Guest post by Alec Rawls
Is Newsweek actually heeding the instruction of Linnaeus to “know thyself”? Their latest panic-mongering cover seems pretty self aware.
Panic is a loss of reason:
pan•ic (pænɪk), noun: a sudden, overpowering terror, often affecting many people at once.
Verb: to feel or cause to feel panic
Synonyms: go to pieces, overreact, become hysterical, have kittens
Yes, Newsweek “science editor” Sharon Begley is all het-up with teh kittehz, and offers readers a guide for how they too can work themselves into a state of unreasoning fear. A few details from her grab bag of hysteria provide an interesting look into this pathological mind.
Drier and wetter, IN THE SAME PLACE
This is just strange:
Picture California a few decades from now, a place so hot and arid the state’s trademark orange and lemon trees have been replaced with olive trees that can handle the new climate. Alternating floods and droughts have made it impossible for the reservoirs to capture enough drinking water.
Higher temperatures (unlikely to be coming, now that the sun has quieted down) would probably change some weather patterns, making some places wetter and some places drier. Overall increased evaporation would make for more rain, but this rain might miss California, as a scare story from 2009 alleged.
That was KTVU’s tropopause height extravaganza, put together by “science editor” John Fowler. There is speculation that the width of the tropical weather zone is a function of the height of the top of the troposphere, which has risen since 1958. If continued warming continues to raise the tropopause, we’re doomed:
Fowler: Since 1960, the sand colored desert regions have crept northward, according to this research, now up to about Los Angeles. They could cover the [San Francisco] Bay Area in a few decades.
All of the world’s increasing rainfall is apparently going to land on Seattle. But at least they weren’t claiming that the same part of California was going to become both drier and wetter. Where did Begley get the idea that global warming will cause flooding and droughts in the same place?
A little poking around on the Newsweek website (now a subsidiary of The Daily Beast) turns up Begley’s source, another “new normal” story posted on May 21st, linking the following “global weirding” drivel from Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and killing droughts are signs of a “new normal” of extreme U.S. weather events fueled by climate change, scientists and government planners said on Wednesday.”It’s a new normal and I really do think that global weirding is the best way to describe what we’re seeing,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University told reporters.
“We are used to certain conditions and there’s a lot going on these days that is not what we’re used to, that is outside our current frame of reference,” Hayhoe said on a conference call with other experts, organized by the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists.
An upsurge in heavy rainstorms in the United States has coincided with prolonged drought, sometimes in the same location, she said, noting that west Texas has seen a record-length dry period over the last five years, even as there have been two 100-year rain events.
So west Texas had a record five year drought punctuated by two 100-year rain events. Is that even possible? Wouldn’t the rainfall from two 100-year events be enough to lift the rainfall total of that five year period far above the lowest totals on record? In any case, this is the epitome of local weather, and Sharon Begley is extrapolating it to the entire world. Unusual weather seen in one place one time will now be seen everywhere all the time. Some science editor! And I thought Fowler was bad.
But let’s give Katharine Hayhoe credit as well. What did she expect when she called a single cherry-picked five year span of weather in one location “the new normal”? Begley is just following Hayoe’s instructions for inciting irrational PANIC. Still, aren’t science editors supposed to, you know, edit? When they see something scientifically insane, aren’t they supposed to cut it out, not extrapolate it as world-covering truth?
Global weirding weirdos and CO2 “fingerprints”
In addition to citing global weirdist Katharine Hayhoe, Begley’s subtitle refers to “freak storms” and her article is accompanied by a photographic “freak weather gallery.” Yup, Newsweek is all aboard the weirdo bandwagon. So how do the weirdos justify blaming every weird weather event on people? Just ask Donald Wuebbles, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois. He dusted for fingerprints and the culprit was revealed:
Climate does of course vary naturally, but the large changes we have been seeing in recent decades have the fingerprints of human emissions as being the primary driving force.
The IPCC did try to claim that their predicted CO2 warming “fingerprint”—a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere—had been found, but that claim has long since been debunked, as recounted in David Evan’s recent piece in the Financial Post. (Evans also has a more formal presentation with citations).
If the CO2 explanation for late 20th century warming were correct, the hotspot would have to be there. The CO2 theory produces a testable hypothesis and the empirical falsification of this hypothesis proves that the theory is wrong. Ditto for the “global weirding” that stands upon it.
Trenberth is a weirdo too
Kevin Trenberth follows the Weirdo Wuebbles model for blaming every extreme weather event on human-caused global warming. We know that global warming is proceeding apace, says Trenberth (despite humanity’s failure to cause any 21st century warming), so pitch it in strong:
“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”
Trenberth’s call to blame every bad thing on CO2 was used by the leftists at Think Progress to blame this year’s killer tornadoes on global warming, just like Begley and Newsweek. It’s one big global weirdo convention on the eco-left.
All that is actually getting weirder are the claims of our global warming scientists. Foot soldiers of panic like Sharon Begley are not proceeding just on their own ignorant intiative. They are following the marching orders of unscientific scientists like Wuebbles, Trenberth, and Heyhoe.
I come not to praise Stephen Schneider, but to bury him
It is appropriate that Trenbeth presented his sweeping justification for alarmism in a talk dedicated to the late Stephen Schneider, the spiritual grandfather of politicized eco-science.
It was Schneider who in the 1970’s tried to blame global cooling since the mid-forties on the human burning of fossil fuels. When the planet started to warm a few years later he smoothly switched to blaming global warming on fossil fuels. It never mattered to him if any of it was true. His objective was to curtail the human burning of fossil fuels and any excuse would do. Honesty was not a requirement, as he explained to Discover Magazine:
To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.
If what one wants to be effective at is expounding truth, there is no such conflict. It is only ulterior motives, like the unplugging of industrial capitalism, that can only be effectively promoted though dishonesty. Bad behavior springs from bad motives. Unfortunately, we’ve let a lot of bad people gain a lot of power, and it’s going to be very difficult to dislodge them.
Addendum: Roy Spencer on the hotspot fingerprint
Roy denies that the absence of an upper troposphere hotspot invalidates the CO2 theory of late 20th century warming, but this conclusion seems to be a non sequitur:
The famous “hot spot” seen in [AR4 figure 9.1] has become a hot topic in recent years since at least two satellite temperature datasets (including our UAH dataset), and most radiosonde data analyses suggest the tropical hotspot does not exist. Some have claimed that this somehow invalidates the hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for global warming.
But the hotspot is not a unique signature of manmade greenhouse gases. It simply reflects anomalous heating of the troposphere — no matter what its source. Anomalous heating gets spread throughout the depth of the troposphere by convection, and greater temperature rise in the upper troposphere than in the lower troposphere is because of latent heat release (rainfall formation) there.
For instance, a natural decrease in cloud cover would have had the same effect. It would lead to increased solar warming of the ocean, followed by warming and humidifying of the global atmosphere and an acceleration of the hydrologic cycle.
Thus, while possibly significant from the standpoint of indicating problems with feedbacks in climate models, the lack of a hotspot no more disproves manmade global warming than the existence of the hotspot would have proved manmade global warming. At most, it would be evidence that the warming influence of increasing GHGs in the models has been exaggerated, probably due to exaggerated positive feedback from water vapor.
Roy’s “thus” at the beginning of the last paragraph refers to his assertion that warming caused by a decrease in clouds (as would result from an increase in solar activity under Henrik Svensmark’s GCR-cloud theory) would create an upper troposphere hotspot, so long as there is a positive water vapor feedback effect. This does demonstrate that the existence of a hotspot would not uniquely implicate the CO2 warming theory, but it does not demonstrate that late 20th century warming could be due to CO2 in the absence of a hotspot. In fact the opposite is known to be true.
CO2 by itself does not trap enough heat to account for 20th century warming. The CO2 warming theory depends on a strong water vapor amplification mechanism, where the initial CO2 temperature forcing evaporates water into atmosphere whichg traps yet more heat, creating yet more water vapor, etcetera. As Roy notes, it is this “warming and humidifying of the global atmosphere” and the resulting “acceleration of the hydrologic cycle” that creates the upper troposphere hotspot. Ergo, no hotspot means no powerful water vapor amplification mechanism and no CO2-based account of late 20th century warming.
Svensmark’s theory, on the other hand, does not imply that there will be a hotspot. It is merely compatible with a hotspot. In the presence of a powerful water vapor feedback effect, the temperature forcing created by a GCR-cloud mechanism would create an upper troposphere hotspot. If the water vapor feedback effect is weak or negative, temperature forcing from the GCR-cloud mechanism will not cause a hotspot, but it could still account for 20th century warming just by the magnitude of its unamplified forcing.
ThanksRoy, for all of your great work. Hope you don’t mind this bit of editing help.
I believe this quote applies to the times we find ourselves in. And not just as regards climate and other environmental issues.
Villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged, waiting for the right climate in which to flourish, spreading fear in the name of righteousness.
Honestly, I think all this panic and fear mongering is good in the long run. Eventually people will tune it out. There is only so many times you can cry wolf before people start to ignore it.
In any emergency situation, those who panic have the lowest rate of survival.
They also tend to increase the mortality rate of those around them.
Let those who lose thier heads be the only ones to lose what it is attached to.
Let those who keep thier wits do so unhindered by the panic-stricken.
How many times does this nonsense have to be debunked? The so-called “hot spot” in the tropical troposphere is not a prediction of warming due specifically to the mechanism of greenhouse gases; any warming is expected to produce it. And, it is not at all clear that it is missing given the problems with the data. Even Richard Lindzen agrees with me on this (although actually he is even more unequivocal about the problem lying with the data):
( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/richard-lindzen-a-case-against-precipitous-climate-action/ )
what about thos eof us who lived in the last colder period- 50’s 60’s and early 70’s?
Newsweak didn’t miss a bet in the IICEEE AGGGEEE! era either….
Okay…I see your addendum did try to sort of correct things. However, you are still missing or confusing a number of important points:
(1) The most direct implication of the missing “hot spot” would be that the lapse rate feedback, a negative feedback in the climate models, is being overestimated. The argument from the lack of the hot spot to the water vapor feedback being overestimated is more indirect…and hence there are more ways in which this conclusion could turn out not to be true.
(2) There are good reasons to suspect problems with the data in regards to the hot spot: The amplification of temperature fluctuations that occur on the timescale of months to years is seen in the data. It is when one looks at the multidecadal trends that the amplification seems to possibly be missing, but this depends on what data set and what analysis or re-analysis one looks at. There are good reasons to be concerned about artifacts in the data for these trends, due to changes in instrumentation, transitions from one satellite to another, etc. So, what one has is verification of tropical tropospheric amplification where the data is reliable…and a fuzzier picture where the data is more problematic. It is also difficult (although perhaps not impossible) to come up with ways in which convection (which operates on the time scales of hours) can produce the expected behavior on the time scales of months to a few years but not on the time scales of several decades.
(3) There is independent verification of the water vapor feedback, i.e., that the upper troposphere is moistening about as expected. See, for example, here http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5917/1020.summary and here http://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5749/841.abstract .
More nonsense. If you look at the timing, the planet did not begin to warm yet when Schneider changed his views. He did his first calculation in 1971 (Rasool and Schneider http://www.sciencemag.org/content/173/3992/138.abstract )…and he understood that greenhouse gases cause warming and aerosols cooling, but he overestimated the cooling relative to the warming for two reasons: one being an error in computing the magnitude of the warming effect (I believe) and another being that he did not anticipate how we in the U.S. and other Western countries would quickly reign in our emissions of aerosols. Within a year or two after that first calculation, he had realized the error enough that he no longer believed cooling would dominate. (It is worth noting that even in their reply to a comment on their paper published in January 1072, Rasool and Schneider were already emphasizing the tentativeness of their result: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/175/4017/95.1.full.pdf )
And, that quote from Discover magazine was taken out of context as discussed here: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/APS.pdf . In fact, Schneider is widely regarded in scientific circles for working diligently to explain the uncertainties and their implications to the public. You really need to get beyond the Echo Chamber for your information.
‘Panic’
Otherwise known as are you f*cking kidding me?
@Douglas DC: I may misunderstand you, but as I read what Linzen is saying in your link it is that there isn’t anything wrong with the data. That it is improbal that the data always needs to be adjusted to fit the models. What I see him saying is that it wrong to asume that the models are always right and the data is always wrong. Here is the a more full quote.
“This requires that warming in the tropical upper troposphere be 2-3 times greater than at the surface. Indeed, all models do show this, but the data doesn’t and this means that something is wrong with the data. It is well known that above about 2 km altitude, the tropical temperatures are pretty homogeneous in the horizontal so that sampling is not a problem. Below two km (roughly the height of what is referred to as the trade wind inversion), there is much more horizontal variability, and, therefore, there is a profound sampling problem. Under the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that the problem resides in the surface data, and that the actual trend at the surface is about 60% too large. Even the claimed trend is larger than what models would have projected but for the inclusion of an arbitrary fudge factor due to aerosol cooling. The discrepancy was reported by Lindzen (2007) and by Douglass et al (2007). Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.”
Wasn’t this rag sold for a dollar a little while back?
Was this it? Newsweek sale a head-scratcher
Fair use opening-excerpt:
Good news: Newsweek sold — for a dollar
newsweek’s circulation, like arctic sea ice, is back to 1966 levels.
But, Joel, this does not block the atmospheric window at 10 um (right about the earth’s LWIR spectral peak) … does it?
And aren’t spectral windows where CO2 and WV show absorption already saturated (from surface to top of atmosphere)?
So, what does this ‘moistening about as expected’ really do for us?
Anything? Nothing?
.
Tom T says:
I don’t think your interpretation makes sense. Lindzen clearly believes that cumulus convection requires the tropical tropospheric amplification…and he implicates the surface data as being what is wrong. I think he does try to argue against those who are saying it is the balloon and satellite data where the problems most likely lie.
Of course, there is a sort of irony in that he is critiquing other scientists for implicating … and trying to re-analyze … the data when he is doing much the same thing, only with the surface data rather than the data at higher altitudes.
Newsweek has a problem if this is so . . .
“In 2003 worldwide circulation was more than 4 million, including 2.7 million in the U.S; by 2010 it was down to 1.5 million (with newsstand sales declining to just over 40 thousand copies per week).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek
Oh, and it is published in N E W Y O R K C I T Y ! — said in the tone of
a Pace Picante Commercial (1994).
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ooPBXfnIpYI
With the printing of more panic/junk material we can hope that Newsweek meets the “new normal” of sudden extinction along with CAGW.
Joel Shore says: June 3, 2011 at 7:30 pm Even Richard Lindzen agrees with me on this (although actually he is even more unequivocal about the problem lying with the data):
Not too familiar with the concept of irony I guess Joel, how about sarcasm?
The article is more proof that homo sapiens in general are incapable of thinking outside the limits of their egocentrism. The concept of “global weirding” is meaningless when placed in the context of planet earth’s 4.5 billion year history.
Irony? Taste of their own medicine? Australian climate scientists receive death threats.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/scientists-suffer-death-threats/story-e6frf7jo-1226069173816
“Professional Experts” would be a great way to describe these people.
Thanks to Joel for the Lindzen analysis. If Lindzen is right, it sounds like the upper troposphere hotspot is not a testable hypothesis of the CO2 theory of warming, but is something that we should expect to see regardless of whether there is a positive water vapor feedback effect or not. This differs from Spencer, who seems to be saying that a hotspot would imply a positive water vapor feedback effect. Am I reading Spencer correctly, and if so, can this difference between Lindzen and Spencer be settled?
In any case, there are other empirical ways to measure climate sensitivity and these too seem to indicate small or negative net feedback. On this Lindzen and Spencer are agreed, Lindzen in the post that Joel cites, and Spencer here.
Who reads Newsweek anymore? When I subscribed to it, 30 years ago, it was a reasonably informative news magazine. Now it’s just another liberal bird-cage liner.
Once upon a time there was a family of Gnus. Poppa Gnu got eaten by a lion. Momma Gnu got shot by a Gnu-hunter. Junior Gnu got caught and sold to a Gnu-zoo.
A story was run in Gnus-weak.
That’s the end of the Gnus. Now for the weather…. (or climate, I forget which).
“…at least two satellite temperature datasets (including our UAH dataset), and most radiosonde data analyses suggest the tropical hotspot does not exist. Some have claimed that this somehow invalidates the hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for global warming. But the hotspot is not a unique signature of manmade greenhouse gases. … Thus, while possibly significant from the standpoint of indicating problems with feedbacks in climate models, the lack of a hotspot no more disproves manmade global warming than the existence of the hotspot would have proved manmade global warming.”
I am surprised Dr Roy Spencer could write such logically inaccurate stuff. The AGW theory produces the hypothesised heating via a warming hotspot in the troposphere. It is part of the hypothesised mechanism by which the heating is produced. That is, AGW requires a warming troposphere:
AGW => Warming troposphere. (where “=>” is “implies”)
Roy’s article says other things also cause a warming troposphere:
(at most) other stuff => Warming troposphere.
In logic, “A=>B” is equivalent to “B or not A”. So “AGW => Warming troposphere” is equivalent to
“Warming troposphere or not AGW”.
But warming troposphere is false:
“false or not AGW”
is equivalent to:
“not AGW”. I.e. AGW is false.
Did you spot “other stuff” anywhere in that logic? I didn’t either. So what is talk about cloud cover changes doing in his article? I tried out various modifications to the axiom, including reversing the implications, but the more I look at it I think Roy has simply made a mistake in logic. Disproof of Warming troposphere disproves any theory that asserts this to be a necessary precursor to AGW – and that is all of them (so far, but expect revamped models sometime soon).
The lack of the predicted hot spot neither proves nor disproves, rather is resets back to the NULL hypothesis.
IF there was a hotspot, it’s a leg to stand on until the next test is not met, which was rising sea levels and snow a thing of the past.
FAIL. Sea levels are silly millimeters higher, not feet, and we got snowblasted. Oh man, do we got snow.
Reset to the NULL hypothesis.
Throw the messy thing overboard and move on to the other theories waiting patiently the past decade.
The so-called positive water feedback mechanism is totally bogus. The force of wind is responsible for the transport of water vapor off the surface of water and into the air. The heavy nitrogen and oxygen molecules act as micro sandblasters and knock the light water molecules right out of the liquid water.
Take a straw and blow air onto water in glass. Note how the stream of air moves the liquid water. That steam of air is also blowing water molecules right out of the water!
The other factor that more strongly influences the transport of water vapor is air presssure. Check the dial of an aneroid barometer. A drop of air pressure by a few hundredths of inch or so will often result in moist air or rain.
The heat of vaporization of water depends very strongly on external air pressure. Lower the air pressure the more readily the water evaporates in still air for a given temperature.
rbateman says: June 3, 2011 at 7:23 pm
In any emergency situation, those who panic have the lowest rate of survival.
They also tend to increase the mortality rate of those around them.
Actually, I saw evidence which suggests that “panic” is often an emotional label given to other people. When asked, the people who were said to be panicing … agreed they were emotional (perhaps crying), but they explained their actions and these were shown to be quite rational.
Then again, I was particularly struck by the advice if a car goes into the water which used to be don’t panic … just wait till the water levels equalise and then just open the door
When this was tried live in a test tank, the presenter nearly died. When they “panicked” (i.e. took immediate action), they got out without much difficulty.
The moral is that evolution has undoubtedly selected humans to “panic” just enough to take immediate action when needed, but not too much to totally override rational thought. But that doesn’t stop corporal Jones of the UEA home guard from making us all laugh with his:
Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic …. they don’t like it up!
Umm… “Know Thyself” goes back a lot further than Linnaeus.
It was (?still is) an inscription at Delphi that has been attributed to at least a dozen ancient Greek philosophers.
Still got current value, though!
For those wondering why we are getting more than the usual number of absurd shroudwaving fairystories in the media lately, this is the explanation:-
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
UN Climate Change Conference June 2011
Bonn, Germany 6 – 17 June 2011
The 34th session of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) will take place from 6-16 June. The second part of the fourteenth session of the AWG-LCA and the second part of the sixteenth session of the AWG-KP will take place from 7-17 June.
It m8ust be world wide PR attack. The Courier Mail, the single paper in Brisbane , Australia dredged up some old rubbish scares today also.
They dragged Al Gore’s fake scare about Tuavalu out. Then they tried to make out that there were already 50million environmental refugees in the world. Mostly in China where the population, with encouragement from the government is moving from poverty in farm life into comparable affluence working in cities and towns.
Then because Bangladesh had a big flood this year, they claimed a big population there were refugees.
It was pure bunkum but this still takes time to counter.
Oh Please…
The orange and lemon trees were pulled out long ago, replaced with freeways, homes, and concrete buildings. “Orange” county is now an urban metroplex; part of the LA Sprawl….
And “replaced with olive trees”? Someone needs to point out them that we’ve GOT and HAD olive trees since the missionaries here built the missions of mud back in the 1700’s and that those same trees are still here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/everything-from-mud/
http://www.growquest.com/Fruit%20trees%20-%20better%20plant/Mission%20Olive%20Tree.htm
Sheesh….
FWIW, there was a very small olive oil industry near my home town in N. California 1/2 Century ago. It was put out of business by “cheap Italian oil”, and I got to watch many trees pulled out to plant peaches instead. The industry was “legacy” from about 100 years ago…
There are some folks trying to start up a “Boutique Olive Oil” business again with “specialty oils”. I wish them luck. While we’ve always had great weather for olives, they don’t like cold and damp so much and it IS cold and damp here now.
We are on track to break records for cold and wet rain in June. Normally it’s bone dry and about 85 F. Now we’re headed for “record rain and 55 F”…. Global Warming? No way…
From wunderground for Sacramento:
So our MAX is 18 F below normal and 35 F below the record, while our MIN is 7 F below normal and only 3 F above the “Coldest Ever” for this day…
This is NOT warming, folks. It just isn’t. And no amount of lipstick on this pig is going to make it anything other than what it is:
Significant Cooling with cold and wet winter like weather in “summer”…
Anyone calling it anything other than that needs to look out the window.
Chris says:
June 3, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Honestly, I think all this panic and fear mongering is good in the long run. Eventually people will tune it out. There is only so many times you can cry wolf before people start to ignore it.
Yes, but careful we don’t also tune out the sneaky action plans that “could” result.
Philosophic example. There is old newsreel footage of a blimp nosing in to tether, (perhaps the USS Akron). Some men run out to grab the nose rope to tie it down, but the wind lifts the nose. Panic. Men hang on. More rush out to add their weight. It takes too long. Several men cannot hold on any longer and drop to their deaths.
The philosophical part is that the more early a man volunteered to help, the more danger he faced, because the higher he was taken. The cowards stayed in safety on the ground. A lukewarmer might have grabbed the end of the rope that did not leave the ground. Altruism does not always pay positive returns.
One can make comparisons with the posted material. In a time of climate panic, be it real or not, people react differently. Only after the event can we confidently call them wise or foolish.
Well if that Newsweek cover doesn’t seal the deal as this being the proverbial jump the shark moment, I don’t know what possibly can.
Who could have dreamed that the current generation of pop-scientists and popular media would successfully out-perform their predecessors 30 years ago?
You would think that they might look back at the ice-age scare that hit critical mass when pop-scientists and popular media, like fissioning neutrons striking each other, caused a decade long chain reaction of published and televised nonsense.
You would hope they would learn something, anything at all from the ceaseless theorizing and endless hyperbole and interminable lecturing we endured throughout the 1970’s.
But no, like incorrigible children, they have not learned a single thing. It is as if there is no generational memory anymore amongst the media and scientific elite, even with all our books, computers and technology.
They are surely on an unstoppable course now. Which is all the more insane this time around because they are fully aware of all the egg-on-face when the climate changed in the mid-1980’s.
Yet they are hell-bent on doing a complete absolute replay!
More drivel from that increasingly neurotic former profession known as journalism. Frankly one has to feel sorry for those who lives have centred on trying to gain attention via ever more lurid and scary scenario’s. They need to get a life!
Newsweek in trouble with circulation? Reads like it. A good scare story increases the bottom line whether based on fact or fiction.
ATTN: E. M. Smith
Any rain coming down in the Central Valley? With all this rain, should not the delta smelt be removed from the threatened list?
Alec breathlessly questions
———-
Where did Begley get the idea that global warming will cause flooding and droughts in the same place?
———
Alec could you please confirm that you do understand that floods and drought can happen in the same place as long as they happen at different times? You seem to be incredulous about the whole idea.
Alec is astonished
———–
So west Texas had a record five year drought punctuated by two 100-year rain events. Is that even possible? Wouldn’t the rainfall from two 100-year events be enough to lift the rainfall total of that five year period far above the lowest totals on record?
——–
Well you could calculate it I guess.
But more to the point a 5 year stretch without rain, beginning and ending with 100 year floods is still a drought. Agriculture depends on seasonal rains and if rain does not turn up season after season and then it floods then its is still damaging to agriculture. Surprisingly to city slickers I guess crops don’t grow during floods.
I have to comment on the illogic being used with respect to discounting the tropical troposphere hotspot as a signature of global warming/GHGs because the Sun could have also caused a hotspot.
This is such a red herring but some people find this non-sequitor convincing somehow – even Joel Shore above and it comes up all the time – RealClimate even did a complete post on it.
————
The tropical troposphere hotspot is not there. It is, in fact, warming at the lowest rate (barely above zero) of any area on the surface or in the troposphere. It is, therefore, the tropical cool spot.
The fact that either solar increases or global warming could have caused a hotspot is irrelevant. Neither of them did since it is not there.
It is illogical to now claim that the hotspot is not a signature of global warming because solar increases could have also caused it – this is misdirection, a red herring and a strawman.
If solar forcing had increased, the hotspot could have appeared. But solar forcing didn’t increase and the hotspot didn’t appear, therefore the hotspot is not a signature of global warming? That is the logic being used in this line of argument.
It is indeed a signature of global warming. The theory is obviously wrong on one of its most important aspects.
Ready. Aye, ready.
…-
“Climate change
Hot enough for you? Preparing for Canada’s 100-year heat wave
SIRI AGRELL
URBAN AFFAIRS REPORTER— From Saturday’s Globe and Mail”
“The long-range forecast for Canadian cities is hot. And we’re talking for the next 100 years or so.
As summer weather finally arrives, municipal governments across the country are preparing for the long-term impact of climate change, adapting everything from the trees they plant to how their emergency services personnel are trained in preparation for the gradual increase in temperature and wildly fluctuating weather patterns expected in decades to come.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/hot-enough-for-you-preparing-for-canadas-100-year-heat-wave/article2047055/
Has anyone noticed that all the current observations suggest an equatorward shift of the surface pressure distribution ?
That is, the opposite of what was going on pre 2000.
Meanwhile CO2 has been going up throughout.
Dear Lazy
Weather has always been inconsistent. The foolish consistency of CAGW fanatics, in their persuit of money and power, is likewise, not terribly surprising.
Take this six year period as an example of extreme weather. It is a quick, not an exhaustive search of one period. The CAGW crowd can only pray for such a period in order to promote their cash cow.
1930 May 13th Farmer killed by hail in Lubbock, Texas, USA; this is the only US known fatality due to hail.
1930 June 13th 22 people killed by hailstones in Siatista, Greece.
1930 Sept 3rd Hurricane kills 2,000, injures 4,000 (Dominican Republic).
1930s Sweden The warmest decade was the 1930s, after which a strong cooling trend occurred until the
1970s INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.946/abstract
1930 Russian heat wave in the 1930′s, for the decade was 0.2 degrees below 2000 to 2010 heat wave.
1930 set 3 all time HIGHEST state temperatures, Delaware, 110F Jul. 21, Kentucky, 114 Jul. 28, Tennessee 113 Aug. 9, and one all time LOWEST state record, Oklahoma -27 Jan. 18. About 400% more then a statistical average.
1931 set two highest State temp ever, FL, 109 Jun. 29, and HI, 109 Jun. 29
1931 Europe LOWEST temp ever in all of Europe −58.1 °C (−72.6°F)
1931 The 20th centuries worst water related disaster was the Central China flooding of 1931, inundating 70,000 square miles and killing 3.5-4 million people.
1931 July Western Russia heat wave 6 degrees F monthly anomaly above normal, 2nd warmest on 130 year record. Decade of 1930 to 1940 within 0.2 degrees of 2000 to 2010 western Russia July
1931 Sept 10th The worst hurricane in Belize Central America history kills 1,500 people.
1932 TORNADO OUTBREAK SEVERE 1932, March 21 Alabama 268 DEAD
1932 November 9th Santa Cruz Del Sur Cuba category 5 hurricane 2,500 dead.
1932 Madagascar cyclone crosses Reunion Island 35,000 homeless 45 dead.
1932 June 19th Hailstones kill 200 in Hunan Province, China
1932 / 33 Soviet famine. 7 to 14 million. Mostly human caused, but drought and low crop yields in 1931 and 32 contributed.
1933 Sept Cat 3 Florida landfall.
1933 4 LOWEST state temp ever were recorded in Oregon -54 Feb. 10, Texas -23 Feb. 8,
Vermont -50 Dec. 30, Wyoming -66 Feb. 9
1933 February 6 Highest recorded sea wave (not tsunami), 34 metres (112 feet), in Pacific hurricane
1933 Highest temp ever in SWEDEN 38.0 °C (100.4 °F) tied in 2009
1933 Lowest temp ever recorded in ASIA −68 °C (−90 °F) tied in 02 and 06
1933 NORTH KOREA LOWEST temp ever North Korea −43.6 °C ( -46.48°F)
1933 August 11th Highest World Temperature ever reaches 136 degrees F (58 degrees C) at San Luis Potosí, Mexico (world record).
1933 Nov 11th Great Black Blizzard” first great dust storm in the Plains of the USA.
1934 May 11th Over two days, the most severe dust storm to date in the USA sweeps an estimated 350 million tons of topsoil from the Great Plains across to the eastern seaboard.
1934 Fastest recorded with an anemometer outside of a tropical cyclone: 372 km/h (231 mph) sustained 1-minute average; Mount Washington, New Hampshire,
Michigan -two states recorded their highest ever temperature both 118 degrees Idaho and Iowa, and two states recorded their lowest ever temperatur Michigan -51 and New Hampshire -47
1934 LOWEST temp ever Singapore 19.4 °C (66.9 °F)
1934 Typhoon strikes Honshu Island, Japan, kills 4,000
1935 Ifrane Morocco, LOWEST temperature continent of Africa ever recorded, minus 11
1935 Florida, A CAT ONE HURICANE AT LANDFALL.
1935 Nepisiguit Falls, New Brunswick 39.4 °C 12th highest temp ever in Canada.
1935 Collegeville, Nova Scotia 38.3 °C 15th highest temp ever in Canada.
1935 Iroquois Falls, Ontario −58.3 °C 5th lowest temp ever in Canada.
1935 Western Russia, 9th coldest July in 130 years.
1935 145,000 dead 1935 Yangtze river flood China
1935 August 1935 and 36 two typhoons hit Fukien province in China, hundreds dead.
1935 Labor Day hurricane one of the most intense hurricanes to make landfall in U.S. in recorded history. More than 400 people were killed. 185 MPH sustained winds
1935 Hati 21 October: hurricane in Sud and Sud-Est départements. 2,000 people perished.
1936 HIGHEST state temperature ever recorded in Nebraska 118 Jul. 24, New Jersey 110 Jul. 10, North Dakota 121 Jul. 6, Oklahoma 120 Jun. 27, Pennsylvania 111 Jul. 10, South Dakota 120 Jul. 5, Virginia 112 Jul. 10, Wisconsin 114 Jul. 13, Arkansas 120 Aug. 10, 1936, Indiana 116 Jul. 14, ever recorded Kansas 121 Jul. 24, Louisiana 114 Aug. 10, Maryland 109 Jul. 10
1936 TORNADO outbreak April 5-6 Mississippi and Georgia 436 dead
1930 to 1936 20 Twenty state record all time HIGHEST in 6 year period plus 7 were tied ONLY in the same 6 year period. 9 record Lowest in same period. Contrast that to 5 highs set in 1990 – 2000 all 5 in 1994. And 5 lows in the same period ten year period.
Six of Canada’s highest ever records were set in the same period.
1936 Bay of Bengal Myanmar May 1st cyclone 72,000 homes lost 360 dead
1936 Drought related famine in China, five million dead. (
NOAA’S TOP GLOBAL WEATHER, WATER AND CLIMATE EVENTS OF THE 20 TH CENTURY)
1936 July 11th St. Albans, Manitoba 2nd highest temp ever in Canada 44.4 C
1936 Northeast Flood – Spring 1936
Rain concurrent with snowmelt set the stage for this flood. It affected the entire state of New Hampshire.[17] … In all, damage totaled US$113 million (1936 dollars), and 24 people were killed.
So there!!!
Panic is past its sell-by date. The main panic-mongers on every imaginable subject are the cable “news” networks, and they’re all losing ratings now.
http://www.frumforum.com/cable-news-ratings-drop
Most people have figured out the whole ‘fair and balanced debate’ scam, which is designed to stir up anger and fear over utterly trivial differences while totally ignoring all important questions. ‘Fair and balanced debate’, when it works, is much better than the old Soviet Memory Hole methods, because you don’t notice that 90% of the picture is missing. But it’s losing power at last.
With their current quality of “reporting”, they should just change the name to “Newsweak”. This would truly capture the meaning of “know thyself”.
According to Katherine Heyhoe –
“An upsurge in heavy rainstorms in the United States has coincided with prolonged drought, sometimes in the same location, she said, noting that west Texas has seen a record-length dry period over the last five years, even as there have been two 100-year rain events.”
According to USHCN records there have been 13 rain events of equal or greater magnitude since 1930.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?id=418201&_PROGRAM=prog.gplot_clim_jd2009.sas&_SERVICE=default¶m=PRCP&minyear=++++++++1930&maxyear=++++++++2009
The alarm might be heard miles away, but upon closer inspection it is more like looking at a bunch of screaming slugs from a particular animated movie: aaaaaaaaaahhh*repeat indefinitely.
Essentially, the terrified alarm we hear today is just the remnants from the global cooling alarm from decades ago.
The whole alarmist-movement have yet to switch to a global warming pitch. Might that be the confusion? But, of course, hippie do tend to have problem to keep up with current times. :p
Help !
the following (plus a couple of others) refer
Joel Shore says:
June 3, 2011 at 7:30 pm
quote
The so-called “hot spot” in the tropical troposphere is not a prediction of warming due specifically to the mechanism of greenhouse gases; any warming is expected to produce it.
end quote
Ron House says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:04 pm refutes using logic the contention the prediciton that other theories invalidate the link between AGW & Tropo hot spot
rbateman says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:09 pm
quote
The lack of the predicted hot spot neither proves nor disproves, rather is resets back to the NULL hypothesis.
end quote
As I understand it we have
GCM all predict that global warming will be evidenced by a troposphere hot spot of a couple of degrees.
Many AGW hypothesis predict a trop hot spot
No existing tropo temperature data set shows significant heating (in terms of the predictions)
This falsifies the predictive ability of the GCM and the AGW hypothesis which demonstrate a warming of the troposphere
It doesn’t matter a damn what other theories may or may not result in a tropo hot spot/cold spot. Any prediction based on a theory that there WILL BE a tropo hot spot is invalidated
Models falsified in at least one prediction. Some AGW hypothesis falsified in at least one prediction.
Why re-hash the data ? The models/hypotheis are falsified – do good science – re-work the models (and the underlying hypothesis) so that the models agree with reality .
All other claims are specious; bogus and false.
Why is this conclusion incorrect ?
For anyone with a BRAIN…Newsweek has been called “NewSpeak” for decades.
I’d say at least since 1984 !
Max
_Jim says:
The saturation argument is wrong, as discussed here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/ and http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii/
Yes, there is a window. In Ray Pierrehumbert’s book, there’s a calculation of how much temperature increase one would expect if CO2 doubled and it were a graybody gas (in the absence of feedbacks, I believe). The answer is it would be huge!
So, yes, the fact that CO2 only absorbs over a fairly narrow range of the spectrum is already taken into account. The numbers are what they are and no serious scientist disputes that doubling CO2 produces about 4 W/m^2 of forcing.
Nigel S says:
I am…but I don’t think the interpretation that the whole paragraph is sarcastic makes much sense. So, is he being sarcastic about cumulus convection? Is he being sarcastic in claiming it is the surface data that is wrong? I don’t think so. I admit it is a bit ironic that he says the surface data is wrong and then lambasting scientists for saying that the data (at altitude) is wrong.
I think the most reasonable interpretation is that Lindzen, Spencer, and Gavin Schmidt all agree that the “hot spot” is due to the fact that the temperature in the tropics is expected to closely follow the moist adiabatic lapse rate.
Right now, I’M panicking. I’ m afraid that future historians will point to the early 21st century as a time of superstitions nonsense as extreme as the 17th century witch burnings:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/27/italian-scientist-charged-manslaughter-failing-predict-earthquake/
“Italian Seismologists Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake
Published May 27, 2011
| FoxNews.com
Brilliant, brilliant article; wonderful, wonderful article. Enjoyed every word. This article shows sceptical analysis at its best. I especially like what you said about Spencer. The humor is excellent. That Newsweek cover and article is an automatic collector’s item. Finally, and this is a bit of an aside, isn’t it so very clear in this article that Warmista just hate the great unwashed masses. Maybe Newsweek’s next article will be about pathological narcissism among America’s Ruling Elites.
Alec Rawls says:
June 3, 2011 at 10:28 pm
“Thanks to Joel for the Lindzen analysis. If Lindzen is right, it sounds like the upper troposphere hotspot is not a testable hypothesis of the CO2 theory of warming, but is something that we should expect to see regardless of whether there is a positive water vapor feedback effect or not. This differs from Spencer, who seems to be saying that a hotspot would imply a positive water vapor feedback effect. Am I reading Spencer correctly, and if so, can this difference between Lindzen and Spencer be settled?”
Talking about testability and falsifiability requires the actual words of the person whose hypothesis or hypotheses are being tested. There is no point in a debate among Rawls and Shore on the matter of Warmista hypotheses being falsified by lack of a hot spot unless they have the exact words of the scientist they are discussing. Rawls, Shore, Lindzen, Spencer, and many others have their views of the relevant Warmista hypothesis and substituting those views for the clearly stated views of some Warmista scientist is an exercise in futility. A hypothesis expresses a belief held by one or more indiviuduals and such a belief can be tested or falsified. However, to begin a discussion that uses the several beliefs of several people, none of them specified in detail, is just to introduce multiple ambiguity.
Bill Illis says:
And, you know this how? You seem to be cherry-picking which analysis of the data you want to believe to get the result that you want to believe. The fact is that the data are not good enough to make such bold conclusions.
No…It is perfectly logical. It is asking the question of whether or not the data can be used to distinguish what mechanism is responsible for the warming. And, the answer is that this aspect of the data cannot be used to do that.
Some people do claim that the observed warming is due to the sun or natural variations or what-not (including the author of this post, I believe). The point is that the non-observation of a hot spot does not lend support to these claims because we would expect the hot spot for these mechanisms of warming too.
No…It is a signature of what we expect for warming due to any mechanism, and it is a signature that we in fact see for temperature fluctuations in the tropical atmosphere. That the models (and very basic theory) and data agree where the data is known to be reliable and only potentially disagree where the data is known to be subject to artifacts suggests the problem is most likely with the data.
This is especially true since, as I have noted, the time scales of the processes that are expected to yield the hot spot are much shorter than the time scales for the observation of either the temperature fluctuations or the multidecadal trends. This makes it difficult to come up with an explanation of what might be happening that has the “hot spot” appearing for the fluctuations but not for the multidecadal trends.
By the way, it is interesting that some skeptics seem to want to believe that the data conclusively show that the hot spot is not there while other skeptics (or maybe some of the same) want to believe that somehow the speed up of the water cycle with warming causes heat to be transported out into space without much surface warming. These two beliefs are contradictory. If the water cycle were doing this, the hot spot would have to be much more pronounced, not less pronounced, than the models predict.
OMG! Comments like these are whats wrong with climate change now, and why it has gotten as bad as it is. Its easy for you to sit back and say that the article is BS, your not the ones whose homes have been flooded or ripped from its foundation. Yes we have freak weather all the time, but it is increasingly getting worse and worse, and you sit there and type away at your computer doubtful and you’ll be the next one it gets. Just saying. You kinda deserve it. Your little brain cannot even begin to comprehend how frightful and terrifying this shit is. Let your family members die and perish in it, lets see how YOU feel. SMH!
Fortunately, having a story appear on the cover of Newsweak (sic) or Bizzyweak (sic) or the front page of the NYT usually means a peak in the hysteria. After that it goes down.
Sharon Begley?!
Good grief, is she still employed?
This is what she had to say in her famous “Truth About Denial” fantasy in Aug 2007.
No El Nino in 2005 eh? No, just about 3 years of nothing but.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
Now, as far as the “trend is again upward” bit.
Hmmm. When should we choose as the start point? 2007?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2006.6/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2006.6/trend
How ’bout 2005?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2005/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2005/trend
Maybe we should give her a break and look for that rising trend she saw in 2007.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002.6/to:2007.6/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002.6/to:2007.6/trend
Of course, since she didn’t specify a date range (Jean Dixon used to use a similar…er…trick), we can only guess what she meant by “trend is again upward”. Maybe she meant Jan 2006 to Jan 2007? Who knows.
Anyway, one cannot mention Newsweek without dragging out this masterpiece.
http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
What were they blaiming on global cooling then?
Canceled my subscription to both Newsweek and SciAm after their complete failure to adequately and objectively report on Climategate, the greatest science scandal in history. Their failure in reporting demonstrated a breathtaking lack of interest in the facts surrounding the issue and a clear-cut bias toward Man-Made Global-Warming alarmism.
Since then I will not pay any attention at all to anything they have to say on any topic – what else are they telling lies about – lies with far-reaching bad consequences for humanity?
Someone famous said (approximately), <>
(I can’t find the source by googling–does anyone know it?)
PS: My double angle-brackets blanked out the quote I included in them. It was, “It is in the nature of the ordinary that it includes the extraordinary.”
It would be interesting to have Newsweek “science editor” Sharon Begley explain what is the difference between the weird weather of the 1800s and the weird weather of today. One only needs to look back at the weather records of the 1800s to see that similar events happened then.
It’s really sad to see the “news media” using Fiction in their reports.
Casey Byrd,
I and I presume all folks who post here have sympathy for those who incurred losses in the recent weather disasters.
That’s not to say we accept those who try to exploit such disasters and their victims to further their activist agenda about climate change.
Joel Shore says:
June 4, 2011 at 6:58 am
————-
The tropical troposphere hotspot is not there because it is dominated by the ENSO and the ENSO has no trend over the long-term.
The tropics lower troposphere is predicted to warm at a rate that is 127% of the surface. But it is warming at only 55% of the surface.
http://imageshack.us/m/109/5572/tropicsnonhotspot.png
“We are used to certain conditions and there’s a lot going on these days that is not what we’re used to, that is outside our current frame of reference,” Hayhoe said on a conference call with other experts, organized by the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists.”
I guess it depends on the length of time one uses as “the current frame of reference” to understand if any particular event is outside a 3 to 5 sigma occurrence from the frame of reference.
The nuances around the law for non-profit classification aren’t something I am versed in, but it seems that the Union of Concerned Scientists sure collects a lot of revenue and spend it to enhance that revenue stream. Oh well, maybe it’s time for the “Union of Concerned Engineers” to develop a non profit……………………… I can think of lots of contributors here who would make excellent board members…………….
Joel Shore says:
June 4, 2011 at 6:58 am
“And, you know this how? You seem to be cherry-picking which analysis of the data you want to believe to get the result that you want to believe. The fact is that the data are not good enough to make such bold conclusions.”
for once, Joel Shore is to be commended for making a verifiable statement
addendum:
that is to say, generally in relation to climate data being represented across the range available, from temperature measurements to inferences from them, and not necessarily to this hypothetical hotspot
casey byrd says:
June 4, 2011 at 7:11 am
OMG! Comments like these are whats wrong with climate change now, and why it has gotten as bad as it is. Its easy for you to sit back and say that the article is BS, your not the ones whose homes have been flooded or ripped from its foundation. Yes we have freak weather all the time, but it is increasingly getting worse and worse, and you sit there and type away at your computer doubtful and you’ll be the next one it gets. Just saying. You kinda deserve it. Your little brain cannot even begin to comprehend how frightful and terrifying this shit is. Let your family members die and perish in it, lets see how YOU feel. SMH!
I live in the center of Dixie alley. 40 miles from Tuscaloosa. The weather is not getting “worse and worse”. It’s just getting more publicity as a result of the internet, cell phones, etc., and because there is more inhabited land than there was 66 years ago when I was born. USA population in 1944 was approx 140million. Today it’s over 308 million.
Today’s discovery:
Do not make bold conclusions on the basis of inadequate data or biased data, as sceptics will doubt and pour objectivity onto the theory in question
Joel Shore says:
June 4, 2011 at 6:58 am
“Some people do claim that the observed warming is due to the sun or natural variations or what-not (including the author of this post, I believe). The point is that the non-observation of a hot spot does not lend support to these claims because we would expect the hot spot for these mechanisms of warming too.”
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little knowledge of scientific method is a catastrophic thing. In the case of the quotation above, the knowledge displayed is so little that one is tempted to conclude that the author knows better and is actively propagating confusion.
The author reasons that several “hypotheses” imply (and that word is necessary here) the existence of a hot spot so the fact that no such hot spot has been detected means that the alternatives to his “hypothesis or hypotheses” cannot gain support from this fact. Yep, that is true. However, the author fails to note that, according to him, all the rival sets of “hypotheses” imply the existence of a hot spot that has not been detected. The search for this hot spot has been going on for decades. In that case, all the hypotheses are falsified. The author’s “hypothesis or hypotheses” are falsified. None of the sets of rival hypotheses can be used in their present form and must be rejected outright or seriously reformulated. How did the author manage to overlook this obvious implication of his reasoning?
Joel Shore says:
June 4, 2011 at 6:58 am
“By the way, it is interesting that some skeptics seem to want to believe that the data conclusively show that the hot spot is not there while other skeptics (or maybe some of the same) want to believe that somehow the speed up of the water cycle with warming causes heat to be transported out into space without much surface warming. These two beliefs are contradictory. If the water cycle were doing this, the hot spot would have to be much more pronounced, not less pronounced, than the models predict.”
Not necessarily contradictory, so its worth pointing out that heat leaving via the oceans indicate that the heat they are receiving from the sun is not as great as formerly, so heat as well as c02 exits the oceans at a greater rate than it is receiving. The distinction has to be drawn between sea temperatures and land temperatures, as both have different affinities of effect from the cause regarding the rate of heat escape, of which temperature is only a measurement.
It is nonsensical to regard atmospheric temperatures as anything more than the rate of heat escape of these two combined factors caused by outgoing long-wave radiation. Water just holds heat for much longer, so when the source of heat decreases, the energy remains for much longer. Water retains heat. Air does not.
More distinct fingerprints of CO2 would be the Arctic melting and stratospheric cooling that are occurring. The tropical hot spot depends on tropical SST warming, and I suspect it may not be proceeding as fast as expected because of the more rapid than expected response of the Arctic sea ice albedo to the imbalance produced by CO2.
Jim D,
I see your mind is made up, and you insist on believing that CO2 must be the culprit. But cherry-picking the Arctic because it fits in with your beliefs is not science. And the widely touted tropo hot spot prediction completely failed – yet you still try to keep it on life support.
Don’t you see the problem? [If not, check out the title of this article].
I live ~30 miles from Texas Tech. We’re definitely dry right now, but last year was one of our wetter years on record, with it spread from January to October. The 100 year flood last year was from a hurricane that came inland. Not much of a connection to me, but who am I.
“So west Texas had a record five year drought punctuated by two 100-year rain events. Is that even possible?”
It’s not only possible it’s normal.
http://texas.sierraclub.org/water/20100309b.asp
“Texas weather has sometimes been described as drought punctuated by floods.”
That’s one of the first things I heard about the climate when I moved here 18 years ago. The first thing I heard about the weather is “if you don’t like the weather right now just wait a bit because it will change”.
Winter-type storm beating down on central coast CA right now. Here we are in June and it’s acting like February.
Speaking of impossibly stupid weather panic, the guy who invented Obamacare says the world is getting warmer.
Well, I suppose it is, depending on the trend line used. But the long-term trend is intact, and it isn’t rising any faster than in pre-industrial times, so CO2 isn’t the cause. But I guess the politician is straddling the fence, as pols do.
But I would love to see a political debate where someone of national stature says: “Show me solid evidence of global harm from CO2! And make sure it’s global. If you don’t have any evidence that CO2 causes global damage, my opponents need to explain why the government should get $trillions more of our tax money to fight ‘carbon’.”
And he/she should be ready to ask the others if they know the percentage of atmospheric CO2 – a great ‘gotcha’ question, even if it’s answered correctly: 0.00039 of the atmosphere is insignificant, but 90% of the public still believes it’s 20% or more. And after a ≈40% increase in “carbon”, there should be at least some evidence of global damage, no? But there is no such evidence, none at all, indicating that the trace gas CO2 is harmless at current and projected concentrations.
Jim D,
Please show us a graph of stratospheric temperature that’s consistent with increasing ghg in the troposphere.
So the term “gully washer” in a desert locale is new? Funny. Seems like I heard my grandparents talk of such things here in the high plains deserts of central and NE Oregon. But then history isn’t nearly as accurate as models.
Soon we will be referring to the past as “fake history” and the future as “accurate models”.
There is no cooling in the tropical Stratosphere either.
There is an Ozone depletion signal caused by the big volcanic eruptions but it appears that the Ozone is now recovering since tropical Stratosphere temperatures rebounded to pre-Pinatubo levels last year.
(There is however, a correlation between troposphere warming and stratosphere cooling and visa versa – but this is an ENSO signal, not a GHG warming signal).
Pro-AGW people do not actually look at the data very often.
http://imageshack.us/m/849/6419/tropicsltlstratnonhotsp.png
Casey Bird says
“Yes we have freak weather all the time, but it is increasingly getting worse and worse, “
I have no doubt you evidence to back this up?
I don’t think that Newsweek can sell any subscriptions. For some reason, I am receiving it free in the mail. I would never pay for it and it goes straight to the trash can.
Weather is not Climate, and they define the Climate as they presently fancy it.
Always, the logic is turned upside down, inside out. Always.
As regards stratospheric temperatures:
“The results show mean cooling of 0.5-1.5 K/decade during 1979-2005,
58 with the greatest cooling in the upper stratosphere near 40-50 km. Temperature anomalies
59 throughout the stratosphere were relatively constant during the decade 1995-2005.”
from here:
http://acd.ucar.edu/~randel/SPARC_revised.pdf
and note this:
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/5/0/53/_pdf
“The evidence for the cooling trend in the stratosphere may need to be revisited. This study presents evidence that the stratosphere has been slightly warming since 1996
It is those findings that reverse the previously accepted view and which led me to incorporate the reversed sign solar effect in my new climate description.
Subsequently Joanna Haigh reported evidence for just such a reversed sign effect and I am keenly awaiting further developments on the issue.
As far as I know my climate description is the only one that successfully integrates the reversed sign solar effect in the mesosphere and stratosphere.
There is a bottom line to all this. What the Warmista need to do is to show that they have reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses which go beyond Arrhenius’ hypotheses. There are no such hypotheses. Without such hypotheses, science cannot tell us anything about the impact of CO2 on Earth’s atmosphere. Climate science is in its infancy. The point is simply indisputable, until some Warmista answers the challenge and produces one such physical hypothesis. Warmista, if you have the science, the physical hypothesis, why are you not producing it?
For your entertainment pleasure, read National Geographic November 1976 and December 1977.
Or I can save you the trouble …
The November ’76, article was titled, What’s Happening to our Climate?
The December ’77 item was The Year the Weather Went Wild
Thirty five years and it still is “same old same old.” ☺
“…Everybody’s talking ’bout the stormy weather
And what’s a man do to but work out whether it’s true?
Looking for a man with a focus and a temper
Who can open up a map and see between one and two..”
http://youtu.be/tdeTQPgh9SE
Jim D says:
June 4, 2011 at 9:35 am
“More distinct fingerprints of CO2 would be the Arctic melting and stratospheric cooling that are occurring.”
Can you state a rigorously formulated physical hypothesis which has a record of confirmation and which embodies one of these hunches? If you cannot then your knowledge is nothing more than a matter of hunches. Don’t feel bad about that, climate science is in its infancy and is nothing but a collection of hunches.
casey byrd says:
June 4, 2011 at 7:11 am
“Yes we have freak weather all the time, but it is increasingly getting worse and worse, and you sit there and type away at your computer doubtful and you’ll be the next one it gets.”
I grew up in one of the areas that is now famous for tornado devastation. I spent half my youth in our homemade storm shelter. The damage might be getting worse but the storms are not. There are more people in the way of the storms. You can move away from tornado alley.
Joel Shore says:
June 4, 2011 at 6:40 am
“The numbers are what they are and no serious scientist disputes that doubling CO2 produces about 4 W/m^2 of forcing.”
Are you saying that you have a physical hypothesis to this effect, that is has been tested, and that it is well-confirmed? Or is this another inference from Arrhenius’ work?
I advise people asking for references to just Google “cooling stratosphere” and form their own opinion.
@ Joel Shore , June 4, 2011 at 6:40 am
I browsed the references at realclimate.org , but didn’t see any equations , and frankly I’m only interested in calculable equations with which to elaborate to additional parameters the implementation of the essential physics in succinct array programming language on my website . ( It needs the collaboration of someone with a good handle on the available spectral data . )
Your bottom line estimate of the effect of a doubling of CO2 being about 4 w/m^2 seems reasonable . That translates to an increase of about 0.8k on the approximately 279k of a gray ball in our orbit , clearly nothing which has ever caused catastrophes in the past .
However , you make the statement :
Do you mean by “graybody gas” a gas with a flat gray spectrum with some degree of transparency ? This is the sort case where I absolutely want to see the equations when it is claimed the effect is “huge” .
It sounds like you are claiming that the center of an irradiated partially transparent gray marble will be hotter than if it had an opaque surface . This sounds like the arguments , testable equations for which I have never found , that Venus’s surface temperature can be more than twice that of a gray ball in its orbit without an internal source of heat .
Is this what your are asserting ?
” What the Warmista need to do is to show that they have reasonably well confirmed physical hypotheses which go beyond Arrhenius’ hypotheses. There are no such hypotheses.”
Well I have one:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7798
“The Setting And Maintaining Of Earth’s Equilibrium Temperature”.
Theo Goodwin, you should start with understanding what Arrhenius did. He did it with pen and paper, not computers, so it is an ideal study for model skeptics to look at, and he got an idea of the magnitude of the effect of doubling CO2.
Arctic: CO2 has a greater effect at higher latitudes where there is less water vapor, so we expect to see more direct surface effects in the Arctic.
Stratosphere: CO2 is a more effective radiator to space, so it cools the stratosphere if the ozone heating remains fixed.
No hotspot detected because global cloud levels and temperatures have stabilised. This graph is really showing what has mostly changed global temperatures during the last 3 decades.There is no better single direct match in climate science better than this one.
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/5246/globaltempvglobalcloudb.png
Bob Armstrong says:
June 4, 2011 at 2:53 pm
I browsed the references at realclimate.org , but didn’t see any equations , and frankly I’m only interested in calculable equations with which to elaborate …
———————
The most recent source of the estimate is Myhre et al 1998 “New Estimates of Radiative Forcing due to Well-mixed Greenhouses Gases”. This is the standard used by the IPCC and in the science.
Don’t expect to find any equations or even a vague explanation. It just uses the Hitran 1996 radiative transfer model to develop the estimate which si summarized as.
5.35*ln(CO2/CO2orig) = + 3.71 watts/m2 for a doubled CO2.
Add another +0.8 watts/m2 or so for a doubling of the other GHGs (but nobody seems to use this extra 0.8 anymore – mostly because Methane is the biggest part of the other GHGs and it is going to stabilize very soon at a level which is well below previous expectations – we have already seen all the Methane forcing we are going to see).
http://folk.uio.no/gunnarmy/paper/myhre_grl98.pdf
If you want the rest of the feedbacks you have to visit the Classius-Clayperon equations which predict that water vapour will increase by 7.0% per 1.0C increase in temperatures (or about double the forcing caused by doubled CO2). Albedo feedbacks – well there is not a single explanation of how climate science calculates this anywhere (ie guessed at by Hansen long ago and everyone keeps using it).
@ JimD at 2:51 pm
I advise people asking for references to just Google “cooling stratosphere” and form their own opinion.
====================
I wouldn’t be quite so quick to suggest Google as a reliable source for impartiality in this or much any other matter, as the good Mr Eschenbach recently conveyed here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/19/an-open-letter-to-google/
You may have to scroll down through a number of pages ….
If you want another source of information on “cooling stratosphere” that is up-to-date and not distorted by propaganda go here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadat/images.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadat/update_images.html
or here (use the most recent 5.4 version):
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t4/
Bob Armstrong says:
Perhaps it is a little misuse of language to call it a “graybody” in the sense of it having the same absorption across its ENTIRE spectrum. The picture is of it having the same absorption across the part of the spectrum relevant for the earth’s terrestrial radiation. It would still be essentially transparent in the part of the spectrum relevant for solar radiation. In practice, this would be realized by a body that had something like a step-function in its absorption spectrum at somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-5 um.
Bob Armstrong says:
The proper way to calculate the zeroth order response is using the 255 K effective temperature of the earth system, which then gives about 1.0 – 1.1 K. However, as you know the big issue is then what happens with feedbacks, which is not what _Jim seemed to be discussing.
I think it is worth keeping these different issues separate. If you think that net feedbacks are about neutral or negative so this ~1 K number goes down or stays the same, then I will disagree with you about what the balance of the evidence shows, but you are at least not necessarily arguing nonsense. However, claims of non-existence or “saturation” of the greenhouse effect (at least if they mean saturation beyond the notion of it depending approximately logarithmically on concentration) are really nonsense.
Each time I see the infamous “hook echo” on the trailing edge of a tornado storm front, I think of the drain in my bath tub. Ice cold air draining out of the clouds just like water spinning down the drain. This could help explain the power of the tornado. The ice cold air continues spinning down to the warmer earth where it explosively expands outward and upward wrapping around the spiraling ice cold air draining out of the cold front clouds.
I guess this goes against the prevailing theory that horizontally rolled up air spins and then tips over to earth creating the tornado. If tornados do act like a bathtub drain, then perhaps we could save lives if we can plug the cold air cloud drains.
I would be curious to hear what Anthony thinks about the bath tub drain observation and if it has any merit.
@ Joel Shore says: June 4, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Amateurish crap .
Graybody gas???? Now that’s funny.
Jim D says:
June 4, 2011 at 3:47 pm
“Theo Goodwin, you should start with understanding what Arrhenius did.”
What makes you think I do not?
This gives an up tp date data source for the stratospheric data.
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t4/tlsglhmam_5.1
obviously, no stratospheric cooling trend, and no heating trend of the upper troposhere has been detected either.
Theo, good, so which part of the Arrhenius theory do you disagree with? Or, if you agree with him about his basic AGW theory, I did misunderstand your general drift.
Bob Armstrong says:
June 4, 2011 at 2:53 pm
“It sounds like you are claiming that the center of an irradiated partially transparent gray marble will be hotter than if it had an opaque surface . This sounds like the arguments , testable equations for which I have never found , that Venus’s surface temperature can be more than twice that of a gray ball in its orbit without an internal source of heat .”
Venus is a red herring. It has an internal source of heat. The incredibly dense atmosphere does the same thing that the crust does on the earth – it insulates against loss of heat from the mantle. There are two sources of heat in the mantle – heat of formation (leftover heat from gravitational compression when the planet first formed) and radioactive decay. This heat remains trapped on Venus just as it remains trapped on the earth. If you dig down through the earth’s crust it gets hotter and hotter as you go down until it reaches thousands of degrees (or you’re a science illiterate like Al Gore it reaches millions of degrees). Same thing happens on Venus only it happens as you dig deeper and deeper into the atmosphere.
The internal heat loss from the mantle on the earth surface is only a few milliwatts per square meter and once it conducts through the crust to reach the surface those few milliwatts quickly escape to space. The same thing happens on Venus except that after conducting through the crust it encounters an incredibly dense atmosphere and has to conduct its way through that too. Even a few milliwatts per square meter at the surface can add up to some very elevated temperatures if it can’t easily escape.
More on the Venus canard:
The surface of Venus is perpetual night. The cloud layer is so dense that no light from the sun can penetrate it. Thus there is no solar heating of the surface. All the action from solar heating takes place high in the atmosphere where sunlight can still penetrate. The surface temperate is entirely a matter of internal heat from the mantle being forced to conduct its way through the atmosphere until it gets high enough to escape radiatively.
Jim D,
Which Arrhenius theory are you referring to? His first paper, published in 1896, and the one that every alarmist quotes because of its ultra high sensitivity estimates? Or his 1906 recantation of his 1896 paper, in which he estimates sensitivity at only a fraction of a degree over Lindzen’s estimate, which is based on much better data?
I suspect you are not even aware of Arrhenius’ 1906 paper, because its conclusions show there is nothing to be alarmed about regarding CO2.
Jim D,
I advise people asking for references to just Google “cooling stratosphere” and form their own opinion.
I guess that means you can’t argue your own case. I asked for a graph showing a very clear relationship between ghgs and stratospheric cooling, since you referred to that as a “distinct footprint”. A “distinct footprint” should be…well…distinct.
Replying “just google it” indicates you can’t find one yourself.
@ Dave Springer
You are describing essentially what I figured , tho I’ve wondered if some tidal forces might be involved too , given they seem to have been strong enough to stop Venus from rotating in its orbit . Do you have any references to a more detailed analysis . Does NASA agree ?
There are so many obvious indications , aside from the violation of the most fundamental thermodynamics , that Venus’s temperature cannot possibly be explained by a greenhouse effect that it’s a measure of the pathetic state of understanding of the most basic physics apparent on both sides of the debate . Yet , it remains a staple among the alarmists’ horror stories . Never do you see a computation of what the maximum temperature a colored ball in our orbit could be and what color ( spectrum ) would produce that maximum . In deed , this is a major reason I’ve concluded you can get a PhD in climate science without ever learning how to calculate the temperature of a radiantly heated colored ball . It’s far from clear that Joel knows how other than the single widely parroted most extreme case .
The Venus scare story has the advantage for the alarmists that is is open ended , unconstrained by the actual energy available from the sun . Thus “tipping points” can be claimed to have unbounded catastrophic effects on temperature rather than just spectrum . I believe Pierrehumbert’s alleged computation is some sort of a cascade causing heat to go uphill in Venus’s thick atmosphere producing its “huge” temperature .
Speaking of Newsweek, SDA posted this up today.
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/016969.html#comments
The money quote:
Smokey, Arrhenius in 1906 had a sensitivity of 2.1 C per doubling, still within the IPCC range and twice that of Lindzen.
Jim D
Odd that you would use the Arrhenius sensititivy that includes water vapor for this discussion, but I guess any port in the storm.
Anyway, for the record, in 1906, Arrhenius proposed sensitivities of 1.6 for CO2 only and 2.1 for CO2 including water vapor.
Just barely within the IPCC range, but as I said, any port in the storm.
John M., IPCC also include water vapor. This is the normal way. Lindzen says that part is basically zero or canceled by some other, yet to be specified, effect. Everyone now agrees without water vapor it might be near 1 C, so Arrhenius was a bit high there.
Sorry to butt in again, but has anyone else noticed that these tornadic storms come by way of unseasonally COLD cold fronts?
After Joplin, I could not help notice the cold weather parka clad wearing reporters.
Too, the bowling ball sized hail boulders point to unseasonably ICE COLD air masses muscling over spring warmed land.
This ice cold air, needless to repeat, is looking for a way out of the clouds to fall. It is this ice cold dense air that seems to be funneling out of the SW corner of these massive COLD fronts.
The “hook echo” appears to me to be the radar signature of an ice cold air drain, much like a bathtub drain, out of the clouds.
Again, this maybe a simplistic observation, but it could explain the explosiveness and power of tornados, e.g. ice cold dense air hitting the warm ground and exploding out as it is warmed.
Who cares what some bumbling propagandist at News-weak has to say?
Does anyone see any merit to my observations and are they new or not? Anthony? Anyone?
I have notice a clear and hypocritical shift away from global warming and onto weather events [something they accused sceptics of doing]. This is clearly caused by the lack of a warming trend over the past decade or so.
Here are the (NO) trends or decrease in extreme weather events over the decades.
Extreme weather indicators:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2011.01.021
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/full
Floods:
http://itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1128/
Hurricane activity:
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2010/2010GL042487.shtml
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
Rate of sea level rise
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
Even tornado strength have been shown to be decreasing in a warming world!
Jim D says:
June 5, 2011 at 12:11 pm
“Smokey, Arrhenius in 1906 had a sensitivity of 2.1 C per doubling, still within the IPCC range and twice that of Lindzen.”
And what did he have for data? Diddly, that’s what! And what do we still have for data? Diddly, that’s what! And why? In great part because NASA cannot figure out how to get a satellite or two into orbit. Instead of investing in supercomputers, our government should be investing in data collection that might lead to the first physical hypothesis about forcings that is based on reasonable evidence. At this time, there are neither physical hypotheses nor reasonable evidence. If you have them, show them. And I am not talking about brilliant hunches. I am talking about physical hypotheses rigorously formulated so that they have a reasonable record of confirmations in the face of scientific attempts to falsify them.
Theo, all Arrhenius needed for his hypothesis is data regarding atmospheric temperature and spectral radiative effects of CO2 and H2O. He also assumed constant relative humidity as temperature rises. That is why I say, start with Arrhenius. He was also able to derive the total greenhouse effect to be near 3o degrees C from his hypotheses. Later work has just fine-tuned these basic numbers using the same general ideas.
Jim D says:
June 5, 2011 at 7:30 am
“Theo, good, so which part of the Arrhenius theory do you disagree with? Or, if you agree with him about his basic AGW theory, I did misunderstand your general drift.”
Ok, son, I will explain scientific method once again as I would explain it to my own son. When someone makes an assertion that they claim to be scientific, your response should be 1) What are your physical hypotheses, 2) What is the confirmation record of your physical hypotheses in the face of attempts to falsify them, and 3) What phenomena can be predicted (implied logically) and explained using your physical hypotheses.
Using that test, Arrhenius had no physical hypotheses about forcings. He might have had brilliant hunches about forcings, but he had no physical hypotheses and no data worth the name. Maybe you think I am wrong. If so, you are free to present Arrhenius’ physical hypotheses about forcings along with their record of confirmations and explain how they are used to predict phenomena and explain the phenomena predicted. To explain the phenomena is simply to show how those phenomena are examples of natural regularities that are described by the physical hypotheses. Finally, this is a debate. You are expected to do the work, not refer people elsewhere. If you do not like those terms, do not address a comment to me.
I accept Arrhenius’ account of the behavior of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, that account cannot be used to support a global warming thesis. In order to support such a thesis, one must first show that there are forcings, and this requires genuine physical hypotheses, that the forcings are positive, at least on the whole, and that they are of sufficient magnitude to cause dangerous global warming. None of that work has been done. There is your career. Get started.
John M,
You asked for a graph of the troposphere/stratosphere. Here are a couple by Bill Illis:
http://imageshack.us/m/109/5572/tropicsnonhotspot.png
http://imageshack.us/m/849/6419/tropicsltlstratnonhotsp.png
Nothing unusual going on, just natural variability.
Theo Goodwin says:
You mean, like the Deep Space Climate Observatory that the Bush Administration nixed…almost like they actually didn’t want to have the data that would answer important questions: http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN10/wn031210.html
Joel Shore says:
“…the Bush Administration…”
Translation: “It’s Bush’s fault!” [Which is a convenient excuse for everything.]
That fits right into Joel Shore’s Left of Hugo Chavez talking points, no? ☺
The hallmark of panic, of course, being abandonment of rationality.