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?
Dr. Maue you must not be ‘into’ the New Age California Mindset and ‘with’ the Post Normal Science of the moment. Technically speaking, of course you are absolutely right. But you see that is precisely the problem. California is on the Left Coast, everything here is bass ackwards. Left is right on and OK. Right is left out and NOT good. Up is a downer, really down, unless you’re on speed. And down is up, unless you get some bad stuff and that’s bad, very bad. When The Big One hits, that’ll be BAD — unless you don’t live in California, then it will be Good. Regardless of what anyone says, you can’t beat the weather (usually), it’s fantastic; and some normal people stay in the state (even though they can’t or won’t speak the lingo) because of the weather, and the cool nights, and the fresh organic fruits and veggies, and flowers, etc., etc.
[ryanm: i live in california, same as Anthony]
Mr. Keen: Thanks for your pointers. I hope you found the “formal paper” by the Japanese Forrest Institute that I found. Similar conclusion to yours, but (ahem, cough…obviously better quality /sarc), as it appeared in a “Peer Reviewed” journal.
It’s sad when we have to “point out the obvious”, i.e. “cold and snowy” tend to go together. Maybe some of these genieuses can’t figure this out – – – if you look at the begining of the “winter season” and the end of it, you have times when the temperature goes above 32 F. Generally (there are some odd exceptions to this, as you know because of the normal lapse rate, primarily, and “close” situations, where it will snow, while the ground ambient is 32, the form of the precipitation is RAIN. Now when you play the stupid “average temperature” game, if you have a more of your season in this realm, (>32 F) you have more of your season in the “snow turned off” realm. This may have a little to do with the general observation that a “colder” (on the average) winter tends to be a “snowier” winter (on the average.
Notice that the interviewer/reporter made the same mistake. Are we surprised that a reporter would know so little about a subject for which s/he is doing an interview?
Cassandra King
“May I use it again please? I will of course offer the correct attribution.”
Sure, go nuts 🙂
Hi Ryan
From a post on an Australian blog about Yasi: “Last night on a talkback show they were talking of Yasi striking the coast at the top of the tide. A fisherman rang and said it wouldn’t happen. He said “every fisherman knows that the cyclones slow down to let the high tide flow out. ”
Any thoughts on that?
[ryanm: how would a fisherman know what happens beneath a category 5 cyclone — the surge would make the tide unmeasurable compared to it]
David L says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:01 pm
You got to give them credit. They’ve gone from dismissing snowstorms as weather and having nothing to do with climate to having everything to do with climate driven by global warming.
Yes, and strange as it is, as best as we can tell, the earth in January 2011 was the same temperature as it was in January for the past 30 years on average, but for some reason this January all the snow and tropical storms around the world were caused by
CO2. Why does the same heat content, assuming we are good at measuring that, suddenly cause more disasters?
Could this be Mr Kaku who wrote the book called Visions, I believe I re-wrote one of his chapters, cross refernced and all, for a friend to put it back into the human arena without all the errors, the funny thing was it ended up with an offering and vision almost 180 degrees different from Kaku`s, I remember the worst example was the toasters using superconducting elements to save energy. (electrical resistance = heat generation or so my mother used to say) . I ought to buy the new book and see if it just as error stricken.
jono
“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.”
I think we’ve set a new record low wind-chill for the blog with this.
Deliciously brutal.
All y’all shut up. This sort of stuff is completely plausible in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and fourteenth dimensions. Everybody knows that the gender-associations in Spanish invert in the teen-dimensions.
/kaku-impression
“Seems even Dr. Kaku fails to apply science here.”
He’s gone Sagan; the studio lights are more important to him than the light of knowledge.
Kaku-sensei, meet Alan Sokal. You share an equal facility with the English language.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/critstudies/transgress_v2_noafterword.pdf
Pamela;
Of course. Doncha ‘member? Warmcold causes wetdry! It’s a(some) known non-disproven fact(s). Non-disproveable even!
Michio Kaku has never met an “official story” he didn’t like. He’s the Arlen Specter of science.
Terribly sorry, I wasn’t aware that insults were only allowed to fly in one direction…Who am I kidding? That’s exactly what I expected.