Comments on Yesterday’s paean to Global Warming
Guest post by Dr. Richard Keen,
Meteorologist Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder
It’s like playing whac-a-mole. After every major storm or unusual (or even slightly interesting) weather event, some non-investigative reporter gets hold of the usual suspects to write an article about how it’s all due to global warming. Then it’s up to knowledgeable folk like Joe D’Aleo, Anthony Watts, Bill Gray, James Taylor, Steve Goddard, and many, many others to write a data-based rebuttal to “whac” the nonsense back down into its hole. But then, as in the game, it always pops up again. Today I’ll draw the short straw and try to whac the mole back down once more.
The article in question is a piece by Seth Borenstein (again) of AP (again) titled “Climate contradiction: Less snow, more blizzards” (again). Borenstein talked to Michael Oppenheimer, Mark Serreze, and other “leading federal and university climate scientists” (again). If you really want to read it, it’s at
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_SNOW_GLOBAL_WARMING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-18-11-33-15
But you might find the annotated version more rewarding:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/no_surprise_psuedo_scientists_now_blame_blizzards_on_warming/
Borenstein’s story starts off with a valid point:
“With scant snowfall and barren ski slopes in parts of the Midwest and Northeast the past couple of years, some scientists have pointed to global warming as the culprit.
“Then when a whopper of a blizzard smacked the Northeast with more than 2 feet of snow in some places earlier this month, some of the same people again blamed global warming.
“How can that be? It’s been a joke among skeptics, pointing to what seems to be a brazen contradiction.”
So far, so good. It IS a brazen contradiction. So what do the global warming apologists say?
Borenstein continues,
“But the answer lies in atmospheric physics. A warmer atmosphere can hold, and dump, more moisture, snow experts say.”
So they’re saying that since a warmer atmosphere can “hold” more moisture (technically quite incorrect in itself), there’s more moisture to produce more snow. How much moisture is there?
At -10C, aka 14F, each kilogram of air can “hold” (as they say) a maximum of 1.8 grams of water vapor. If all that condenses out as snow, you’ll get 1.8 grams of snow from that kilogram of air rising in a Low or along a front. That would likely be a cold, fluffy snow. Warm the air up to 0C (32F), and the water content of the air doubles to 3.8 grams. Then the same storm will produce twice as much snow, or at least twice as heavy a snow (since the warmer snow won’t be as fluffy). Most big snow storms occur with temperatures close to the freezing point.
Source: http://web.gccaz.edu/~lnewman/gph111/topic_units/Labs_all/Water%20Vapor%20Capacity%20of%20Air.pdf
Now let’s kick in some global warming and raise the temperature to +10C (50F). The water content doubles again to 7.6 grams, so the snow storms will again produce twice as much snow.
What? You say it can’t snow at 50 degrees F???? Well, then you know more physics than these “snow experts”!
The biggest snow storms occur at temperatures near freezing, and warming CANNOT make them any bigger because of two corollaries of a well-known physical law:
1. The freezing point of water is 0C (32F), and ice or snow cannot form above this temperature.
2. Short of a presidential executive order, the freezing point cannot be raised to allow for more moisture to be available.
Like the speed of light, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law, and it clearly states that warmer cannot equal more extreme snow.
Now, the AGW apologists will gin and jerry their models to violate these physical laws, but one can also make pigs fly on a computer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49wJAkz8X1M
Onwards….
“The United States has been walloped by twice as many of the most extreme snowstorms in the past 50 years than in the previous 60 years, according to an upcoming study…”
Well, you can look at the same data and draw different conclusions. May I refer you to a piece I wrote for the Science & Public Policy Institute, “ARE HUGE NORTHEAST SNOW STORMS DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING?”, at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/ne_storms.pdf
Simple plots of winter temperature and snowfall data for Philadelphia show two obvious things:
1. Colder winters have more snow and more big snow storms, in contradiction to the warming hypothesis. This would be obvious to most folk, but the warmers have a way for denying the obvious with clever theories.
2. Over the past 125 years there has been little or no trend in either winter temperatures or snowfall.
Less obvious, but apparent in closer scrutiny of the charts, is a small 60-year cycle in snow and temperature. These correspond well with the “Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation” (AMO), a huge oceanic cycle enveloping the entire Atlantic Ocean from the equator to Iceland. Joe D’Aleo has written extensively on this; just go to ICECAP.us, Wattsupwiththat.com, or other honest climate websites and do a search for combinations of “snow”, “AMO”, and the AMO’s Pacific cousin, “PDO”.
You can check this article, “Reliving the 1950s (and 1890s): the 60 year cycle” at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/reliving_the_1950s_and_1890s_the_60_year_cycle/
Although I was raised in Philadelphia, and was present for the regional climate shift from hurricanes in the 1950s to the cold snowy winters of the 60s (due to the AMO, of course), I realize not everybody considers the city the center of the universe. Expanding to the entire Northeast, NOAA’s “Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS)” also shows no overall change in the snow climate of the northeastern U.S. Read all about it at “Big Snows: Northeast U.S. and Colorado”
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/big_snows_northeast_us_and_colorado/
The Colorado part of that article has the same end point: giant storms in Colorado are not increasing or decreasing; out in the Rockies it’s all el Niño. More at:
“Thirty years in the Bull’s-eye: a climatology of meter-class snow storms in the Front Range foothills”
http://hydrosciences.colorado.edu/symposium/abstract_details_archive.php?abstract_id=155
Now movin’ on up to the South Side, Borenstein asks us to “take Chicago” (please!), which, along with the Northeast, has “been hit with historic storms in recent years”. The 2011 Blizzard was certainly impressive, with 21.2 inches of snow containing 1.57 inches of water equivalent. Not bad, but officially, it was a bit shy of 1967’s “Big Snow” (they didn’t use excessive superlatives like “superstorm”, “megastorm”, or “storm of the century” back then; “Big” was sufficient) which dumped 23.0 inches. More importantly, the water content of the storm was 2.40 inches, 53 percent greater than the recent blizzard. It would take 6C, or 11F, of global warming to produce that much more moisture, according to the warmers. Indeed, the Big Snow was warmer than the 2011 version, with temperatures close to freezing during the snow. Two days earlier Chicago enjoyed a record maximum of 65 degrees and the Midwest suffered its largest January tornado outbreak on record. One of the 32 tornadoes was a F3 monster in Wisconsin, the northernmost wintertime tornado in US history. I had moved to Chicago by then (follow the snow, I say), and although the ’67 storm fit perfectly the warming scenario now espoused by Serreze, Oppenheimer, and the like, I don’t recall anyone linking it to Global Warming 46 years ago. Not even Mayor Daley. Extreme weather is not new. Read more about these wild storms at:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=2011blizzard
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=67blizzard
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dvn/?n=01241967_tornadooutbreak
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lsx/?n=jan241967tornado
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_St._Louis_Tornado_Outbreak
There’s more nonsense in Borenstein’s article, but frankly, neither the taxpayer, the canola oil companies, or the Rockefellers pay me enough to spend all night refuting it all. Actually, they pay me nothing.
[Added/] And one more thing, about that “ragged edge”….
“Strong snowstorms thrive on the ragged edge of temperature – warm enough for the air to hold lots of moisture, meaning lots of precipitation, but just cold enough for it to fall as snow,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Increasingly, it seems that we’re on that ragged edge.”
Let’s look at some data to see if that’s the case. Here’s climatological means, 1971-2000, for three substantial cities supposedly on the “ragged edge”:
Taking the usual 10:1 snow to precipitation ratio, 31% of the precipitation falls as snow. That means most of the precipitation already falls as rain, and always has (at least since weather records began). That would place Boston, New York, and Philadelphia on the
warm side of Serreze’s “ragged edge”, a fact supported by the above freezing mean temperatures for these places. Any warming – should it occur – would push that “ragged edge” even farther north and away from the cities. That would mean more rain, less snow, and fewer big snow storms.
Since the winters aren’t getting warmer, it’s all a moot point. [/end addition]
The AGW gang summarize their apologetics by claiming they knew it all along.
“when Serreze, Oppenheimer and others look at the last few years of less snow overall, punctuated by big storms, they say this is what they are expecting in the future.
“It fits the pattern that we expect to unfold,” Oppenheimer said.
“Ten [unnamed] climate scientists say the idea of less snow and more blizzards makes sense: A warmer world is likely to decrease the overall amount of snow falling each year and shrink snow season.”
They’d have a point if they had said this five or ten years ago, before the recent round of big eastern storms. But they said no such thing. The last IPCC report claimed snowfall would decrease, and made no mention of larger snow storms in the northeastern US. In 2000, Oppenheimer himself lamented his daughter’s unused sled and that “the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling”.
New York Times 2000: “sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling”
Now Oppenheimer & Co. are trying to explain their way out of their dead wrong assessment without admitting the sad truth – that Global Warming, like Barney, is a dinosaur from their imaginations. And we – you – the taxpayer – are paying the AGW gang to cover their errors.
As for the changing climate,
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” — Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV
And the climatologists,
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782
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UPDATE 1PM PST: I’ve contacted AP by both email and telephone per this page here:
http://www.ap.org/company/contact-us
So far the email has been ignored. Perhaps others will have better luck at getting a correction. An upcoming story on WUWT will further illustrate why Seth Borenstein has made a grievous error.
I spoke with a person named Corelaee, and her response was to simply ask me to talk to Seth directly, which we know will be a waste of time. So I’ve asked to speak to someone who can intervene. Keeps your fingers crossed.
UPDATE2: 4PM PST I’ve added some new content per Dr. Keen’s request between the [Added/] [/end addition] tags. See also the related story below. – Anthony
Related articles
- Round Up: Meteorologists Slaps Down latest warmist claim of ‘Less snow = more blizzards’ — AP’s Seth Borenstein rebutted (climatedepot.com)
- New paper from NOAA demonstrates that El Niño has more impacts than climate on winter weather in the USA
What warming? And how can could they blame CO2 when its ability to create heat is logarithmic….it cannot over heat us….if it could all life on earth would not have developed in the first place as CO2 was 15 times todays levels 500 million years ago..
We have been cooling for 10,000 years…..Holocene Climatic Optimum
If we go back to the late 90’s the BBC was always on about the lack of snow for skiing in the Alps due to AGW….and when we get snow it is all caused by CO2.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
February 19, 2013 at 12:39 pm
“There was an ABC World News with Dianne Sawyer last night which copied this story. ABC did zero fact checking as far as I could tell. Instead they had several climate talking heads on to repeat the mantra.”
CBSnews had it up on their website for about two hours.
Mosher, your drive by shooting is tiring, especially when many of your comments indicate that you only have an approximate idea of weather phenomenons and their genesis. And when your half baked knowledge is pointed out: no more Mosher, gone.
– – – – – – – – –
Mark Bofill,
Appreciate your thought.
My goal was to be polite with trafamadore.
WRT your reference to ‘golf clap’, did you know that there are at least 4 or 5 different definitions of it? One is a quiet respectful upper society type of applause. Another is quiet sarcastic applause for a golfer who messed up a shot. The definition I find the most fun is ‘golf clap is a particularly virulent strain of Gonorrhea caused by illicit sexual intercourse with Tiger Woods’.
: )
That last definition and all others can be found at:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=golf%20clap
John
Mark Bofill says:
Not trying to kick trafamadore here, but still I must say that response was a work of art John (golf clap)
>>> May I simply quote from two sources of greater wisdom than me…
Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.
— Proverbs 26:4 (NKJV)
“Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference“
— commonly credited to Mark Twain, but could be Yogi Berra.
snaparooni says:
February 19, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Couldn’t, for example, a saturated air mass at 50F mix with a cold air mass at 10F to produce a large amount of snow at 30F?
>>> That happens all the time, but it won’t produce any excess amount of snow. As the 50F saturated (with 7.8 g/kg H2O) air cools down to 32F, everything that condenses out will fall as rain (since it’s above freezing), until it reaches 32F and starts freezing. But then the moisture content is back down to 3.8 g/kg, that good old limit for the amount that can make snow.
It’s hard to sneak around physical limits.
Gail Combs,
Thanks for your substantial reply.
I am on the same page as you on both the history of and the interpretation of the political / ideological warping of the ‘science’ supporting alarming AGW by CO2.
John
As one reads, the mind quickly fills in the words with clues from the shapes of the letters. Then as you focus on a word, it’s actual meaning comes forward into “present” thought.
I initially read “leading feral university climate scientists” in the last line.
Still chuckling.
– – – – – – – – – –
Richard Keen,
Loved you quotes.
And there is also this quote;
– “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
(from George Bernard Shaw)
And here are some wonderful stanzas / lines selected from Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’,
John
Matthew W says:
February 19, 2013 at 8:33 am
I don’t even bother reading “articles” from Seth anymore.
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Anything with the Tag Line “AP” or “REUTERS” has come to be synonymous with meaningless drivel to me so I look at the Tag Line and just skip the article or read it for amusement only if either of those appear.
Matt says:
February 19, 2013 at 9:06 am
“but one can also make pigs fly on a computer.”
With sufficient thrust one can make pigs fly in real life. Please note that I am not suggesting that flying pigs would be a good idea. 🙂
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This may be a bit out of place but anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be around the after math of a hog barn fire knows that pigs can fly quite a long way under their own power. But since the trajectory is unknown, it is quite dangerous. Kind of like a GCM model. 😉
[The mods note you did not specify the difference between flying, fleeing, and free-following pigs. Mod]
I remember the Chicago Blizzard of 1967. I was an undergraduate at the U of Chicago then. I remember how nice and warm it it was the day before. Kids were running around campus dressed like it was spring. Then Bang. The blizzard hit. We were stuck in the dorm all weekend. The Dorm ran out of heating oil by Sunday night and there was a bit of delay in getting it refilled. I also accidentally started a fire in a trash can. But airing the room out put a dent in its heat.
Walter Sobchak, very well put.
No wonder hype-whores like Sorenstein, Gore, and others want to push AGW in public, ’cause there’s typically very little time or tolerance for objective, scientific processes to be considered in an open, public forum full of non-scientists. Then again, AGW has NOTHING to do with science; it’s all about central planning, submitting society to the whims of central planners, debt and finance, rule changes to benefit the pushers and so-aligned.
Seth Boringsteen and everybody else knows AGW is a common scam like many of today’s crisis structures; full of emotion and hype for the sake of atypical folks (not observations, not facts). Unlike Boringsteen, I refuse to condemn society and submit to fear of the unknown simply because some fool talking head says to do so. And America will be far better off to dismiss their clownish act, perhaps even prosecute the frauds.
Warning, this post contains spoilers if you intend to see the stage play “Yes Prime Minister “ currently playing at the Sydney Opera House after a London West End run.
Like Adam who is the author of the link below which gives a taste of the “Yes Prime Minister” script, I saw the play – last night. The play I believe hilariously sums up to a tee the political narrative of global warming after poor old Prime Minister Jim Hacker is faced with the dilemma of having to distract the BBC from all his current woes by coming up with a super dooper story of international importance. And Sir Humphrey Appleby provides the solution.
A must for both sceptics and CAGW believers alike.
http://www.tameware.com/adam/global_warming/ypm.html
Moral To The Story.
Never talk to ‘Agent Orange’ deranged Vietnam ‘Failure’ Vets such as ‘Michael Oppenheimer, Mark Serreze’ among many others.
If you see them at AGU, just turn and walk in the opposite direction, very quickly.
Good advise.
XD
A few years ago on this site I commented that it was official “weather has now become climate” because of a story of a warm summer was caused by AGW. Of course the warming trend had flattened for over a decade before this summer and was told that you need many years of data to study a trend. Well it’s creeping up to 17 years now, still flat, more CO2, we get a cold/snowy winter and it’s NOW a sign of AGW…. Priceless
Even funnier…. I remember folks joking about if it got any colder they would blame THAT on AGW! hehe
Climate is now weather!! Bazinga!
Steven Mosher says:
February 19, 2013 at 8:17 am
It would be nice if you would tell us which IPCC document you are quoting. Seems a little suspicious. I downloaded the AR4 to see what it said – couldn’t match any phrases from your list. But, I did find these gems:
Alfred Alexander Feb 19 8:10 says
Whac-a-moling — isn’t that the green stuff you spread on a chip?
Alfred i like your mind.
Eugene WR Gallun
After the end of Kyoto, I took some time out from global warming … after all if countries with 85% of global emissions don’t believe in global warming, it is dead whatever our idiotic politicians think.
A month later and I’m wondering what all the fuss was about. These guys who believe in global warming are a bunch of idiots. But worse … so are the ones who get all het up about the guys who believe in global warming. MOST PEOPLE DON’T CARE, and it is VERY VERY OBVIOUS that global warming believers have the same credibility as UFO watchers and other nut-cases.
That doesn’t mean they don’t get publicity, but people know these academics are there to create filler material which people read when there’s no serious news.
What I’m trying to say is they are filling a necessary niche. There isn’t always enough economically viable news to fill the papers and some days due simply to the randomness of news stories … THEY HAVE TO MANUFACTURE NEWS.
40 years ago, government (or perhaps more accurately the media) wasted a hell of a lot of money on the idea of being able to control people through “mind control”. The press & media was full of it. Today the idea is completely forgotten (until you watch 1970s dramas).
Richard:
My apologies;
I lightened the mustard reference after decades of people reacting to the idea with disgust, (didn’t stop me from putting mustard on my pretzel). You are absolutely correct about the mustard. That is, unless you’re using some of that homemade genuinely sharp mustard from Lancaster PA. If that mustard is dripping off your pretzel, then your sinuses are also free flowing.
I forgot scrapple, well maybe, as I also left out hogshead cheese, smoked pork chops and many other Tri-State delicacies; (real snapping turtle soup anyone? Is good stuff, caught the turtle myself, so it is fresh!).
Hurricane Carol in Wildwood Crest; that must’ve been a worrying experience. During a fishing trip we visited a friend at his family’s house just off the boardwalk in Atlantic City and I asked why the bottom half of the room wasn’t painted. He responded that salt water had soaked into the walls during the hurricane and that he hadn’t found a paint that would stick to salt. The flood mark was about seven feet (2,1m) up from the floor, in a walk up brownstone row house; so maybe fifteen feet (5m) off the ground. Add in a few feet for an approximate sea level to flood mark of eightteen feet (6m). Yeah, that would be a frightening flood level in Wildwood Crest. Them brownstones were razed for some cheap casinos…
Good Post!
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”; Jorge Santayana y Borrás circa 1905 in ‘vol. 1; The Life of Reason’
Could be rephrased as, Those who adjust the past to affect the present are condemned to repeat past failures and misfortunes.
Just realised that there is a lot more in common with this idea of “mind control”, brain washing, etc. etc. that believed almost as scientific doctrine in the 1970s and global warming today. Then the real science that the human mind was a machine and could be affected by e.g. drugs, led to wild speculation … which became ingrained as if it were actual science … that humans could manipulate the mind.
When that slowly but surely proved not only to be a ridiculous idea, but the problem was not that the mind as a whole could be easily altered, but real scientists found that they couldn’t alter even small bits of the mind at all easily or safely … the media gave up.
Likewise … changing the climate … has always been on the “wish list” of humanity. We’ve always been intrigued by the idea of stopping storms, bringing rain where there is drought. Just as the real science that humans can alter the mind (but it is hellishly difficult) sparked the non-science of mind-control. So the real science that humans can affect the climate in very small ways, has again been taken completely out of proportion by the nut-cases in society who now try to suggest we can completely alter the climate.
So here is a prediction for you …. in 2030, families watching old dramas from the 2000s will hear strange references to something called “global warming” and the kids will think it quaint the odd things they used to believe and the parents/grandparents will …. I tell a lie. The kids will leave the room leaving the parents to goggle at the 20year old stars who they used to fancy and realise their kids are/have passed that age.
What is the answer on the question Will it snow more from a m^3 of water saturated air initially at 20°C than from a m^3 of water saturated air at 10°C ?
Well the answer is Maybe
To produce the snow one has to first cool the m^3 from its initial temperature to 0°C and then to transform the available water to snow.
What is important to understand is that during this cooling, the water will condense at every step even above 0°C.
Only during this stage it will transform in rain, not snow.
Mathematically it is very easy :
mCpdT + Lwater.dm1 + Lsnow/water.dm2 + L snow/direct.dm3 = dQ (amount of cooling available)
where :
L are the latent heats for the 3 possible phase changes.
dm1 is the amount of vapour transformed in rain
dm2 is the amount of rain transformed in snow/ice
dm3 is the amount of water vapour directly transformed in snow without going through rain first
It appears clearly that this differential equation is totally constrained by dQ e.g the cooling power available.
This available cooling is what every meteorologist knows as being the front dynamics. This cooling is provided by a mass of cold air. With a large mass of very cold air, all initially available water will finish in snow. With a smaller and warmer mass of cold air only a fraction of the available water will finish in snow.
And this simple remark explains why the question is actually very difficult and why the answer is “Maybe”.
It is because knowing the temperature and water content of the humid warm air which are represented by the left hand side of the equation is totally insufficient to give an answer.
One also needs the amount and the temperature of the cold air which meets it and cools it thus creating snow (right hand side of the equation).
As the GCM are unable to model correctly these dynamics, they can give both answers depending on the details. Either : in a warmer world there will be (regionally) more snow or : in a warmer world there willl be (regionally) less snow .
For this reason a fair conclusion is that the GCM don’t know, IPCC doesn’t know and people who pretend they know are charlatans.
I can’t resist to mention and explain an amusing paradox already noticed by many posters.
You have all read and heard that “In a warmer world it will snow more because there will be more water in the air.”
Well to make more snow you need not only more water but also more cooling power.
As I explained above this cooling power is provided by a mass of cold air.
So to make more snow one needs more cold air too.
That’s why we can restate the above claim by : “In a warmer world there will be more cold air”
Amusing isn’t it 🙂
Curiously, it’s snowing a lot of big snow flakes right now @-7.8C, but the radar shows the snow as streamers off of Lake Erie, lake effect snows. We get lots of lake effect snows, when the lake has open water, cold dry air sucks huge amounts of moisture out of the lake, dumping it down wind of the shore. We live on the edge of the “snow belt”, places near the lake will get 5-10 times the snow during winter as areas 50-75 miles south. Buffalo NY is pretty famous for it’s snow, those are mostly lake effect snows. But once the lake freezes, that turns the faucet off.
Confucious was pithiest: Argue with a fool and there are two fools arguing.