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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“goes cuckoo” is right – Kaku is one of those who believes in time travel! ‘Nuff said.
Mooloo says:
January 28, 2011 at 1:50 am
“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).”
My experience is that there is less snowfall in bitter cold weather. The air gets very very dry from the low temperature. The most snowfall (and lasting accumulation) is when nightly lows are in the low 20F’s and daily highs are in the high 20F’s. A bit closer to the Great Lakes (I’m about 60 miles away) is notorious for heavy snowfalls known as “Lake Effect” snow. The above freezing lake water injects a lot of moisture into the air then when it moves out over land with below freezing temperature it drops right out in heavy snowfall. By time those air masses get to where I’m at most of the moisture has been frozen out.
Gerard:-
I liked your “facts” about “climate”, which could be summarised even more in the following manner:
“Almost everything is caused by global warming”.
I say “almost everything” because, when the weather is fine yet mild, neither too hot nor too cold, and we get just the right amount of rain, but very late in the night when all good (read very old) people are safely tucked up in bed, fast asleep;
THEN
that’s just weather, not climate, silly me, silly you.
This is really getting depressing. Blaming or praising “global warming” for anything is beyond reason from a logical argument point of view. If anything, “global warming” -here interpreted as average land and sea surface temparatures?- would be the result of weather events, not the cause. Weather has always been erratic over time, storms in Western Europe have diminshed significantly since my youth, both in frequency and strenght. And of course man has an influence on the weather no reasonable person can hold that for instance land use and -yes- antropogenic CO2 emissions must have some impact on the weather/climate but no one can tell what this impact is and it is unlikely that any of the alarming claims are valid. And this tale telling does not even pretend to have any scientific background, its just infamaous speculation.
I found this bit from Dr. Pielke’s column quite interesting.
“The NASA water vapor dataset would help further diagnose the global atmospheric water vapor issue, but, as discussed in
Statement By Vonder Haar Et Al 2010 on Using Existing [NASA Water Vapor] NVAP Dataset (1988 – 2001) for Trends,
while a preliminary study showed a (1988-1999) decrease in global atmospheric water vapor (see), an updated accurate NVAP data analysis will only be available in 2012 or 2013!
The available data shows that sea surface temperature anomalies show large spatial variations, including large areas of cooler than average conditions, the lower tropospheric temperature anomaly is only slightly warmer than the long-term average (and shows no statistically significant trend since 1998), and the global water vapor anomalies, to the extent we can determine from recent data, shows that it has not increased significantly in recent years. The tropical sea surface temperatures also show large areas of cooler than average conditions.”
Having gone dumpster diving through Google and various search engines looking for global water vapor data on a number of occasions over the last couple years, I’d concluded I was just incapable of drafting a proper search phrase, but it seems good near term water vapor data really isn’t widely available. Given that the AGW hypothesis is so critically contingent on positive H2O feedback, this strikes me as extremely curious. One would assume that this would be one of the most closely watched and widely circulated variables in the climate panoply, but that appears to be far from the case. Why do you suppose that is?
Gerard says:
January 27, 2011 at 10:44 pm
‘Drought = climate change
Rain = climate change
lack of snow = climate change
volumes of snow = climate change
hot = climate change
cold = climate change’
Thanks Gerard, excellent summary of the current state of crimatology. I’ve put it onto my facebook page as flame bait, along with this:
http://www.yourroadmaptohome.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/gk324_flying-pig-rgb-final_lr_web.jpg
I await the apoplectic responses 🙂
@Louis
The article you reference doesn’t say what you claim it says. In fact, the article praises Einstein to high heaven. Here’s the full quote
At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all — or very nearly all — scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles’ theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides’ myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein’s block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning).
He was not claiming that Einstein’s universe doesn’t change. He was saying that adding a new dimention to Parminendes’ universe gives you Einstein’s universe, and IF nothing ever changed then it shouldn’t change in Einstein’s universe either, which is foolishness of course, since the dimension to which we refer is time, and the whole point of conceptualizing the “dimension” of time is to determine change in the other 3 dimensions.
Kaku is entertaining enough if you enjoy those ‘what-if-maybe’ type of popularised science programs. In fact, Kaku now seems to be omnipresent, since I can’t seem to switch on any sciency documentary without him popping up to give his opinions on everything from multiverses to time travel or worm holes.
Such programs rank scientifically alongside one I saw recently, where scientists were asked to ‘reverse engineer’ a ‘captured’ ufo to come up with credible mechanisms that would account for ‘witnessed’ behaviour. No, Kaku didn’t appear in that one, but the level of scientific rigour is about the same – take a few basic ideas of physics and toss them around to see what you can come up with. Basically, a schoolboy would come with as much – if he understood the physics.
So Kaku’s arm waving on weather-is-global warming should be treated alongside his predictions that we are splitting off into parallel universes moment by moment.
“Here’s the false dichotomy that Kaku sets up”
A dichotomy involves a choice between two separate options which in no way overlap, since he begins the paragraph with “There is no single” he has not excluded the possibility that both of his suggestions could be correct. He also adds “But we can focus our attention on two likely culprits” – suggesting that the options are not limited to only his suggestions.
Last year was, in fact, tied with 2005 as the hottest year recorded since 1880,
No it isn`t if New Zealand is anything to go by, they finally obtained the real temperature data.
That guy is about as goofy as they come. When global temperatures plunge as much as they have in the last two months, physics dictate that the atmosphere simply cannot hold as much water vapor, so we get torrentoial rains, record snowfalls, mudslides, etc… It happens like clock work when we transition from an El-Nino to a La-Nina.
This is all a bunch of BS, Washington, Philly, NYC GET SNOW! They always have. This is not even close to the worst storm, the 1993 storm was far, far worse than anything since. Birmingham, AL got 17 inches, Washington DC got 14 inches shutting the city down for days. Places farther north got 2, 3, even 4 FEET of snow.
I know a lot of you are not from the US, but trust me, the only are of the east coast having exceptional weather is the south (GA in particular) which rarely gets more than a dusting of snow that melts within hours, and that little bit causes them to freak out. Nothing too far out of the ordinary anywhere else.
I just called my Dad to double check the year and figures, because I’m curious. During the winter of 1960-61 ~ our FIRST in New Jersey after moving from MIAMI (!) ~ we received a cumulative winter snowfall of 157 inches and it was bitterly cold for what seemed like forever to a five-year-old.
I’m a weather fan, not a geek (no head for numbers) and started wondering: Is this possibly a manifestation of that same weather pattern?
Then there is the Blizzard of 1996, more localized but still damn potent. I remember having walls of snow about 8 feet high in Central PA that winter. They had to bring in giant vaccum hose dump trucks to get the stuff outta here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_of_1996
When you have a Storm of the Century every 3-5 years you might need to reaclibrate your Panic Mode scales just a bit.
He was all over TV as the ‘expert” in the Gulf Oil Spill. Same entertainment value then.
I do wonder why when he says a warm atmosphere “holds” more water vapor he concludes there will be more precip.
What part of “holds” does he not understand. If the air is holding water vapor, we should expect droughts.
Another science blogger attack’s Kaku’s misrepresentation of possibility of an eruption at Yellowstone here:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/26680
Looks like this guy’s a sensationalist publicity hog who would rather be in the spotlight than be right.
Madman2001
Oh, right – its either pure chance, or global warming…
Very scientific…
Michio-kaku was seen jumping up & down, running in circles & exclaiming “I’m CUCKOO for AWG-puffs, CUCKOO for AWG-puffs, CUCKOO for AWG-puffs.
The Globull Warning industry screwed up decades agao when they coined the “Global Warming” phrase. With that phrase, you can more easily convince lay-people into believing global warming if the observables seem “right” to them, such as record heat, droughts, etc. But when the weather turns cold and rainy or snowy the connection is much harder to sell. Sure, scientifically there might be some stretch of the physical laws to draw a connection, but to try and convince the average person, you’re only going to look foolish to them. It doesn’t match conventional wisdom or basic sensibilities. The average person does not believe that global warming is yielding the colder snowier winter we are observing. Making this connection only makes the theory much more foolish in their eyes.
Had the globull warnings industry been smarter about their PR, and used a label such as climate change, then they might be able to convince folks that humans are affecting the climate by observable drastic changes in weather patterns, either hotter or colder, drier or wetter.
So, now they are trying to switch the terminology from “global warming” to climate change, or IBS, or whatever…but it’s probably too late because to the average lay-person the moniker “Global Warming” has stuck.
[I think we all get your dislike of the AGW theory but banging on with globull just grates after a while . . personal opinion, sorry]
Pamela Gray says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:32 pm
“First, they bemoaned the lack of snow and loss of snowpack due to global warming. Now they bemoan getting dumped on (thus replenishing the snowpack) due to global warming. The air was too dry, now the air is too wet. The rivers were too low, now the rivers are too high, the land was too dry, now the land is too wet, the soil was too warm, now the soil is too cold, the wind was too still, now the wind is too great. I give up. It’s just too tiring to argue with stupid.”
What a scream! But you need to add the meta-whine that everything was perfect just yesterday and that evil humans (parents?) are responsible for all changes in weather or climate. Also, you might consider adding that today droughts and floods are too close together and cats and dogs are living together.
If more moisture causes more Winter weather then I dread the snowstorms that will hit upstate New York this Summer when the humidity is stifling.
Agree with Louis Savain and many others.
This guy is in showbiz/politics with a science flair. I can’t stand it when scientists’ first concern is to appear “competent” through maintaining a conventional attitude. I have to say, though, that the only field that compares to the fraud of AGW is theoretical physics. So, maybe it’s a natural fit.
Bill Sticker says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:17 pm
“He’s also talking up the ‘supervolcano’ under Yellowstone. Looks like he’s desperate to raise his media profile.”
Someone who wasn’t too empressed with Dr. Kaku on his knowledge of volcanism and yellowstone is volcanologist, Erik Klemetti, an assistant professor of geosciences at Denison University.
He says:
“What happens next is one of the worst interviews about Yellowstone I’ve ever seen – and shows us what happens when you are lazy and don’t get a real expert in the field. Heck, it didn’t even need to be a volcanologist, but I’m sure that they could have found even a geologist for the interview.”
He concludes:
“I know many people like Michio and his work towards popularizing science, something that I fully support, but CNN and Kaku should be ashamed of this performance.”
Read it here at :
http://bigthink.com/blogs/eruptions
Bill Sticker says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:17 pm
“He’s also talking up the ‘supervolcano’ under Yellowstone. Looks like he’s desperate to raise his media profile.”
Someone who wasn’t too impressed with Dr. Kaku on his knowledge of volcanism and yellowstone is volcanologist, Erik Klemetti, an assistant professor of geosciences at Denison University.
He says:
“What happens next is one of the worst interviews about Yellowstone I’ve ever seen – and shows us what happens when you are lazy and don’t get a real expert in the field. Heck, it didn’t even need to be a volcanologist, but I’m sure that they could have found even a geologist for the interview.”
He concludes:
“I know many people like Michio and his work towards popularizing science, something that I fully support, but CNN and Kaku should be ashamed of this performance.”
Read it here at :
In closing his diatribe the author of this blogpost says:
“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.”
In fact some meteorologists say the Dr Kaku is correct. Here is a post by Jeff Masters at Wunderground:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1427
… There are two requirements for a record snow storm:
1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).
2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.
It’s not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the globe warmed 0.74°C (1.3°F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow. The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture. Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events–the ones most likely to cause flash flooding–will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow. …