People send me stuff. This time it is a press release from the laughably named “Institute for Public Accuracy”. Even in the midst of hurricanes, these people don’t give up trying to tie weather to climate. It’s shameless desperation.
Here’s my response to this Tabloid Climatology™ they are pushing. In addition, go look at the history of the Great Atlantic Storm of 1962 and explain how CO2 at much lower levels than today fit into that. Also, explain why this:
One of the strongly held assumptions of climate change is that the variability of precipitation will grow with an increase in temperature. Storms will become heavier but less frequent. Flash floods and droughts will increase.
Has been falsified today by the American Geophysical Union saying:
However, drawing on seven databases representing global monthly mean precipitation values, Sun et al. find that from 1940 to 2009 global overland precipitation variability actually decreased.
I pity any news organizations dumb enough to buy into this activist schlock they are pushing. I urge readers to counter them with facts anywhere they see them popup in the media.
==============================================================
From: Institute for Public Accuracy
Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 9:09 AM
Subject: Interviews Available — Hurricane Sandy and Climate on Steroids
To: Institute for Public Accuracy
Institute for Public Accuracy
980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
Monday, October 29, 2012
Hurricane Sandy and Climate on Steroids
Interviews Available
BILL MCKIBBEN via Phil Aroneanu, (551) 486-5833, phil@350.org, http://350.org
The group 350.org organized activists in unfurling a giant “End Climate Silence” banner in Times Square on Sunday. McKibben, the founder of 350.org said today: “Meteorologists have called this ‘the biggest storm ever to hit the U.S. mainland,’ which is a reminder of how odd our weather has been in this hottest year in American history … scientists are connecting the dots between increasingly extreme weather and global warming. Yet for most of this year’s presidential election, the words ‘climate change’ have gone unmentioned.”
JOE ROMM, (202) 483-1024, jromm@americanprogress.org, http://ClimateProgress.org
Romm is a senior fellow at Center for American Progress, edits Climate Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. He said today: “Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. And like a baseball player on steroids, it’s the wrong question to ask whether a given home run is ’caused’ by steroids.” See the video: “Steroids, Baseball and Climate Change.” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421711/video-steroids-baseball-climate-change
“We also know that as we warm the oceans, we end up with more water vapor in the atmosphere — 4 percent more than was in the atmosphere just a few decades ago. That is why another basic prediction of climate science has been more intense deluges and floods.
“A new study finds, ‘we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large [storm] surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923. In particular, we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years.’
“Global warming and the loss of Arctic sea ice has been linked to the kind of blocking pattern that is driving this storm.” See “NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather.” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/11/989231/noaa-bombshell-warming-driven-arctic-ice-loss-is-boosting-chance-of-extreme-us-weather/
Romm recently wrote the piece “CNN Bans Term ‘Frankenstorm’, But It’s A Good Metaphor For Warming-Driven Monster: ‘Largest Hurricane In Atlantic History.” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/28/1101241/cnn-bans-term-frankenstorm-but-its-a-good-metaphor-for-warming-driven-monster-largest-hurricane-in-atlantic-history/
JOSEPH NEVINS, (914) 631-0403, jonevins@vassar.edu
Nevins teaches geography at Vassar College. He recently wrote the piece “Ecological Crisis and the Need to Challenge the 20 Percent,” which states: “Although you would not know it from what passes for debate during the ongoing presidential campaign here in the United States, the biosphere is under siege. A historically high rate of ice melt in the Arctic, devastating floods from the Philippines to Nigeria, a record-setting decline in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and extreme levels of drought in much of the United States are just some of the recent manifestations.” http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012101085331931338.html
TYSON SLOCUM, (202) 454-5191, tslocum@citizen.org, http://www.citizen.org
Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, Slocum recently told IPA: “For the first time in 24 years, neither the presidential nor vice-presidential candidates were asked a question about climate disruption during the debates. And the candidates have failed to highlight the issue as well — unless you count Governor Romney’s use of climate change as a punchline to a joke in his convention speech. Some argue that the issue isn’t high on voters’ minds, but polls demonstrate otherwise. Rather, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the fossil fuel industry and their allies are spending saturating the airwaves with anti-regulation messages is likely the culprit. Obama’s ‘all of the above’ strategy locks in fossil fuels as the status quo, forcing us farther behind on the sustainable era of renewable energy. There is no such thing as benign fossil fuel production and consumption, and the future of fossil fuels will only become more expensive.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
_________________________________________________________________
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Anthony,
When you say “I pity any news organizations dumb enough to buy into this activist schlock”, it would appear that you believe that your highly read blog, WUWT, is a cut above those news organizations with respect to scientific rigor. Yet, most real professional climate scientists – that is, those scientists who do research on the subject every day and report the results of their studies in the best peer-reviewed journals of our country – believe that the frequency and severity of extreme weather events will increase throughout the world as the average temperature of the Earth increases due to man-caused global warming.
While any single weather event cannot necessarily be blamed on AGW, it is nevertheless a distinct possibility that any one might be. It is appropropriate therefore for news organizations and especially the metrologists or “weathermen” on those news programs begin to recognize and discuss this possibility. To date, in my opinion, they have been negligent in that regard.
I have to say, I find this downright offensive. Sandy isn’t going to affect us over here in the UK, but I have friends in Vermont who are expecting the worst and doing what they can to prepare.
Given that this storm is going to cause a lot of worry at best and real problems, if the worst happens, for a great many people, to pre-emtively tie it to a political point smacks of the worst possible bad taste. The fact that the connection they’re making is a spurious one only makes it even more reprehensible!
Weather is not climate except when the Warmists say it is.
This article from the National Post seemed to start off well, until I read this:
“Lohan, good intentioned though she may be, doesn’t seem to grasp that, as it is an unstoppable force of nature caused by low pressure fronts, high pressure fronts and probably climate change.”
It is in the arts section which May help explain the nonsense of adding a climate change reference.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/10/29/louis-c-k-shows-full-understanding-of-hurricane-sandy-lindsay-lohan-kim-kardashian-not-so-much/
While I’m at it, I might as well inform WUWT readers that a regular columnist of the National Post, Jonathan Kay, called us “cranks” in a somewhat recent column. I shall not read anything he writes ever again.
“Institute for Public Accuracy” Ah, yes. Newspeak is newsspeak. Alarm sells… at least for a while.
@ericgrimsrud
Did you happen to read the post below this one about a new paper on precipitation variability? Here is a quick link :Sun et al
It would appear that your hypothesis is completely falsified.
I pity any news organizations dumb enough to buy into this activist schlock they are pushing.
The problem is that the current stamp of ‘journalists’ just lap this kind of ready made junk up. Research – Nein, Danke! Much easier to cut and paste a ready meal from the Internet supermarket.
“Institute for Public Accuracy” – they owe me a new keyboard, minus the Coffee.
ericgrimsrud – Calling a weather forecaster negligent without a statistical basis is rather myopic.
ericgrimsrud says:
Nonsense. “Most real professional climate scientists” are almost certainly aware that weather is driven not by temperature, but by temperature gradient.
With polar temperatures supposedly increasing at a higher rate than in temperate/tropical zones, the temperature gradient in a hotter world will be lower, so extreme weather events will be fewer – and less extreme.
I guess the US must have more co2,
here in the Uk 1987 was the last great storm and before that 1703.
ericgrimsrud says:
October 29, 2012 at 9:14 am
“To date, in my opinion, they have been negligent in that regard.”
It is clear that you have not incorporated into your ideology anything that anyone has presented to you in Anthony’s forum. What does this say about you as a student of the sciences?
To date, in my opinion, you have been negligent in that regard.
Frankenstorm – old school:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b21g-5YBLs&w=420&h=315%5D
ericgrimsrud says: Yet, most real professional climate scientists think..
..that [they are] nobel laureates too. 🙂
When I read comments from anybody claiming that some climate parameter important to the AGW controversy is up or down, I go to Humlum’s site to see if he has some data on the subject. He usually does. McKibben said water vapor in the atmosphere is up. The data in Humlum’s site says it is down since 1983, the earliest year in his charts.
Does McKibben have some older data saying that before 1983 water vapor was was lower? If so, I would like to understand why water vapor would climb up to 1983 and fall thereafter and how such a trend is consistent with ever increasing CO2.
Plain language please. I am just a layman on this issue.
To Physics Major and RHS,
With due respect to your comments, let me inject a bit of common sense.
How is power transported throughout the atmosphere? It is via its only component, H20, that can undergo phase changes, from its solid to liquid to vapor forms – thereby either releasing energy in locations where condensation of the vapor to either the liquid or solid forms can occur. No other component of the atmosphere is condensible and, therefore, can transfer energy in that manner.
Note that if the Earth’s temperature was so cold that very little water vapor was present in the atmosphere, then there would be relatively little energy released by water condensation and there would be fewer severe storms.
As the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere increased it will hold more water and there will be more condensation of that vapor when that air mass comes in contact with colder air. These events will then release more energy and the intensity of storms will increase. Also the amount of precipitation throughout the Earth simply has to increase as the Earth’s temperature is increased – what goes in must come out.
So consider what you have said above and think again. It seems to me that one cannot get around the basic and comment sense points I have made above. Can you?
” I am concerned when I see people substituting fear for reason”.
Klaatu in “The Day the Earth Stood Still”
Don’t feed the trolls. Romm et al will die back on the vine if you ignore them.
To David Ball,
Concerning your comment at 11:12 am above, I have no interest in developing a mindless pissing match with you over a trivial issue. I will admit here that my comment came from my own observation that the TV Weathermen I see on my local (Montana) and national (US) news programs very seldomly mention the possibility of a “climate change” cause while reporting stories of draught or floods.
If you don’t mind, I’ll leave it at that and not return any insults. ERic
Romm not that long ago tried to recast himself as moderate: “This notion that the environmental movement — or any other major play in the media landscape — is pushing non-stop apocalyptic messages like a broken record is one I debunked ….” – Joe Romm, April 29, 2012
More here: http://www.masterresource.org/2012/05/alarmism-romm-both-ways/
baseball players blood test data not being released..next step is metaphor in the scientific method..
ericgrimsrud says:
“How is power transported throughout the atmosphere? It is via its only component, H20…”
Forgetting convection, are we? How about conduction? Radiation? Energy [power] is transferred by all of those.
Scottie,
I believe that you might be misunderstanding some recent insights concerning the effect of decreasing the “temperature gradient” between the Arctic regions and those of lower longitude in the NH.
This is occurring as you say because the T of the Arctic is rising about twice as fast as that of the lower latitudes. But, as I understond this recent literature, the main effect of that gradient decrease is to weaken and broaden the Jet Stream which runs around the NH and tends to break up existing weather patterns. This, in turn, is expected to cause existing weather conditions everywhere in the NH to persist longer than before. I do not understand, however, as you seem to, that this effect will decrease the severity of storms.
One of us is clearly misunderstanding this bit of recent research. Please correct me if I have it wrong.
“…we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years.’”
We knows that in the cooler years we had more violent hurricanes – 1962 was mentioned. I’ve warned that sceptics should be proactive on this. We should be forecasting more hurricane activity, droughts, wild fires, tornadoes, etc as we slip into a cooler period (or if we do go cooler, for those who think talking about coming cooler periods is a bit too aggressive a stance). Otherwise (as is happening now) we leave the warmists to take the initiative and our tardy efforts lose their weight. Look at the record of extreme weather in mid 50s – 60s. Anyone tuned into this idea should do a post on the history and timing of extreme weather events before the wrong story is out there first.
Yes, Of course, energy is also transported by radiation (emitted by everything) and convection (powered by thermal gradients primarily in the troposphere). My comments concerned the only component in the atmosphere that carries “latent heat” via its phase changes – that is, water. Without water vapor so that radiation and convection, only, were transfering energy, I would think that the Earth’s weather would be quite boring.
As for conduction (the motion of charged particles through an electric field) I don’t think that one has much at all to due with E transfer throughout the atmosphere.
To Dennis Rushworth,
It will be interesting to see if you get any response to your request for data concerning the total content of water vapor throughout the entire atmosphere. Imagine how very difficult such measurements would be – the concentration of water vapor varies so greatly in both the horizonal and vertical directions throughout the planet and water vapor is also rapidly transported in moving air masses – while more is continuously added (evaporation) and elimnated (condensation) everywhere. Thus, as important as the point is – how much water vapor is in that air relative to some previous date – I’ll be surprised (pleasantly) if good answers can be offered by anyone.