I’ve read a number of the testimonies before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment yesterday. It had a number of excellent presentations, and you can watch the entire video here. 
One presentation made me chuckle though, and that’s the one from Dr. Heidi Cullen.
It was probably the most lightweight presentation of all of them, and was mostly a history lesson combined with overused and well known talking points. It was a bit like watching An Inconvenient Truth. For example, does her Climate Central graphical treatment of the Keeling CO2 curve (at left) make it impart the information to viewer any better than the original?
When I was in TV news, it was called “swish”. “We need more swish on that.” i.e. “we need to add some bling and sound effects because the viewer has the attention span of a gnat and if we don’t make it pretty they’ll change the channel”. Yeah, in retrospect, maybe that works with Congress too.
One of her statements though, made me bust out laughing. It’s a prime candidate for Quote of the Week but I’ve already named one this week.
Here’s what she had to say:
And the urgency is that the longer we wait, the further down the pipeline climate travels and works its way into weather, and once it’s in the weather, it’s there for good.
Is it just me, or do you all get the impression the Dr. Cullen really doesn’t understand the differentiations of weather and climate?
Weather has always been in climate, it doesn’t suddenly appear “in climate” based on some imagined metric or maxim. It’s always “been there”, not the inverse.The Merriam Webster dictionary says:
I could forgive her if this was an off the cuff poorly considered ad-libbed remark under pressure before congress, but she wrote this ahead of time. This is just nutty thinking.
She adds:
We are currently in a race against our own ability to intuitively trust what the science is telling us, assess the risks of global warming, and predict future impacts. So when we look at a climate forecast out to 2100 and see significantly warmer temperatures (both average and extreme) and sea level three feet higher, we need to assess the risk as well as the different solutions necessary to prevent it from happening. The challenge is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, replace our energy infrastructure and adapt to the warming already in the pipeline.
Three feet huh? Okay, let’s run the numbers. Here’s the satellited measure University of Colorado Sea level graph from our WUWT ENSO/Sea Level/Sea Surface Temperature Page
Let’s see, at the current rate of 3.1 mm per year, with 90 years remaining, we’ll have 279 mm (0.91 feet) by the year 2100. And of course, if we get some changes in ocean patterns, AMO, PDO, etc, we might very well see a lower rate. Or, it could be higher, but even being generous, and doubling that rate, gives only 1.82 feet.
Scary huh?If I lived on the coast, I’d worry more about hurricanes and strong ocean storms than I would sea level changes. And, what will coastal development look like in 100 years? Who knows? People 100 years ago certainly couldn’t predict what our coastal development would look like today. In fact, who could have predicted that Australia might consider banning coastal development due to such overblown fears?
But, it is often unreported that we’ve had sea level rise all through American history. Of all the talk about sea level rise, it is interesting to point out that at least in Boston, man has easily outraced the sea. The worry about sea level is real, but the ability of man to adapt is clearly illustrated in the comparative maps. See here: The rubbish is coming! One if by land, two if by sea
You can read her entire testimony here: Cullen_Testimony_10-17-2010
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Richard:
Today’s paper told me that scientist have just isolated a super statin drug that just may increase lifespan by a decade or so, so who knows how long we’ll have Ms. Cullen to curry favor from.
That redistributive IPCC quote is, you note, featured by the GWPF. Glad to see it’s on the job.
So far, just read the opening statement by Brian Baird. Chock-a-block with presumptuous cAGW assumptions. I hope he felt shafted and betrayed by the end of the session …
And we are amused (or bemused) by this why?
What amuses me, is that anyone here @ur momisugly WUWT is – amused? Surprised? Corrective? about Cullen’s statement. How many people, including so-called scientist, think “climate” exists? That “climate” can do something? That “climate” has an effect? And does not the statement, “weather is not climate” buy into climate being “something” separate from weather? Only a child would seriously say something as silly as, “A is not B” when A exists but B does not, except maybe in their imagination. And it further amuses and astounds me that supposedly intelligent adults can convert, what is no more than a mathematical byproduct (climate) into something real.
OMG! That’s her. I’m glad I’m not the only one who found her testimony hilarious. At times, she was spewing incomprehensible phrases together like silly putty. I could not stop laughing. I have to admit, at times I was very perplexed by what I was seeing. But that just made it funnier.
j ferguson says: “Has anyone reading this any idea how Dr. Cullen could have gotten through two bouts of Columbia without getting a better grasp?”
Here’s one clew: Michael Mann was on her thesis committee.
It is refreshing to hear that Cullen now predicts three feet by 2100. In her book “Future Climate,” published just this year, she predicts 3 feet by 2050.
She says:
“…The challenge is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, replace our energy infrastructure and adapt to the warming already in the pipeline…”
Heidi’s got “pipelines” on the brain
By “already in the pipeline”, presumably she means in the oceans.
Am I right here: the only way the oceans (covering 70% of the Earth’s surface) can heat up is by increased incident solar radiation?
As a layman, I don’t understand how an increase of a fraction of 1°C in the temperature of the atmosphere (whatever the cause) can have any noticeable effect on the 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of seawater.
“Yeah, in retrospect, maybe that works with Congress too.”
Yes, there are plenty even in Congress that go “Ooh and Ahh” when shiny things are dangled in front of them !!
Until explained by Heidi’s testimony, I didn’t realize that Climate goes through a pipeline to Weather and when it gets there, it goes into Weather and can’t get out. I wonder if Anthony could offer her a guest posting here on WUWT so she could explain to us exactly how this works, particularly why Climate can’t get back out of Weather.
However that UC graph is portrayed I always find it extremely irritating. The notion that satellite altimetry is able to measure MSL to millimeter or sub-millimeter accuracy is a statistical fantasy. I have posted this link here a number of times in the past. It is a PDF of the data products handbook for the Jason 2 satellite.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/J2_handbook_v1-3_no_rev.pdf
This is the latest and greatest of the series of sats that have provided the data for UC’s graph. To understand my irritation refer to Section 2.3.1. Accuracy of Sea-Level Measurements. There you’ll find this “The sea surface height shall be provide with a globally averaged RMS of 3.4 CM (1 sigma)”. That’s CENTIMETERS, which still sounds pretty good until you refer to the table that follows. There you find that the accuracy starts at 11.2 cm and only gets to 3.4 cm after multiple levels of statistical processing and each and every level is listed as TBD, i.e. that’s what we’re hoping for but we ain’t guaranteeing anything. If you proceed down the table you come to a line for significant wave height where the picture is even less rosy. When waves are present, which they are over most of the oceans most of the time averaging 2 m and ranging to 8-10 meters daily, they can’t read the surface to 10% of wave ht. or 0.4 m. whichever is greater.
Still if they are actually able to achieve their claimed levels of accuracy it would be a prize meriting achievement. Personally I’m quite dubious of that they’re getting within +/- a meter. I used to work in the surveying field and, though the quality of equipment available has improved greatly since I was doing it, the best instruments which operate on a very similar, if not identical, method to the satellite altimeters are still only able to achieve +/-2mm+/- 2ppm. That’s reading from a solidly fixed instrument to an equally situated block of high precision retroprisms over 2.5 miles or less and under ideal conditions, with reading times that range from 5 sec to over a minute. Shooting to a natural surface causes an immediate loss of accuracy of 1-2 orders of magnitude.
The satellite altimeters are orbiting at 1336 kilometers at thousands of miles per hour. Orbit accuracy, although tremendously improved in the latest generation, is still +
/-10 cm. It used to be 2-3 orders of magnitude worse. They are scanning swaths of ocean hundreds of kilometers across, with reading times of less than a second. At that range to achieve the the +/- 3.4 cm that they claim would mean they are able to measure to one part in 40 million.
If you take the time to read the entire document, they do a fairly comprehensive job of explaining the process and the very large number of correction factors involved in arriving at the final data. I tried to count them all but gave up. All of them are partially to completely model based. What I found most revealing though, was that the entire process is referenced to the reference ellipsoid and geoid models that are the basis of the GPS, so that the connection of the data to the reality of the world’s oceans is bit ephemeral.
Still, even if we take their accuracy claims at face value, try slapping a +/- 3.4 cm error bar on that ubiquitous UC graph and see what you have. And as I pointed out earlier this is the latest and greatest data available and the data at the beginning of the record is multiple orders of magnitude worse.
Richard Wright says:
November 18, 2010 at 12:56 pm
I can confidently predict that if they get their way, life expectancy will be closer to 35 than 75.
DaveE.
Dave Wendt says:
November 18, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Agreed. They’re confusing precision with accuracy.
We may have a realistic approximation of sea level rise in a century because instantaneous measurement is simply not realistic.
DaveE.
“Here’s what she [Heidi] had to say:
And the urgency is that the longer we wait, the further down the pipeline climate travels and works its way into weather, and once it’s in the weather, it’s there for good.”
===============================
Exactly the way I feel about Catastrophic AGW theory, if becomes any more entrenched, it may be here for good.
The business models/government subsidies/careers/political favors/ already built upon the theory, is the “heat in the pipeline”.
Some have noticed the pipeline is near failure, and are running for their lives.
Some believe in the integrity of the pipeline………
Some question the existance of a pipeline.
Looks to me as if Dr Cullen’s strange comment may simply be a consequence of multi-tasking –
– such as, she may have been preparing her Subcommittee presentation at the same time as rehearsing a “voice-over” for a well-known brand of washing machine descaler advert, and got her notes mixed up.
A busy life for AGW climate scientists seeking a second career when it’s all over?
Is this the same Dr. Heidi Cullen who proclaimed that all meteorologists that did not believe in man made global warming should have their certifications revoked?
Dr. Cullen and her fellow believers are convinced sea levels are rising based on computer projections using the 2.3 mm/yr “increase” being registered by Quarry Bay Station in Hong Kong Harbor, while ignoring the rest of the stations around the world, which show collectively no significant change at all. Keep in mind this single “increase” is really measuring how quickly the geology Quarry Bay Station rests upon is sinking into the Harbor, not how much the water level is rising!
But at least the warmers like Dr. Cullen are making their idiotic claims on tv and in public view. The more alarmists they become, they more incredible they get.
just as hillbilly here but seems to me that in order to ever become “climate” it is REQUIRED that it be weather first?
THINK folks, the weather BECOMES the climate doesnt it?
and the climate does NOT in any way dictate the weather.
commonly said as the climate is what we expect, the weather is what we get.
jorgekafkazar –
MM
Curriculum Vitae – Michael Mann
External Committee Member (2001-)
Heidi Cullen, Ph.D. 2001: external committee member, Columbia University, 2000-01
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/cv/cv.html
Re: jorgekafkazar: November 18, 2010 at 10:14 am
Why didn’t that suprise me, and perhaps it’s time to update the SNA charts again. Given her science-lite performance, it’s not suprising she’s another example of mann made global warming.
LAURA DEVENDORF, Sunbury, Georgia: “You can just sit there and see the tides getting bigger.”
Really? Savanna, Ga averages about a 7′ tide range (today’s high and low tides were 8.4′ and 1.4′ respectively). Laura and the Weather Bimbo can really just sit there and and discern a <3 mm / year rise within a 7' (2,133.6 mm) range?
Mama always said: "Bimbo is as Bimbo does".
Why would she say (and write!) such a thing? Its nuts.
Either she is
a) condescending (thinking that what she says to Congress doesn’t matter – only that it has to ‘sound’ good) or
b) she truly is an idiot and doesn’t understand the basics of climate (pipeline? Wtf?).
She hurt herself here – Congress radar is ‘up’ and working. They’re not stupid ….
“It’s a prime candidate for Quote of the Week but I’ve already named one this week.”
But there’s room for a second isn’t there?
I do wish folks would get past the notion that climate is the average of weather. Consider the action of placing one foot in a bucket of ice water and the other in a bucket of very hot water. You will not keep either foot in its bucket very long. The average, however, is just fine.
please enlighten me as to how climate is arrived at if it is NOT the AVERAGE of the past observations?
Well they certainly showed that it takes all kinds to make a panel, lot of contrast between Cullen and Curry, Lindzen and Santor, and the switch over to the “uncontested OA” theme was really obvious.
I was sure clear the harm done to the Blogasphere by RC had left an impression Baird.