by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
Kaku showed up on the CBS Early Morning show on Groundhog day, and it sure felt like it. Essentially parroting his CNN.com opinion blog from last week, Kaku eloquently, as if reading from the Presidential TelePrompter, butchered the field of climate science in his tortured explanation of global warming fueled snowstorms. Please, someone from the Climate Change Rapid Response Team issue a press release with all of your names on it repudiating this nonsense.
And, someone tell Kaku that El Niña does not exist. Go back to talking about aliens and supervolcanoes on Coast to Coast AM instead of trying to raise your profile, push your book, and make money off of the extreme cold weather hurting millions of Americans. West of the Rockies…
CBS Early Show: Video of Extreme Winter Weather Explained
Kyle Drennen at the Media Research Center helpfully provides a transcript of the video nonsense, with a very helpful host Chris Wragge participating:
CHRIS WRAGGE: Here to explain why we’re having such extreme weather is physics professor Michio Kaku of the City University of New York and author of the upcoming book, ‘Physics of the Future’ Doctor, good to have you with us. I think everyone wants to know, very simply, nine storms in seven weeks, why is this happening? Why is this happening?
MICHIO KAKU: Well, snowstorms take place when dry, ice-cold weather from Canada and Alaska bump up into moist, warm air from the Gulf of Mexico. Monster storms like this are caused by fluctuations which draw more icy weather from the north and there’s more moist air in the Gulf of Mexico because of increased temperature.
[X] No. The Gulf of Mexico does not have “increased temperature”. It is actually historically, anomalously cold right now. Does he know that the non-stop infiltration of Arctic cold blasts actually chills the Gulf of Mexico? The La Nina has cooled the entire planet due to changes in the tropical eastern Pacific. It’s anomalously cold as well, as cold as it ever was in the past 30-years or maybe more.
WRAGGE: What are some of the theories behind this extreme weather, though?
KAKU: One theory says it’s random, natural fluctuations in the weather. For example, we have something called El Nina in the Pacific around the equator, which is helping to divert cold air into the United States. And also the North Atlantic oscillations, air currents in the North Atlantic, which again is helping to pull down, pull down more cold air into North America.
[X] Random? El Nina? Divert cold air. North Atlantic oscillations helping to pull more cold air down. WTF is this?
WRAGGE: I think a lot of people* want to talk about global warming and thinking that that may actually come into play here. Is that accurate? Is that having an effect on what’s going on?
KAKU: Yes. It seems to violate common sense, but as the Earth begins to heat up, that means more moist air in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico on average. Which creates more precipitation, and eventually more snow. So global warming is caused when sunlight hits the Earth, and turns into infrared, red radiation, heat radiation shown here, and it’s sort of like a roach motel, light checks in but the heat does not necessarily escape.
[*] Editor’s note: Only the liberal media and Democrat Party wants to talk about global warming during the coldest winter in a long time, in order to further their job “killing” green policies.
[X] When you say something violates common sense, then it probably does! More moist air in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico on average: well, not this year. Roach motel?
WRAGGE: So I think the other big question people have, is this going to – I mean is this going to continue? Or is there a light at the end of the tunnel?KAKU: Global warming simply says more oscillations. So we have fluctuations, but on average, temperatures are going to rise. Remember, last year was the hottest year ever recorded in the history of science, next to 2005, since 1880. So the Earth is heating up. We can debate exactly what’s driving it. But, hey, get used to it. We’re going to have more energy sloshing around the Earth, more extremes, and swings. Flooding in one area and ice-cold temperatures in another.
[X] More oscillations? Where is he pulling this out of? So, global warming is going to cause the same weather events we have seen since time immemorial?
WRAGGE: Is this the same weather pattern, though, that’s affecting us that’s affecting other regions around the world? You’ve had problems in Brazil with mud slides, Australia’s going through some weather issues now. Is this the same?KAKU: Similar. El Nina, cold weather around the equator, is contributing to what’s happening in Australia. And I was in Brazil just two weeks ago, where they had monster mud slides, killed hundreds of people because of flooding. Massive flooding. And it’s summertime now in Brazil.
WRAGGE: In El Nina, what are the patterns here? Is it every couple of years?
KAKU: Yeah, El Nina and the North Atlantic oscillations go back and forth every few years and they last a few months. And so we have both effects helping to bring down cold air from the north, while the Earth itself is heating up, creating more moisture in the Gulf of Mexico. And when the two meet, watch out.
Garbage in, garbage out. However, when you combine an all-knowing theoretical physcist with a book to push and the liberal media, you get more than garbage — you get “unadulterated trash”.
Open question: the use of the term “denier” is used as a pejorative by alarmist climate scientists to describe those that do not buy their prescriptive policies for “saving the planet”. If the shoe fits wear it — as Trenberth said at AMS. In this era of new civility, instead of “alarmist”, should the politically correct term of “Useful Idiot” be investigated for potential inclusion into the scientific discourse?
It is surprising that with all these “Great Men” of Science around in 1999 that not one of them recognised that the Y2K computer “millenium” bug was an overblown myth.
I remember approaching the then President of the Royal Society at a function at the end of 1998 and asking why he was not advising that the Y2K bug was not really a problem, I was a bit of a professional machine code junkie. After a short time it became clear to me the poor man had little knowledge of computers or software. However it did not stop him publically advising the Nation that the Y2K computer bug was a “threat to our civilisation”. Tony Blair also said it, and we wasted billions of pounds supposedly fixing software, but the truth was there was nothing to fix. I had colleagues in non english speaking countries who did absolutely nothing to fix Y2K computer bugs, and absolutely nothing went wrong.
Why would it, people such as me wrote the stuff and admitably it wasn’t very good and the software failed for all sorts of reasons, but as to date sensitivity, that was a hypothesis but after a few minutes thought it became clear there were not going to be many problems as the time and date is relative to where you are on the Earth’s surface and we somehow seemed to cope with that in our code.
KD
Just playing Calvin Ball
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes
CalvinballOther kids’ games are all such a bore!
They’ve gotta have rules and they gotta keep score!
Calvinball is better by far!
It’s never the same! It’s always bizarre!
You don’t need a team or a referee!
You know that it’s great, ’cause it’s named after me!
—The Calvinball theme song[51]
When asked how to play, Watterson states, “It’s pretty simple: you make up the rules as you go.”
It seems to violate common sense, but as the Earth begins to heat up, that means more moist air in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico on average.
Good! A claim that is subject to empirical verification…. Has anyone charted long term (or even short term) records of atmospheric humidity in the Gulf? How do current levels compare with the past?
Cassandra King,
It worked just like you said. The words and sentences are like the random ejaculations of a parrot. Yet most humans, if unsighted, can tell if their interlocutor is another human or a parrot. If you randomly shuffle the sentences and if it sounds the same as the original, we can then conclude the original was gibberish.
Sad. Kaku is entertaining and well-spoken when it comes to astrophysics, but it’s almost laughable when he starts talking about stuff he doesn’t really know.
Same thing will Bill Nye. He’s a good entertainer, but then tries to become an authority on climate and politics, both of which he knows nothing. And Bill Nye doesn’t even have a PhD…just an honorary one. Sorry, but you pretty much have to have a PhD to be credible in the scientific community.
Stick with what you’re an expert in.
On the bright side, he DOES look better groomed than Suzuki.
And what about the sun? By now most real scientist are seeing the sun, water vapor and cosmic rays as controlling Earth’s climate … What say you?
“El Niña”
He didn’t say it once. He said it three times! This was not a nervous slip of the tongue.
And the interviewer (Bragge – with his lips parted like those of a fish) didn’t see the need to correct this professor of quantum physics. Maybe he was intimidated by the authority, or maybe he was too ignorant. He too said “El Niña” once.
What a shameful encounter! Shameful for journalism, shameful for climate science, shameful for Kaku and his fans.
Indeed, where is the Climate Rapid Response Team when you need them?
El nina? My god, its worse than we thought…..
Nice work Ryan. Would you like some help finding the “cuckoo with Kaku” stuff? If yes, email me at the address I use to comment.
Cheers!
This sounds to me like a new lecture for Dr David Morrison “The Rise of ClimatePhobia”
Dr. David Morrison during his “Doomsday 2012 Rise of Cosmophobia” lecture got riped into Michio Kaku over his promotion of 2012 doomsday theory’s last year, where Kaku proclaimed that the Earth will be destroyed by a massive solar flare similar to that in the films the knowing & 2012.
(although Dr David Morrison has been on a personal mission to disprove “Doomsday 2012” I have heard his lecture called “taking a hit” which earned him the title of “Dr Doom” I’m unsure of his views of man made global warming).
You can listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9DlumvXqEw&feature=related Kaku talks at 4:40
In another news interview about solar storms when asked by the interviewer “what I’m reading here scares me to death, should I be that way?”
Michio Kaku replies “Thats right! we are talking about a potential Katrina from outer space!”
You can watch that interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_TzIUlaQok&feature=related
I wonder if Rupert Murray could be persuaded to do a documentary called “Meet the Warmists” and follow Kaku about with a camera. He would make a wonderful spokesman for the alarmist side.
Mike says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:23 am
““When you say something violates common sense, then it probably does!”
Common sense: The sun goes around the Earth.
Galileo: Nope. Careful observations and mathematical analysis show just the opposite.
Common sense: Heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects.
Galileo: When controlling for shape and size heavier objects fall at the same rate a lighter ones.
And then there is quantum mechanics. Guess we will have to chuck that bit of nonsense right out the window!”
As usual, the warmists compare their cult with the theory of gravitation, and with Einstein’s work. Because it’s *THAT* important and *THAT* hard to grasp. Listen warmists, all you got is a lousy *peace* nobel; not one of the important ones, now go and play with your computers again.
When you know you are not going to be challenged, you let your guard down, and nonsense comes out. Indeed, pushing beyond the AGW issue, that is why liberals are such bad debaters, they have never been challenged when they need to be. In college and in the press, as long as they use the correct code words, and mouth the right talking points, the professors and journalists pass them along. So they do come off looking stupid to anyone in the know. But to those who are wide eyed and agape, they probably sound authoratative since the “interviewer” is not disputing them.
Kakunuts got a little roasting when trying to be a vocano expert on Eruptions blog too. There are plenty of links to the complete story.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/26680
Warming probably increases absolute humidity in a world covered with oceans, but I don’t see why it would change relative humidity, and therefore precipitation, one way or the other.
But I guess most here would agree with that already…
Kaku says “Remember, last year was the hottest year ever recorded in the history of science, next to 2005, since 1880. ” So it was the warmest year ever recorded since 1880? So that means he clearly admits that there are years PRIOR to 1880 that were warmer than 2010/2005/1998…
Interesting.
FAIL
Dr Kaku,
Do we have a La Nino that will pull more warm air up too? :,)
“Similar. El Nina, cold weather around the equator, is contributing to what’s happening in Australia. And I was in Brazil just two weeks ago, where they had monster mud slides, killed hundreds of people because of flooding. Massive flooding. And it’s summertime now in Brazil.”
So … global warming is not only causing colder, snowier winters … it is also causing colder, rainier summers.
Somebody help me out with the ‘warming’ part.
And El Nina? I thought it was inustrial oestrogen analogs that caused that, not ‘global warming’.
Vince Causey says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Cassandra King,
It worked just like you said. The words and sentences are like the random ejaculations of a parrot. Yet most humans, if unsighted, can tell if their interlocutor is another human or a parrot. If you randomly shuffle the sentences and if it sounds the same as the original, we can then conclude the original was gibberish.
Stranger and stranger isnt it? “random ejaculations of a parrot” that one made me collapse into a fit of the giggles, thanks I really needed that! May I use it again please? I will of course offer the correct attribution.
Yours
Cassie K.
The first Kuku of summer…
Someone help me out here. Wasn’t there a short paper by a retired NYC Meteorologist, who reviewed like 90 years worth of East Coast records, and plotted “average winter season temperature” versus snowfall and got about an 80% correlation factor?
Yep warmer weather…LESS SNOW! Debunking (at least on a regional basis) that “weather extremes” (AKA snowy winters) are associated with a warmer atmosphere.
Y2K wasn’t nearly as overblown as CAGW. Real corporations spent real capital to prepare their software systems for the changeover in year. There was a real concern about their ability to make money with the change in date.
That said, yes, there was a lot of overblown nonsense that should have been shouted down. Chief among them was the “planes falling from the sky” myth of airplanes in mid-flight losing navigation. Which for some reason is still perpetuated with the cell-phone RF signal myth.
On no. This is terribly embarrassing. I have a lot of respect for Dr. Kaku. Have two of his books.
This guy built a particle accelerator when he was 13 and is one of the architects of Superstring theory.
Seems even Dr. Kaku fails to apply science here.