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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Kev-in-UK says:
November 19, 2010 at 8:58 am
I said: “Chaos is an illusion generated by ignorance. With sufficient information and computational resources everything is predictable backwards and forwards in time.”
U said: “I am not sure quantum phsyicists would agree with that statement!”
Most do but some notables do not. It boils down to whether information can be lost or whether it, like many other things, is governed by a conservation law. If quantum events can truly be random then information can truly be lost. If further interested in the controversy you can start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
[my emphasis]
Heidi Cullen made a remarkable mistake about Svante Arrhenius’ Nobel prize in her presentation. It is perhaps wishful thinking by Dr. Heidi Cullen that Arrhenius won his Nobel prize as a result of his contribution to climate science but this is not so.
Dr. Cullen told the committee that Svante Arrhenius ”got the Nobel prize in chemistry 1903 for doing the back-on-the-envelope calculation Dr. Meehl spoke about, which is if we double CO2 in our atmosphere our planet would warm approximately 8 degrees F”.
But according to Nobelprize.org:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1903/
“The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1903 was awarded to Svante Arrhenius “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his electrolytic theory of dissociation””.
This is further discussed in the biography of Svante Arrhenius:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1903/arrhenius.html
Arrhenius work on the electrolytic dissociation theory is described in the second and third paragraphs of that biography. The third paragraph ends:
”The paramount importance of the electrolytic dissociation theory is today universally acknowledged, even if certain modifications have been found necessary”.
Climate science was one of many topics Arrhenius was interested in and this is mentioned in the following sentence in his biography:
“He took a lively interest in various branches of physics, as illustrated by his theory of the importance of the CO2-content of the atmosphere for the climate, his discussion of the possibility that radiation pressure might enable the spreading of living spores through the universe (panspermy) and by his various contributions to our knowledge of the northern lights”.
Sorry, Dr. Cullen, but Svante Arrhenius’ Nobel prize cannot be used to glorify the pro AGW view.
[snip]
[If you want to join in, say somthing that adds to the thread and can not be viewed as offensive ~jove, mod]
I already joined the thread and made my views known. Why don’t you check up? I take it you find endless “stupid blonde” jokes endlessly funny too.
[I did – your previous comments were fine, laudable even, berating others for ad homs. Your snpped comment was an ad hom and added nothing. ~jove, mod]
On the difference between weather and climate there is an interesting old post from Roy Spencer that in my view explains things very well. Key is that today’s weather influences future weather, i.e. today’s climate influences future climate. This is one of the reasons the IPPC’s analogy with individual versus mean life expectancy does not hold.
Here is how Roy Spencer puts it:
“First let’s review the ‘scientific consensus’ explanation of the difference. In weather forecasting, you take a snapshot of global weather patterns with weather balloon, satellite, surface, and aircraft-based measurements, and then extrapolate them out in time using a set of equations. And as Ed Lorenz demonstrated in 1963, any unmeasured weather on very small space scales can cause huge differences in the forecast the farther out in time one projects the weather. This is the classic example of the chaotic, nonlinear variability inherent to atmospheric circulation systems. Even the flap of a butterfly’s wing will eventually change global weather patterns. Mathematically speaking, this is referred to as sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Global warming forecasting, in contrast, has been claimed to be possible because we are instead dealing with a small change in the rules by which the atmosphere operates. The extra carbon dioxide we are putting into the atmosphere, it is argued, changes the Earth’s greenhouse effect slightly, which is then expected to change average weather (climate) to a lesser or greater extent. Mathematically speaking, this is referred to as a change in boundary conditions.
But upon closer examination, I have come to realize that the two kinds of variability – weather and climate – maybe are not so different after all. The only major difference between the two is just one of time scale.
The weather today is impacted by what has happened on the Earth, in the atmosphere and on the surface, every day previous to today. In a very real sense, today’s weather retains a memory of all weather which has occurred in the past.
But climate variability is really no different. This year’s climate is a natural result of average weather and climate in previous years. For instance, the slow overturning of the ocean can bring water to the surface which hasn’t been in contact with the atmosphere for maybe hundreds of years. Therefore, the climate we are experiencing today can be related to average weather conditions which occurred hundreds of years ago.
So, one might argue that climate variability is just as good an example of chaos as weather variability. Mathematically speaking, the ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’ we associate with chaos might also be called ‘sensitive dependence on continuously changing boundary conditions’.
In fact, nature does not distinguish between changing initial conditions and changing boundary conditions…it is all just change. The real question is how a human source of change (e.g. carbon dioxide emissions) stacks up against all of the natural sources of change.
“But”, one might object, “Nature has been the same until humans came along and changed it!” Well, is it really valid to think of nature as unchanging? I don’t think so. Nature causes its own changes, all the time. And each of those changes forever alters the future direction of both weather and climate.
But we aren’t aware of these continuous subtle changes — only the spectacular ones. For instance, a major volcanic eruption can inject millions of tons of sulfur into the stratosphere, leading to a couple of years of global cooling. But what isn’t mentioned is that such an event will also forever change the future course of weather and climate on the Earth simply because future weather and climate retain a memory of that event.
Similarly, a chaotic change in precipitation patterns in the Pacific Ocean will change ocean salinity, which will then change the circulation of that water into the deep ocean over time, which maybe a hundred years hence will then reemerge as a change in surface waters which will, in turn, affect weather patterns once again.
So, are these changes in initial conditions, or boundary conditions? I think the question is only one of semantics…it is all just change. And change in nature is ubiquitous.
The possibility that mankind can change climate, even for hundreds of years down the road, does not impress Mother Nature. She has been changing climate all by herself since time immemorial. Millions of tons of sulfur spewed into the stratosphere by a volcano illustrates the power of nature, and the spectacular sunrises and sunsets that result vividly display nature’s beauty.
Of course, if humans did the same thing as a volcano does, it would be called the greatest pollution disaster in history. But I digress….
The climate modelers assume there is no such thing as natural climate variability…at least not on time scales beyond maybe ten years. In effect, they believe that chaos only exists in weather, not in climate. But this view is entirely arbitrary, and there is an abundance of evidence that it is just plain wrong. Chaos occurs on all time scales. Climate change happens, with or without our help.
And maybe there is one more difference between weather forecasting and climate forecasting…a difference which has allowed climate alarmism today to flourish. When the TV meteorologist blows his forecast for tomorrow’s weather, people will remember his error, and hold him responsible. But climate modelers get to forecast any kind of climate change they want, knowing full well that no one 50 or 100 years down the road is ever going to remember how good – or how bad — their forecast was.”
It was an unmistakably sarcastic response to a freelance Referee-In-Chief who, citing a learned friend, said that stupid blonde jokes were just figure of speech like Mickey Mouse jokes. (See, above. George E. Smith, November 19, 2010 at 9:12 am)
Maybe he is right but I can’t say it looks pretty in the thread. Definitely not with so many of them.
Anyway, we can’t all be perfect everyday. Think nothing of it.
BillT says:
November 18, 2010 at 6:46 pm
please enlighten me as to how climate is arrived at if it is NOT the AVERAGE of the past observations?
Think patterns. The average temperature in the tropics is in the 20s (°C). And it hardly varies at all. The average temperature in parts of the SW US isn’t much different, but it can swing between -20°C and +40°C. VERY different climates, very similar averages.
sorry but those 2 areas do NOT have very similar averages…….the average high and low are VERY DIFFERENT.
and the climate for both areas is derived from the averages from that area.
please face the FACT, climate is nothing more or less than the average weather over the past 30 years or so for ANY given area.
“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?”
Yes, it does. The mirror effect is a nice touch.
HEIDI CULLEN:…Laura Devendorf lives on the coast, some 40 miles south of Savannah. She’s starting to see change, too.
LAURA DEVENDORF, Sunbury, Georgia: We’re worried about sea level rise, indeed. I think everyone on the coast is. You can just sit there and see the tides getting bigger.
Meanwhile back in reality, this past week, there I sat on my 35′ sailboat (with only a 3′ draft and according to the charts supposedly in 5’+ water) stuck twice in the Chesapeake Bay and once in the Pamlico Sound witnessing the lowest tides seen in the area(s) in recent memory. At the time, I thought it was simply the position of the moon playing havoc with my supposed median depths.
Upon my return, imagine my disappointment learning from Heidi and Laura that it can all be attributed to climate which hasn’t traveled further down the pipeline from Savanah as yet, working its way into the weather of the central US coastal region.