Just in time for summer heat waves in the USA, worrisome model outputs from Stanford with the all important could qualifier. No mention of UHI, asphalt, or heat waves of the past. No mention of weather stations that read hot in Tucson. Just CO2 driven modeling. Stanford’s Press Release is here. No published paper was provided with the press release, but there is a link to GRL in the body of the PR. – Anthony
Heat waves could be commonplace in the US by 2039, Stanford study finds
The effects of global warming will be felt sooner than expected, say Stanford researchers.
BY MARK SHWARTZ, Stanford
Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.
“Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Diffenbaugh concluded that hot temperature extremes could become frequent events in the U.S. by 2039, posing serious risks to agriculture and human health.
“In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities,” said Diffenbaugh, a center fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields.”
The GRL study took two years to complete and is co-authored by Moetasim Ashfaq, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow now at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The study comes on the heels of a recent NASA report, which concluded that the previous decade, January 2000 to December 2009, was the warmest on record.
2-degree threshold
In the study, Diffenbaugh and Ashfaq used two dozen climate models to project what could happen in the U.S. if increased carbon dioxide emissions raised the Earth’s temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) between 2010 and 2039 – a likely scenario, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.
In that scenario, the mean global temperature in 30 years would be about 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) hotter than in the preindustrial era of the 1850s. Many climate scientists and policymakers have targeted a 2-degree C temperature increase as the maximum threshold beyond which the planet is likely to experience serious environmental damage. For example, in the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Accord, the United States and more than 100 other countries agreed to consider action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius.”
But that target may be too high to avoid dangerous climate change, Diffenbaugh said, noting that millions of Americans could see a sharp rise in the number of extreme temperature events before 2039, when the 2-degree threshold is expected to be reached.
“Our results suggest that limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial conditions may not be sufficient to avoid serious increases in severely hot conditions,” Diffenbaugh said.
Record heat
For the GRL study, the researchers analyzed temperature data for the continental U.S. from 1951-1999. Their goal was to determine the longest heat waves and hottest seasons on record in the second half of the 20th century.
Those results were fed into an ensemble of climate forecasting models, including the high-resolution RegCM3, which is capable of simulating daily temperatures across small sections of the U.S.
“This was an unprecedented experiment,” Diffenbaugh said. “With the high-resolution climate model, we can analyze geographic quadrants that are only 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) to a side. No one has ever completed this kind of climate analysis at such a high resolution.”
The results were surprising. According to the climate models, an intense heat wave – equal to the longest on record from 1951 to 1999 – is likely to occur as many as five times between 2020 and 2029 over areas of the western and central United States.
The 2030s are projected to be even hotter. “Occurrence of the longest historical heat wave further intensifies in the 2030-2039 period, including greater than five occurrences per decade over much of the western U.S. and greater than three exceedences per decade over much of the eastern U.S.,” the authors wrote.
Seasonal records
The Stanford team also forecast a dramatic spike in extreme seasonal temperatures during the current decade. Temperatures equaling the hottest season on record from 1951 to 1999 could occur four times between now and 2019 over much of the U.S., according to the researchers.
The 2020s and 2030s could be even hotter, particularly in the American West. From 2030 to 2039, most areas of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico could endure at least seven seasons equally as intense as the hottest season ever recorded between 1951 and 1999, the researchers concluded.
“Frankly, I was expecting that we’d see large temperature increases later this century with higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming,” Diffenbaugh said. “I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades. This was definitely a surprise.”
The researchers also determined that the hottest daily temperatures of the year from 1980 to 1999 are likely to occur at least twice as often across much of the U.S. during the decade of the 2030s.
“By the decade of the 2030s, we see persistent, drier conditions over most of the U.S.,” Diffenbaugh said. “Not only will the atmosphere heat up from more greenhouse gases, but we also expect changes in the precipitation and soil moisture that are very similar to what we see in hot, dry periods historically. In our results for the U.S., these conditions amplify the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Besides harming human health and agriculture, these hot, dry conditions could lead to more droughts and wildfires in the near future, he said. And many of these climate change impacts could occur within the next two decades – years before the planet is likely to reach the 2-degree C threshold targeted by some governments and climate experts, he added.
“It’s up to the policymakers to decide the most appropriate action,” Diffenbaugh said. “But our results suggest that limiting global warming to 2 degrees C does not guarantee that there won’t be damaging impacts from climate change.”
The GRL study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The high-resolution climate model simulations were generated and analyzed at Purdue University. GRL is a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
Mark Shwartz is communications manager at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.
And have they tried feeding in the data as it was in 1980, and seeing if they can accurately forecast what happened in the intervening 30 years? With the 25 km resolution it should be making real forecasts that can be verified or not.
If they can show that the model run as if it was 1980 comes up with some predictions for 1980-2010 that match the observed weather, then that would be a considerable step forward.
If not, then any predictions made for the next 30 years are junk.
Simples!
The word “could” must be banned. Replace with an estimate of the probability.
So the penny has dropped, 2 degrees C is a target the world governments have set (that they new would never be reached!!, well not in our lifetimes) but with warmists believing what they preach they expected it to be reached in just a few years…
Why would governments promote this? TAX… And when the climate cools the Govt will look to the Climate Sheeple Scientists to start all over.
$60 billion in climate grants = Trillions in World Govt Climate Tax
Latimer Alder says: “And have they tried feeding in the data as it was in 1980, and seeing if they can accurately forecast what happened in the intervening 30 years? …If they can show that the model run as if it was 1980 comes up with some predictions for 1980-2010 that match the observed weather, then that would be a considerable step forward.”
My understanding is that the models have already been tweaked numerous times so as to reproduce actual climate, more or less, via ‘postdiction’. The problem is not that they can’t match the weather for a given interval; the problem is that as we get farther and farther away from the tweaking date, the models produce more and more garbage.
an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science
Gosh! Well, I guess the word is in.
They are quick with their chicken bones. I will give them that.
I rely on Peter, not that “New Earth Professor”;
Anyone want pay me a shed load of money to produce a report showing what could happen if temperatures dropped 2°C. No, I thought not.
When I was a kid in the 1970’s, New Hampshire would have at least a few 100 degree days most years. People had to keep their lawns watered else they would go brown from the heat. Lawn sprinklers were common, not just to hydrate the lawn but for those kids whose parents didn’t have their own swimming pool.
Since the mid 1990’s, we’ve not had a single day over 100 that I am aware of, and nobody I know waters their lawns anymore. There is enough precipitation that people typically mow their lawns more frequently, and never need to use fertilizer anymore.
Haven’t read the paper, but they do realise that 0.3C is not significant when compared to month to month temperature variations which are otherwise known as weather? I’ve seen very little correlation between average temperatures and daily weather (warming appears to me to manifest itself as higher overnight temperatures, not noticeably different weather)
I know America is a litigious place. Can these people be sued for inducing unwarranted stress in worried members of the public?
Wait for the whitewashes, wait for the summer heat, then let the machine start again.
This is a war.
I did an astrological compatibility test between myself and a world famous sportswoman 2 years ago – said we should make Agassi and Graf look like an arranged marriage of mutual sacrifice for the greater good. Really!! It’s true!!!!
Doesn’t mean the model’s true and the wedding bells sure aren’t coming soon!
It’s a model which may or may not be true and there may be circumstances (e.g. I didn’t meet her and probably won’t) which mean it’s unlikely to happen.
These models: they road tested for 30 years to show they actually work??
“Could, might, maybe, …”
Haven’t we been down that road before?
Tell you what: That whole line of malarky is not but a deceit foisted upon those whose minds which are less prepared to understand the machination.
Those –ahem– slimy bastards pushing that crap, have it in mind to fool enough of the uninformed into buying the lies such that the ‘crap and fade’ (cap and trade) gets enacted.
That what it’s all about.
“The Stanford team also forecast a dramatic spike in extreme seasonal temperatures during the current decade. Temperatures equaling the hottest season on record from 1951 to 1999 could occur four times between now and 2019 over much of the U.S., according to the researchers.”
Last November you had a guest post here critiquing an NCAR claim of a dramatic increase in the ratio of new daily maximum to new daily minimum temps.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/hall-of-record-ratios/#comments
The most significant, at least in my view, evidence offered was this graph of new monthly maximums and minimums by decade since the 1880s
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_b5jZxTCSlm0/Sv31ZY99ioI/AAAAAAAAD38/zHZkCLYg590/s1600-h/image017.png
It sure looks to me like global warming is producing a serious decline in temperature extremes. The 2000s had fewer than any decade since the 1880s and the trend seems to be down in a big way.
For me, the biggest flaw in the AGW argument is the models.
I accept the radiative physics science that tells us that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial times could raise temperatures by around 1 degree celsius. And that, depending on how much faith one puts in the surface temperatures record, we may have had around 0.7 of a degree within that 1 degree already.
But the models seem to be are a based on theoretical ‘runaway’ positive feedbacks based on increased water vapour. No precedents, evidence; merely conjecture,
I’ve tried my best to find pro-AGW information that supports the models and the ‘best’ that I can come up with (for a layperson like me) is ‘How to talk to a denier’ at grist.org. – http://www.grist.org/article/climate-models-are-unproven/
I’d really appreciate anyone throwing a bit more light on the arguments FOR the AGW models – just so I can get clear on the specific areas of disagreement.
I’m going to need help with this one! Maybe someone with good a working knowledge of these models can chime in.
I visited the RegCM3 high resolution model page mentioned above as being the “unprecedented” part of this research and found that the data fed into this model all comes from “Global” models (ECMWF, GCM, GISST, etc.) . I was under the impression that these global models are not good at all for modeling events with any degree of certainty far into the future, so would not this make the RegCM3 suffer from the same malady?
This entire hypothetical scare story is based on a slew of ‘could’s and ‘may’s. Wish their super high-resolution computer models would just tell us what IS going to happen in the next three years so we could track for confirmation before it’s thrown to the policymakers.
Even if the temperature went up 2 degrees, which I seriously doubt, we may have already hit the very top, it may just rain more and more often due to increased evaporation making this conjecture totally wrong, in fact in the opposite direction. In other words, without any proof of its validity, this is just a super high resolution scientific computer model wild ass guess, nothing more.
Curious how they conveniently omitted the maps showing 1960-1969 and 1970-1979 and 1980-1989 and 1990-1999 so we could see what the maps looked like in the very real past, not the hypothetical future. But that would allow us to compare the model to historic records wouldn’t it? Sigh.
For those reading here that don’t know science very well, even though this is stated as being done by scientists and at Earth System Science at Stanford University, this article is not science, this is not the way science is done, just look up the words ‘scientific method’, you will see it isn’t.
Noah Difenbaugh, I think there is a typo here, should it not read, Noah Arkbuilderbaugh ?
PaulH from Scotland says:
July 9, 2010 at 2:22 am
I’d really appreciate anyone throwing a bit more light on the arguments FOR the AGW models – just so I can get clear on the specific areas of disagreement.
I know it’s no help, but I’ve been asking for that since at least 1995.
I feel ripped off!
This study was suppose to come out last winter!!!
Effective timing….hmmm.
Looking at the daily weather role….been mighty cool in that region of the west coast.
The three most telling words in American Scientific Publications, the more you see them, the less value the publication, journal, study has: “COULD’A”, “WOULD’A”, “SHOULD’A”. One day soon, the really deep stuff is going to be published in Comic Book format, with super heros, super villans, great color pics, and 2 letter words. I have a feeling Hav’erd and Stan’ferd will lead the way. Invest now!
This just gives me Tourettes, ugh.
“In the study, Diffenbaugh and Ashfaq used two dozen climate models to project what could happen in the U.S. if increased carbon dioxide emissions raised the Earth’s temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) between 2010 and 2039 – a likely scenario, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.”
They programmed their models to increase the globe’s temperature by 1C over the next 30 years, and are surprised to learn that their models predict, under that scenario, the U.S. will be warmer during those same 30 years? Am I reading that right? Seriously?
Hot weather in Colorado?
We have been freezing our rears off. Two consecutive years of washed out July 4 fireworks.
The paper is in press:
Diffenbaugh, N., and M. Ashfaq. Intensification of hot extremes in the United States
http://www.agu.org/contents/journals/ViewPapersInPress.do?journalCode=GL
And as such it’s not available for purchase (as if I was going to buy a copy).
PaulH from Scotland.
About the AGW models. I tried to respond but my post got lost somewhere.
Take a look at http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm for their viewpoint. Keep in mind that when you’re on that site you’re be looking at the AGW viewpoint – just as when you are on this site, you’re looking at the non-AGW viewport.
It looks like the political spin and white washes of the warmist crowd is working. Summer temperature are now doubt helping too. Believe that “Global Warming is Primarily Caused By Planetary Trends” has dropped from 50% in Dec and Jan to 44% now.
“A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% of Likely U.S. Voters now say global warming is caused primarily by human activity, while slightly more (44%) say long term planetary trends are to blame. Five percent (5%) blame some other reason, and 10% are not sure.
The number of voters who feel human activity is causing global warming is up seven points from early April and has reached the highest level measured since early September 2009. Meanwhile, the number of voters who blame long term planetary trends has fallen to the lowest level measured since early June of last year. “
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/energy_update
… is likely to occur as many as five times between 2020 and 2029 over areas of the western and central United States.
Note how the models indicate heat waves, not in the Eastern US, but the Central and Western states. Yet, they used the current heatwave as a lead-in. Pure alarmism (and lies) at its worst.
They blew it. They coulda, woulda, shoulda focussed their models on the Amazon. But who thought that would blow up. REDDi, get set, go!
=====================
I looked in the AMS Glossary to see how both a heat wave and cold wave are defined. I would have thought the AMS would provide precise definitions somehow related to the normal temperature and maybe dew point of the region. Not so. They have left both definitions tunable to the whim of the person making the claim. Doesn’t sound very scientific to me.
Here are the definitions.
I came accross this yesterday. A completely different conclusion! We will just have to wait it out and see where we are headed.
Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed publication produced at Harvard-Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/07/06/lawrence-solomon-global-cooling-underway/
The love affair of far into the future temperature projections and as always unverified climate models continues.
This reminds me of a cartoon I came across last year,that covers this perfectly:
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/thread-14-post-2776.html#pid2776
When will these manufactured climate crisis’s ever end?
Does the NOAA show both poles cooling over the next 8 months???? Maybe it’s my monitor.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/glbT2mSea.gif
It has become a tradition these last 10-12 years to print AGW stories during summertime heat waves. And there are no shortage of enviormental scientists who claim that heat waves were not only rare in past centuries, but are really the product of man-made GHGs. It is all so boring, sooo earl 2000s. And to think our taxpayer dollars subsidize these over-credentialed peer reviewed blockheads.
Well, I was taught as a child not to mock the afflicted.
But this piece from Noah Dippenstick is so laughable that I just have to share this piece of priceless fun concerning his namesake.
http://monologues.co.uk/3Hapence.htm
Just shows that I’m prepared, in the spirit of evenhandedness, to refer to another alarmist who wasn’t believed but who (if a well known book is to be believed) was proved to be right! (But I suspect he had some inside information that our Assistant Professor Dippenstick isn’t privy to!)
Scott BL says:
July 9, 2010 at 4:31 am
“In the study, Diffenbaugh and Ashfaq used two dozen climate models to project what COULD happen in the U.S. IF increased carbon dioxide emissions raised the Earth’s temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) between 2010 and 2039 – a likely SCENARIO, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.”
I’ll highlight the operative words for you above.
I’m sure I’ve seen this kind of thing somewhere before. :o)
Yeah right. Just like the prediction of more hurricanes. We all know how that prediction panned out. The climate boffins need to stop making testable predictions from their hypothesis. That’s too much like science and it just encourages most people to mark it their calendars then wait to see if it comes to pass. That’s too much like science too.
PaulH from Scotland says:
July 9, 2010 at 2:22 am
For me, the biggest flaw in the AGW argument is the models…..
I’d really appreciate anyone throwing a bit more light on the arguments FOR the AGW models – just so I can get clear on the specific areas of disagreement.
_______________________________________________________________
Paul, you are asking about “climate sensitivity” perhaps these articles by Dr. Spencer and Willis Eschenbach may help. Yes they are AGAINST the AGW models but they do explain the positive feedback mechanism of water hypothesis.
In a nut shell CO2 causes warming. Warming increases evaporation of water. Water is a very powerful greenhouse gas and causes further warming. This simple model however does not take into account the negative feedbacks caused by water such as cloud albedo and the rapid thermal energy transport from the oceans to space by thunderheads as shown in this photo: http://texasscribbler.com/images/Thunderheads.jpg
Water Vapour as a positive feedback – http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
Global Warming Explained: http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/
Global Warming Theory in a Nutshell http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
Clouds Dominate CO2 as a Climate Driver Since 2000: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/01/clouds-dominate-co2-as-a-climate-driver-since-2000/
Spencer: strong negative feedback found in radiation budget: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/07/spencer-strong-negative-feedback-found-in-radiation-budget/
Spencer on Pinatubo and climate sensitivity: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/27/spencer-on-pinatubo-and-climate-sensitivity/
Spencer on climate sensitivity and solar irradiance: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/05/spencer-on-climate-sensitivity-and-solar-irradiance/
Spencer: Global Average Sea Surface Temperatures Poised for a Plunge: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/20/spencer-global-average-sea-surface-temperatures-poised-for-a-plunge/
Spencer: SST’s headed down – fast: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/22/spencer-ssts-headed-down-fast/
Willis Eschenbach on Climate Sensitivity
The Thermostat Hypothesis: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
Sense and Sensitivity: an extension of the ideas laid out as the Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/28/sense-and-sensitivity/
Another Look at Climate Sensitivity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/16/another-look-at-climate-sensitivity/
——-
Tropical Tropospheric Amplification – an invitation to review this new paper: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/30/tropical-tropospheric-amplification-an-invitation-to-review-this-new-paper/
Message in the CLOUD for Warmists: The end is near? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/01/message-in-the-cloud-for-warmists-the-end-is-near/
Hope that helps.
I’d like to know what happens if they run the model backward in time with decreasing atmospheric CO2 if it predicts the drought of the 1930’s which caused the infamous Dust Bowl. It it does not then the model isn’t worth the electricity used by the computer that executes it.
The press release has the unmitigated gall to call a computer model run an experiment.
No Stanford, that isn’t an experiment. It’s a prediction made by a hypothesis. The experiment is the testing of the prediction. That pesky old scientific method just keeps rudely intruding on these computer fantasy worlds. It’s hard to believe these so-called scientists are trying to pass off computer simulations as experiments. In Marine Corps parlance this is just inf**kingcredible and unf**kingbelievable.
Two things jump out at me.
“Using a large suite of climate model experiments…” How can anyone call a computer model run an “experiment”, much less a scientist. That would be like writing a program that calculates 2+2 = 5, then running your program a bunch of times, averaging the result, then publishing a paper claiming that you have “experimentally” verified that 2 + 2 = 5
The second is even funny: “In the study, Diffenbaugh and Ashfaq used two dozen climate models to project what could happen in the U.S. if increased carbon dioxide emissions raised the Earth’s temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) between 2010 and 2039 ” They then found that their would be more hot days.
So these brilliant guys seem to have discovered that if the the temperature goes up then we would have more hot days. Wow, I’m impressed.
If these guys are right that a 2 rise in temperatures will be so devastating, please say a prayer for us here in Alberta. It’s 12C now and it’s expected to hit 23C by this afternoon. That’s an 11 degree rise in only 5 hours! How many must die before you people will listen (obey)?!!! Our Father, whom art in Heaven….
I love the phrase “climate model experiments.” It almost makes it sound like real science, doesn’t it?
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/only+gets+worse/3248931/story.html
Interesting data here. A lot of news stories were claiming this latest spike was “unprecedented” but unbelievably, someone from a newspaper actually went to the trouble of looking up older records from the experimental farm that show there were longer hotter spells earlier in history. AND the new temperatures are taken at the AIRPORT, while the old ones were at the experimental farm.
Jim
And then there’s this pesky fact:
The warmest year, to date, in the United States, even with heat islands increasingly contaminating the modern record, is 1934.
There is a new study out that says future European heat waves will reduce vegetation and the increase in Albedo from this will slightly cool off temperatures so that they only increase 3.0C rather than 4.0C.
So, naturally I did the calculations for the expected 40% die-back of the Amazon (whatever the real expectation is). It turns out this would have a pretty big impact on the Earth’s Albedo – more than the impact of the Arctic sea ice melting out in early June for example – a reduction in Earth’s temperature of about 0.4C with a higher local impact in the Amazon.
Just showing how many factors have to be included in these climate model projections. If there are going to be more heat waves in the US South-West and the desert expands presumably (which has a very high Albedo compared to even partially forested land for example), this will cause more sunlight to be reflected back into space and there will be a cooling affect from this. Now the US South-West is smaller than the Amazon or the Arctic ocean basin, but the point is the same.
Bob, the PDF link works fine for me.
http://www.agu.org/journals/pip/gl/2010GL043888-pip.pdf
Go long on rock salt now.
What’s with AD 2039? Why not 2038, 2040– better yet 2035, when Pachauri’s melted Himalayan glaciers will have raised sea-levels, de-moisturizing Earth to produce baking droughts? Alas for such hysterics, Gaia knows the truth.
Point is that in 10 – 15 years maximum, anything Jones- or Mann-related will have deliquesced to toxic waste. As an endangered academic species, AGW fruitcakes will face extinction regardless of kleptocratic poseurs’ efforts to sustain the breed with cash infusions akin to kidney dialysis affording life-support.
Let’s consider an analogy in the computer modeling business. Flight characteristics of aircraft. Say a bright aerodynamics engineer has a brilliant insight into how to modify a jumbo jet to greatly reduce drag. He modifies the extant design on his engineering workstation and runs the hypothetical aircraft through a flight simulator. Sure enough it flies more efficiently in the computer simulation. Keep in mind that flight simulation models are a HELLUVA lot better than any climate model.
So following the post-scientific method of skipping past the experiments he doesn’t do any wind tunnel testing and his company immediately starts retrofitting all extant aircraft in service. They skips doing any actual flight tests and immediately put these modified aircraft into service fully loaded with paying passengers.
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? That’s exactly what the climate boffins are doing except that their models, unlike aircraft flight models, are virtually untested to begin with and have no history of predictive success.
This isn’t science. It isn’t engineering. It’s wool gathering. Damn dangerous and expensive wool gathering if the untested conclusions are acted upon. I don’t have too much of a problem with academic wool gathering per se. If someone wants to devote their time to, say, making informed guesses about whether dinosaurs were warm or cold blooded, or whether homo sapiens and homo neandertalensis interbred 100,000 years ago, that’s fine so long as the pursuit of that knowledge isn’t being funded on the public dime and any tentative conclusions have no practical impact on the modern world. It’s a waste of time and money in my opinion but as long as it isn’t my tax dollars being wasted I have no right to interfere.
In the case of CO2 driven AGW I am compelled to interfere. Not so much because of the cost of the research but because of the comtemplated, hideously expensive actions based on incomplete, unreliable, cherry picked observations and shoddy alarmist conclusions obtained therefrom. These actions could easily cause vast harm while doing no good whatsoever.
The Met Office has the largest computer. Their forcasts have been wrong 10 ot the last 10 years. They were much hotter than actual 9 times. They have proven forecasting is wrong if done by warmistas.
My appreciation of science has been so damaged by CAGW now that I instantly switch off every time I see the word “could”.
@Henry
I’ve been thinking for some time now that a much better use of the Met Office computers, if “saving the world” was their genuine concern, would be to use the processing power to aid in the efforts to track asteroids.
tallbloke says:
July 9, 2010 at 1:08 am
“I know America is a litigious place. Can these people be sued for inducing unwarranted stress in worried members of the public?”
Only when our Department of Justice begins defending the public:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/06/justice-department-file-suit-arizona-early-tuesday/
Here they sue Arizona whose law supports federal law, but ignore Sanctuary cities whose laws Refutes federal law.
Jimbo says: July 9, 2010 at 5:35 am
Does the NOAA show both poles cooling over the next 8 months???? Maybe it’s my monitor.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/glbT2mSea.gif
Interesting, compare that with this also from NOAA, the first six in the left columns match the same graphs but for the US only.
http://i28.tinypic.com/2vbq1i1.jpg
The forecasts from the same agency look nothing alike for the US. While I was at it, I also included the the next six forecasts for the US. It appears the forecast for the 2010-11 winter is similar to the one past in the NW, but the SW gets warm. Didn’t work that way last winter.
Won’t Diffenbaugh et al be surprised when we will be cooler in 2030 than now…
3. Results
We find that the exceedence of the historical hottest-season threshold increases over the next three decades in the A1B scenario (Fig. 1). The intensification of hot extremes emerges quickly in the RegCM3 simulations, with 3 to 4 exceedences per decade over large areas of the U.S. in the 2010-2019 period (Fig. 1) (with an intra-ensemble standard deviation (S.D.) of 2 to 3 exceedences per decade over most of the U.S.; Fig. S2). This emergence intensifies in the 2020-2029 period, with up to 8 exceedences per decade over the western U.S. (S.D. of 3 to 4), and up to 4 exceedences per decade over much of the eastern U.S (S.D. of 2 to 3). Further, in the 2030-2039 period, most areas of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico experience at least 7 exceedences per decade (S.D. of 3 to 4), and much of the rest of the U.S. experiences at least 4
exceedences per decade (S.D. of 2 to 5 over most areas). The summer warming in the RegCM3 ensemble is not uniform, with greater increases in the mean in the eastern U.S. than the western U.S. (Fig. S3), along with increased variance in the northcentral U.S., increased skewness in the southwestern and southeastern U.S., and decreased kurtosis throughout most of the continental U.S. (Fig. S3). The intensification of hottest-season exceedence is similar in the CMIP3 ensemble (compared with the RegCM3 ensemble), including up to 6 exceedences per decade over the western and northeastern U.S. in the 2030-2039 period, and up to 8 exceedences per decade over parts of the southeastern U.S. (with S.D. of 4 over most of the western and eastern U.S., and 3 over most of the central U.S.). However, the intensification of seasonal hot extremes emerges more quickly and strongly in the RegCM3 ensemble, particularly over the western U.S., where the higher-resolution topographic boundary condition leads to a more accurate representation of extreme seasonal temperature values (Fig. S1).
———-
Well, they reported the standard deviation at least…be nice to see a map of it between the ensemble runs. Not very impressive when your error is almost as large as your result.
They also run the climate model from the 1950-2040 period, which is where they get their baseline hot extremes for the 1950-1999 period, yet there is no validation of the model output for that time period.
“We first calculate the hottest season of the 1951-1999 period at each grid point. Both the CMIP3 and RegCM3 ensembles are able to capture the observed magnitude and pattern of hottest-season and mean-summer temperature in the U.S. (Fig. S1). The simulation of interannual variance of summer temperature is less accurate, with over-estimation of variance in the central U.S. (Fig. S1).”
That’s always nice to have bad variance, yeah, because that leads to stable model runs. There is no Fig. S1 in the manuscript, btw.
It is not really suprising that they get the result they get from their 2 dozen models, because they all contain the same assumption – global warming will reduce cloud cover which will lead to more warming. Observation does indeed show a slight reduction in cloud cover has occurred in recent decades. However –
Dr. Spencer has pointed out that these models have got cause and effect the wrong way round. Rather than the current warming having led to reduced cloud cover, he suggests that it is the reduced cloud cover that has led to the current warming. If he is correct, then it wouldn’t matter if they ran 2 dozen or 40 thousand. The models are basically crap.
Here’s the actual article:
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2010/07/08/14654631.html
Last evening on BBC TV 1 in London, UK, we were warned of a ‘heat wave’, warning complete with health alerts!
Forecast max temps… 31C!
July 08, 2010
“Despite June 2010 being one of the warmest U.S. Junes since 1895, the twelve-month period ending June 30 was tied (with 2001) as the coldest since 1998. Of course, the U.S. cooling trend will eventually revert to a warming trend, but the current decade-long plus global cooling trend has not yet abated, which has been a major surprise for all global warming alarmists. ”
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/07/last-12-mths-ending-june-is-coldest-since-1998-us-temps-cooling-at-81f-rate-per-century.html
Darn, and just 35 years ago I was reading about how we were going to go into the next ice age. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
From Gail Combs: “In a nut shell CO2 causes warming. Warming increases evaporation of water. Water is a very powerful greenhouse gas and causes further warming. This simple model however does not take into account the negative feedbacks caused by water such as cloud albedo and the rapid thermal energy transport from the oceans to space by thunderheads as shown ….”
Thanks for the links.
A question:
The explanations for CO2 and Water IR absorbtion always depict the heat exchange energy transfer models for daytime, when these IR sensitive gases add heat to the atmosphere. Why do we never see the same kind of model for the nightime, i.e. without solar input, when the ‘greenhouse’ gases become net emitters of IR, that is they become ‘coolant’ gases for the atmosphere?
Ed
There is only one thing capable of causing the substantial US heating referred to in the press release. El Nino’s. Otherwise, heat waves under neutral or cool SST conditions are simply temporary weather related events (the current heat wave is a weather related event). And we all know and have been told multiple times that weather related events have nothing to do with climate. The model must cause CO2 radiation of long wave infrared to heat oceans deep enough to produce El Nino’s, that evaporate enough water that turns into enough increased water vapor, that stays in the atmosphere long enough, to cause further longwave radiation, that warms the planet more, that produces more El Nino’s.
In summary, increasing CO2 must produce more frequent, stronger, and longer El Nino’s. Trouble is, so far, there is no correlation to increasing CO2 and increasing El Nino’s. Reason? Simple. Longwave infrared cannot warm oceans deep enough to cause an El Nino. Physically can’t do it. El Nino’s are caused by naturally occurring events we have no control over whatsoever.
So many interesting points in this article…
First, the definition of heat waves is ill-formed if you want to talk about the dangers of heat. An heat wave is actually defined as a temperature sufficiently warmer than this historic average. The real danger of heat waves should be about how much warmer it is compared to the last month average, because the body get accustomed pretty fast to warmer temps. So if climate gets warmer, our body will get used to it and 100 degrees F won’t be as dangerous.
Second, the 2 degrees of warming target, I have never seen any good argument for it.
Third, they focus on the 1951-1999 portion of the record. In the USA, it is a segment which exhibits an acceleration of the warming. Make it longer on any side and you lose this illusion. Why focus on this period?
Fourth, they expect 1.8 degrees F of warming in the next three decades. It probably fits right with the “acceleration of warming” or the period 1951-1999. But if you look at a longer record, let say 1920-2010, this level of warming seems much less probable.
I’m glad to see the phrase “sooner than expected” being used with greater frequency. This means that the entire AGW enterprise may collapse sooner than they could possibly expect. (It’s not wise to raise the ante too casually in a game that depends on the cooperation of Mother Nature.)
It’s also amusing (and a little hair-raising) to note that “sooner than expected” in this case refers to expectations contrasted with other expectations, since the events under consideration all take place the future. Talk about living in a mirror-world!
evanmjones says:
July 9, 2010 at 12:36 am
“an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science
Gosh! Well, I guess the word is in.”
I once interviewed a person with a PHD in Environmental Sciences for a position we had open that was to deal with industrial water pollution in Lake Erie. She had NO chemistry, physics or math courses but plenty of tree planting, horseback riding, plant identification, etc. “education”. This was called environmental sciences by here educational institution. Anyone can obtain any level degree in any field today if they have the time and money. It may, of course, be meaningless.
I am seeking funding for a very important project:
But first I need a subject, a new and really scary one on how global warming is going to dramatically affect …………………………… I want something good for at least 10 years’ funding and unlikely to be proven right or wrong in my lifetime.
Unfortunately, hundreds of other scientists have been quicker than me to milk this public teat, so I need to move quickly before the bubble bursts.
Any ideas, as well as substantial financial contributions, would be most welcome.
“…according to Stanford University climate scientists. In most of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, the number of extremely hot seasons could be as high as seven.”
Wow — Gorebull Worming will heat up Teh Planet so much that the *year* will expand beyond the usual four seasons to seven!
How much more worse-than-we-thought can it get?
It is hot every summer.
I am convinced these are dishonest people because they are arguing forecasts as being actual facts which they are not. They also don’t have records of forecasts from 20, 30, 40 years ago to show us if they have forecasting accuracy.
When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards. Maybe we need to print cards on forecasters.
Noah Diffenbaugh, spoke at last US Mensa’s Annual Colloquium last year. (I would’ve preferred going to the ICCC, but they had James Hansen as the keynote speaker and I figured I’d better look after my “flock.” Hansen looked exhausted and left early to get to Washington before the snow – he spoke at the Capitol Hill power plant protest and I got stuck in Atlanta for a couple days. I may have brought home bedbugs, too. Sigh.)
See http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Mensa.htm for a good summary from someone who wasn’t there.
Diffenbaugh spoke about the projected warm up in the southwest. It was the first I had heard of either the man or the research (some model output he showed was only days old), so there wasn’t much I could question. IIRC, one of the things the models came up with was that the “semi-permanent summer low” over the southwest would turn into high pressure and subsidence would reduce clouds and rain. This struck me as very odd as the summer low comes from low density hot air and I couldn’t figure out how it could turn in high pressure in a hotter environment. The best I was able to come up with is if the hot area expands, then maybe there could be a low pressure ring and subsiding very dry air in the center.
At any rate, I figured in the the short term it might be another area to watch during the negative PDO phase. And what was behind the past drought that forced the Anasazi Indians out of the area anyway?
This is the first I’ve seen about Diffenbaugh’s work since the Colloquium, it’s nice to see some form of paper trail for his near-term predictions.
mikelorrey says:
July 9, 2010 at 1:04 am
Nashua broke 100 earlier this week. I set up watering for raspberries and part of our back yard this week, I know we didn’t water the yard last year and likely not the year before. It’s really just weather – a well placed storm could have negated that and the forecast for Saturday is calling for some rain.
I didn’t move to New England until 1974, the only 100 degree weather I remember was the stretch in in 1975 that set the all time high temp in Massachusetts. Some coworkers and I were going to climb Mt Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts, but decided doing that day was really stupid, so we hiked up overnight and watched the dawn at the top. Much more sensible.
We’ve had a few summers recently that didn’t break 90. I liked those, though sometimes the humidity made up for it.
Say, might it be possible that increasing CO2 causes weather changes but leaves climate alone? If all the climate indices continue their hide and seek with AGW scientists, they may have to come up with a new acronym for the newly discovered (I love this) CO2 relationship to weather related events, and can thus continue with the panic inducing press releases!
Human-Induced Bad Weather
Now I know there are clever folks out there. Let’s come up with a really catchy acronym and ask for coinage to further study the problem!!!
It’s all a matter of perspective when it comes to weather. Saskatchewan is suffering under one of the coolest spring/summers anyone can remember and more rain than we’ve ever seen in the Eastern part of the province. Sure we’re not as populated as most of those singing the heatwave blues but our cool spring/summer is affecting a very LARGE area. We’re in desperate need of unrestricted sunshine without a cloud or drop in sight. In some areas its been too cool for too long. Rain is fine if its being mitigated by sun and wind but without the breezy warmth to carry off much of that sitting moisture we get crops rotting in the ground which can’t be made up for with a hot and sunny August. Others here have said it and here’s the truth of it. Hotter we’re able to offset with irrigation and the hardier hybrid grains we grow but cooler is a shorter season with unworkable moisture levels and that means less production overall. I’ve never in 30 years here had the smell of mold overcome the air freshener hanging off the mirror in the truck until last year and this one will be worse yet. I’d bet that doesn’t make the news anywhere but here.
The crying hasn’t even begun yet. Wait until the harvest yields are reported and some governmental pinhead pushes more ethanol production to get off that evil oil. Maybe “big oil” will have a poster with a malnourished child having gone without so fuel in B.C. could be lauded as “green” and slap the caption on it “Grain into gas. Green enough for you but what about him?”
jorgekafkazar says:
July 9, 2010 at 12:26 am
i agree with jorgekafkazar.
That is how most models are generated. you take your model, use the past data, and tweak all the parameters, and then use them to move forward.
but there ARE SO SO many parameters. an old saying in the modeling world is ” Give me 18 parameters, i can model an elephant!!!”
People on the wall street take their new-fangled Risk models and “validate” them using the past data, acting as if they are “forecasting from the past”.
now, after the last couple of years…… i wonder how many people think that will do a bang-up jobof predicting the future!!! and the climate is lot more complex than financial markets.
” Jimbo says:
July 9, 2010 at 5:31 am
I came accross this yesterday. A completely different conclusion! We will just have to wait it out and see where we are headed.
“According to Dr. Lu, the phase-out of CFCs will be reversing the global warming effect by ushering in a 50 to 70-year period of global cooling.”
Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed publication produced at Harvard-Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/07/06/lawrence-solomon-global-cooling-underway/”
Just gave it a quick read. Most is over my head but a very interesting angle. Now can he devise a real world experimental test for his observations?
The bigger problem is how will they ever tax CFCs when they are being phased out? Oh that won’t generate any where near as much as CO2 taxation!
“Those results were fed into an ensemble of climate forecasting models….”
An ensemble! The entire bloody orchestra in concert! Who would dare to argue against any finding that sprang therefrom?
Alan F:
Similar weather here in WY. Just now moving into a real summer. Much cooler and much more precipitation/clouds than “normal” up untill last week. But I have seen it like this before here, about 15 years ago. That’s why they call it “climate change”. As we have seen, they can blame it for anything that happens.
Yes, heat waves are common in the US, especially due to the High Pressure that forms over the 4 Corners region.
It’s called Summer…drrrrrrr.
Read the Lewis & Clark Expedition. They talked of the oppressive heat along the Missoula. A merciless baking sun in 1802, gee who woulda thunk it?
How’s about that 1875 heat wave & drought in California? Never seen a hotter year in Redding & Red Bluff since.
They don’t make toasty like they used to.
MSM digs.
…-
“Heat can’t beat records of the good old days
By JUSTIN SADLER, Ottawa Sun”
“Contrary to news reports based on readings at the airport, temperatures in recent days have only come close to breaking records.
Temperatures recorded at the Ottawa airport only go back to 1939, said Environment Canada meteorologist Peter Kimbell, but records at the Central Experimental Farm date as far back as 1897.
“If you look at that site, which is not much farther away, no records are broken,” he said.
Monday’s temperature of 34.2C didn’t quite reach a stifling 36.1C recorded in 1897. Tuesday hit 34.1C and in 1912 it reached 35C. Wednesday soared to 35C, but didn’t pass the 36.7C mark Ottawans felt in 1921.
The record temperature on July 8 was recorded in 1897 at 36.1C.
“I don’t think we’ll break the record (Friday),” Kimbell said.
Expect temperatures to moderate in the coming days, he said, as a stagnant ridge of high pressure dissipates allowing a cooler front to push through.”
“Record temperatures
July 5, 1897 — 36.1C
July 6, 1912 — 35C
July 7, 1921 — 36.7C
July 8, 1897 — 36.1C
July 9, 1911 — 35.6C ”
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2010/07/08/14654631.html
“”” “Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study. “””
So there we have it; Noah now has himself a nice Playstation just like Peter Humbug has; so now he is playing “a large suite of” video games on it; well he called them CLIMATE MODEL EXPERIMENTS.
Say Noah; how about doing some REAL climate experiments rather than some “MODEL” experiments.
And then come and tell us your results. And could you bring a reconstructed (back model) of say just the 20th Century; to back up your claim that this contraption is actually modelling the climate of planet earth.
“”” Ric Werme says:
July 9, 2010 at 11:09 am
Noah Diffenbaugh, spoke at last US Mensa’s Annual Colloquium last year. (I would’ve preferred going to the ICCC, but they had James Hansen as the keynote speaker and I figured I’d better look after my “flock.” “””
I asked my 91 year old Mexican MIL, if she would like to be a member of MENSA; and she burst out laughing. “Why would I want to belong to an organisation for crazy ladies ?”. was her response. In colloquial Mexican Spanish, MENSA does NOT mean a Table; remember the Spanish word for table is MESA; from a quite different Latin root.
No need to go into that other Latin root and why it relates to crazy ladies, and some other common words.
“”” Gail Combs says:
July 9, 2010 at 6:05 am
PaulH from Scotland says:
July 9, 2010 at 2:22 am
For me, the biggest flaw in the AGW argument is the models…..
I’d really appreciate anyone throwing a bit more light on the arguments FOR the AGW models – just so I can get clear on the specific areas of disagreement.
_______________________________________________________________
Paul, you are asking about “climate sensitivity” perhaps these articles by Dr. Spencer and Willis Eschenbach may help. Yes they are AGAINST the AGW models but they do explain the positive feedback mechanism of water hypothesis.
In a nut shell CO2 causes warming. Warming increases evaporation of water. Water is a very powerful greenhouse gas and causes further warming. “””
Professor Stephen H. Schneider; the dean of the Climate biology experts at Stanford University says that H2O is a weak greenhouse gas compared to CO2; I believe he made that claim in an interview he gave regarding the book Climategate authored by Meteorologist Brian Sussman; in which (interview) he said Sussman was misfiring on all cyclinders.
So which is it; it H2O vapor a weak GHG compared to the all powerful CO2; or is it a positive feedback warming enhancer of CO2 initiated warming.
And why the hell does it cool down so rapidly at night in a previously (daytime) very hot and very arid desert; when all of the CO2 (see it is well mixed) is present and accounted for; and ONLY the H2O is missing; well it isn’t missing; it still is more than the CO2 even over the dryest of deserts.
I can’t buy it; whenever CO2 is left on its own to do its thing; it fails miserably to keep the earth warm.
Peter Humbug recently did a Playstation experiment; where he eliminated all the atmospheric water vapor; he didn’t quite duplicate my suggested “Birdseye” experiment; but he did get rid of all the water vapor. Anmd when he let everything run (on his playstation; ALL of the H2O vapor returned in about 3 months proving the positive feedback thesis.
Well I would like to see him do the converse experiment; and get rid of all of the CO2 in the atmosphere; and see how long it takes for all of that to come back. In fact why not keep it out; and see what temperature the earth reaches with nothing but the H2O feeding on itself.
And then do the Venus experiment too, and flood the atmosphere with H2O vapor and pole to pole cloud cover from the ground to say 20 km high. Show us what happens then when we start from way past the “tipping point”.
Does the H2O in the atmosphere continue its positive feedback perpetual increase; or does something else happen to circumvent that ? Enquiring minds want to know. (well not me; because I already know what happens in both cases.)
Dave Springer (7:00am):
You’re dead right about the significance of results from “experiments” with unproven computer models. I suspect that the only way to keep young assistant professors from falling in love with acts of computational onanism is to tie their predictions to pay and prospects for tenure. Make them ineligible for raises one year for every tenth of a degree by which their prediction is off. And make them ineligible for tenure if the accumulated error exceeds 2 sigma of natural variability.
Peter Miller says:
July 9, 2010 at 9:44 am
“I am seeking funding for a very important project:
But first I need a subject, a new and really scary one on how global warming is going to dramatically affect ……………………………”
Male fertility. That’s always good. Do we already have it in the warmlist?
Yes, but a dead link. So you’re good. Go ahead, reduced male fertility is the ticket.
@george Smith
Water vapor is a weak greenhouse gas but it makes up for it in quantity. So much so that 95% of the greenhouse gas effect is due to water vapor. The other thing of major interest about water vapor is how much and how quickly it can vary. The other greenhouse gases don’t wax and wane like water vapor does. Saying CO2 is responsible for throttling water vapor is pretty analogous to saying the tail wags the dog.
George E. Smith says:
July 9, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Nevertheless, they manage to suck it in and tough it out, there is a Mexico Mensa, see http://www.mensa.org.mx/ . Their name probably reminds them to not take themselves too seriously.
Heh – babelfish can translate Mensa, e.g. “The Stupid word means “table” in Latin, and makes reference to the quality of our group….” and “Our vision is to develop to the maximum to the capacity and leadership of the integral members of Stupid in Mexico to the benefit of the community.”
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mensa.org.mx%2F&lp=es_en&btnTrUrl=Translate
Mensa is like the Genuis Club for Dummies. Requires 98th percentile on standardized intelligence tests. True Genius (like True Scotsmen, ha) begins at the 99.95th percentile. I choose that point because I tested out at 99.97th percentile on both the SAT and military GCT tests. I’m not all that smart and I’d hate to think a True Genius could test out lower. Seriously though, it’s a curse. At a Mensa meeting I still feel like the driver on the short bus. Most IQ tests, or widely accepted proxies like the SAT and GCT, are rather narrow in what they measure. Little long term memory or knowledge base is measured. What it measures is speed of thought and to some extent your ability to prioritize your time. Tests aimed at measuring very high IQs typically have no time limit and have exceedingly difficult problems which eliminates thinking speed and ability to prioritize. Gives a better measure of raw problem solving skill which I think generally manifests in what we commonly call intuition. The modern SAT, since it was re-centered in 1995 can’t measure IQs above 99.97 (a perfect score) unless the time to complete it is taken into account. I took the pre-recentered SAT in 1978 and scored 1480 (99.976th percentile). But I aced the math section and finished the entire test with quite a bit of time to spare so it wasn’t a really accurate measure. I didn’t practice for it and took it about a month before my 4-year tour in the Marine Corps was over so it wasn’t like I’d been intellectually challenged much in the 4 years that had lapsed since graduating high school.
The reason I’m so skeptical of so-called scientific experts and political elites is that I know that super-smart people are found in all walks of life. Highly intuitive people often find the most pleasure in doing things that engage the body instead of the mind. The result is that an academic climatologist’s auto mechanic or plumber might be a lot smarter than the scientist and if that plumber bothers to put some effort into studying climate science on a need-to-know basis he’ll arrive at sound conclusions in short order.
Climatology is more pattern recognition than anything else. You have a super complex system with borderline chaotic behavior, scores of important influences ranging from known and understood to unknown and unknowable, and thousands of minor influences. You can’t teach pattern recognition in universities. You either have a talent for it or you don’t and IQ in large part is a measure of your speed and ability to recognize patterns and make sense of them. So in the case of AGW what we have is very many high IQ individuals who don’t happen to be academics coming out of the woodwork to focus on this because the conclusions being drawn by the academics and the politicians sucking it all up because controlling energy use equates to controlling the world is threatening their way of life. These brilliant non-scientists have a compelling reason to apply their brainpower to it and, thank God for the intertubes, they have a cost-free effective way of making themselves heard.
I’m still working through some of the numbers but it appears to me that water vapour actually has a negative impact on the climate.
The Albedo of clouds outweighs the positive greenhouse contribution of water vapour.
We can calculate how much impact the Albedo of clouds has which something on the order of -13C to -17C. The greenhouse potential of water vapour is less, maybe 10C.
This would mean rewriting the greenhouse theory since the feedback of water vapour would not be close to 2 for 1 but would be something close to Zero or slightly negative.
We could use a real-world example of two locations which are very close to each other, have about the same solar energy coming in, would have similar CO2/GHG levels given how close they are, but have very different water vapour levels.
Sudan in the Sahara at 15N, 30E has an average temperature of 32C in April. In Zaire at 0N, 30E, the average temperature is just 23C in April (April is a good month to compare since the solar forcing at the TOA is about the same in both locations).
So one location with extremely low water vapour levels (and no clouds) is 10C higher than the very close location which has very high water vapour levels and lots of clouds. There is also more variation between night and day (23C in the no water vapour location versus 9C in the high water vapour location) as would be expected.
Edward Bancroft says:
July 9, 2010 at 8:28 am
The GHGs don’t add heat. They act like blankets slowing down the migration of heat from hotter to colder. In the daytime the GHGs in the upper atmosphere slow down infrared radiation from the sun. In whatever frequency band they are in they absorb photons from a directional source and then quickly emit it in a random direction. The random direction of re-emission is what causes the slowdown in heat transport as it’s just as likely an IR photon from the sun will be re-emitted right back at the sun rather than at the ground.
So in the daytime the GHGs cause upper atmosphere temps to rise and surface temps to fall by an equal amount. At night the situation is reversed. The IR photons are coming up from the ground and the surface GHGs impede their progress. The reason why the net result is more warming at the surface than the upper atmosphere is that much of the insolation is in visible wavelenghts which pass through the GHGs unimpeded. These visible wavelengths are absorbed (more or less depending on reflectivity of the surface) by the ground and then at night are re-emitted as infrared radiation which the surface GHGs impede.
Another good blanket analogy is that GHGs aren’t linear. If you have no blankets on a cold night having just one blanket will help a lot. A second blanket will help some but not as much as the first. If you have four blankets a fifth one would hardly help at all. If you have 999 blankets adding one more won’t have any measurable effect. Greenhouse gases work the same way. The first bit has the most effect and adding more is a case of diminishing returns. A fair characterization of increasing levels of CO2 is that the more there is the less you have to worry about the effect of adding even more.
Yet another good blanket analogy is heat capacity. Air can’t hold much heat compared to rocks, dirt, and water. A one square inch column of air 10,000 feet long weighs about 14 pounds. A one square inch column of water only 30 feet long weighs about 14 pounds. Moreover, pound for pound, water can hold 4 times as much heat as air. So basically a pond that is 8 feet deep holds as much heat as the entire atmosphere above it. The oceans hold roughly 1000 times as much heat as the atmosphere. And the average temperture of the ocean is fairly close to freezing. Only a relatively shallow top layer gets warm enough for brass monkeys. Whatever factors regulate how much of the icy cold ocean depths mix with the warm top layer cause the most noticeable climate changes which is why it’s always pretty easy to see the fingerprint of major oscillations in SSTs (sea surface temperatures) like ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), and AMDO (Atlantic Multi Decadal Oscillation) in global weather patterns. These all have different periodicities so depending on how the peaks and valleys line up or oppose they cause a plethora of different climate patterns. And who the hell knows if there are SST oscilations with periods of hundreds or thousands of years. We only know about the ones we’ve noticed since thermometers were invented and there were enough sailing ships plying the world’s oceans and keeping good enough logs that survive to this day to see the patterns emerge. Given the average ocean temperature is close to freezing it’s safe to assume that it reflects the average surface temperature over tens of thousands of years which handily explains why interglacial periods like the one we’re in now last about 10,000 years while the glacial period lasts about 100,000 years. Our so-called average global temperature measured over the long term is freezing cold. In the long view the arctic region today is the average climate for the entire earth most of the time. We should be afraid of altering the atmosphere in ways that accelerate cooling and cheerfully do whatever we can to encourage warming. Unless of course you’d like to see year round glaciers covering Washington, D.C. and everywhere north of it.
Dave Springer says:
July 9, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Mensa is like the Genuis Club for Dummies. Requires 98th percentile on standardized intelligence tests. True Genius (like True Scotsmen, ha) begins at the 99.95th percentile. I choose that point because I tested out at 99.97th percentile on both the SAT and military GCT tests. I’m not all that smart and I’d hate to think a True Genius could test out lower.
A fair number of the most widely accepted geniuses have not done all that well on I.Q. tests. Most notably Einstein, Feynman, and Tesla. One of Feynman’s biographer’s claimed he only scored 125 when tested in high school, though he was already demonstrating the capacity for breakthrough mathematics at that stage. I’ve always thought that the defining characteristics of really revolutionary geniuses were the ability to recognize the implicit fallacies in accepted dogma and the ability, when faced with a problem, to find the best question to pursue an answer for to provide its solution.
BTW, here is a neat little video of Feynman taking about honors and scientific elitism.
@Bill Illis
Don’t neglect to consider the water cycle as a heat pump. Water has a lot of unique properties and one of those is an enormous latent heat of vaporization. It takes one BTU to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. It takes almost a thousand BTUs to convert one pound of water to one pound of water vapor at the same temperature. Thus when water evaporates at the surface and rises up thousands of feet to form a cloud it carries an enormous amount of heat from the surface and releases it thousands of feet in the air when it condenses into a cloud. This effectively pumps the heat through the insulating surface layer of GHGs and releases it high above. The surface GHGs then act to impede the heat high in the atmosphere from reaching the surface. The GHGs in this case are helping to keep the surface cooler instead of warmer. Adding insult to injury (if you’re an AGW fanatic) the cloud further serves to raise the albedo during the day drastically, I mean REALLY drastically, reducing the amount of insolation reaching the surface. The models the climate boffins wave about don’t account for the heat pump effect and because it’s practically impossible to accurately measure the quite variable average albedo of the earth they just throw in a constant for the albedo. Interestingly different models use constants for albedo that vary by 7%. This 7% variation in average solar insolation between models is greater than the variation caused by all greenhouse gases combined. So ask yourself what worth is a model that attempts to isolate the effect of a single variable such as CO2 when there is an unmodeled, unknowable variable which has one or two orders of magnitude greater potential effect? The answer, of course, is the model is worthless for the task of isolating the effect of a minor variable. Until you have the major variables correctly modeled you can’t begin to isolate the smaller ones with any reasonable degree of confidence. Albedo and water cycle heat pump aren’t the only poorly modeled variables. Ocean circulation patterns along with timing and magnitude of mixing of cold deep water with warm surface waters is a hugely important variable that is still largely a mystery. Complicating things even more is there’s an obvious correlation between solar magnetic field activity and global climate change. We don’t really know what the hell is going on there. It’s hypothesized that waxing and waning solar magnetic activity, through it’s effect of more or less shielding the upper atmosphere from galactic cosmic rays (very high energy particles from things like supernovas) throttles the formation of wispy very high altitude clouds. Those high altitude clouds in turn throttle the average albedo of the earth and thus the amount of solar insolation reaching the surface and thus the near surface atmospheric temperature.
Obvious to everyone (seemingly except a majorty of so-called climate scientists) is that we have a lot of bigger climate changing variables that need to be understood before we can begin to understand the effect of a small increase in a modestly effective greenhouse gas. CO2 is almost certainly a bit player in this great climate mystery.
The really biggest insult to my intelligence with this CO2 nightmare fabrication is that what we can reliably know about increased CO2 concentration from the basic physics and biology (or botany to be specific) is it’s beneficial. Dig it. From a physics standpoint we know that adding a bit more CO2 insulation is going to keep the lower atmosphere a little warmer at the expense of a colder stratosphere. There’s no real argument there. But the effect is going to be noticeable mostly at night in cold dry air where there’s relatively little water vapor. Elsewhere the blanket (insulating effect) of water vapor, the major greenhouse gas by a long shot, overwhelms the smaller role of CO2. So where do we see the extra surface warmth? At night in freezing weather. If we could order up some warmer air that’s right where we ask it to be delivered! This will have the decidedly beneficial effect of reducing killer frosts and thus extend growing seasons for agriculture. From a botany standpoint higher levels of CO2 increase the growth rate of plants and also reduce their water requirements. If we could order up a boon to agriculture we’d order more atmospheric CO2! The downside of higher CO2 is just about nil in comparison. Coral reefs will suffer from a slightly less alkaline ocean? Cry me a river. I don’t eat coral and none of the animals I eat feed on coral either. BFD. Polar bears won’t have icebergs to frolic upon? BFD. They’re friggin’ bears. They’ll adapt. With an open northwest passage we can have cruise ship passengers feeding them like black bears in a park. Their population hasn’t diminished in any case. Only thing that has actually happened is some morons took some pictures where they look sad and lonely sitting on an isolated berg. If they were actually sad it would have been because they were looking at a 200 pound chunk of warm red meat holding a camera and couldn’t get close enough to eat it. So where’s the reliably known DOWNside of higher levels of CO2 that might offset the large benefits? In a nutshell, there are none. And THAT insults my intelligence more than anything else.
Oh, I forgot about rising sea levels story that is making kids have nightmares about drowning. The oceans have been rising, near as we can tell, a couple of millimeters per decade for thousands of years. This is what happens in interglacial periods as landlocked glaciers melt and thermal expansion takes place. There aren’t enough landlocked glaciers left where it’s anywhere near above freezing for that to be a factor. The vast majority of landlocked ice is sitting at the south pole and it will take many thousands of years to put a dent in it. A temperature rise of a few degrees from -40F to -37F won’t do it. That ice is there to stay. It’ll be there when the interglacial ends and so will the much smaller glacier covering Greenland. So that leaves thermal expansion as the only thing worth worrying about. The reliably known ability of CO2 to raise surface temperatures can’t possibly account for more than an extra millimeter per decade of sea level rise through thermal expansion. 100 years from now the ocean will be 4 inches higher than it would be otherwise. I’m supposed to be alarmed about that? 4 inches with 100 years to adapt to the rise? Give me a friggin’ break. That is a non-concern. Even the IPCC in their wildly exagerated global warming scenario is only predicting a one or two foot rise over 100 years. Even that isn’t hard to deal with. The natural rise of the ocean during that time would have been a foot. If a one foot rise in the ocean per century is a horrible problem why haven’t we seen our ancestors over the course of thousands years of recorded history in which the oceans rose 20 feet complaining about how terrible it was to deal with? In the past 15,000 years the oceans have risen 300 feet. The ecosphere appears to have nicely accomodated it. Is modern man so inferior in the big scheme of life on this planet that we won’t be able to cope with an extra foot of rise per 100 years while every other member of every phyla takes it in stride? Are we that weak and pathetic? Maybe so.
@Dave Wendt
Years of concentrated focus on a single narrow range of problems by a moderately fast thinker is nothing to sneeze at. Personally I have a problem staying focused on such a narrow range of intellectual pursuits as those guys and have a great many more not-so-intellectual physical pursuits as well. My big project at the moment is building a house from scratch with just me for labor and Home Depot for most of the materials. Going on my second year with it. Coming along very nicely. It’s all weathered in now with roof, siding, insulation, and interior walls & ceiling finished. Put in the A/C last month so the rest of it is a piece of cake in climate controlled comfort. The previous several years I became expert with a tractor & chainsaw clearing the several of acres of land where I’m building it, grading the beach, building a large boat dock, runnning utilities all over it, fencing, putting in fresh water supply system & septic field, pouring a 500 foot long concrete driveway from the road to the shore, and stuff like that. Only native plants are growing on it. No lawn and no irrigation. My motto is if it couldn’t survive here before I arrived it ain’t gonna survive with me here. There’s a really wide range of plants and critters to observe. I spend a couple hours a week just looking around. Forrest Mims, the amateur scientist and personal computer pioneer, is a friend of mine and we’re both of a like mind in the way we love to observe the smaller features in nature outside our back doors. Last we talked was about ice flowers. I had a ton of them this winter and learned all about the white crownbeard plants that produce them.
I bet Einstein & Feynman never did anything like what I described above and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for me. Tesla was a bit different in that he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. He’s by far the most interesting character of the three you mentioned. There’s a bit of cult surrounding Tesla and an old friend of mine has been obsessed with him for at least 20 years. I’m rather skeptical about any of Tesla’s more flambouyant inventions actually working as advertised but who knows, maybe you really can construct a massive power grid out of thin air. I’d have to see it to believe it though. In the meantime I made my personal power grid with about 2 miles of 6 guage copper.
I agree with their statement that “heatwaves could become common”. I also agree that “heatwaves could become rare”, and “cold snaps could become common”, and “wet spells could become common”, and “drought could become common”.
If we wait 26 years, we can check. If heatwaves are common, they’ll be right. If not, well that just said “could”, and what exactly does “common” mean? And who’ll remember their vague prediction anyway.
@Dave Wendt
By the way, I tend to hold inventors and expermentalists as the greatest thinkers. Famous mathematicians and physicists seem more like idiot savants to me. Leonardo Da Vinci is at the top of my chart. Prolific in all kinds of art, science, and engineering. Estimated IQ is off the charts. 200+. I’d also put guys like Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison above Einstein and Feynman. That would also be why I zeroed in on Tesla as the most interesting of the three you mentioned.
You piqued my interest with Feynman’s measured IQ of 125. I wasn’t aware it was that low. That’s below par for university college professors in the sciences. I think the explanation begins with him not uttering his first word until he was three years old. To get a high score on a standardized intelligence test you have to excel at both math/spatial & verbal thinking. Feynman probably had a deficit in the latter and was beyond the ability of the test to measure in the former. Standard IQ tests don’t measure well beyond about 150. So if he had average verbal IQ of 100 and maxed out the math portion at 150 that would give a reading of 125 since math & verbal are equally weighted. His actual math and spatial IQ was probably more like 180. He might have also simply been not interested in the test and didn’t put much effort into it.
Einstein never took an IQ test but best guestimates put him between 160 and 180 which is borderline high genius in anyone’s book and he too was probably much higher in math and spatial relationships than verbal performance.
Likewise, I found no record of Tesla ever taking an IQ test but best guestimates place him at or into the high genius range too. He was a child prodigy in math. He teachers thought he was cheating somehow. Also reported as a young child was that he would construct machinery in his mind, test it in his head, and then start bending metal to instantiate the design. This is characteristic of high mathematical IQ as spatial thinking goes along with talent for numbers. I build and test stuff in my head like that too. Everything from Rube Goldberg tinkertoy contraptions as a pre-schooler to entire personal computer motherboards as an adult and more lately a whole house I built in my head then started buying materials and putting it together. I don’t know where you read Tesla’s IQ wasn’t extraordinary. Nothing I found indicates that although I did google up that same three man group (Einstein, Feynman, and Tesla)who someone claimed all had less than remarkable IQ without providing any support at all for the claim except in Tesla’s case. I think you fell for a baseless meme there that someone with a less than remarkable IQ made up to feel better about himself.
At this time it looks like your link to http: // news.stanford.edu / news / 2010 / july / images / wayhot1_news . jpg has gone dead. This could be a site housekeeping issue or they could be sensitive to the use of these images here as examples of unwarranted alarmism.
Dave Springer says:
July 9, 2010 at 10:55 pm
“[….]
mentioned. There’s a bit of cult surrounding Tesla and an old friend of mine has been obsessed with him for at least 20 years. I’m rather skeptical about any of Tesla’s more flambouyant inventions actually working as advertised but who knows, maybe you really can construct a massive power grid out of thin air. […]”
Tesla had this intuition of seeing electricity as something dynamic and flowing, like waves on an ocean, and exploited waves, frequencies and potential differences, and resonance. In a few years we will wonder why people mounted a ton of lithium ion batteries into a Lotus Elise when all you had to do was transmitting the energy wirelessly (via a cable in the road. Yes i know we need a big cable to run thousands of cars on a freeway. I propose superconductors.). And then we will have cars that we can really call “Tesla’s”.
Dave Springer, compliments to you. You have got one good physics mind there.
Rarely can I read through that much scientific text as I just did you wrote above and not hit something either wrong or that didn’t properly follow basic physics and logic. Found nothing. Wish I could write as clear as you do. As you, I’m insulted by the ‘science’ behind this AGW fiasco, good way to put it. It breaks at the physics and logic level without ever getting into the mathematics, that’s clear.
Pamela Gray: July 9, 2010 at 11:39 am
…If all the climate indices continue their hide and seek with AGW scientists, they may have to come up with a new acronym for the newly discovered (I love this) CO2 relationship to weather related events, and can thus continue with the panic inducing press releases!
Human-Induced Bad Weather
Now I know there are clever folks out there. Let’s come up with a really catchy acronym and ask for coinage to further study the problem!!!
Anthropogenic Weather/Climate-Related Atmospheric Phenomena.
Tell the awards committee we’ll take cash, credit cards, paypal, or emeralds the size of chickens’ eggs…
So has anyone ever done a detailed study of the effects of poorly regulated capitalism on global warming? I mean like all across the USA there are barren, empty malls, factories and shopping centers. Across town or sometimes just down the road is a new mall, factory and shopping center that attracted the businesses away from the old one. Instead of clearing trees from large tracts of land why couldn’t something been done to remodel the old locations?
The heat given off by black tar roofs and asphalt parking lots was just doubled, or even more.
Why build new factories several times over in some instances in various countries while the old factories still sit there empty in the heat of the Sun? Why not put the trade agreements back like they were before ‘Nixon Shock’ and protect our own. The trade laws we had before he and Kissinger altered them worked just fine for 200 years.
I really hope someone is keeping a track list (the claim, made by whom, date of claim, direct link to the source, etc) of all of these doom and gloom “scientific” studies so that they can all be thrown back in their faces when the time comes.
Oh, how sweet that will taste.
Heat waves could be commonplace in the US by 2039, Stanford study finds.
Well doh! They are now, and were in the past. Tell us something we don’t know.
Mark Twain on weather:
I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don’t know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk’s factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don’t get it.
– “The Weather” speech, 1876
– for (post)modern times, Stanford is clearly one of the several major places where weather is manufactured, but only the apprentices are raw, not the data.
Dave Springer says:
July 10, 2010 at 1:34 am
@Dave Wendt
I had no intention of suggesting that any of the names I mentioned did not possess the highest level of intelligence, only that their extraordinary minds would not necessarily be captured by the available I.Q. tests. Real paradigm shifting geniuses have always been the ultimate “outside the box” thinkers. In fact, for most, the “box” never seemed to enter into their considerations. In bold contrast “climate science” seems to be overrun with minds driven to contain themselves in smaller and smaller boxes, like some epistemological version of a Russian doll. As a result we are deluged with often contradictory “science”, like the recent disappearing Mammoths fiasco. When the observational data don’t match their models in ways they don’t like they are quick with excuses and mitigations, but when the data miss in a direction that they feel supports their view they are almost exultant in their need to declare that things are “worse than we thought”, seemingly without the ability to recognize that what has been demonstrated in each case is that their models are wrong and probably fundamentally inadequate.
There doesn’t appear to be anyone even remotely approaching the status of an Einstein or Feynman in the climate sciences and I still feel that, by focussing the vast majority of human and financial capital on what is perhaps the least consequential aspect of the climate i.e. CO2, the present effort has probably retarded the growth of human knowledge in the field by many decades.
“Rhys Jaggar says:
These models: they road tested for 30 years to show they actually work??”
Climate Science of Models.
When some people marry a model and she reaches 30 she gets traded in for a a new younger one and waste $$$ going through the divorce settlement!
So just like taxpayer $$$ wasted on producing more GIGO virtual models. They keeping trading in climate models until one fits the best doom scenario they want. 🙂
Climate MODEL “experiments”.
As the saying goes, “Lawd Hep’ Me!”
The oxy + moron factor in this equation is somewhere near 10^44.
Max
Oh no! It’s worse than we thought.
OTOH, if the quiet sun/global cooling correrlation proves to be causal, the forecast of warmer temps by 2040 may work out for them if the sun comes out of it’s low activity by then.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
These Stanford boys don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. I suspect they’re using CO2 forcing in their model, and disregarding the impact of increasing cloud cover.
My prediction, using a non-linear heuristic model, which I run in my head now and then, is that heat waves as we knew them back in 2003 are now a thing of the past. The onset of the next cold period has been heralded by the quiet SS24 sun, and the old heat waves will soon be replaced by the new one of cold straights. So fill up the fuel oil tank, cut plenty of logs and wrap up warm.
Dave Springer – “The random direction of re-emission is what causes the slowdown in heat transport as it’s just as likely an IR photon from the sun will be re-emitted right back at the sun rather than at the ground.
So in the daytime the GHGs cause upper atmosphere temps to rise and surface temps to fall by an equal amount. At night the situation is reversed. The IR photons are coming up from the ground and the surface GHGs impede their progress. ”
The first part adds something that other explanations usually do not consider, however the part about atmosphere/surface temps rising/falling equally runs counter to their case, in that surface temps are increased by GHG IR activity in the daytime.