By Paul Homewood
It seems that every time we get some snow, another “scientist” is wheeled out to explain that, no matter how cold it gets, it is all down to global warming.
In the last week or so, we have had the International Arctic Research Centre announcing a study by three Chinese scientists, “Weakened cyclones, intensified anticyclones and recent extreme cold winter weather events in Eurasia “, with the headline “Climate change brings colder winters to Europe and Asia”. Then, we had WWF Russia blaming the blizzards in Russia on global warming.
But let’s, for one moment, remind ourselves of some of the “scientists” who have said the exact opposite.
UK Met Office
As recently as 2011, Julia Slingo and her team published an extremely thorough paper, “Climate: Observations, projections and impacts”. Running to some 153 pages, it looked at recent trends and future projections, both for the UK and the rest of the world. It made the following points:-
- Analysis of mean temperatures in the UK showed a warming trend during the winter months of 0.23C/decade.
- Describing the extreme cold in December 2010, it states:-
Severe winter weather affected Western and Central Europe throughout the first three weeks of December 2010, with the UK experiencing the coldest December for more than 100 years. This extreme cold weather was due to advection of cold arctic air associated with a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation.
The UK experienced two spells of severe winter weather with very low temperatures and significant snowfalls. The first of these spells lasted for two weeks from 25th November and saw persistent easterly or north-easterly winds bring bitterly cold air from northern Europe and Siberia. This spell of snow and freezing temperatures occurred unusually early in the winter, with the most significant and widespread snowfalls experienced in late November and early December since late November 1965. a second spell of severe weather began on 16th December as very cold Arctic air pushed down across the UK from the north.
- Continuing its analysis of the 2010/11 winter, it finds that:-
The distributions of the December-January-February (DJF) mean regional temperature in recent years in the presence and absence of anthropogenic forcings are shown in Figure 7. Analyses with both models suggest that human influences on the climate have shifted the distributions to higher temperatures. The winter of 2010/11 is cold, as shown in Figure 7, as it lies near the cold tail of the seasonal temperature distribution for the climate influenced by anthropogenic forcings (distributions plotted in red). It is considerably warmer than the winter of 1962/63, which is the coldest since 1900 in the CRUTEM3 dataset. In the absence of human influences (green distributions), the season lies near the central sector of the temperature distribution and would therefore be an average season.
- The winter time-series show a decrease in the number of cool days and cool nights.
So, to summarise, the Met Office believed that winters have been getting warmer, and that the winter of 2010/11 was caused by a natural event, the Arctic Oscillation, and, but for “human influences”, would actually have been a fairly average winter. (According to NOAA, similar conditions existed during the even colder winter in the UK of 1962/63).
Dr Myles Allen, and a few more!
In 2009, Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at Department of Physics, University of Oxford told the Daily Telegraph, during another spell of bad snow “Even though this is quite a cold winter by recent standards it is still perfectly consistent with predictions for global warming. If it wasn’t for global warming this cold snap would happen much more regularly. What is interesting is that we are now surprised by this kind of weather. I doubt we would have been in the 1950s because it was much more common. “
The report goes on to say “a study by the Met Office which went back 350 years shows that such extreme weather now only occurs every 20 years. Back in the pre-industrial days of Charles Dickens, it was a much more regular occurrence – hitting the country on average every five years or so.
This winter seems so bad precisely because it is now so unusual. In contrast the deep freezes of 1946-47 and 1962-63 were much colder – 5.3 F (2.97C) and 7.9 F (4.37C) cooler than the long-term norm.
And with global warming we can expect another 1962-63 winter only once every 1,100 years, compared with every 183 years before 1850. “
Meanwhile Dave Britton, a meteorologist and climate scientist at the Met Office, said: “Even with global warming you cannot rule out we will have a cold winter every so often. It sometimes rains in the Sahara but it is still a desert.”
Even Bob Ward, PR man for the warmist Grantham Foundation, keen to stop people thinking that cold winters did not mean global warming had stopped, said “Just as the wet summer of 2007 or recent heat waves cannot be attributed to global warming nor can this cold snap”
Don’t forget NCAR & NOAA!
Over in the US, they were just as keen to keep on message. An article in Phys.Org, “Experts: Cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming”, which was published in January 2010, had this to say:-
Whatever happened to global warming? Such weather doesn’t seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming at all – it’s just a blip in the long-term heating trend.
“It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. With global warming, he said, “we’ll still have record cold temperatures. We’ll just have fewer of them.”
Deke Arndt of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., noted that 2009 will rank among the 10 warmest years for Earth since 1880. Scientists say man-made climate change does have the potential to cause more frequent and more severe weather extremes, such as heat waves, storms, floods, droughts and even cold spells. But experts interviewed by The Associated Press did not connect the current frigid blast to climate change.
So what is going on? “We basically have seen just a big outbreak of Arctic air” over populated areas of the Northern Hemisphere, Arndt said. “The Arctic air has really turned itself loose on us.”
In the atmosphere, large rivers of air travel roughly west to east around the globe between the Arctic and the tropics. This air flow acts like a fence to keep Arctic air confined. But recently, this air flow has become bent into a pronounced zigzag pattern, meandering north and south. If you live in a place where it brings air up from the south, you get warm weather. In fact, record highs were reported this week in Washington state and Alaska.
But in the eastern United States, like some other unlucky parts of the globe, Arctic air is swooping down from the north. And that’s how you get a temperature of 3 degrees in Beijing, a reading of minus-42 in mainland Norway, and 18 inches of snow in parts of Britain, where a member of Parliament who said the snow “clearly indicates a cooling trend” was jeered by colleagues.
The zigzag pattern arises naturally from time to time, but it is not clear why it’s so strong right now, said Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist at the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Conclusion?
It seems to me that these these theories, that global warming will lead to colder winters, need to pass three tests before they can even cross the starting line:-
1) Explain how winters were as colder, or colder, and as snowy or snowier, in earlier periods such as the 1960’s and 70’s, when the NH was cooling, and Arctic ice expanding.
2) Explain how winters grew milder in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, at a time when the earth was warming, and Arctic ice was declining.
3) Prove what was wrong with earlier models that predicted milder winters.
Until these tests are passed, the theories really don’t get off the ground.
Footnote
Looking more closely at the Chinese study, mentioned above, by Zhang, Lu and Guan, their abstract states:-
Extreme cold winter weather events over Eurasia have occurred more frequently in recent years in spite of a warming global climate. To gain further insight into this regional mismatch with the global mean warming trend, we analyzed winter cyclone and anticyclone activities, and their interplay with the regional atmospheric circulation pattern characterized by the semi-permanent Siberian high. We found a persistent weakening of both cyclones and anticyclones between the 1990s and early 2000s, and a pronounced intensification of anticyclone activity afterwards. It is suggested that this intensified anticyclone activity drives the substantially strengthening and northwestward shifting/expanding Siberian high, and explains the decreased midlatitude Eurasian surface air temperature and the increased frequency of cold weather events. The weakened tropospheric midlatitude westerlies in the context of the intensified anticyclones would reduce the eastward propagation speed of Rossby waves, favoring persistence and further intensification of surface anticyclone systems.
Their methodology also tells us that the data used is from 1979-2012.
What they are saying then is that, in the 1990’s, conditions changed to a weakened state of cyclones and anticyclones, and therefore milder winters. In the last few years, it has changed back to a strengthened state. Although they have not analysed data back, at least, to the 1960’s, (which seems an amazing omission, that hugely undermines their work), the implication is clear, that recent conditions have returned to close to the ones that existed prior to 1990.
But none of that stops Zhang from saying “Decreased sea-ice cover favours further extension of warm air into the central Arctic Ocean. When this warm air propagates to the lower-latitude Eurasian continent, it gets cooled due to radiative heat loss. Anticyclones accordingly form or intensify.”
Before going on to say “We need to evaluate whether climate models can realistically capture weather-scale physical processes”, which, translated, means “Please send us some more grant money”.
Hot summers confirm golbal warming and cold winters confirm global warming. Wet weather confirms global warming, dry weather confirms global warming, no warming confirms global warming, it is the ultimate non falsifiable hypothesis but that is not science.
What they never mention is that CO2 spreads the heat like a blanket making storms milder.
We can’t publish that can we ?
CO2 causes milder storms.
First of all a storm is a heat engine and the amount of energy it uses to move air etc is proportional to the temperature DIFFERENCE between the input and the output not their absolute temperature .
Here is a simple explanation of the thermodynamics involved.
Notice that if the temperature out = the temperature in the heat engine STOPS !
CO2 makes the difference less so it slows down.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heaeng.html
By spreading the heat more evenly CO2 tends to make storms milder.
Despite one extreme storm recently the TREND seems to b e FLAT without any more or less storms floods or droughts and here is the proof.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/extreme-weather-page/.
So what was it that the Kennedy offspring said about children in Washington being deprived of snow?
Time to reprint in bold.
Ok, here is the challenge…
I dare anyone on Bill McKibben’s side to call me a ‘denier’, like OBL et.al. who are associated with the use of the term “infidel’s”… lots of horse shit out there and the gloves are now off.
Flashback: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/world/middleeast/30binladen.html?_r=0
Stay tuned for my next story at The Daily Bail…
john from DB
BBC’s John Hammond associated the recent cold spell with the SSW (sudden stratospheric warming) without any reference to the climate change, AGW or CO2.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSW2012-13.htm
Refreshing!
CAGW is the ultimate non falsifiable hypothesis. Whatever you are experiencing at the present that you do not like, that is caused by CAGW, and if you do not send money now and stop using energy it is all going to get so much worse for you as we know where you live!
“Hot summers confirm golbal warming and cold winters confirm global warming. Wet weather confirms global warming, dry weather confirms global warming, no warming confirms global warming, it is the ultimate non falsifiable hypothesis but that is not science”
Ah but wait for actual global cooling. That is the one thing they can’t blame on global warming. It’s the one thing which will at long last stick a fork in the greatest scientific hoax in history. Can’t come soon enough, but rest assured it will come.
Not long ago, if you pointed to some record- breaking cold event, they would say “Weather isn’t climate!“. It looks like someone sent out a new memo- now, everything is climate and it’s all your fault.
Relax everyone. They are trying to inoculate themselves against falsification in the public’s eyes. You see, they know full well that when, for example, Europe suffers a deep freeze and cold weather deaths, they need to say does not contradict the AGW hypothesis. Yet for over a decade they have been lamenting the lack of snow cover, depth you name it.
Warmer winters, colder winters
Gulf stream slows down, Gulf stream speeds up
UK to get more drought, UK to get more rain, the Sahel too, more or less. You name it, it’s covered. Grrrrr!
LOL
Dr Myles Allen, and a few more!
In 2009, Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at Department of Physics, University of Oxford told the Daily Telegraph, during another spell of bad snow “Even though this is quite a cold winter by recent standards it is still perfectly consistent with predictions for global warming. If it wasn’t for global warming this cold snap would happen much more regularly. What is interesting is that we are now surprised by this kind of weather. I doubt we would have been in the 1950s because it was much more common.
———————————————————————————————————————–
The 1936 North American cold wave ranks among the most intense cold waves of the 1930s. The states of the Midwest United States were hit the hardest. February 1936 was one of the coldest months recorded in the Midwest. The states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota saw their coldest month on record. What was so significant about this cold wave was that the 1930s had some of the mildest winters in the US history. In addition to one of the coldest winters in the 1930s, the cold wave was followed by one of the warmest summers on record, the 1936 North American heat wave.
As for climate disruption,
http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/default.asp?lang=en&n=6a4a3ac5-1
I want to hear something from a Warmist right here on this thread once and for all. Is Europe and the Northern United states expected to get colder winters or warmer winters? I don’t care about snow, just warmer or colder? You can reply both if you like, but I want an answer. 😉
(I may be mistaken but I was led to believe that the sign of a good theory is it’s ability to make good predictions – not the theory of everything.) For example take Einstein and the light bending observation.
and
A perfectly average summer or winter is now CAUSED by CAGW and rabid CO2 !
Excellent post, Paul. In February 2007, the BBC World Service broadcast an episode of One Planet about the mild winters of the last decade, that looked back with nostalgia at the “proper winters” of 30 years ago, which the presenter, Richard Hollingham, said were “unlikely to return”.
Dr Rowan Sutton (researcher, Walker Institute): “There, of course, has been a significant warming, and that’s been seen over much of the northern hemisphere and indeed the southern hemisphere, although the northern hemisphere at present is significantly warmer. And it’s been particularly observed in winter time. And in Europe, for example, we have seen that the recent winters in the UK are well over a degree warmer than they were 30 or so years ago. And that’s associated with trends in snow and ice, for example…”
This audio is available on the Internet Archive site, and I also have a full transcript of it here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20070203_op
Jess keep that old climate of fear goin’ while we rake in them tax dollars, boys!
Please don’t let up on attacking the bbc. It is the enemy and therefore must be destroyed. Don’t let it think it’s fooled you into thinking it has changed just because it says a few sensible things. It hasn’t.
The weather blogs have been all over the SSW, hoping for a period when a winter storm could make it through the cold, dry air. They’re peculiarly overjoyed! At last something interesting and truly wintry is here. But perhaps exalted ‘climate scientists’ are above mere meteorology.
Does anyone know of any kind of weather that *isn’t* proof of global warming?
Anyone?
NetDr says-
“CO2 causes milder storms.”
Hansen agrees in 2012.
“…high latitude cooling would increase latitudinal temperature gradients, thus driving powerful cyclonic storms.”
James Hansen, blog paper, 12/26/2012
But wait-
Hansen disagrees in 2009 with his book Storms of my grandchildren describing increased storm intensity and frequency as CO2 warms the poles faster than the tropics.
This is another example of Hansen’s Horoscopy.
We are all guilty! The Greens tell us so. Therefore whatever happens is our fault. If it gets hotter, it is because of our sins – sorry I meant our CO2 emissions. If it gets colder it is because of our CO2 emissions. If it gets wetter/drier … whatever the effect the cause is the same.
Is there anything that CO2 cannot do?
I predict this winter and next will be colder, about the same or warmer.
AGW is a perfectly falsifiable hypothesis because only a wrong hypothesis makes opposite predictions. We don’t have to wait for many years because the work is done.
I forgot the punchline to my previous comment (see above.) The BBC World Service programme One Planet in Feb 2007 also featured Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists:
Richard Hollingham: Now those of us who grew up with very cold winters, who tell our children that winter’s not what it used to be, we’re right, aren’t we?
Brenda Ekwurzel: Yes, absolutely. It has changed.
The pattern is easily explained because the Rossby Waves in the Circumpolar Vortex have shifted from Zonal to Meridional.
http://drtimball.com/2012/current-global-weather-patterns-normal-despite-government-and-media-distortions/
Since AGW predicts both warming and cooling [as per above], how does one kill the snake????
They have to wheel out another “scientist” each time because the last “scientist is still in therapy.
In australia the Malcom Roberts of the www. galileomovement.com.au is prepairing a report on the CSIRO global warming report should be very interesting reading http://www.conscious.com.au/CSIROh!.html
When dealing with highly complex phenomena, real science is distinguished by making predictions about the world that usually come right more often than not. Random events may sometimes seem to falsify the theory, but progressive science will get more predictions right than wrong. Over time, as the science improves, so will the predictive ability over a dumb predictive model. It is akin to a skilled punter on the horses. They will not win every time, but will on average win more money than they lose, despite the expected average winnings being less than the stake money. Pseudo-science can always explain away the anomalies, and makes itself invulnerable to being contradicted by making “predictions” with wide anomalies
As an example of making predictions that are highly unlikely be contradicted, (though this is from the “weather not climate dept“) the BBC now provides weather forecasts who to 9 days ahead. Try looking a week ahead for Cambridge, Manchester or Drumnadnadrochit and you will find the BBC (courtesy of the Met Office) forecasting temperature bands of around 10 Celsius or more.
As a scientist, I’m seriously getting tired of this idiotic nonsense. Yes, I understand variability, both natural and unnatural (common cause and special cause). I understand and use model building and statistics every day in my job of projecting the degradation of pharmaceutical drugs years into the future to determine shelf life within safe limits of human consumption under intense scrutiny of government agencies around the world.
It’s obvious to me these weather/climate projectionists have no clue what they are doing. If my stability work on pharma products was anything close to being this bad I’d be fired. When I project that a drug will remain in safe limits years from now they actually check year after year for the life of the product. And if I’m wrong I’m done. My company is not paying me to be wrong
These climatologists make up nonsense as they go along and nothing they claim has to be verified nor actually come to fruition yet they continue to rake in the government grants. What a scam. If they operated in the private sector would anyone actually voluntarily pay for their nonsense? They only exist as leaches on government handouts.
Paul
With respect to UK winters , the following web page of Met Office is helpfuL http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/actualmonthly/
Go to UK, MEAN TEMPERATURES and WINTER. options
You will get a plot of UK wineter temperatures since 1910. You will note that the winter temperature trend oscillates and has recently levelled off and is actually dropping after 2006 below the long term trend for three years after rising since about 1960.. What the Met Office is saying that the winter temperture trend will continue to rise . I beg to differ as I think we are heading to a similar period as 1962 -1987 and we will actually see cooler winters for the next 20 -30 years . This trend already started after 2006 .This is completely opposite of what Met Office is saying.
when leo hickman & the guardian have to expose the following, it’s obvious CAGW is on its last legs:
8 Feb: Guardian: Leo Hickman: BBC exaggerated climate change in David Attenborough’s Africa
David Attenborough claims in BBC One’s Africa series that part of the continent has warmed by 3.5C over the past 20 years
Personally, I find it bizarre – and frustrating – that an otherwise exemplary series, which took years to film, has been tainted – in my mind, at least – by such a sloppy piece of research. Why rely primarily on a seven-year-old report published an NGO? Why not just directly ask climatologists who would have the latest available data to hand? And how did the BBC’s researchers even come across such an obscure fact? You get the sense they simply Googled “Africa temperature rise” and went for the first thing they found.
First Comment, by Ecodev: The article makes valid points, but surely the benefits of David Attenborough using the chance to communicate the reality and implications of human-induced climate change on BBC1 to a wide audience should be appreciated?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/feb/08/bbc-global-warming-attenborough-africa
@Jimbo
You are asking them the wrong question.
Cui Bono got it right.
Ask them what the kind of weather disproves global warming.
An interesting melange of climate observations with no science whatsoever. Before you can talk of warming and cooling you have to know what warming and cooling actually happened. This applies specifically to the Chinese data which basically overlaps the satellite era of temperature measurements. An analysis of satellite data indicates that there was no warming during the eighteen years from 1979 to 1997. This was followed by the super El Nino of 1998 which brought so much warm water across the ocean that a step warming followed. In four years global temperature rose by a thgird of a degree Celsius and then stopped. This was the only warming during the entire 33 years of satellite observations. It is this warming that is responsible for the very warm first decade of this century, not some imaginary greenhouse warming. All the years since then sit on the warm platform created by that short, steep warming. Hansen likes to tell us about the nine warmest years during this period, implying that global warming caused them. There was no warming whatsoever during this period and their warmth is inherited from the step warming of 1998 to 2001, not created by greenhouse gases. There still is no warming today and if you follow the Met Office this no-warming period is now 16 years old. If you are a scientist you should recognize by now that your experiment has failed. The attempt to warm up the atmosphere by addition of carbon dioxide to it simply does not work. Now back to the Chinese. According to them, “We found a persistent weakening of both cyclones and anticyclones between the 1990s and early 2000s, and a pronounced intensification of anticyclone activity afterwards.” This tells us that conditions changed between the 1900s and 2000s, and small wonder – the step warming that was in between is the obvious cause, and now we know that global temperature change can influence cyclone and anticyclone activity. No mystery, and certainly no greenhouse baloney involved. As to why that greenhouse fantasy does not work, Ferenc Miskolczi has the answer. Using NOAA weather balloon database that goes back to 1948 he determined that atmospheric absorption of long-wave radiation has been constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of long-wave radiation by the atmosphere. And without absorption of radiant energy greenhouse warming simply does not work. It is that simple: greenhouse warming is impossible. If you have been inculcated into believing that Arrhenius proved otherwise, he only proved that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation. That it does but thanks to water vapor in the atmosphere this effect is blocked. That is because the water vapor feedback is negative, not positive as IPCC has been telling us. We already knew from the absence of the hot spot that water vapor feedback cannot be positive. Miskolczi theory requires that it must be negative and his observations using NOAA database prove it.
Sixteen years of flat global temperature average and cold snowy winters around the globe and wet summers do not disprove global warming. What pray tell WILL disprove this bogus theory? But that really is the problem, isn’t it? A theory is not to be disproved. A theory is to be proven with data matching prediction.
According to Dr Myles Allen:
He’s saying that cold snaps and killer low temperatures are a good thing?
The Warman Empire has a thousand weather roads, all leading to its hallowed doors.
Aaaagggggghhhhh!
If it’s hot, it’s CO2; if it’s cold, it’s CO2; if it’s wet, it’s CO2; if it’s dry, it’s CO2; if it’s windy, it’s CO2…..with no statistical evidence!
If my 10 year old son believed these arguments, I’d give him a lecture on intellectual rigour. Any grown up who swallows this should wake up and be deeply, deeply ashamed of themselves.
The clear truth that global warming has stopped for 15 years has left the environmentalists grasping at non-falsifiable straws. If you ever hear anyone articulate this story, point out that they wouldn’t believe a second hand car salesman who pushed an argument this risible, so why do so when a few trillion dollars of economic impact is at stake?
I hear people on this blog opine that the pause in warming is no big deal. Quite the contrary: take the 11 year centred moving average monthly temperature. It rose with little pause from 1971 to 2002, and has hardly budged since.
Pah! Happy friday night…
Jimbo says:
February 8, 2013 at 2:03 pm
I want to hear something from a Warmist right here on this thread once and for all. Is Europe and the Northern United states expected to get colder winters or warmer winters?
Yes.
It’s quite simple really: take the following words and rearrange to make a phrase that explains the alarmists actions:
their; know; don’t; ar$es; their; elbows; from; they
What I always wanted to know and maybe someone can answer what causes a storm to be a climate change storm and not a natural storm, other than my puter told me it was? That and as blizzards have been happening for longer than CO2 driven warming how much more intense is this storm due to climate change? None of my warming friends can answer so just wondering.
Time to plug in my model again: the one that says look at the weather 60 years ago to see what is in store for us now. CO2 has turned climatologists away from this this simple model, which has a heck of a lot more skill than anything being used or contemplated these days. Cold weather in UK today, look at 60 years ago. Heavy snow in New England – I could have forecast it 60 years ago. Big drought in Texas, gee, pretty much what was happening 60 years ago. Cold springs and summers in the Pacific NW, hmm, check out the conditions 60 years ago….
Whenever we get some heat wave/drought/flood/heavy snow/wildfires… the news folks and weather folks always say…”The worst in 60 years”. I think this would make a good post by someone familiar with weather history.
If the UEA CRU phoned me up at 02.00 in the morning and told me it was dark outside – I’d still open the curtains to check.
And until, NCAR, Met Office and particularly super-computer-Slingo, Sereeze at NSIDC, NOAA et al, start convincing me that they are absolutely sure which way is up – I will never believe a word of what they spiel.
Adapting an OLD quote from Economics is appropo:
If you took 100 Climatologists and laid them end-to-end, they would still point in all directions.
David L says:
February 8, 2013 at 3:12 pm
They only exist as leaches on government handouts.
=========
What is the difference between a leech and a climate scientist?
One is a blood sucking parasite and the other is a worm.
Dogma =df “A belief for which there is nothing that its believer would count as evidence that the it was false.”
This scientific discipline reminds me of a card game my kids used to play. They made up the rules as they played the game, occasionally dissolving the charming “family painting” into an all out feathers flying brawl. But mostly it was just plain fun, coming up with new card playing rules in-between each player’s turn. If I intervened to distract an impending argument I was told I didn’t know how to play the game. These learned and lettered scientists are like my three children playing their made-up-as-you-go card game. Which also means they need to have their credentials as adults removed for a spell and made to sit in the corner with a dunce cap firmly planted on their tiny little heads.
[snip – pointless comment, off topic -mod]
Tim Ball says:
February 8, 2013 at 3:01 pm
The pattern is easily explained because the Rossby Waves in the Circumpolar Vortex have shifted from Zonal to Meridional.
http://drtimball.com/2012/current-global-weather-patterns-normal-despite-government-and-media-distortions/
================================================
Energy balance…. You will always know if you are warming or cooling by the size of the polar vortex and Rossby wave locations.. My mother once told me to “Keep It Simple Stupid”. it is still good advice today..
Dr. Lurtz says:
February 8, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Since AGW predicts both warming and cooling [as per above], how does one kill the snake????
==========================================================
By going with your instincts when you read or hear something as ludicrously stupid as climate change causing warmcold. Derisive comedy and pointing and laughing is the order of the day for these events, as well as the wetdry prognostications to go along with the moreless snow pronouncements. 🙂
This storm is exactly analagous to Sandy and relects the same causes.For a complete discussion see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2012/10/hurricane-sandy-extreme-events-and_30.html
@Arno
CO2 does indeed absorb IR and I rely on that to detect it in gas streams. The 61 years of constancy are well proven and falsify a number of claims upon which models are based. If we had no water on this planet then the situation would be quite different. But it is not the case.
This is how I look at it.
Would I employ a person who thinks that heat causes cold? Answer: No
I would sugget that if bad storms, droughts and floods are caused by climate change/global warming then it follows that all good weather is also the product of climate change. When an area has a beautiful day, sunny skies, calm winds, mild temps then it must be because of glorious climate change. We can all be thankful for it.
Bill H said:
“Energy balance…. You will always know if you are warming or cooling by the size of the polar vortex and Rossby wave locations.. My mother once told me to “Keep It Simple Stupid”. it is still good advice today..”
As I said, back in June 2008:
“If jet streams, on average, are further south then the high pressure systems to the north of them predominate and the globe is cooling. If, on average, they are further north then high pressure to the south of them predominates and the globe is warming.”
from here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1458
“Weather is the key, after all”.
“Decreased sea-ice cover favours further extension of warm air into the central Arctic Ocean.” from Zhang above. I would say that he is putting the proverbial cart in front of the proverbial horse, because warmer waters and warmer air entering the Arctic already provide a plausible physical explanation for decreasing sea ice in the Arctic.
Huge Arctic cold fronts penetrating closer to the equator would engender more warm (and moisture laden) air migrating northward.
@pokerguy says: February 8, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Ah but wait for actual global cooling. That is the one thing they can’t blame on global warming.
=======================================================================
Don’t you be so sure…
“Global Warming To Bring Colder/Warmer Winters”
You forgot ” Drier/Wetter Snow!!”
The money quote for me
“And with global warming we can expect another 1962-63 winter only once every 1,100 years, compared with every 183 years before 1850”
I think AGW just became falsifiable. Lets call the whole “global government – global impoverishment” thing off right now and just sit tight for 183 years. Any AGW zealot who feels the need to demonstrate their purity of belief and who feels strongly that fossil fuels are bad are welcome to live in the bush, off the grid, until then or to just stop breathing whichever they view is less “polluting” and thus more sustainable. Im not holding my breath.
“It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Well that’s just it, isn’t it?
“…the end of the Last Interglacial seems to be characterized by evident climatic and environmental instabilities….”
“The pronounced climate and environment instability during the interglacial/glacial transition could be consistent with the assumption that it is about a natural phenomenon, characteristic for transitional stages.” http://eg.igras.ru/files/f.2010.04.14.12.53.54..5.pdf (you might have to copy and paste that link in your browser)
Which, at yet another half-precession cycle old post-MPT extreme interglacial, might be a thing worth considering.
I remain unconvinced that real, measured, paleo-recorded, “pronounced climate and environment instability(‘s)” at the end of the last extreme interglacial, which themselves wildly trump any prognostication of anthropogenic influence, are irrelevant.
Yet then we have this from the abstract:
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Pubs/AlleyetalQSR2010Greenl.pdf
“Paleoclimatic records show that the Greenland Ice Sheet consistently has lost mass in response to warming, and grown in response to cooling. Such changes have occurred even at times of slow or zero sea-level change, so changing sea level cannot have been the cause of at least some of the ice-sheet changes. In contrast, there are no documented major ice-sheet changes that occurred independent of temperature changes. Moreover, snowfall has increased when the climate warmed, but the ice sheet lost mass nonetheless; increased accumulation in the ice sheet’s center has not been sufficient to counteract increased melting and flow near the edges. Most documented forcings and ice-sheet responses spanned periods of several thousand years, but limited data also show rapid response to rapid forcings.In particular, regions near the ice margin have responded within decades. However, major changes of central regions of the ice sheet are thought to require centuries to millennia. The paleoclimatic record does not yet strongly constrain how rapidly a major shrinkage or nearly complete loss of the ice sheet could occur. The evidence suggests nearly total ice-sheet loss may result from warming of more than a few degrees above mean 20th century values, but this threshold is poorly defined (perhaps as little as 2 C or more than 7 C). Paleoclimatic records are sufficiently sketchy that the ice sheet may have grown temporarily in response to warming, or changes may have been induced by factors other than temperature, without having been recorded.”
The problem here is that you have a rather anemic prognosticated anthropogenic signal to all this natural climate stuff that has already occurred (noise). Which you must, at the very least best, if you are ever to be taken seriously as an anomaly.
In fact twice-background is generally accepted as anomalous. Meaning the Eemian sets a pretty high bar, since we were indeed there…. So, to best the Eemian, we, meaning us, need to at least achieve previous end extreme interglacial highstands, tenfold over present (http://www.uow.edu.au/business/content/groups/public/@web/@sci/@eesc/documents/doc/uow045009.pdf), if not double them, to be considered truly anomalous.
But, but “Moreover, snowfall has increased when the climate warmed, but the ice sheet lost mass nonetheless”, .”In particular, regions near the ice margin have responded within decades.”
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.
A message from ‘Global Warming headquarters…..’ we have all bases covered no matter the weather, the time duration or what, it is still GW, mark my words! Stock market eradic, GW!
[snip – pointless off topic comment – mod]
Sosnowski, Alex. “Evolution of the Arctic Outbreak” Scientific. AccuWeather, January 25, 2013. http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/evolution-of-an-arctic-outbrea/4721288
“Around the start of 2013, meteorologists at AccuWeather.com noticed that a change in temperature high the atmosphere over the North Pole was occurring and projected an arctic outbreak in North America during the middle of January.
“The phenomenon is known as sudden stratospheric warming.
“The explanation is a little complex, but we will try to bring it to layman’s terms. Just keep in mind there are also other players on the field, which we do not mention.”
Andrew. “Stratosphere Analysis and Forecast” Scientific. The Weather Centre, December 31, 2012.
http://theweathercentre.blogspot.com/2012/12/stratosphere-analysis-and-forecast.html
Wyatt, Marcia Glaze, Sergey Kravtsov, and Anastasios A. Tsonis. “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Northern Hemisphere’s Climate Variability.” Climate Dynamics (April 2011). doi:10.1007/s00382-011-1071-8
Kim, Young-Joon, and Maria Flatau. “Hindcasting the January 2009 Arctic Sudden Stratospheric Warming and Its Influence on the Arctic Oscillation with Unified Parameterization of Orographic Drag in NOGAPS. Part I: Extended-Range Stand-Alone Forecast.” Weather and Forecasting 25, no. 6 (December 2010): 1628–1644. doi:10.1175/2010WAF2222421.1
We all know, the science is settled and the debate is over. Global warming causes global cooling. Global warming causes ALL weather events other than totally even weather. If global cooling caused by global warming occurs, more taxes and sanctions on energy production will be required. Only worldwide Socialism can prevent global warming.
I wouldn’t bet on that. 🙁
They then changed the headline when they realised there was a bit of a logic problem.
Revised headline
Adelaide Now – February 28, 2012
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/melting-arctic-causes-snowier-winters/story-e6frea8l-1226283672088
It’s especially sad to see Chinese researchers buying the line that what warms is climate and what cools is weather. China has long and detailed records. Those guys are in a position to know what real climate change did to several of their dynasties. Murderous old Gaia may have got some help from Mao, but the old Chinese records show sustained periods of too hot, too wet, too dry and too cold. (Dry and cold are the big ones to avoid if you’re trying to run a dynasty.)
They havent got a clue.They will say anything as long as they can blame Climate change in there somewhere..
They will say hotter colder wetter.The tuth is they dont know.What are we paying them for.
They will still be banging the global warming drum at the start of the next ice age until we are all frozen 10 foot deep in ice
CAGW – unfalsifiable belief and religious dogma – no different from axiomatic ‘climate change’. It’ll take political revolution born of global cynicism, a solar grand minimum and ice age, a very near miss by a planet sized asteroid, a couple of generations and further economic collapse to shift the meme.
Colder winters with more snow is just evidence of the dropping global temperatures we’ve seen over the last 18 years (known as ‘the plateau’ by Warmisters)
No matter what anyone says about CO2 there are a few indisputable facts.
At sea level there is less than 1 gram of CO2 in every cubic metre of air – 0.06% by mass x 1.205 kg air per cubic metre = 0.732 GRAMS per cubic metre !!
CO2 is ~1.54 times the weight of air – nearly all of it will be found at the ground. If it is indeed a great little radiator even heated CO2 will not stay aloft long !
CO2 has a specific heat 0.844 kJ/kg K while air is 1.01 – the same energy input causes about 1.42 times the temperature increase in CO2 compared to that of air.
CO2 has a thermal conductivity of 0.0146 W/(m.K) and air is 0.024W/(m.K).
What does this mean ?
Heat a gas mixture and the CO2 will heat up more. The CO2 will also cool slower as it is less thermally conductive.
At less than one GRAM CO2 per kilogram of air per cubic metre it doesn’t matter one jot !!!!
I think that Britton is the press officer for the MET Office and not a climate scientist?
Let me see if I have this AGW thing right ..
CO2 is a greenhouse gas and helps to retains the heat of the sun in our atmosphere.
Man produces CO2 in many processes, this CO2 goes into the atmosphere and causes more heat to stay in there making it warmer … , no no, sorry, making it colder, or is wetter, no no, dryer, noooo making it snow, But it also makes it warm, no cold, sea level … ahh forget it.
Here are some more past winter claims. First, we have one for colder winters and the rest for warmer. Today, we are told to expect colder winters. I wish these funding fraudsters would make up their bipolar minds [pun entirely intende].
http://youtu.be/4Ne4UshIgXQ
[*NB* the word “fraudsters” gets a post dropped in the spam bin for human attention . . mod]
Here are some more past winter claims. First, we have one for colder winters and the rest for warmer. Today, we are told to expect colder winters. I wish these funding fraudsters would make up their bipolar minds [pun entirely intende].
http://youtu.be/4Ne4UshIgXQ
For all those in reverence of the BBC. It is a news and entertainment organisation, which occasionally produces good dramas and documentaries. David Attenborough is an observer of animal behaviour, and an animal lover, not a physicist or atmospheric scientist.
As an organisation, it feels it has the power to comment on matters in which it has no expertise.
They take their cue from the Met Office, whose contradictions are already public knowledge
The Met are brilliant! Couple of nights ago on telly, the met presenter solemnly opined that there was a huge column of freezing air coming down from the Antarctic!
Notice I used the word ‘presenter’, rather than in the old days when we had real meteorologists who knew what they were talking about!
I think the majority of sceptics are getting as carried away in detail and sophistry as the Eco-hysterics themselves.
To most of you I would say, you are missing the point.
A rumination is not science unless it offers both a hypothesis AND crucially a null hypothesis. AGW rumination doesnt clearly offer a former and more importantly never offers the latter. The important thing in respect of their discussion of weather is not the minutiae of climate and meterorology but the simple fact that they offer no circumstances which would confirm a null hypothesis. WHATEVER happens (colder, warmer, wetter, drier) they have a way of rationalising it as due to only one “cause”.
By that yard-stick alone it should be easy to ram home the fact that this is not about science but pseudo-science. Falsifyability is an alien concept to them. The basic notion common to all real science that correlation does not indicate causation is something that they ignore continually.An under-graduate in any topic, even psychology, should recognise thesetraits easily. For sceptics to allow these big sticks to go unused and get tangled up in the maze of sophistry woven by the pseudo-scientists is not really acceptable.
Sceptics may be right about those details, as I am certain they are about the bigger picture, but it is an utter waste of time arguing over it. “You” neeed to get your act together and you could learn a few things by studying how Environmentalists influence debate.
To illustrate this…PWilsons comment about the BBC is exactly correct but lacking in force and will be forgotten instantly by most who read it.
Apologies Mr / Ms Wilson, I agree with you BUT, a rather more strident way to address the BBC is warranted. EG:
“The BBC exists to generate revenue distributed as inflated salaries among its higher staff echelons. To get a sense of the scale of the BBCs money generating enterprise it is necessary to compare it with a comparably large and expensive organisation. NASA is engagaged in the most expensive activity short of warfare (space exploration). The turnover of the BBC is more than half that of NASA. Per capita, the BBC costs the British citizen several times as much as NASA costs the US citizen. Whilst NASA conducts some very major,important and serious research, for the comparable investment the BBC broadcasts shows made by others (mainly US), some home-made garbage in the form of cheap chat and cookery shows and repeats of Dads Army. This situation is not simply outrageous but utterly disgusting. It is iniquitous.”
Accosted in a dark alley by the likes of the BBC I would not recommend polite disagreement, go for the testes then smash their knees before stamping in their face.
This is how Environmentalists conduct debate. It is why they succeed. It is why there is no hope of defeating them irrespective of the facts until sceptics learn to reciprocate.
This Harvard professor came up in something I am working on involving Paul Ehrlich and sought cultural evolution via education. When I searched her out, this article came up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shoshana-zuboff/global-warming-lightning-strikes_b_1471783.html
Attributing lightning strikes to Global Warming. Just too good not to post.
Wamron says:
February 9, 2013 at 4:46 am
By that yard-stick alone it should be easy to ram home the fact that this is not about science but pseudo-science. Falsifyability is an alien concept to them. The basic notion common to all real science that correlation does not indicate causation is something that they ignore continually.An under-graduate in any topic, even psychology, should recognise thesetraits easily. For sceptics to allow these big sticks to go unused and get tangled up in the maze of sophistry woven by the pseudo-scientists is not really acceptable.
Accosted in a dark alley by the likes of the BBC I would not recommend polite disagreement, go for the testes then smash their knees before stamping in their face.
This is how Environmentalists conduct debate. It is why they succeed. It is why there is no hope of defeating them irrespective of the facts until sceptics learn to reciprocate.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This. It bears repeating. Some have caught on. We need many many more.
If arctic air plummeting down onto the lower latitudes is an indication of global warming, what is the implication of warm lower latitude air rushing north to replace that south wandering air mass? More global warming?
So if we experience cold lower latitude air rushing north to replace south rushing warm arctic air what would we call that? More global warming?
Final case: Air is just sitting around on its arse, not going north or south. Hazard me a guess – more global warming, right?
I’d like a piece of that 20% EU budget over the next 7 years, please.
This site gives links to articles about things that have been blamed on global warming. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html One Article says the Atlantic is becoming less salty. The next article says the Atlantic is becoming more salty. Hmm! But my favorite is this one; brothels struggle. Gee what isn’t due to global warming?
Global warming used to cause me to wear a bikini. Thank goodness that stopped.
Maybe your wearing of a bikini was CAUSING global warming! 😉
David S says:
February 9, 2013 at 8:31 am
“But my favorite is this one; brothels struggle. Gee what isn’t due to global warming?”
UN diplomats are immune from prosecution so they don’t pay, I guess.
dp says:
February 9, 2013 at 8:25 am
“I’d like a piece of that 20% EU budget over the next 7 years, please.”
Apply here.
http://cordis.europa.eu/home_en.html
If humans are the root of climate change, then graph human population against millions of years of climate. Results are?
Now, let me get this straight.
“Looking more closely at the Chinese study, mentioned above, by Zhang, Lu and Guan, their abstract states:- Extreme cold winter weather events over Eurasia have occurred more frequently in recent years in spite of a warming global climate. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044044/article”
In the comments we are talking about the “cold” winters?:(bold mine)
vukcevic says: BBC’s John Hammond associated the recent cold spell with the SSW (sudden stratospheric warming) without any reference to the climate change, AGW or CO2. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSW2012-13.htm
herkimer says: Go to UK, MEAN TEMPERATURES and WINTER. options- You will get a plot of UK wineter temperatures since 1910. You will note that the winter temperature trend oscillates and has recently levelled off and is actually dropping after 2006 below the long term trend for three years
Village Idiot says: Colder winters with more snow is just evidence of the dropping global temperatures we’ve seen over the last 18 years (known as ‘the plateau’ by Warmisters)
What “cold” weather? Dr Spenser (no disrespect) and the MET and NASA and NOAA and GISS et al report that December and January are the “hottest” ever. No matter that cold records are being broken around the NH–people are dying by the thousands because of the record freezing weather–so what are you talking about? /sarc
All the measures of temperature (except possibly sea surface) report that this is the “hottest” or near hottest winter ever. Anecdotal evidence cannot be summarily ignored. (see iceagenow.info) I cannot reconcile the deep discrepancies between people freezing to death in record numbers from record cold and this being the “hottest” December and January on record. Something is amiss.
pokerguy says: Ah but wait for actual global cooling. That is the one thing they can’t blame on global warming. It’s the one thing which will at long last stick a fork in the greatest scientific hoax in history. Can’t come soon enough, but rest assured it will come.
You think? According to all scientific measurements (no disrespect to science) it isn’t here even when it is.
Bob says: I predict this winter and next will be colder, about the same or warmer.
Bol, it already is not cold this winter–don’t you read the global temp records?
Sorry, I guess I turned of the /sarc too soon.
TO Eric Barnes who says: Jimbo says: I want to hear something from a Warmist right here on this thread once and for all. Is Europe and the Northern United states expected to get colder winters or warmer winters?
Yes.
Funniest line of the week!!!!!!!!
Day By Day says:
February 9, 2013 at 10:00 am
I cannot reconcile the deep discrepancies between people freezing to death in record numbers from record cold and this being the “hottest” December and January on record.
The latest on six different data sets.
Since it is February, I will do things a bit differently than the rest of the year. I will give the latest anomaly I have and indicate its relative ranking if that anomaly were to stay that way for all of 2013. (Of course it won’t.)
The UAH anomaly for January was 0.506. (It jumped from 0.206 in December.) This would rank 1st. (1998 was the warmest at 0.42. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.66.
The GISS anomaly for December was 0.44. This would rank 15th.
The Hadcrut3 anomaly for December was 0.233, This would rank 19th.
The sea surface anomaly for December was 0.342. This would rank 8th.
The RSS anomaly for January was 0.442. (It jumped from 0.101 in December.) This would rank 3rd.
The Hadcrut4 anomaly for December was 0.269. This would rank 19th.
The new UAH is not on WFT yet, but with the January value for RSS, the slope is 0 for 16 years and 1 month from January 1, 1997 to January 31, 2013.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
For the complete statistics on these 6 data sets for 2012, see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/04/the-yearly-lukewarm-report/#comment-1216324
Thank you Werner Brozek , that does help some. I went to Dr. Spencer’s site again after reviewing your links (I had read yours before and appreciated the info)–and I suppose they don’t get the “Global” temp by averaging NH SH and Tropics?
I am assuming the three areas have different weights in figuring the final average…I get .462 with a simple average of Spencer’s data–more like your RSS feed (well not yours) than the ..506 reported by him.
Your help much appreciated in contrast to media hype.
The greatest beneficiaries of human population growth are cows. Where once there were no cows, they are now in great abundance. By good fortune they don’t taste like chicken.
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Snow or no snow, either way, blame it on global warming.
Jimbo, thanks for quoting the Schmidt paper, namely, “Here we use several different climate-model versions to demonstrate that the observed sea-level-pressure trends, including their magnitude, can be simulated by realistic increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations.” Those pressure trends being “gradual reduction in high-latitude sea-level pressure”.
It is interesting that the same scientists writing those papers can write more papers a decade or more later showing that the current scary phenomenon, the increased high latitude pressure causing a weaker polar jet and higher meridional flow is also caused by global warming.
They get paid for this work. And as many people point out in the thread, the work is not all that difficult, basically just write a paper stating that recently observed bad things are caused by increased GHG concentrations. If the claim contradicts a previous claim, simply ignore the previous claim.
I live in the Western Great Lakes. Two weeks ago, the highs were around 38 deg F. A rather brisk outbreak of polar air invaded the Lakes a week or so ago. This took highs down to 18 deg F, and lows around 5 deg F. Several minor snow events occurred anywhere from 3 to 15 inches. Driving sucked, as the small snow events only caused roads to glaze over, and the heavier ones made driving even more treacherous. Thirty seven years ago, a deep, very frigid outbreak of polar air invaded the Great Lakes just after Thanksgiving. The high temperature in South Bend on 6 Dec was -5 deg F. Several snow events (both system and lake affect snow) dumped several foot of snow from Des Moines to Erie Penn. I remember winters as a teenager hiding the ground with snow from Thanksgiving to Easter. In 1976 we were below 0 for almost 30 days (late Dec to late Jan).
What is ironic is that the NH saw its two very cold winters right when the PDO went positive. In 1978, a prolonged artic outbreak coupled with a very active Pacific cyclone season produced one of the worst blizzards in recent memory. Three foot of snow fell in early Feb 1978 from Iowa to Maine. Temps plunged below zero for three weeks for most of the Eastern Third of the US (this was during the early stages of the positive PDO, which lasted until 2007).
Stick around, most humans younger than 40 have no idea how cold winters can get. They soon will.
Day By Day says:
February 9, 2013 at 1:46 pm
I suppose they don’t get the “Global” temp by averaging NH SH and Tropics?
Half of the tropics is in the NH and half is in the SH, so you cannot average the three. Simply average the NH and SH to get the global.
If AGW is going to bring wetter weather, they had better mothball all those wind turbines.. A paper from scientists at Nottingham University have found that Rain + Wind Turbines results with a ‘significant’ decrease in output power..
Paper: http://www.icrepq.com/icrepq%2711/618-al.pdf
Part of abstract:
“Results are presented that demonstrate that rain will have a significant effect on the output of a vertical axis wind turbine. The experiments were carried out in the climatic wind tunnel at the
University of Nottingham where water was sprayed into the wind tunnel to simulate several rainfall rates. The rain had the effect of increasing the drag, slowing the rotational speed of the wind
turbine and decreasing the Power for the equivalent wind speed”
Oh dear. Another catch 22
The difference between this blog and the work of real scientists is that whereas you on this site are dedicated to debunking and discrediting (eg. scientists “wheeled out”), a real scientist wants to determine what is true and what ideas turn out to be false.
A good scientist owes no allegiance to a particular point of view, and if s/he fakes data, s/he will be toast(ed) by her/his community. As a result, you cling to any contradictions. And because weather is complex you will find them. And, so you set out a bewildering barrage of claims.
But, we do know sea temperatures have increased, hence water vapor has increased, hence precipitation increased, hence snowfalls increased (when temps are below freezing).
We also know that Arctic sea ice has rapidly decreased which plays havoc with the jet stream and invites Arctic air to places and times that were not visited before.
Extremes are what were predicted and what have been found. For example, the number of hot records broken have been in this decade twice the number of cold records broken. When that trend turns around, I will make a full public apology.
Posting -on this site- a silly picture of a Global Warming sign in the snow shows you confuse weather with climate. Not very intelligent. But, of course, you know that. You are out to hustle, not inform.
It is the statistics that reveal climate, e.g. the number of more recent extreme events over time compared with earlier decades.
If Barry Bonds strikes out one time, it doesn’t mean that steroids were unrelated to his home run records.
ANY weather event is now down to ‘Global warming/climate change/this week’s definition’…..
Jan
You completely miss the point of the article. It does not attempt to show that cold winters disprove global warming.
It attempts to highlight the disconnect between the many studies that forecast milder winters and those that now try to prove the opposite. Indeed many of the former make the same point as you, that colder winters will still happen, but be less frequent.
Jan:
At February 10, 2013 at 1:45 am you say
Please view this link then explain why Hansen has not been “toast(ed)”.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/giss/hansen-giss-1940-1980.gif
Richard
Jan
The difference between this blog and the work of real scientists is that whereas you on this site are dedicated to debunking and discrediting
By challenging and debating scientific work, discussing real world observations, etc, sites such as this surely provide a very real and valuable service.
Jan says: February 10, 2013 at 1:45 am
“….Extremes are what were predicted and what have been found. ….”
You seem to have somehow managed to miss the point of the article.
We can find someone who pops up and says “yeah, I predicted this”, when in fact that is NOT what was the most vocal and most well known were saying in the past. The fact that they have now come up with a few ideas to explain the current happenings is not terribly convincing to some.
You do a nice job of stringing together a cascading series of happenings ‘required’ and you may end up being correct. But, its all pretty new and in contradiction to most earlier forecasts/projections/proclamations/visions (choose a suitable word) so please forgive me if I sit on the fence for now.
From the article (all comment were made 2009,2010):
2009, Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at Department of Physics, University of Oxford “Even though this is quite a cold winter by recent standards it is still perfectly consistent with predictions for global warming…”
Dave Britton, a meteorologist and climate scientist at the Met Office, said: “Even with global warming you cannot rule out we will have a cold winter every so often. It sometimes rains in the Sahara but it is still a desert.”
http://phys.org/news182026415.html#jCp “..Whatever happened to global warming? Such weather doesn’t seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming at all – it’s just a blip in the long-term heating trend…”
“It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. With global warming, he said, “we’ll still have record cold temperatures. We’ll just have fewer of them.”
Ie They are all saying “This was highly unusual, but its still gonna happen very occasionally”. But now you (and others) tell me this is the new normal.
You might want to revisit the conclusion here too:
1) Explain how winters were as cold, or colder, and as snowy or snowier, in earlier periods such as the 1960’s and 70’s, when the NH was cooling, and Arctic ice expanding.
2) Explain how winters grew milder in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, at a time when the earth was warming, and Arctic ice was declining.
3) Prove what was wrong with earlier models that predicted milder winters.
Until these tests are passed, the theories really don’t get off the ground.
Re “Jan”
Jan, with due respect and you areprobably knowledgeable in your own sphere, but you clearly know nothing about what qualifies an activity or a discussion as scientific. Net data can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways. Only the capacity for accurate prediction makes an argument into a “scientific” theory.
I quote my earlier comment:
“A rumination is not science unless it offers both a hypothesis AND crucially a null hypothesis. AGW rumination doesnt clearly offer a former and more importantly never offers the latter. The important thing in respect of their discussion of weather is not the minutiae of climate and meterorology but the simple fact that they offer no circumstances which would confirm a null hypothesis. WHATEVER happens (colder, warmer, wetter, drier) they have a way of rationalising it as due to only one “cause”.
By that yard-stick alone it should be easy to ram home the fact that this is not about science but pseudo-science. Falsifyability is an alien concept to them. The basic notion common to all real science that correlation does not indicate causation is something that they ignore continually.An under-graduate in any topic, even psychology, should recognise thesetraits easily. ..”
Thre now, look up three concepts in the philosophy ofscience:Falsifyability, Null hypothesis and “correlation / causation”. Or if you prefer look up the namesof those figures who are to the philosophy of science what Newton andEinstein are to physics: Karl Popper and Imre Lakatosh.
Jan says: February 10, 2013 at 1:45 am
“…. You are out to hustle, not inform….”
If you spend some time on here, you will see most are here to question, not hustle.
If you take the information we have received to date from the IPCC and various organizations and politicians, and have no questions whatsoever, then you either live a very naive existence, or simply do not care.
You can see that all scientists involved are still asking questions and every new happening and phenomenon is still requiring explanations, and often new and revised ones.
Its always worth asking questions, and now with IPCC revising their predicted warming to the lower bounds of their earlier estimates, we perhaps no longer have quite the pressure of having to act immediately, (ie the old, “its worse than we thought, its accelerating …do something.. anything.. but do it now!”)
Whenever it snows, our [snip . . try using “sceptical”, less pejorative and more accurate, thanks . . . mod] friends point to this as “proof” that global warming is not happening.
For the intelligent rebuttal to this canard, the Union of Concerned Scientists offers an excellent explanation:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/cold-snow-climate-change.html
Jan/jfreed27
[BTW – please do not use multiple usernames, it’s rather juvenile]
Again you have totally misunderstood the article. There is no attempt to use snow to disprove global warming.
It attempts to highlight the disconnect between the many studies that forecast milder winters and those that now try to prove the opposite.
jfreed27 says: February 10, 2013 at 6:44 am
“….Whenever it snows, our …sceptical …friends point to this as “proof” that global warming is not happening…..
For the intelligent rebuttal to this canard, the Union of Concerned Scientists offers an excellent explanation:… http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/cold-snow-climate-change.html “
Thanks jfreed!
Now, I’ve only got to the first line of the second paragraph before I had to come running back here to ask you a question: Do you think they forgot a phrase here?:
Original: Weather is what’s happening outside the door right now; today a snowstorm or a thunderstorm is approaching. Climate, on the other hand, is the pattern of weather measured over decades.
Should it not read: Weather is what’s happening outside the door right now; today a snowstorm or a thunderstorm is approaching. Climate, on the other hand, is the pattern of weather measured over decades. Unless the storm is called Sandy. Then its a harbinger of global warming, and not weather….
I think most in here are very happy to call the current snowstorms weather, and note that these sort of storms have occurred before. What we find disconcerting are statements that “this” is (now, just recently) “an expected consequence of CAGW”, and “an indicator of Extreme Weather resulting from Climate Change”.
When you guys read George Orwell, you were supposed to take it as a warning, not as a guidebook.
Further observations:
“These kinds of disasters may become a normal pattern in our everyday weather..
The Arctic summer sea ice extent broke all records during the end of the 2012 sea ice melt season. …researchers …pointing to a complex interplay between Arctic sea ice decline, ocean patterns, upper winds,…shifting shape of the jet stream that could lead to extreme weather in various portions of northern mid-latitudes … but this blizzard is occurring at a time when arctic ice extent is higher than it was at this time in 2005, 2006, 2007 2011 and 2012 … Is all this scientific evidence, or conjecture?
…destabilize the polar vortex….(NAO)—was in negative mode… This instability allows the cold Artic air to break free…. [But!?] It’s not clear how much impact this trend will have in the future, especially as the Arctic ice continues to lose mass.
Seems to me there is a whole lotta mumbling and handwaving going on there.
Jan
destabilize the polar vortex….(NAO)—was in negative mode… This instability allows the cold Arctic air to break free…
And this never happened before?
Back in the 1960’s. when the Arctic ice was expanding, scientists found exactly the same phenomenon. And guess what else they found?
During cooler climatic periods, however, the high-altitude winds are broken up into irregular cells by weaker and more plentiful pressure centers, causing formation of a “meridional circulation” pattern. These small, weak cells may stagnate over vast areas for many months, bringing unseasonably cold weather on one side and unseasonably warm weather on the other. Droughts and floods become more frequent and may alternate season to season,
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/extreme-weather-in-the-1960s-1970s/
In other words exactly the same weather we are getting now.
Steve B – yes, the alarmies seem to think water freezes when you heat it, don’t they? Methinks they have their temperature scales upside down.
Jan – The proof that AGW is false is very simple: add up all the sources of CO2, and man’s share of it is infinitesimal; add up all the other factors affecting climate, and CO2 is infinitesimal. Man’s role is, in mathematical terms, one over infinity squared.
You are quite wrong when you say commenters WUWT, or other climate blogs such as Climate,Etc. are just ranting abd not offering evidence to support these conclusions, simple and easily reached though they may be. Other posters here and on the other blogs offer a great deal of observational and other evidence of the falsity of AGW. You just need to read what they say.
Also – with the actual decline overall in temps since the peak of the 1930s, while CVO2w in the atmosphere increased ~40 percent -that would eem to offer pretty unarguable observational proof that CO2 is not a significant factor in global warming. Of course, the alarmies’ response to this is simply to keep repeating their lies. As a certain Joseph Goebbels once said, Repeat a lie enough times for a long enough time and eveyo9ne will take it as truth.
Memdacity makes the world of climate science go round.
When there are many grandmothers, the children were ruptured. So with all the discussion about climate change and its causes.
I think that all previous assumptions about drivers of these changes on the wrong track. That there is at least one correct guess, so far to decipher and find everything. And this: None of it!!
The main causes of changes in the sun and the planets, including climate change, the mutual influences of the planets and the Sun. Let’s try again to everyone that we take seriously.
Sunspots are caused by effects of the planets: Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter.
A reconnection of the magnetic poles of the Sun “guilty” Jupiter and Saturn.
All these discussions ignore and dismiss as futile. You need to watch how they behave, which have to obey the laws of nature.
You have my address
Nikola
Paper called Arctic waming, increasing snow cover and widespread boreal winter cooling
by Judah L Cohen, Jason C Furtado, Mathew A Balow, Vladmir A Alexeev, and Jessica E Cherry, published in Environmental Research Letter, December 2011. Here is their abstract.
Yet, while the planet has steadily
warmed, NH winters have recently grown more extreme
across the major industrialized centres. Record cold snaps and
heavy snowfall events across the United States, Europe and
East Asia garnered much public attention during the winters
of 2009/10 and 2010/11 (Blunden et al 2011, Cohen et al
2010).
Cohen et al (2009) argued that the occurrence of
more severe NH winter weather is a two-decade-long trend
starting around 1988. Whether the recent colder winters are a
consequence of internal variability or a response to changes in
boundary forcings resulting from climate change remains an
open question.
I did some checking to see if there was global winter cooling in other parts of the globe
1.] The winter temperatures for Contiguous United States have been dropping since 1990 at -0.26 F per decade [per NCDC]
2] 8 of the 11 climate regions in Canada showed declining winter temperature departures for 15 years since 1998
.3] The winter temperature departures from 1961-1990 mean normals for land and sea regions of Europe have been flat or even slightly dropping for 20 year or since 1990
4] I have not checked all of Asia but Moscow winter temperatures have been declining since 1988
I think it is too ealy to say if winters are getting colder or warmer until we go through a complete cool cycle also [ ie the next 20-30 years ] The coldest winters are during these cold troughs
Paul
I think if you check the winter temperature trend per the Met Office own data for Central UK since 1989 or the last 22 years, the trend is negative or declining . I think the analysis would be the same for all of UK . So I think it is significant that the Met Office are saying the winters are getting warmer when in fact they have declined slightly or been flat for the last two decades . Who is misleading who?
Thanks Herkimer.
1989 was the warmest winter for the UK since 1910, so this may affect the trend.
The Met Office graph, linked below, certainly suggests a decline over the last 10 years.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/actualmonthly/
The Met report I quoted gives the trend from 1960-2010, and, of course, the 1960’s marked the coldest period since 1910.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
Paul
If you run the winter temperature data from the Met Office web referenced above for both UK as the whole or CET for the years 1989-2012, both will show declining linear temperature trend for the last 22 years . . If you choose1962 , the coldest winter for your comparison you will most likely show winter warming only over a 50 year period . If you choose 1989 , like I did you will show cooling . If you forget about 1989 but look at the last two decades there no real warming trend at all , fluctuations yes but no real warming and if you look at the graph from 1910 to the present , there is no warming trend, fluctuations yes . For the Met Office , who clearly know all this ,to project winter warming using this data is misleading especially looking a century ahead .