Comments by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
Apparently we can throw away the meteorology textbooks, fire the forecasters at the National Weather Service, and tell universities and research labs that they have utterly failed to explain the origin of “monster snowstorms”. Renowned theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku crosses disciplinary boundaries to provide the readers of CNN.com his opinion on the recent winter weather over the Northeast and elsewhere. However, his explanations are hand-wavy, lacking peer-reviewed foundation, and quite equivocal — yet typical of the recent media rush to blame winter weather or any weather on global warming. However, as a theoretical physicist, Kaku needs to do a lot better and consult any weather forecaster that knows why there were snowstorms in the 1770s, 1970s, and still today. At the AMS meeting, Dr. Trenberth highlighted the reason: “winter”. CNN.com article link.
From Monster Snowstorms still spell global warming, I copy a few paragraphs and get to the important one…
New York (CNN) — The weather seems to be going berserk, with more snow dumped on our beleaguered Northeastern cities in a month than in a year, paralyzing business and our lives. Records are being broken even as we speak…
Basically, snowstorms in this region arise from the collision of cold Arctic air from Canada moving south and bumping up against warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, causing water vapor to condense and freeze and then form snowstorms, which travel up the Northeast corridor.
Among many factors, the amount of snow dumped is largely driven by the amount of moisture in humid air and not so much the temperature, and this seems to go against common sense.
Here’s the false dichotomy that Kaku sets up:
“There is no single smoking gun that can point us to the origin of these monster snowstorms. But we can focus our attention on two likely culprits. The first is pure chance. There are many random fluctuations in the weather due to many diverse factors (for example, last year’s weather was affected by El Niño).”
“But the second is global warming.”
Similarly, the main consequence of global warming is not warming at all but instead increasingly violent swings in the weather, with droughts and famine in one area occurring at the same time as flooding in another, and snowstorms in one region at the same time as hot spells in another.
More from Kaku:
“I saw this two weeks ago when I spoke in São Paulo, Brazil, where there were massive, lethal mudslides caused by unrelenting, pouring rain, which in turn might have been caused by increased moisture in the air. Of course, this means only that global warming is consistent with the monster storms hitting the Northeast, not that it is the only definitive factor.”
And as the Earth continues to heat, it means that there will be more moisture in the air to possibly drive more monster storms and hurricanes, simultaneously with droughts and hot spells. So we might expect more unusual, bizarre weather patterns in the future.
And unless something is done about it, get used to it.”
————
From someone of Kaku’s reputation and credibility, I am surprised to read this very basic and hand-wavy, meaning factually light, screed that is barely above high school level science. Perhaps that was what was requested by CNN.com or whoever solicited this contribution, but come on. Kaku sets up a false dichotomy: it’s either random chance or it’s global warming (or I guess both). But, then proceeds to equivocate on every major point thereafter. To summarize, he says we need to do something about it.
Just a suggestion, if this is what the media establishment is putting out there to win over the public hearts and minds on draconian carbon taxation, then at least come up with some hardened facts. I am happy to hear the mention of El Nino, but the transition to a very strong La Nina is likely more important on top of the other alphabet soup of atmosphere/ocean oscillations on a bunch of timescales. It’s like the media, liberal politicians, and now television series scientists awoke out of a coma and are marveling about the drastic changes in the weather/climate all around them. It’s snowed before, it’s flooded before, and it will again. There is plenty of literature on storm track dynamics, extratropical cyclones, and countless broadcast meteorologists that could help a theoretical physicist out. Heck, turn on the Weather Channel and watch the jet stream blue-worm graphic.
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Addendum: Mike Smith at Meteorological Musings also has a good essay on the Kaku căca .
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has a related story here – Anthony
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At least in the penultimate paragraph Michio Kaku recognizes that “global warming is controversial, of course, but the controversy is mainly over whether human activity is driving it”.
In a couple of his essays H H Lamb discusses evidence of increased storminess in the North Sea during the LIA.
It’s self-evident that both global warming and global cooling have their attendant hazards and that the only rational response is to try to anticipate them, deal with them as they arise and not regress to a more primitive or childish response that they are a result of our wickedness.
I’m surprised as well of Michio Kaku’s comments regarding super storms . I have had some interest in Michio Kaku for some time.
Because he is a bit cuckoo. His show on the Sci channel is fun to watch because of his zany approach to discussing science.
But, with that being said, he sold out.
Now I remember this kook. He’s on every crackpot unprovable theory claptrap program. History channel now even presents a movie about a day in the life of a dinosaur family, complete with all their habits, actions, feelings, thoughts and desires. There is drama, heartbreak, terror, and tenderness. All carefully narrated by some nut like Kaku.
[ryanm: Bill Nye must have been busy.]
This guy is more an activist than scientist – heir of the sympathetic Suzuki who said we’re all worms, he preaches that those against the New World Order are the “terrorists”. These people are all intellectual prostitutes; everything today is politics ( and money from foundations ).
Nothing has been mentioned about land clearing or removal of vegetation. The more vegetation, the less chance of erosion and ultimately, landslides. Land clearing has been phenomenal in Queensland over the last 30 years, encouraging floodwater to speed up, soil becoming supersaturated, hence erosion, often severe enough to cause the damage seen in Queensland, Sri Lanka, the Phillipines and Brazil.
Drainage classes taught me that a vegetated drain handles twice the volume of water of a bare drain. A large, mature Rivergum tree in Australia has an uptake of up to 5000 litres of water per day. Floodwater also speeds up through the use of obstructions such as levee banks, roads and fencing, forcing water into narrower channels that often break when pushed to their limits, causing more damage.
River mouths that were once deltas with many smaller outlets to the ocean, have often been urbanised in such a way that some of these are silted up or reclaimed for development, adding to the flooding problems during ’50 or 100′ year events.
The Fitzroy River in the Australian Kimberley near where I live has these flooding events every few years, with little damage. When in full flood this river, normally a half mile wide channel at most, becomes up to 20 miles wide, covering a wide flood plain with slower moving water. No land clearing here.
Global Warming? …bulldust
Doesn’t look like he’s winning any friends in geology community either…
http://bigthink.com/ideas/26680
Okay, I know I should make my posts more science and less personal observation, but Kaku is just about the most annoying person I’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing. I mean, the content – the made-up science, the unjustified and history-ignoring authoritarianism, they’re bad enough – but the smug presentation, grating self-superiority and irritating cadence breaks make it almost impossible for me to even watch anything he’s part of.
I just can’t do it any more. I have to turn it off when he starts talking.
Yeah, he knows all about exactly how civilizations beyond everyone else’s grasp work, he knows all the limits of science and technology, everyone else in physics does things his way, and everyone who doesn’t accept his plan for the future is a terrorist.
Seriously, someone put him in a straitjacket before he starts attacking people on the street for not following his plan.
/rant
eadler says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:25 pm
I am a physicist, and the explanation seems like correct science to me. An increase in temperature means that the air can hold more water, and evaporation rates will increase . When the air holding this water cools, the moisture precipitates as rain or snow, depending on the temperature. So the distribution of precipitation in a sample of storms will go in the direction of increased rain or snowfall. It is reasonable that the amount of precipitation in extreme events would also increase.
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It’s disconcerting that a self-professed physicist would consider that paragraph ‘science’, never mind ‘correct science’. Typically, the clause ‘the air can hold more water’ is derided into oblivion in ninth or tenth grade ‘science’ class.
The temperature of what? You mean the average global lower troposphere? Maybe it’s the global average sea surface. It’s got to be some average or other or else we’d be talking about weather, not climate.
Remember, all events are ‘extreme’ nowadays. You’ll be wanting some of them to produce less snow and /or rain. Let’s not forget wind.
Below is what we were told by climate scientists in the past and what we are being told now. AGW explains both apparently. When will these people just put their hands up and say we don’t know? We are not so sure now?
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June 4, 1999
“Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990604081638.htm
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/abs/399452a0.html
March 2000
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
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Nov. 17, 2010
“Global Warming Could Cool Down Northern Temperatures in Winter”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117114028.htm
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009JD013568
December 2010
“Expect more extreme winters thanks to global warming, say scientists”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/expect-more-extreme-winters-thanks-to-global-warming-say-scientists-2168418.html
From Mike Smith’s nlog:
Kaku isn’t a Global Warmist. He is a Global Swinger.
Something must be done! Squawk! Bleat! Send money or the penguin gets it!”
Succinct question for the AGW True Believers:
If cold weather today proves Gorebull Wurming is real, what did identical cold weather prove before nasty people started burning teh eevul modern fuels? Eh?
There are some pretty convincing statistics that correlate river flow to solar variation, this was even in Brian Greene’s documentary on BBC1 just after Christmas. This is his series on the Solar system, and this particular programme was about the Sun.
Sunpots high, rivers low, sunpots low rivers high.
I would have thought that when the rivers are high this would mean increased precipitation. I remember very well in the 1990’s that there were worries the Rhine was drying up.
Michio Kaku has gotten a reputation as a “pop physicist,” sort of like Carl Sagan; I see him on the Science Channel all of the time now. I can’t imagine that colleagues of his take him all that seriously these days. Guys like him end up on television when they can’t accomplish anything very meaningful in the classroom or the laboratory.
If warmer air holds more moisture, then surely it must retain more moisture once it has stopped raining as well, resulting in a net no change in the amount of rainfall with increased air temperature.
If an increasing global air temperature holds more moisture, doesn’t this reduce the sea level, as the water is now in the air instead of the sea?
R. de Haan says:
January 27, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Thanks Ron, that video explains everything!
Check out Warwick Hughes’ latest posting on the deception of BOM with latest and past Queensland rainfall events.
“Australian Bureau of Meteorology report conceals details of high rainfall in February 1893
January 28th, 2011 by Warwick Hughes
On 25 January 2011 the BoM published an amended SPECIAL CLIMATE STATEMENT 24 (SCS24) originally published on 7 Jan on the subject “An extremely wet end to 2010 leads to widespread flooding across eastern Australia.””
There is no single smoking gun that can point us to the origin of these monster spinstorms. But we can focus our attention on two likely culprits.
The first is pure ignorance. There are many who talk a lot about “science” but really have very little idea of what they are talking about.
But the second is intentional fraud.
As the global consensus amongst climate “scientists” are that they are not ignorant, but their own logic, we must change the null hypothesis and they should prove it is not fraud!
I am a physicist, and the explanation seems like correct science to me. An increase in temperature means that the air can hold more water, and evaporation rates will increase . When the air holding this water cools, the moisture precipitates as rain or snow, depending on the temperature.
The bit you are missing is that if AGW is true “when the air cools” implies less cold. You are trying to get more water into the atmosphere when hot (fine), then turn off AGW so it cools like normal (bollocks).
In fact global warming works exactly the other way round. The highs are not much higher, but the lows are warmer. So the sensible prediction is less snow, because the differential between hot and cold is less. And until a short time ago that was the warmist position.
(In fact I suspect the measured lows are higher largely due to UHI effects, but either way your analysis fails unless you can show how AGW will give hotter highs and colder lows. Good luck!)
Just watched the video of Michio Kaku monologue above.
He is all Type 3 fiction and Type 0 science. The monologue is a Type 1 talk to gawking Type 0 teenagers who are familiar with Type 2 Hollywood productions.
Kaku doesn’t neglect to mention all the most advanced Type 3 keywords in his talk: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Madonna, rock music, blue jeans, telephones, internet, space, Captain Kirk, and of course, Star Wars (“a Type 3 civilisation”), and many, many others.
Then, he commits a Type 10 error while discussing a Type 1 exploration and colonisation. He suggests that that will be as easy as creating and sending a programmed robot to the Moon. One robot can build a factory, which can go on building millions more robots just like it -like the growth of a single cell organism, du’h- and they in turn go and explore “other moons”, and so on, “like a sphere expanding at the speed of light”.
With trillions of these sloshing around the place, there comes a stage where the robot would land on a moon and wait. “Simply wait! For a Type 0 civilisation to become Type 1”. Now, just where have we seen this before? Well, that was precisely the basis of the movie 2001, where a Type 3 civilisation does that to our ape ancestors.
The Type 10 mistake that Kaku makes is that replicating robots is a very, very bad idea, let alone sending them to other moons or planets for exploration and colonisation. We already know that these robots will come back to bite us (see, Arnold Schwarznegger, “Terminator”, 1984, Hollywood). Had he been fully informed of Hollywood literature on the subject, he’d know that Stargate SG1 and Stargate: Atlantis fully studied the idea and found it to be a very dangerous course of action. Indeed, as Stargate et al have found, the self-replicating robots (“the replicators”), originally created by the Ancients, turned into an existential danger for the Ancients, the Asgard and us humans. See, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LULVxYTdx3g&feature=related
Now, did Michio Kaku say something about global warming?
Since the NH extra tropics temperature is on the same level as 1990, I officially declare the “climate disruption caused by global warming” theory as BS.
The only exception is, that the warming induced disruption “in a world that continues to heat” has caused its cooling.
We should remember that this fellow led a protest against the Jupiter-bound Galileo probe’s gravity-assist flyby of Earth on the grounds that navigational errors might (in an alternate universe) cause its RTGs to enter Earth’s atmosphere, dispersing miniscule amounts of radioactive material over planetary expanses, causing little (but not zero) harm. He’s a pompous quack who has done no original research but who figured out long ago how to play the “expert” card for the media. He deserves to be ignored.
“Similarly, the main consequence of global warming is not warming at all but instead increasingly violent swings in the weather, with droughts and famine in one area occurring at the same time as flooding in another, and snowstorms in one region at the same time as hot spells in another.”
In several decades we have gone from fear of global cooling, to fear of global warming, to fear of climate change, to fear of increased abnormal events.
A well-rounded addition, to cover all future bases, would say that “in between the extreme events, we predict that there will be anomalously more periods of absolutely normal weather.”
I’m from Baltimore and have lived here more than 30 years. Every fall and winter there are nor-Easters, some of these are all snow and some are all rain. It’s not uncommon to alternate between rain and snow in January. What happened last year was not only did we get back to back major snows, it was cold dry snow the snow did not pack down much. So our record snow didn’t produce record moisture, as you would expect by Kaku’s hypothesis, just a lot of volume. If a single GCM had predicted the high pressure in the arctic (as a number of meteorologists did), they might have a leg to stand on but they did not. Science is about falsifiable predictions, not after the fact rationalizations.
It’s just the Narrative. What’s important is “what’s repeated”. Without much effort you can find someone, usually with some degree, which will proclaim human caused global warming created the Big Bang “cycle” and that we’re in a headlong dash to the next human caused Big Bang. Likely 53% of Greenies would buy in and repeat it along with the MSM. Then they’d do talk shows. Then they’d feature it on The View. Then Oprah would have a couch-cozy on it right after a revisit of Bowling For Columnbine and finally the NYT’s reports there is a global consensus of the cause of how humans created the Universe confounding the Pope. Just for starters. Then a Brit MP would demand…well, one can write books about this stuff.
I’m currently in western New York state in a small town experiencing my first northern winter in 35 years. It’s wonderful. Just like when I was a child before the winters got warmer and dryer. I’d forgotten how starkly beautiful it is when there’s a foot or two of snow on the ground and weeks on end without temperature rising above 32F. The problem with the north Atlantic coast is the same as always. They have the Gulf Stream keeping it warmer near the coast. Heavy snowfalls are rare enough so they just aren’t adequately prepared for them when they happen.