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
_________________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
ericgrimsrud;
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 –
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
REPLY
Oh, my, god. You have a PhD in Chemistry you say? You’ve completely neglected conduction, convection, and wind currents!
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?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Eric,
Time to study some physics instead of chemistry. Weather is driven by (amongst other things) pressure differentials which in turn are caused by temperature differentials driven by the regular cooling and heating cycle of the planet as it alternates between facing the sun and facing outer space. The flaw in your argument is the assumption that because a warmer world had more energy in it, then when this energy is alternately concentrated and then dispersed by natural processes, the outcome must be higher energy processes expressed as more severe weather events. This is incorrect.
Consider two car batteries, fully charged. If one hooks them up in parallel, despite both batteries being at their maximum in terms of energy storage…. nothing happens. With no voltage differential between them, no current will flow. Hook them up in series however, and they’ll weld your jumper cables solid in a matter of seconds. (IF YOU’RE GOING TO TRY THIS, WEAR EYE PROTECTION!)
Given that we expect warming to be more pronounced at high latititudes, elevations, winter seasons and night time lows, the corresponding temperature differentials which in turn drive pressure differentials which in turn drive wind and water currents, will be lower. So, even with more energy in the system, just as with the car batteries in parallel, potential energy differentials are lower, not higher, no matter that the system is “fully charged” or not.
You may want to look into the data regarding Total Cyclone Energy which has been measured with some accuracy and which has been declining since measurements began in 1979. Putting aside the merits of your argument versus mine, the fact is that the data doesn’t support the theory you espouse.
ericgrimsrud;
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.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is not the meaning of conduction in this context. Wow, you’re physics knowledge isn’t weak, itz pathetic!
ericgrimsrud – my point to you is, Anthony is a weather man/forecaster. And like most weather forecasters, he finds no link to a trace gas and weather. Understanding the difference between possibility and probability is what separates wishful thinking and understanding.
I understand that CO2 has increased but I like many feel it is insignificant because there is no mechanism or model which has identified how less than 400 (methane and CO2 combined) parts per million has an exaggerated affect on the remaining 999,600 parts per million. Even with the increase of man made activity, the ratio of CO2 to everything else isn’t really changed much.
Even the father of the Greenhouse effect (Svante Arrhenius) retracted/changed his mind after talking/discussion/arguing with Knut Ångström. Ångström was able to show the means of transferring (your) referred to energy is not significant because the IR spectrum of water vapor covers/overlaps CO2. Since water vapor is roughly 40,000 parts per million, CO2 will never overwhelm water vapor for heat transfer.
@ericgrimsrud
Yet, most real professional climate scientists … believe
Belief is a characteristic of religions (cults?), not of science.
You condemn “Climate Science”© in a word.
ericgrimsrud says:
“most real professional climate scientists… believe that the frequency and severity of extreme weather events will increase… as the average temperature of the Earth increases due to man-caused global warming.” and “It is appropriate therefore for news organizations and especially the meteorologists 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.”
Yes, simple logic (and numerous climate model runs) suggest the frequency and severity of extreme weather events should increase as the average temperature of the Earth increases (regardless of the cause). They also suggest that rising CO2 concentrations over the past 25 years should be warming the earth to a much greater degree than is actually occurring. Unfortunately, the heart of the problem with climatology is that pesky, unforgiving empirical data. The majority of research by “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” is based on computer models, questionable data adjustments, and irreproducible statistics rather than empirical data. Empirical data shows extreme weather events have not increased the way simple logic suggests and the Earth’s temperature has not increased the way the models projected (abundant references are available here at WUWT).
And your opinion “that weathermen have been negligent to recognize and discuss ‘this possibility’” is shared by Dr. Heidi Cullen, who does recognize and discuss this possibility at length at “Climate Central” and formerly on The Weather Channel’s “Forecast Earth” (cancelled). She was fired for publically calling for dissenting meteorologists to lose their professional registration for ‘negligence in that regard’ (aka heresy).
To Davidmhoffer,
Yes, in this application a definition of conduction would certainly include the transfer of heat via physical contact with a body of different temperture. ( I did initially miss that one – being a chemist for whom this term usually refers to the transport of charged particles in an electric field rather than heat through a temperature gradient. So yes, conduction might have some importance in the atmosphere and particularly in the stratosphere where convection is so slow. Even there, however, I would suspect that heat transfer via conduction would be very small relative to that caused by radiation. In the troposphere, I would think that conduction is definitely negligible relative to the combined effects of radiation and convection.
Note also that your additions of other forces, such a pressure and temperature differentials are reduncant – these are covered under the general term, convection (the motion of the medium such as will occur in response to pressure or temperature differentials).
I hope that you also don’t mind if I do not include any insults here. While I have noted before, as well as now, that you do your very best to be a real horse’s behind on WUWT, for all I know, you might really be a nice person.
TO RHS,
A question for you. What is the most abundant, well-mixed, permanent GHG in the atmosphere? That is, the one that has the greatest concentration, does not condense out in places with low T, and lasts for a very long time on a time scale of relevance to human civilizations.
Yes, all good scientist remain sceptical of all conclusions – as Svante Arrhenius was of all of his numerous accomplishments (for which he won the Noble Prize). Concerning the overlap of CO2 and water’s absorptions of IR, that question got resolved only much later when high resolution IR spectrometer were invented. Also other reasons for CO2’s nonimportance were envisioned in the first half of the 20th century and were similarly found to be wrong in the later half. In short, read the entire history concerning the Earth’s GH EFfect and the role that CO2 plays in it.
ericgrimsrud @ur momisugly 12:04 pm
There is nothing special about “existing weather conditions”. I simply noted that weather, and in particular wind, is driven ONLY by temperature gradient. The steeper the gradient, the stronger the wind, and in a hotter planet wind speeds will be lower.
I do not understand how a calmer planet can be subject to more severe weather.
Basic meteorology.
ericgrimsrud;
I hope that you also don’t mind if I do not include any insults here. While I have noted before, as well as now, that you do your very best to be a real horse’s behind on WUWT
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First a statement that you’re not including insults followed by…. an insult. Typical Grimsrud.
I would like to refer you to the comment by rgbatduke on this thread http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/29/global-precipitation-variability-from-1940-to-2009-contradicts-models/ at 1:08 PM. I know you discount everything I say because I don’t have a degree, so please, take a look at what a PhD in physics is saying on the same topic.
BTW, your contention that pressure and temperature are redundant because they are covered by convection is dead wrong. Look up the coriolis effect (and that’s just for starters).
Eric, please stop while you’re behind with the physics.
Claiming that “a definition of conduction could include…” is so transparent as to be invisible. Even a chemist would (should) know from basic High School science that the three classic transport mechanisms for heat are conduction, convection and radiation. Certainly, my 12 year old son knows it and he’s more interested in football (soccer) than science!
How did you obtain your chemistry qualifications without doing any of this basic science at school? How on earth did you get a place on any science course at University? Or did you simply “forget” this very basic bit of physics over the years?
As for conduction having some importance “particularly in the stratosphere”. Again basic science says that it will be far LESS important there because of the greatly reduced pressure. Look at it this way (as my 12 year old has just commented) – “there’s less molecules to bump into up there so conduction won’t work well”.
Please stop digging.
PS, Eric, I think you mean the “coriolis effect” – was English also not on your school’s syllabus for chemists? 😉
Joe:
At October 29, 2012 at 1:46 pm you say to Eric Grimsrud
It seems you are not aware that Grimsrud claims to be a retired academic who taught chemistry to students.
Assuming his claim is true (yes, I know that is doubtful) then God alone knows what his students ‘learned’. the poor souls.
Richard
To LouisHooffstetter,
I too do not pay so much attention to models as I do the basics, because, I suppose, I understand the latter far more than the former.
And I understand that the most difficult parameter to use to “prove” that AGW is occurring is the final result – the temperature change. That is because only relatively small changes in T will occur – even though those small changes in T will be exceedingly important. Also other things mask the T increase due to AGW. This include natural variations, man’s other effects on T – such as the cooling effect of sulfate based particulates and the very large thermal inertia of the Earth due mainly to its oceans.
Eventually, however, the forces of AGW will overcome those masks and we won’t be able to go back. That thermal inertia factor is our friend now but will be our enemy later. And the heating effect of the EXTRA CO2 will be with us for many centuries ( it takes a very long time to put that biological carbon back into geological forms).
And finally, I suspect that TV Weathermen might pay a lot more attention to the obvious observables (T changes, to date, must indeed seem tiny in comparison to the daily changes they focus on) than they do to the thoughts of those academic “eggheads” and “alarmists”.
PS: It is interesting to note that that our community of atmospheric scientists already saved mankind’s butt once before when they sounded the alarm concerning the effect of CFC’s on stratospheric ozone. “Eggheads” and alarmists, what do they know ?” is the cry we also heard then from Dupont and Corp America. between 1974 and 1985. That CFC alarm was also just a big Hoax, right? And now we know that that community of scientists not only saved the ozone layer, but also, if the production of CFC’s had continued to increase as it was prior to 1975, the CFC’s would now be our most powerful GHG’s !!!!
What hope is there for a country that distrusts their very best professionals in any field?
Joe, I am pleased to learn how smart your 12-year old is in view of the expected outcomes when determined by generics.
All this talk about climate weirdness came about when countries around the world began experiencing severe winters and heavy widespread snowfalls, some of the first excuses when AGW flopped, was when the media latched on to the term “snowmageddon”, they’d say “weather isn’t climate” global warming causes more precipitation due to melting ice caps (or some nonsense like that), and now it’s claimed that all meteorological events are the result of a changing climate caused by human C02 emissions, but “you just have to connect the dots” i.e. use your imagination to fill in the blanks, and that’s just super! they’re not even trying to put across a scientific argument anymore.
Richard,
I was aware he claims some form of chemistry qualification but not the details. I must say that I find a claim to be “retired” makes his apparent lack of any breadth of education outside his chosen field even more surprising.
I’m still a fair way from retiring (short of a lottery win) but, even as I went through school, those slightly older were bemoaning the fact that we were being allowed to specialise “too much and too early”. One would expect someone older (past retirement) to have had what was known as a “good general education” strictly enforced before being allowed anywhere near a specialised degree or teaching course!
ericgrimsrud – Not sure your point but (per Wikipedia) dry air contains roughly (by volume) 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Broken down by PPM, we get 780,900 for Nitrogen, 209,500 for O2, 9,300 for Argon and 390 for CO2. None of those precipitate out at temperatures or pressures normally experienced by humans.
If “all good scientist remain sceptical of all conclusions”, then why do the mainstream/public climate scientists refuse to be skeptical of their conclusions? Several refuse to show their work, all refuse to debate in public, most claim there is a consensus and engage in other behaviors which they show they have no skepticism of their “conclusions”? Does this mean they aren’t good scientists?
RHS,
The greenhouse gases are the ones with 3 or more atoms. Thus within your list, carbon dioxide is the most abundant GHG. N2, O2, and Ar contribution nothing to the GH effect – they do not absorb or emit IR radiation.
All scientists are skeptics and assign “probabilities” of occurance to their predictions of some occurance. Many then some to “believe” in a given probable outcome but never claim to “know” what the outcome will be. The same is true, as you know, for medical surgeons. They do the best they can with what they know. When you are sick you seek their advice, but they do not “promise” you anything. Why would it be any different when the Earth is sick and you are interested in how to cure it ? You have the same choice.
More to RHS,
Concerning your comment about scientists not being willing to debate in public, a few thoughts”
The working scientist has a “day job” on which he is focussing. Their work is likely to include some aspect of climate change, but not the total picture.
Climate science includes many scientific discipliness and in order to “argue” about things in public one must spend a lot of time studying as much of the total issue as one can. Few have the time required to do that.
Working scientists are concerned about be labelled “biased” on this topic. That label might interfere with the maintenance of their “day job”. I dont’ think it should, but it does. Take the example of Jame Hansen. He is one of the leading day job climate scientists in the world and he is also very much involved with public activism. Because of the latter, some cry out that he should be fired from his day job. Other prominent scientist who sick mainly to their day jobs have even been harrassed by US Congressmen and their “investigative committes’ just because of the science they have produced. The message to them – do not try to affect public opinion.
I am different from those day job scientists in that I am now retired and have no conceivable conflicts of interest or other demands on my time and energy. I spend my time studying anything I wish and can speak and write as I consider proper with no conceivable tie to any organization. I understaind why there are so few working scientists that spend their time and energy the way I do and wish that there were more retired scientists that were willing to jump into the fray.
The two driving forces behind my activities are: I have come to believe that strong action against AGW is the right thing to do and I now have 5 grandchildren all under the age of 5.
ericgrimsrud:
At October 29, 2012 at 2:51 pm you assert:
OK. If “the Earth is sick” then we need to investigate the malady.
So, where do you suggest I insert the rectal thermometer?
Richard
PS I know where I think it should be shoved.
There was actually an error in one of the responses to ericgrimsrud that would, when corrected, be supportive of the AGW hypothesis. I’ve been waiting for him to jump all over it…. but nothing. He responded in detail to that commenter, so hard to believe he simply missed it.
Or else he doesn’t understand the physics involved….
2nd chance to find it Eric. Show us how smart you are.
That’s really not a good analogy, Eric.
If I go to a doctor, in most cases they will be able to tell me exactly what’s making me sick, and why. They may not be prepared to “promise” a cure, but there’s a very good chance indeed that they’ll be able to identify what’s causing the sickness with absolute certainty.
The analogy to climate science breaks down on two fundamental levels:
First, we really have no idea whether or not the earth is “sick” Because of the timescales involved, saying that it is would be like a doctor listening to your heart for the second or so between two beats and then declaring you dead because your heart’s stopped!
Second, even if the Earth is “sick”, they can’t make any promises about the cause [i]or[/i] the cure. A bit like the days when GPs used to hand out penicillin for every snuffle and sneeze. More often than not, the cause of the illness was wrong for the prescribed cure and all that happened was they produced lots of antibiotic resistant bugs.
ericgrimsrud – You put forward a logical explanation of why rising global temperatures should lead to increased storm activity, and say “It seems to me that one cannot get around the basic and comment sense points I have made above. Can you?“.
There is always a risk in following clear and persuasive logic, without first checking it against the facts.
Klotzbach and Gray are hurricane ‘experts’ who publish papers in the scientific journals and regularly publish hurricane forecasts. Sorry, I don’t have the online link to an original, but I kept a copy of one of their charts here
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/Hurricanes.jpg
which indicates that increased North Atlantic hurricane activity is associated with global cooling, not global warming.
Their chart appears to be supported by the NOAA National Hurricane Center data
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
which shows the greatest major storm activity occurred from 1940 to 1970 (approx), with declining activity since.
Obviously, this data is for part of the globe only, and your comment related to global activity. There is support for your hypothesis in the global storm index:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg
This shows increasing global storm activity from c.1970 to c. 1998 – a period when global temperatures were increasing – and reducing storm activity after that. It has been noted by many commentators that global temperatures stopped rising around 1998.
So while I agree that your logic is very clear and convincing, I would suggest that it could be a good idea to pull back from the idea that it is necessarily correct, and to investigate a little more just how it is that the North Atlantic, which has had temperatures in ‘sync’ with global temperatures, can have a storm pattern that is so out of sync. I suspect that everyone still has a lot to learn about storms.
And, of course, you should also pull back from any notion you might have that global temperatures are going to go on increasing, given the unexpected global temperature underperformance of the last ~15 years.
In another comment, you refer to the Antarctic ozone hole. You used slightly oblique language, and I couldn’t work out whether you were serious or tongue in cheek. Certainly there is no data to show that the ozone hole is anything other than a natural phenomenon with its own ‘cycles’. The recent sudden ozone hole in the Arctic would also seem to indicate that the effect is natural and not driven by man-made CFCs.
So, I would re-phrase your question about trusting experts, as follows:
“What hope is there for a country that trusts their professionals in any field, without checking?“.
ericgrimsrud says:
October 29, 2012 at 3:18 pm
[…] Working scientists are concerned about be labelled “biased” on this topic. That label might interfere with the maintenance of their “day job”. I dont’ think it should, but it does. […]
That’s it, you’ve just blown any credibility you might possibly have had as a self-proclaimed scientist / chemist. Do you really believe it’s ok for any scientist, in any discipline, to openly exhibit bias in their work? Science has to be objective to be of any value whatsoever, bias (by definition) is not.
Joe, I beg to differ. I thing the analogy to the surgeon is a very good one which becomes clearer in the following example. Lets say you are profoundly obese and have a heart problem. The Doc tells you what he thinks is the most likely cause of your heart problem. He tells you you are much too obese at 400 pounds and in order to improve the health of your heart, you must lose about 200 pounds as well as endure some surgury. You don’t like that “solution” so you look for a “second opinion” that will not require the diet bit. In this case, as with that of our sick planet, we know how we got into our present conditions, but we don’t know how to get out other than biting the bullet as recomended by the heart surgeon.