CEI is taking John Holdren to task over his “polar vortex” video.
In a post today at globalwarming.org we have this:
DC’s cherry trees hit their official peak blossom date last Thursday, April 10th. That’s the latest in the year that the Capital has experienced peak blossoming in over two decades. (For you botanical historians, the last time that peak blossoming occurred this late or later was in 1993, when the event fell on April 11.)
In 2013 the blossoms were almost as late, hitting their peak on April 9. That was a pretty dramatic change from 2012, when the date fell on March 20. This change was most disconcerting to two groups: tourists trying to plan their trips to DC in advance, and global warming alarmists who trumpeted every earlier-than-expected cherry blossom as yet further proof of global warming. In fact, in a sizzling multi-part blog post series last year, followed by dozens of readers, we charted peak blossom dates against global warming data. We even had graphs. (See Adam Sandberg, Peak Bloom Is Here – DC’s Global Warming Canary Lands with Frost on its Feet, April 15, 2013.)
White House Science adviser John Holdren made some ridiculous and baseless claims about the “polar vortex” being tied to climate change in a hastily produced “never let a good crisis go to waste” style video on YouTube. Readers may recall our January 8th WUWT story:
The White House gets into the ‘polar vortex’ climate change blame business
So as the post at globalwarming.org posits:
We suspect that Holdren’s agency, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), may now have a second video in the works in this Blame-Everything-On-Global-Warming series. Perhaps they’ll call it Delayed Peak Blossoming Explained in 2 Minutes.
I get word from our friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that they are taking the claims made by Holdren in that January video to task. CEI is targeting two claims made in WH videos and blog posts:
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of
extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues.”
We also seek to correct a January 8th OSTP blog post by OSTP Senior Communications Advisor and Web Editor Becky Fried that features the above Polar Vortex Explained video.
We request a correction of its claim that “we also know that this week’s cold spell is of a type there’s reason to believe may become more frequent in a world that’s getting warmer, on average, because of greenhouse-gas pollution.”
Despite the widespread criticism that this claim has received, the video and a related claim are still up on OSTP’s website. The CEI petition uses OSTP’s own regulations (and the Information Quality Act) to request that this misinformation be corrected.
The late onset of cherry blossoms in DC made CEI wonder whether Holdren would soon be releasing a video attributing that to global warming as well.
CEI has a short blog post on this at http://www.globalwarming.org/2014/04/14/will-cherry-blossoms-get-sucked-into-the-polar-vortex/
The blog post links to the OSTP correction request, which can also be found at:
We expect OSTP to shortly post the request on its website.
Just a reminder, we’ve experienced all this before:
In 1977, a nearly identical pattern set up with warmth in Alaska, drought in California, and cold in Florida. Arctic sea ice was near a peak at the time. (h/t Steve Goddard)
And then there’s the winter of 1963, the most “savage winter of the century” according to Life Magazine on February 8th, 1963:
And this illustration is from that Life Magazine article on page 33. Gee, that pattern looks familiar.
Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=o0EEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA31-IA2&vq=jet%20stream&pg=PA31-IA2#v=snippet&q=jet%20stream&f=false
Those who do not study weather history are condemned to bloviate it as yet another effect of “global warming”.
temps still in a downtrend until 2000 high taken out
http://jauntycyclist.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/feb-global-surface-mean-temp-anomalies/
For those that want to see those weather maps from that bitter cold Winter of 76/77, go to this link, to get reananalysis data/weather maps that go back to 1948. It’s actually a useful link to review previous extreme weather events and patterns.
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ncepreanal/
For the CURRENT DATE, type in 1976 for the YEAR. For the MONTH: 12, for the day 25-(Christmas) then advance the day(+) one frame at a time and watch through the entire month of January 1977.
If you want to run a loop, then you must put in and END DATE also.
Note: Huge upper level ridge at high latitudes, Polar Vortex dropping very far south, similar to this past Winter.
I think going back a month earlier, to late November, allows you to see the evolution of this pattern while it was just starting to gain atmospheric traction. There was a severe drought in California during that Winter also and not by coincidence.
My point the last 4 months has been that it’s absurd to say that increasing CO2 caused this to happen in January 2014 because it matches up with a belief system but the same thing happening 37 years ago was from natural causes.
January 1977 is just one month to use as an example, there were many other instances of this happening in the past.
The same can be said about other weather extremes in the last decade……………give me the extreme event/pattern and most of the time, I can show you something similar or even more extreme happening in the past.
How in the @ur momisugly#!! $##! Does warming cause cooling? What is wrong with these idiots? And who believes this nonsense other than Al Gore?
Shaka when the @ur momisugly##!!@ur momisugly$!##!! $$ walls fell!!!! Good god man. WTF?
David Ball says:
April 17, 2014 at 1:14 pm
A climate scientist and a Co2 molecule walk into a bar,…….
Barkeep says, what’ll it be?
Climate scientist says “whiskey, straight up”.
The CO2 molecule says, “you would”.
“…the last time that peak blossoming occurred this late or later was in 1993”
—
You mean that some things caused by global warming are not irreversible? It seems that life on this planet is highly adaptable to changes in the climate, and does so rather quickly. Who knew?
On the other hand, if global warming can cause both heat and cold, flooding and drought, ice loss and ice gain, then why can’t it cause trees to blossom both earlier and later in the year? Carbon dioxide is an intelligent but evil molecule that loves to play tricks on climate scientists. I can’t wait to see what new tricks it has up its sleeves. The entertainment is almost worth the cost of admission. Almost.
Isn’t it a subjective decision as to when peak blossoms has occured. Maybe we should check the bias of whomever made that decision.
I like how in Warmism everything is the new norm. If it’s warm one winter, new norm, cold winter, new norm, early blossoms, new norm, undulating jet stream, new norm, climate science becoming hysterically sensationalized, oh this last one has been the norm for a while.
I just heard a discussion on CNN about how the Koch brothers are paying the cherry trees to bloom later and thus embarrassing all of the true scientists and their acolytes. SARC (Just in case.)
For months I have been comparing this Winter to that of 1977, which I remember vividly as a high school classmate of Bill McKibben, in Lexington, MA. That season was capped with 10″ of very heavy, wet snow on May 9-10, when the leaves were already out on the trees. The extra load of the snow on leaves brought down limbs and trees in large numbers, leaving thousands without power for nearly a week.
Yeah, so what? This also out of DC…http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/president27sclimateactionplan.pdf Read it a weep. As far as the executive branch is concerned Climate Change is a huge problem now. They have no interest in cherry blossoms. They “know” that “carbon pollution” is a toxin like mercury and arsenic and say as much. Could they be thinking of CO. Can’t be CO2, it’s not a poison and not toxic. Wonder if B.O. has ever heard of WUWT?
I still find it shocking that after telling us that the weather is not the same as the climate – they are now doing the same. It is a sign of desperations.
They told us global warming would lead to warmer winters, early springs, cherry ‘picking’ blossom bloom etc. Now they insist that ONE COLD OR HOT WINTER is positive proof of global warming OR climate change OR disruptive, naughty, badly behaved weather fronts. This is getting silly now.
The most outrageous example of cherrypicking I ever did see.
Damn. Jimbo beat me to it.
Someone dial 911!!!
Someone dial 911!!!
We must act THEN!!! Governments must act then before it’s too late. The planet was screaming.
I checked that LIFE magazine from 1963. The article ends with this statement: “But last week at least one U.S. Weather Bureau spokesman dropped a chilling thought. The whole world is generally beginning to get a little bit colder, he said, and this winter might be the frigid forebear of worse ones to come.” Plus ça change…
Haaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaa.
Japanese cherry blossom blooms were confused by climate chage caused by something or other.
We must act now!
The question that needs to be asked is:
Why didn’t the warmist climate modelers warn us?
They can see the future! I hear the regional climate forecasts are really good now!
So.
Forecasting a Polar Vortex in 2014 should be much easier than forecasting the climate in 2100; due to inevitable error accumulation in an iterative model.
It’s quite maddening that the corrupt press lets them get away with their preposterous pseudoscience for so long now.
This is NOT the weather. It is positive proof of GLOBAL WARMING and we must act now!
All this in one relatively small country. Whoever choses to cherry pick cherry blossom bloom dates to show global warming is mad. I have picked the best cherries by using ‘reductio ad absurdum’.
Funny that when cherry trees bloomed later in the spring a few years ago some claimed that was proof of global warming, yet deny that a global MWP was confirmed by studies of historical cherry blossoming dates in Japan:
http://repository.osakafu-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10466/11600/1/2010000033.pdf
Studies of cherry blooming dates in Japan also confirm cooling occurred there during LIA.
SR
Interesting because we are still experiencing summer weather patterns in Western Australia.
Plus the Great Lakes freezing late, Arctic sea ice extent Sept 2013 growth on 2012, general colder winters in the NH, Antarctica sea ice extent not normal, global sea ice kinda normal etc. This is climate change or the weather. I don’t really care as long as Warmists are forced to face their demons.
I find it so odd that all this is happening just after the HOTTEST DECADE ON THE ‘RECORD’. Mmmmm.
Jimbo, your references to Cherry blossoming dates in Japan posted while I was writing my post, so mine were not intended as thunder theft nor reply to your posts. I do think, though that I should note that the studies by Aono used blooming dates from many, many years, garnered mainly from the dates of the annual cherry blossom festival in Tokyo, Japan.
SR
Global warming used to be about global SURFACE temperature warming. It was easy to understand.
Global Warming became Climate Change TM.
Climate Change became Climate Disruption.
Climate Change became weired weather.
Climate Change became cold, warm or average weather events.
Today Climate Change means anything they want it to mean. This is no longer science but a cult. A cult driven by greedy wealthy folks looking to empty the pockets of millions of people via a transparent scam lead by the IPCC. Don’t fall for it, reach for your back pocket. Follow the money >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Has anyone compared NOAA’s three-month track record against those of the Weatherbell like the article from January?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/senior-meteorologist-on-extended-usa-cold-blast-wow-f-ing-wow/
Steve, just do your stuff. Our enemy is Goliath, we are Davids. I have NO fossil fuel funding and it’s a bloody travesty.