this error except that my email box has been unusually loaded with hate mail today.
Gerald North”]
He liked it so much that he decided to get it bronzed.
tallbloke says:
June 17, 2010 at 7:49 am
That one has belonged to the Marine Corps since 1870, please don’t touch it. 😉
Pull My Finger says “or how 2+2=5. Orwellian gets bandied about a lot these days, but truly, we are closing in on 1984 with the garbage kids are fed in school.”
But its true, 2 + 2 does equal 5 for very large values of 2 🙂 . 2 + 2 = 4 would show the decline, which, as we all know, must be hidden.
Andrew Dessler is the world leading expert on water vapour so I imagine it was the college newspaper author who mixed up the quotes so badly.
Gerald North, however, probably believes the recent warming is at the fastest rate in the last 10,000 years because he affirmed the hockey stick studies which requires one to suspend objective examination of other climate data.
The Daily Collegian has a decent bunch of writers, much better than a few years ago.
—
Although it has been more than a “few years”, our pet name for it was “The Daily Co-liberal”
Hey! I resemble these remarks (visting MS student at TAMU, and PhD as a Utah State University Aggie). I wish I could remember some of the gems I heard back in College Station, but that was a long time ago.
For the trivia-minded, those Aggie “A”s at the top of the article are on the USU campus. If you stood on them this morning and looked to the east, you would have seen the dusting of new snow we got last night (down to about 2000m). Not many folks in northern Utah worried about warming this week — more are wishing for it.
“L Nettles says:
June 17, 2010 at 6:29 am
Aggies don’t eat M&Ms because it takes too long to peel them, that and Global Warming makes them melt in your hand.”
I thought that they don’t eat M&Ms because they have trouble sorting them out from the W&Ws.
I guess everyone has heard about the Aggie bonfire “accident”.
they “built and burned a bonfire on campus each autumn. Known to the Aggie community simply as “Bonfire”,, ,,,,,,,
Although early Bonfires were little more than piles of trash, as time passed the annual event became more organized. Over the years the bonfire grew to an immense size, setting the world record in 1969. Bonfire remained a thriving University tradition for decades until, in 1999, a collapse during construction killed twelve people—eleven students and one former student—and injured twenty-seven others.
The accident led Texas A&M to declare a hiatus on an official Bonfire”
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggie_Bonfire
Wasn’t that about the time that so called “Global Warming” ended? Any connection?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggie_Bonfire
Scott:
That soccer ball had to be accelerating positively. I saw it going left to right.
Mike from Aggie
“Texas temperatures are going up pretty much like the earth’s temperatures are,” North said.
Not according to NCDC and USHCN
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
June 17, 2010 at 7:11 am
“Wouldn’t it be a good idea (or does this already exist) if there was an independent web site – and I mean independent in the way that no beliefs were held on AGW – which simply presented ALL the ‘facts’ we know about temperature changes.”
Oh Ghostly One,
You have arrived at the One Site to meet your stipulated requirements: WUWT!
Yes, commentors often express advocacy, but Mssr. Watts, the Moderators, and most of the article contributors strive for full disclosure and balance. That’s why the rest of us, in ever increasing numbers, keep coming back to WUWT……
As Dragnet’s Sgt. Joe Friday stated it : “The facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.” Anthony and crew are the modern day Dragnet squad, time and again confronting and handcuffing the Climate Change Criminals…. with the facts.
No, no, no. These guys are right. Texas is getting hotter…I noticed it in March, and the rise in temperature since then seems to be accelerating.
Well it seems to me that they don’t have any data on global average temperature; since there is no way to measure that.
That second graph is labelled global land-ocean temperature index” and the Y-axis goes from -0.4 deg C to +0.6 deg C which is a long way from guesstimates that the mean global temperature should be about +15 deg C; and they call it temperature anomaly; whcih sounds like something is wrong with it.
I wish they would stop trying to peddle “anomalies” as actual temperature data. The temperature any place on the globe is somewhere between about -90 deg C and about +60 deg C; and pretty much covers most of that range at all times.
Even if they could measure the true global average temperature it has no scientific significance anyway; there is no formal relationship between the local temperature anywhere and the heat or other energy flows at that place; because every different kind of terrain has different thermal processes taking place; that all differ in how they relate to local temperature.
So average temperature tells you nothing about the earth energy balance. The system is not in equilibrium any way; it isn’t even at a stable state; and goes through wild gyraionss at least every 24 hours.
So stop trying to present temperature anomaly plots as if they were actual physical data; about anything real.
Ken Hall says:
June 17, 2010 at 6:39 am
“I am from England so I do not ‘get’ the Aggie angle. Would this be the same University that was featured in the Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds movie, The best little whorehouse in Texas?”
—————————————-
You did better than I did. I had to resort to Google.
@Pamela Gray
“Obama’s nearly 10th-grade-level rating was the highest of any of his major speeches and well above the Grade 7.4 of his 2008 “Yes, we can” victory speech, which many consider his best effort, Payack said.”
Yeh, I picked this little gem out of his babble. Sadly, Pamela, I find this to be true when talking to average people. If you go over 2 syllables, you’ll lose many in any idea you’re trying to express. (Present company excepted of course.) So, I guess the president thought the American people function at a 10th grade level. What does that tell you about the people he spoke to at his “victory” speech. heh, heh.
Slightly off topic…
The state of Texas has revamped the hurricane evacuation plan for this year. Folks are now to leave the Houston/Galveston area based upon which college they went to. UT grads take I-10 West. LSU grads take I-10 East. SMU grads take I-45 North, and Aggies take Loop 610.
sandyinderby says:
June 17, 2010 at 10:36 am
“I am wondering if this is anything to do with a spinning ball rebounding without spin. Angular momentum and all that.
That does happen, it can be easily demonstrated by just spinning a ball between your hands and dropping it, if it grips the ground when it bounces it’ll accelerate laterally.
“How many Aggies does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, but he gets 3 hours credit.”
Hey, That’s my joke!
I’m not kidding.
27 years ago, I was a show writer for the University of Virginia Pep Band, and I came up with that gag (except it was “Maryland football players.”
You people are being very unkind – this poor Prof may lose his position over this.
However, we are long overdue in having a precedent – someone in the comfortable alarmist country club needs to be fired for publicly distributing BS science theories.
Once the first one falls, then the Domino Theory applies. Ultimately this would lead to CRU and IPCC, which in turn would lead to real climate science – half hearted apologies for the pun.
Stephen
You forgot to mention Rice. ;^)
Yeh, I picked this little gem out of his babble. Sadly, Pamela, I find this to be true when talking to average people. If you go over 2 syllables, you’ll lose many in any idea you’re trying to express. (Present company excepted of course.) So, I guess the president thought the American people function at a 10th grade level. What does that tell you about the people he spoke to at his “victory” speech. heh, heh.
Despite the source, this would actually be correct – in fact, at 10th grade, its overly generous. Public communications are generally written to the 8th grade level (used to be 6th grade), as the average competency in English is not more than that, across all spectra. This is the “lowest common denominator” approach that purports to ensure your message is understood by the widest possible audience, without alienating those whose language skills are above that level.
I send this WUWT link to Prof North and invited him to join this discussion to clarify what he meant. Its possible the student reporter is a CAGWer and purposely misinterpreted what the good Prof. said – a number of times.
I guess that there are no farmers on this forum. The farmer’s test for a hot day is that you can fry an egg on the hood of your pickup truck. Such a standard would give the global warming crowd something substantial to work with. They could report that each of the last five decades added on egg-frying day.
Prof North posted this response to my email to him.
“Please correct the false impression left on your website. The item in the Texas A&M student newspaper was based on short interviews by phone. While there was no error in fact, the impression left is false. In the interview with me, I was referring to the temperature changes of our planet over the last century (about 0.7 deg C). The author switched abruptly to an interview with Professor Andrew Dessler who was not talking about the temperature over the LAST century but instead the IPCC prediction for temperature over the NEXT century (averaging over models about 3 deg C). I would not have known about this error except that my email box has been unusually loaded with hate mail today.
Gerald North”
Reply: I’ve updated the post above to include this response from Professor North. ~ ctm
If the soccer ball had enough “english” in the form of topspin, and it bounced along the way, then angular momentum might convert to an acceleration. Never say never.
No gain of energy overall, of course.
Cheers ctm.
When WUWT posts controversial articles the author(s) should be invited to the discussion.
Reply: That would be a lot of work. You did a good job this time. Feel free to do it with every article. If you want I’ll send you my email address. ~ ctm
I have an Aggie co-worker. Hanging on his office wall is a coat hanger with a pair of men’s briefs attached. It is his Aggie briefcase.
On the other hand, A&M produced more Army officers during WWII than West Point did.