Dr. Ryan N. Maue
Comments in addition to Previous Post…
Time to build another igloo, this time in Oklahoma: Al Gore finally responds to a question about global warming fueled snowstorms, and who does he cite? Clarence Page at the Chicago Tribune, not a climate scientist but someone self-described as having a scientific education commensurate with the old “Watch Mr. Wizard” TV show and a subscription to “Popular Mechanics”. This is lame to say the least. The link on Gore’s blog goes back to a Clarence Page article from February 14, 2010, on the heels of the two major snowstorms:
“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”
Compare with this with Dr. Michio Kaku’s explanation from last week:
“…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.”
Neither Clarence Page of Dr. Kaku cite a peer-reviewed paper that definitively shows a link between the posited increasing blizzard frequency or intensity due to human-caused global warming, but resort to a hand-wavy, thought-experiment that uses the phrase “completely consistent with” and “all sorts of havoc” causing warmcold and drywet. Why doesn’t Al Gore cite the vast body of scientific research over the past 20-years that has been warning of that global warming “could” make snowstorms more severe — specific scientific papers that have directly attributed the recent snowfall changes to AGW — not El Nino or La Nina or the PDO or the rest of the alphabet soup of climate oscillations?
Instead, you cut and paste from a liberal columnist and talk show pundit. For some reason, I doubt Bill O’Reilly is going to fall for that one. This is called “spinning” or a “snow-job”.
Just an open question to those that have a scientific IQ much higher than Al Gore and Clarence Page: are we even sure of the sign of the change in extratropical cyclone (including blizzards and other midlatitude storms) frequency or intensity? How many decades will it be before we can detect these changes and over what geographical area?
During Northern Hemisphere winter, the planet Earth is climatologically as cold as it gets in January and February due to the preponderance of land versus ocean coverage. The average global near-surface air temperature during the past 30-years on February 1st is 13C, compared to well over 16C during July and August. When averaged out during the entire annual cycle or calendar year, the temperature is about 14.4-14.6C depending on who you ask. The largest changes in winter temperatures have been with warmer night-time lows, for whatever reason.
When the air is super cold like in Havre Montana last night (-42F), it carries next to no water vapor. That’s the air mass that will follow behind the current blizzard — underneath a 1050 mb Arctic high pressure — which is causing the strong winds due to the pressure gradient with the storm. Ahead of the storm and the warm front, temperatures are in the 50s and 60s from Louisiana to Virginia and the Carolinas, which isn’t destroying any record highs. This blizzard could have a helluva lot worse in terms of atmospheric dynamics — and moisture since the Gulf of Mexico and Tropical Pacific sea-surface temperatures (the source region for this so-called global warming moisture), are of course anomalously cold due to La Nina…
Compare the actual Sea-Surface Temperatures between 2011 with 2010 and 2009 and 2008…that’s “climate change” I can believe in…
But just wait for next week as the entire Northern Hemisphere sinks further into the deep-freeze…
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Who would you trust more to predict the weather–Al Gore or Puxatawney Phil ?
Check out where January ended up on ch 5 UAH.
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png
Jan 30 was at -.239.
I cant wait for Gore etal to start talking about the next ice age AGC, anthropogenic global cooling.
Just a minor typo, but in the 6th paragraph:
Neither Clarence Page of Dr. Kaku
Should not the “of” be an “(n)or”?
You got to ask yourself, what is the shelf-life of the term AGW. All sceptic, holocaust denying, anti-scientific, and most likely Creationist extra chomosome types always default to AGW then talking about, well….AGW.
I think we have dropped the ball here. AGW supporters have all kinds of words to describe climatic phenomena and sceptics, holo….well you get the picture. There was Global Warming, before that Global Cooling, followed by Climate Change, Climate Disruption, and my personal favorite: Global Weirding (no wonder they pay Tom Friedman the big bucks), and we’all are stuck on AGW.
Well, no more. The estimable Dr. Maue has, I think, given us a term of power, might, and discriptive accuracy: Anthropogenic Warm/Cold Wet/Dry. Think about it!
He sounds like those horoscope makers or cursers of the heathen. “Evil will befall you!”. Any evil some time in the future (offers list of natural unpleasantness’s of all imaginable kinds).
Yes, dear. Things happen on regular basis, some of them are less nice than others. Naturally, bad things do happen, as they have always happened. It works well in medium’s parlor, but in science it is considered good practice to prove that things actually CHANGE.
If you want to see what an actual weather expert thinks, then check out this article by Joe Bastardi at Accuweather: “Bastardi: Three of Next Five Winters Could be as Cold or Colder” http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/45220/bastardi-three-of-next-five-wi.asp
Al Gore finally responds to a question about global warming fueled snowstorms, and who does he cite? Clarence Page at the Chicago Tribune, not a climate scientist but someone self-described as having a scientific education commensurate with the old “Watch Mr. Wizard” TV show and a subscription to “Popular Mechanics”.
LMAO!
Al Gore “The earth has a fever!” So this must just be the ‘cold sweats’.
Dang, how did that sarc switch get flipped again.
Ryan:
Is there really such a body of scientific papers, or should there have been a winky face after this statement? 🙂
“The largest changes in winter temperatures have been with warmer night-time lows, for whatever reason.”
That reason would be the UHI effect. Most of the remaining GHCN stations are located in populous areas surrounded by infrastructure, and not in green (or white, as mine are now) fields where they belong.
So with due deference to Curry, the issue is “how do we fix” Al Gore.
Hmmm, perhaps we can “pass the hat” and get him something more than an honorarium “BS” in Science?
Heaven knows he is great at the other meaning of the abbreviation but “what if” he was actually knowledgeable?
Worth a Shot?
The Earth does have a fever…and there’s only one perscription….it needs more cowbell! It’s gotta’ have more cowbell.
And, if the Earth needs more cowbell….then, damnit, we had better give it some more cowbell. Right now!
Paul Deacon at 9:19 pm: “…a “chartist”, who tracks the behaviour of markets based on charts (visible patterns), and makes predictions based on the similarity of current charts to past charts.”
Paul, I’m not inclined to disagree about charts and chartists in financial markets, because prices are a function of human behavior and so financial charts might plausibly be said to represent the results of aggregate human decisions and behaviors. Volatility could hence be called aggregate indecision, and of course an outcome will be eventually be an aggregate decision either positive (upside) or negative (downside).
In the end, chartists are merely trying to read (and predict) aggregate human behavior … via charts.
But using the above rationale, I’m not sure that weather/climate charts can be “read” in the same manner, since we don’t know what the preeminent signal might be for climate, at least in the same way that we know “price” is the preeminent signal for financial markets.
X-VP Gore’s response is nothing more than perusal rhetoric of Global Warmers.
X-VP Gore use of “scientific community” we know amounts to a few dozen unprofessional people who taken advantage of the government system to get funding for their salaries (aka play time) and leading-edge equipment (aka expensive toys). X-VP Gore, along with the aforementioned people have failed to prove (& the burden is on them) there is “global warming”, let alone “man-made global warming”; yet they continue to rant. Their own prophecies have not materialized, and their so-called research results have conflicted with know scientific facts and reality (aka latest blizzard); yet they continue to rave.
All of this is why X-VP Gore and the few dozen unprofessional people have to resort to SPIN, such as X-VP Gore’s response to Bill. What their SPIN has come down to is, throw everything against the wall, cause something has to eventually stick.
One could get a laugh out of their whole Faux “man-made global warming” claim (aka funding & profit plan) if it were not for it costing us hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted taxpayer funding, and it leading us to wasting billions of dollars on Cap-n-Trade. Cap-n-Tax being another aspect of their “global warming” plan that would have negligible impact, even if their claim was ‘for reals’.
John from CA says: (February 2, 2011 at 2:34 pm)
> So with due deference to Curry, the issue is “how do we fix” Al Gore.
> Hmmm, perhaps we can “pass the hat” and get him something more than an honorarium “BS” in Science?
You know, they say, “You can’t fix stupid”…
Here is a suggestion that might be the answer to: ” ‘how do we fix’ Al Gore ”
Send Gore and his “scientific community” to the new tundra areas, where they can help shovel out from all that /sarcasm “man-made global warming”. A few weeks of hard back breaking labor might fix Al Gore and his buds, flawed thinking.
It’s the Sun coupled to mother nature, not man, nor CO2.
Here’s a good rebuttal to Gore’s stupidity and lies:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/561975/201102031827/Gores-Unending-Blizzard-Of-Lies.htm
Also, Dan Weil reports:
Much of America suffered a huge snowstorm this week, and former Vice President Al Gore blamed it on global warming. Hmm. Ernest Istook, a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation and former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, took issue with Gore in a humorous vein.
“Blame it on global warming,” Istook writes on Politico. “If you lose your job, blame global warming. If your boyfriend bugs out, blame global warming. If your kids set the house on fire, blame global warming. If the cashier gives you the wrong change, blame global warming.”
In a more serious vein, he writes, “It’s nothing new for Al Gore to claim that global warming (or should we call it global cremation?) is causing cold weather instead of hot. He already admitted that he was wrong to tout ethanol, but did it for political purposes. His latest comments are just as consistent.”
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/ishtook-algore-globalwarming/2011/02/03/id/384938?s=al&promo_code=B9B1-1