“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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Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
December 29, 2010 at 5:17 am
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?
================
http://www.iceagenow.com had a list and some links to newspaper items.
===========
and thanks to the 2 above for the CSIRO clowns comments, I was dozing when I heard it, thought it was a bad dream..should have known the corrupted CSIRO weather bods would be into as*cover mode pretty quick.
didnt work! their removing the 30s heat and drought records from BoM site also didnt fool any , with a memory or brain who read them before they vanished.
We push the button on our Time wayback machine and return to June 24, 1974: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
Somebody taught them : I did not have sex with the lady and his compadre claimed :
This science is settled . Peters Sellers remark on the subject : What is new pussycat ?
tarpon says:
December 29, 2010 at 5:53 am
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.
=======================================================
Don’t start
I planted seed a little over three months ago.
I should be eating tomatoes by now.
It’s been so cold the plants are only about 5 inches tall………………..
Why are some of you discussing solar reflection as part of the argument? Aren’t most of the snow capped areas, above the artic circle, completely dark right now. What sunlight is being reflected?
P Gosselin says:
December 29, 2010 at 3:04 am
“It indeed effectively shuts these charlatans up.”
In your dreams. It’s a lucrative scam for intelligent but dishonest people, and they are heavily invested. If the scam goes bust they are all on the street.
Ryan, fair enough to berate these idiots, but introducing party politics and hyperbole kinda brings WUWT down to the level of lesser sites. It has been Anthony’s great achievement to keep WUWT out of that swamp, despite great provocation.
People who are buried in snow don’t need to be told that ‘global warming’ is the least of their concerns. They have worked it out for themselves.
Thanks to a compliant and lazy mainstream media, the AGW alarmists have been given enough rope, and the inevitable result is before our eyes.
Jack Lacton says:
December 29, 2010 at 5:11 am
“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?”
I can’t but the funny thing is the AR4 mentions the French heatwave in 2002 (or so) where 3000 (or so) elderly people died as an example for what will happen more frequently in the future.
Now they can (or must) add in AR5 the extreme cold spells we will experience in the future right next to the heatwaves.
Alternatively, they could form a new Working Group that simply reprints the Book Of Revelations.
AusieDan says:
December 29, 2010 at 3:38 am
Ryan, I heard a person described as a representative of the CSIRO on Australian ABC radio this morning, when I was only half awake.
What he said made sense I think, although I do not agree with him for other reasons.
He simply said that there are two forces at work, CO2 emissions causing a long term linear rise in temperature and cyclic, directionless influences such as the PDO, which override the CO2 effect in the short term but do not influence the long term direction.
But I take it he is a practicing scientist from a very reputable organisantion and he did make a reasonable case that it could be getting colder and colder within a longer term upward moving trend. It’s just, as I’ve said, he’s left so much other stuff out.
BARRY HUNT: “Yes because the climate deniers think that unless you’ve got constant warming every year the greenhouse warming has gone away. And they forget about the natural variability.
But we should expect now to see the global warming trend take over again.”
AusieDan, I guess since you were not really awake yet, you might be excused for thinking what he said “made sense”. Hopefully you at least noticed the blatant straw man he trotted out, and attacked, plus the laughably absurd statement that we “forget about the natural variability”.
The obvious tremendous leap in logic he made was that “greenhouse warming” aka CAGW/CC/CD etc. is a given, when in fact it is just a construct. “Scientists” like him live in hope that gullible people will continue to take on faith the idea of C02-induced warming. Unfortunately for him and his ilk, the curtain has been pulled away and revealed nothing but humbuggery.
Shona says:
December 29, 2010 at 5:25 am
“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?”
Hi Shona, P.G. Sharrow over at Tallblokes Talkshop has some interesting ideas on this…
“At times a freely rotating device [Earth] can act as a motor or a dynamo depending if it lags or leads in the local fields. Energy in or energy out as the magnetic fields try to remain in balance. Energy is stored as angular momentum (AM) or dissipated as heat ( LIR?)”
Over the period you quote, LOD has both increased and decreased, often in rapid steps and these small changes correlate quite well with global temperature. Worth your while to have a closer look at this area I think.
Pamela Gray says:
December 29, 2010 at 5:51 am
ROFL
East coat winter storms draw their moisture from the ocean not a “warming atmosphere” due to global whatever the current term is.
Having faced credible opposition the global warming crowd is going to sell global warming like the selling of Happy Holidays to replace Christmas, homosexuality as a civil right, the pet rock and socialism. They plan to beat us into acceptance by repeating it 24/7.
They expect us to be like the guy in the movie Big Trouble who hit by a toxic spray from a frog resulted in hallucinations and crying make it stop, make it stop, God in Heaven make it stop. The question is who is hallucinating?
Jack Lacton says:
December 29, 2010 at 5:11 am
Best I can do for you Jack is to point you to the IPCC AR4 WG1 Chp. 11 pp 872
And
And
Though I give them credit for the following…
All in all, the AR4 predicts warmer but wetter winters (they say more precipitation) for Northern Europe.
This argument is so bad, so so bad.
Let us presume that a warming world does indeed put more moisture into the air, and that with more water vapor in the atmosphere, there is more snow in the colder places on earth.
-> Then why is the arctic losing ice? Cold/frozen precipitation is the major source of creating multi-year ice in the arctic. If the world is warming, and more water vapor is in the atmosphere as a result… how is it that none of this moisture is affecting the snow cover on the arctic ocean? Wouldn’t you expect that the coldest places would see snow increases?
-> Then why is Kilamanjaro losing it’s snow cap? If moisture in the air is increasing, shouldn’t glaciers on high mountains at low/mid lattitudes (where it’s always colder) be increasing?
-> Then why are we afraid of glacial losses in the Himalayas? More moisture in the air should certainly increase the precipitation in these areas, and thus increase the snowpack, should it not?
-> Then why are we afraid of the loss of rain-forests due to global warming? Shouldn’t more moisture in the air create MORE rainfall in the areas predisposed to heavy rain? Why then has the IPCC itself lectured all of us on the possibility of the Amazon turning into a Savannah?
The logic is so bad, they’re basically destroying their other precious appeal-to-emotion arguments in the process. This is now BLATANT cognitive dissonance.
Britain’s Independent newspaper, which displays precious little independence of thought where global warming is concerned, carried this gem of a cartoon earlier in the winter: http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d417153ef01348991019d970c-popup
johanna says:
December 29, 2010 at 6:36 am
Ryan, fair enough to berate these idiots, but introducing party politics and hyperbole kinda brings WUWT down to the level of lesser sites. It has been Anthony’s great achievement to keep WUWT out of that swamp, despite great provocation.
People who are buried in snow don’t need to be told that ‘global warming’ is the least of their concerns. They have worked it out for themselves.
Thanks to a compliant and lazy mainstream media, the AGW alarmists have been given enough rope, and the inevitable result is before our eyes.
I disagree, johanna. The Alarmists have always known that their “science” was not all it was cracked up to be, and that in order to succeed, they needed to exaggerate and even lie in order to convince what they regarded as their flock of sheeple, who would believe the moon was actually made of green cheese as long as enough “scientists” said it was, and the MSM dutifully went along.
Fortunately, it didn’t quite work, but as has been pointed out, the war for the truth is not yet over. There are still plenty of sheeple out there to be shorn, and taxpayers to be fleeced. And yes, to their everlasting disgrace, it is the Democrats and/or Liberals who have primarily spearheaded this campaign against truth, against science, and against Humanity, and I say that as a former died-in-the-wool Democrat.
Jeremy says:
December 29, 2010 at 7:44 am
The logic is so bad, they’re basically destroying their other precious appeal-to-emotion arguments in the process. This is now BLATANT cognitive dissonance.
==========================================================
Jeremy, it actually makes good sense.
A 1/2 degree increase in temperature has caused more snow.
If the temperature had not risen 1/2 degree, we would have less snow and what little snow we did get would melt sooner.
Just imagine how cold it would have been if the temperature had not risen 1/2 degree. Probably too cold to snow.
And even though there’s no sun in the Arctic right now, it’s shorts and T-shirt weather, because that 1/2 degree rise in temperature caused all the cold air to fall out……….
sarc/off………………………
Time has an excellent record when it comes to climate prediction.
“Another Ice Age?” – 1974
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
The NYT is probably worse still.
New York Times
http://newsbusters.org/node/11640
Now journalists and some scientists sound alike: one wonders if it is the scientists who parrot the journalists these days…
Jeremy, the reason there is more moisture in the air comes from more intense confrontation between colder polar air masses and tropical ones, thus there is more moisture advected toward mid and high latitudes. The selective regional losses of arctic sea ice is located below the corridors of warm air advection where temperatures are rising as the intensity of advections is increasing.
Kilimanjaro suffers from the southward displacement of isohyetes in tropical Africa, displacement that follows the rise in atmospheric pressure observed for a same location in both hemispheres. Alpine and Himalayin glaciers are affected by numerous anticyclonic agglutinations (high pressure) that prevent precipitations.
The rain forest is threatened by deforestation and the fact that in a cooling scheme, as what we are seeing since the 1970s, the latitudinal range of the meteorological equator shrinks and thus as observed in the past the rain forest extent diminishes.
I invite you to read two books by climatologist Marcel Leroux:
[“The Meteorology and Climate of Tropical Africa”, Springer Verlag, Springer-Praxis books in Environmental Sciences, London, NY, 548 pp + CD: 300 pp, 250 charts, 2001, ISBN 978-3-540-42636-3].
And
[“Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate Atmospheric Circulation, Perturbations, Climatic Evolution”, Springer-Praxis books in Environmental Sciences, 2nd ed., 2010, 440p., ISBN 978-3-642-04679-7 ]
Knowledge of atmospheric circulation is critical to understanding sometimes seemingly contradictory observations and to weed out the warmist’s garbage. The 2010 book is the best start.
This CO2 must be the most powerful gas in the universe, it causes more snow and less snow and lower temperatures and higher temperatures and droughts and floods and more rain and less rain and more storms and less storms and kills the oceans and melts the sea ice and glaciers and brings colder winters and warmer winters and drier summers?
Is there nothing that CO2 cannot do? An apparently harmless trace gas plant food present in the minute quantity of 0.040% of Earths atmosphere can wreak such ‘omnihavoc’ ™ better warn Clark Kent AKA superman ™!
I suppose those who support the idea of an all powerful and incredibly destructive trace gas can back up their claims with evidence can they? It seems the much hyped computer models that form the backbone of the IPCC reports did not see this coming so they are no help and BTW have you seen any of the IPCC approved super computer models doing the rounds of the compliant MSM lately? No, I have not seen any recently either, funny that eh? These models turn out to be less able to predict anything than the old grizzled carny woman you see in every town fair so they are quietly hidden away.
The much vaunted computer modelled evidence seems to have disappeared now they have run into the concrete wall of observed reality, so its alarmist double down time at the tables, the gamblers disease we have all seen at Vegas, the loser tries to win back his poke by betting the farm. This is the last chance saloon, this is the last throw of the dice, all in and let the cards fall where they may? But dear reader of my poor prose, what other option does the CAGW cult have left? They either admit the models were rubbish and their projections utterly wrong or they hide them away and go for the big one. CO2 causes every damn thing and to hell with the supportive evidence, its go for broke time and pile everything in, from A to Z its CO2 that does it all. Its the newest and greatest Satan in town, George Bush must be relieved that he no longer bears that particular burden.
I’m surprised at the complaints of anger displayed in the OP. Anthony, inspiration for most posters hers, is the Prince of Snarkness in the climate blogosphere and I don’t mean that in a bad way. This site has a history of cleverly worded titles, biting criticism, and disassembling to a thin broth like a blender the sinew and gristle laced, watery claims and arguments of lesser pundits, naifs of post-grad science, and agenda scholars.
To see true vein-popping rage one need only read Tamino or Romm. I can hear brain cells dieing when ever I read RealClimate. And can we forget who gave us death trains?
I wouldn’t change a thing in this story – it is a good fit. If you need agonizing science detail and a gentle hand on the throttle then make a pot of coffee and read Dr. Curry’s excellent blog.
WEATHER EXTREMES OF SUMMER 2010: GLOBAL WARMING
OR NATURAL VARIABILITY?
by
Madhav L. Khandekar (Canada)
Dr Madhav L Khandekar is a former research scientist from Environment Canada and was an Expert
Reviewer for the IPCC 2007 climate change documents. Khandekar has been in weather & climate science
for over 53 years and has published well over 130 papers, reports, book reviews and scientific
commentaries. While at Environment Canada, Khandekar wrote a book Operational analysis and prediction
of ocean wind waves published by Springer-Verlag in 1989. Khandekar continues his research at present on
several issues re: global warming, extreme weather and monsoon inter-annual variability.
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/images/stories/pdf/mlk2010eegw-ew.pdf
Ha-ha, I said “died-in-the-wool”. Well, the Democrat in me died, anyway.
I appreciate the reasoned direction there, but I was simply comparing layman arguments with other layman arguments. The public/political alarmists want us to fear the loss of rainforest, but when the weather turns to a blizzard three years in a row, it’s because of greater moisture being in the air? These people cry about losses of glaciers all over the place, which in many cases is directly tied to precipitation declines, and with the next breath they tell us we’re seeing more snow because warming means more precipitation. It’s like they’re all lobotomized.
I accept that the system is complex. However I will not accept (and no one should accept) the complexity of the system as an excuse for claiming all possible outcomes are proof of a theory.