“The line must be drawn here! This far and no further!”
Bryan Walsh deserves a giant watermelon for his journalistic efforts this Time around in his annual piece on global warming causing blizzards.
He comes out swinging right away: “A big winter snowstorm provides more fodder for the global-warming skeptics. But they’re wrong”
Oh really? Bryan, if you can find any (credible) scientist that wants to go on record supporting your contortionist logic with respect to this holiday blizzard, please quote them directly on the record, and do not cherry-pick their blog postings or opinion-editorials. Is this the type of new “green journalism” expertise that we can expect from the vaunted and much lauded Climate Science Rapid Response Team? Preemptive straw man arguments that would make the master blush? This article is just another in a long line of really speculative pieces that reek of scientific ignorance. Enough of it, please!
Before getting to this year’s Time Life installment of “blizzards gone wild”, let’s go back to February 10, 2010 and Snowmageddon when Bryan Walsh authored this gem:
Indeed, what happened to that climate change — perhaps a follow up on that Virginia state GOP campaign strategy (Tsunami warning).
We’re braced. Semi-interested readers will see from that February Time piece that Bryan Walsh relies on Dr. Jeff Masters‘ blog posting to rationalize the blizzard and global warming saying that warmer air carries more moisture — true. However, intense baroclinic cyclones such as blizzards also rely on Arctic-cold air for their fuel which is usually provided behind dynamically-positioned midlatitude troughs. I haven’t read any peer-reviewed literature lately linking an increase in moisture being responsible for that blizzard’s intensity or existence, specifically. That reasoning is essentially a thought experiment extrapolated to the situation at hand. Walsh finishes up:
We are in agreement on that. Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. says the same thing over at his Climate Science blog in reaction to the woeful Dr. Judah Cohen opinion editorial.
Fast forward to December 28, 2010 and the most recent blizzard. Everyone that participated in our sarcastic peremptory analysis of the blizzard journalism-to-come had some jolly holiday laughs conjuring up what was expected to be written by the liberal media. Time Magazine does not disappoint!
First off, let’s get our time-scales right. Decadal-time-scale, mean-global warming on the order of tenths of a degree is not an event. The blizzard is an event. Who is coming out saying that “climate change” is a myth? The climate is always changing — I’d be surprised and alarmed if it stayed the same. Alas, I thought you weren’t supposed to conflate a singular weather event to climate change/global warming/disruption/something. There are two main arguments that are cobbled together to form a scientific thesis:
(1) A warmer Arctic will lead to colder and snowier winters in the middle-latitudes due to the “continued Arctic sea-ice meltdown”. The loss of ice will make the surface darker, absorb more heat, and change pressure patterns leading to a weakening of the jet stream, which allows cold-air to seep into Europe. This is called the Warm Arctic – Cold Continents theory by NOAA and operates exclusively in the fall months. Dr. Jeff Masters’ calls it “leaving the refrigerator door open” to cool your house.
(2) Dr. Judah Cohen’s theory about Siberian snow-cover early in the fall leading to a dome of cold air forming near the mountains which in turn “bends the passing jet stream”. This affects the middle-latitude waveguide and results in a highly amplified pattern. Thus, more meridional flow exchanges of cold-air equatorward. This is an appeal to the negative Arctic Oscillation phase.
Okay, these theories are not in dispute but their applicability to the current blizzard is. Dr. Cohen’s scholarship on Arctic climate dynamics is top-notch. Conversely, his recent NY Times op-ed was not received well. But, what does this have to do with a singular event like a blizzard which has happened many, many times in the past? The Arctic Oscillation has been negative before. Look at this time-series graphic. To establish a causal chain that links these theories to the situation at hand requires a leap of faith:
How are autumn sea-ice or snow-cover changes supposed to affect the winter circulation three-months later when the troposphere has such a short memory?
See the aforementioned Pielke, Sr. posting for additional science reasoning. I’m just going to throw something out there that the Climate Rapid Response Team might want to discover: El Nino and La Nina (ENSO) in that potentially important body of water known as the Pacific Ocean. Have you heard anything about this driving our current climate/weather in the media lately? Crickets…
No objective person will disagree that Time Magazine or the NY Times’ “green journalism” is liberal in nature and fits perfectly in with the political agenda of the Democrat party. So, why did Bryan Walsh go from correctly stating in February that one storm or event isn’t proof of anything to unabashedly blaming global warming for the most recent blizzard? Open question…
While Dr. Oppenheimer talks about “loaded dice” with respect to global warming and extreme events, Walsh and the drive-by media are putting their cards down too soon, and are in effect overplaying their hand in a reflexive manner. They are looking for theories hidden in the tapestry to make the world’s weather fit a narrative. In doing this, “green journalism” ends up being science fiction, unsupportable, reflexive, and only worthy of watermelons.
In the meantime, the line is drawn here, no more of this type of article, please. Blow up the damn ship!
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With respect to Cohen’s recent opinion piece in the NYT’s, and now that I think of it any of the numerous pro-AGW articles they’ve run in the last couple of years: is it my imagination or am I right that one just about never finds a critical letter to the editor in response? PLenty of letters in support of course. It’s pretty difficult to believe that no one’s writing them. If I’m correct, it speaks for itself of course.
He must be a student of George Monbiot.
“There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm.”
This may be true. Who knows. But it’s irrelevant.
The problem we face is the warmist agenda is based on the false premise that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and that it’s significant as a greenhouse gas. Both of these are scientifically incorrect.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the Sun that’s causing any warming, and the snow and storms, or if it’s humanity. What’s important is that the warmists have dragged the world’s politicians into a self-sustaining carbon-is-evil delusion that’s compounding the financial troubles left by the banks.
We, the sceptics, need to highlight the most basic aspects of REAL science in order to make it clear to politicians and members of the public that the propagandist claims of the warmists are factually incorrect.
* CO2 is not a pollutant.
* CO2 is insignificant as a greenhouse gas.
* CO2 is one of the two main building blocks of ALL plant life on Earth.
* CO2 concentration is historically at a low level.
* CO2 concentration has been ten times higher during ice ages.
* CO2 is good.
Keep it simple. Maybe then they will listen.
AusieDan says:
December 29, 2010 at 3:38 am
Dan you heard honorary research fellow of the CSIROs marine and Atmospheric Researc Unit Barry Hunt. The transcript is here
burnside says:
December 29, 2010 at 3:37 am
Hmmm what a shame your friends aren’t as smart as you and they wouldn’t “value” the information WUWT provides as you do.
Your friends are lucky they have a good friend like you who decides for them what is worthy of doing.
My advice? get new friends, the current ones are obviously not as smart or discerning as you.
Wouldn’t more snow cover further South of the Arctic end up creating cooler temps because of the suns rays reflecting off of a larger white mass? Does Global Warming project this too? Or do temps go up and up while snow increases to 4 ft, 5 ft, 6 ft?
Last couple of years where I live snow cover has been all winter. Back in the 1990’s we’d get snow, then it would melt a couple days later, and repeat that cycle all winter. Shouldn’t that then create lower temps since more of the suns rays are being reflected than they were in the 1990’s?
Snow. Surely it insulates? What, then, accounts for the current Northern Ireland water rationing and the tens of thousands of emergency calls to water services in Scotland and the North?
When the disenfranchised of middle England realise that their national security, welfare and jobs have been sacrificed in an “austerity budget” that roughly equals, pound for pound, the spending on windmills and reparations to foreign countries for our climate crimes what will happen?
We have “saved” nearly £7 billion yet spent that same amount, most of it outside of our own economy (Both our PM and his deputy have close family invested deeply in windmills and their sites) . The exchequer lost approximately the same amount because our councils didn’t do their sums correctly with regard to “weather” events this winter and many citizens could not report for work, spend their pittance at the shops or put fuel into their vehicles as the ice broke their bones, pipes and vehicle cooling systems.
It sounds a little 1984ish – Ministry of Peace is actually the War Ministry. Cold is proof of warming! What we really have to fear is the build up of snow and ice followed by cold summer due to a volcanic eruption. We have far more to fear from an ice age than a return to Minoan, Roman or Midieval temperature levels! Althoughit is probably true that of all the countries in the world Australia has more to fear from any global warming – farming in Australia has always been a risky and marginal enterprise and any reduction in rainfall or increase in temps will have a significant impact on agriculture as I am sure it would have in any of the aforementioned warming periods if we were farming then.
As Prof.Khabibulo Abdusamatov (Head of the Pulkovo Observatory, Sain Petersburg) said about “Global Warming”: “It´s Hollywood Science”.
His conference at the Heartland Institute: (click on his video)
http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4
Anything else is, again, but “Hollywood Science”.
Climate science makes the kooky field of creation science look almost respectable!
Problem: models fail to predict the future. Answer: backfit the models and voila! Instant accuracy.
Problem: it’s as cold as heck. Answer: blame global warming and voila! Theory intact.
Can someone please point out to me where in the IPCC AR4 (or 3 or 2 or 1) it says that one possibility (likely or even extremely unlikely) is that we have extreme cold spells?
Juraj V. says:
December 29, 2010 at 4:26 am
Would you please provide a reliable reference for your “basic physics says, when heating a pot of water, in one part it will boil and in other part it will freeze” statement. I really need to see it to believe it.
My understanding of the differences in reflectiveness between sea ice and open sea was that the relationship was reversed at times when the Sun is low in the sky, that is during winter and close to the arctic circle. If this is in fact the case, that would mean that a smaller ice cap would reflect more solar energy at this time of year rather than less. Had this explanation been used I might have thought that it made some sense. This effect would also lead to a self correcting effect due to the negative feedback involved.
I see a very strong argument against the warmists is that ten years ago they were confidently predicting the end of snowy winters. It is not so much the fact that they were proved so badly wrong, that happens to scientists all the time, it is the total lack of humility in the face of such a collossal error of judgement, still hurling the word denier at anyone who might disagree with them.
Funny, I don’t remember anything in Al Gore’s movie about “global warming” causing longer winters that would have record cold and snow for years in a row…..
Lars Tunkrans says:
December 29, 2010 at 4:35 am
Stockholm Sweden has broken all cold records since 1788 ( 222 years ago ) over the period of the 4 weeks before christmas
Please, can you give links to all the articles and data for this?
ot, but I’m studying Ohanian’s physics. Amazing how much he debunks in chapter 1…anyway, apparently the Earth slowed 1 second per year after 1900. This has to affect climate surely? Is anyone studying this?
I’m guessing it would have a cooling effect?
You should all expect to see more of this scrabbling around for anything that props up the AGW farce. Even the renaming of it to whatever it’s called now should have warned us all that the religion that is global warming is now having to stand in the light of real, measureable science. But they won’t go down without a fight. You can expect a big tussle over the 2010 temperatures and any more weather ‘events’ but it will be the recovery of Arctic ice that will be the nail in the coffin of AGW. Expect to hear more about Siberian snow cover, that’s another life raft that the psuedo-scientists are clinging to.
Don’t forget, Winter has only just started!
If Global Warming is causing the colder weather, then how many winters will it eventually take to make a summer?
Ryan,
Funny how scientists try to protect a bad theory by turning science upside down.
Since obviously, they have no clue what weather is.
Only the mathematics and formulas are important and not science.
The weather pattern does have a name and NOT “mini-Ice Age”(hope?).
Off topic Anthony, but did you read this? If ever there was a prime example of how some scientists are living in cloud-cuckoo land when it comes to their beloved models, this is probably it!
Fail?
[In the future please post such things in “Tips & Notes”. There is a link up in the header. …bl57~mod]
I note with interest that the American Scientist has an article online which claims that Global Warming will cause more snow and wetter summers. Apparently this is because the higher temperatures in summer cause greater evaporation and this leads to increased precipitation…. Someone in the comments also claims that more snow cover traps the heat, causing a heat feedback that causes glaciers to melt from below.
No; I don’t believe it either, but it seems in keeping with Time’s report.
After six weeks of snow cover here in Germany, we are beginning to think that -X°C is normal and may even be warm enough for sunbathing. I confess I am getting tired of the constant battery of ‘facts’ about CO2 being to blame and in particular that the West is exclusively to blame for it all. The experiments on which CO2 ‘warming’ are founded involve enclosed environments that are anything but dynamic and levels of CO2 that would instantly exterminate all human life. No one has yet produced a demonstrably repeatable experiment in which atmospheric heating occurs in the manner the ‘models’ predict at the levels of CO2 it is supposed to occur at.
As for this being the warmest decade ever – yes, since it is measured by means of an algorithm that is different to that used in any previous decade and therefore incomparable to anything else. That said, an anonymous troll in the UK Met Office (Think CRU with a supercomputer they have to justify!) announced that they only use the highest recorded temperatures and select the highest 15 of these in any three month period to calculate the “average” for the period. If that is true, then their figures are right – except they are ignoring the lowest temperatures recorded which would lower this figure considerably.
As one of our funnier comedians summed up such statistics; “If you want the worst case, you include the Titanic; for the best case, exclude it.”
Shona says:
December 29, 2010 at 5:25 am
I have been extensively studying this and brought it to before evaporation was occuring and we were closer to the sun.
Current physics LAWS collapse as with faster rotation, the laws of relativity change. The oceans were salter to generate more density as centrifugal force was greater as well.
I’m babysitting the cutest little old man pug. Something I hadn’t realized but, small dogs have become the fashion during this last half of the previous century. Drawback: Very hard to pee and poop in snow passed their cute wittle ears. As soon as I set him down, he disappeared in a fluff of white. Good thing I had a leash on him, else I wouldn’t have been able to find him again.
Aminoacids wants the links and articles:
You need to be a reader of the obscure language spoken in these parts, Swedish …
Anyhow from the official Swedish weather service SMHI:
http://www.smhi.se/nyhetsarkiv/fyra-veckor-utan-tovader-1.14238
The headline reads: Four weeks without thaw.
The paragraph on Stockholm reads:
Stockholm has not been warmer than + 0,7 degrees centigrade since 24:th of November. Last time this occurred at this time a year was between 30:th November 1788 and 18:th of january 1789
The paragraphs describing the other cold records for 6 Swedish cities ends with stating : This is a record since measurments began in 1859.
The basic problem for warmist, with every shovelful of snow the hole gets deeper.
We have lost danged near all our Florida tomato crop for the year now, as we are hitting record lows for all time. Well at least all known time — LOL. Daytime, when it’s in the 60s in Florida, it’s cold.
BTW — I doubt any normal people are listening anymore to his drivel.
The world’s top climate scientist produced the IPCC Apolyctic Revelations 4 in 2007, and said quite clearly that winters in the NH would be warmer and shorter with less weather events. We are told there were thousands of the world’s great minds that put this report together (although it was about 52 for WG1) and these thousands of great minds failed to note in AR4 that there would be more severe winters caused by global warming.
Not only that what are the odds of the three worst winters in living memory would follow on directly from the pronouncements of these great minds of climate science telling us winters would be less severe and shorter?
New dictionary entry:
green journalism (noun) – yellow journalism written by blue state authors
I like it.