A very odd thing happened in Science. Turns out a famous weatherman has been forecasting highs in the 60s then 70s for New York City all winter long. But the temperature never rose above the single digits, teens, twenties, and thirties.
One day a writer at the New York Post wrote an article telling people not to trust the weatherman, who, it turned out, had issued a prediction for the following day for a “High of 80!”
Climatologists stationed at NASA on the Upper West Side were incensed that a non-scientist would interfere with Science. So the climatologists spoke with the weatherman, who said he was basing his predictions on a sophisticated computer model. The weatherman admitted his difficulties, but said his model would have performed great if only he had better measures of surface snow cover.
This reasoning wholly convinced the climatologists who held a press conference at which they insisted, “Whoever disagrees with this weatherman is a science denier. The weatherman is using a sophisticated computer model, which can only get better since we have provided the weatherman with New & Improved! measures of surface snow cover.”
Cowed, the press skittered away, went home and put on their shorts to await the promised warmth. But the next day the high was only 16oF. And for the next week it was bitterly cold, yet the weatherman went on predicting a heatwave. This raised eyebrows, but since nobody wanted to be called a denier, they didn’t insist the weatherman was wrong.
The climatologists suspected, however, that something wasn’t quite right. So they called another meeting with the weatherman. He admitted he had incorporated the New & Improved! surface snow cover measurements, but that hadn’t helped much. And besides, there wasn’t anything wrong after all. The model was still great—better than great—but it was natural variability that was to blame for the wayward observations. “Nobody,” he said, “Can anticipate natural variability.”
Again, the climatologists were convinced by this argument and they called another press conference. “The model this weatherman is using is correct,” they said. “It is really a quite excellent model. But natural variability interfered with observations.”
A man in the audience, a non-tenured engineering professor, was perplexed. He was bold enough to ask, “But that doesn’t make any sense. Natural variability is what the weather is. What you’re really saying is that the model does a poor job of representing the weather.”
“That is false,” the climatologists said. “The model is terrific. From whom do you receive your funding?”
The engineering professor said, “Well, partly from a company that manufactures a specialized product. But what does that matter? Your model said the temperature would be high and instead it was low. That can only mean the model is wrong.”
Now the engineering professor didn’t know it, but his Dean was watching the press conference. The Dean was embarrassed that he had a science denier in his department and the next day he moved to have the young professor terminated. A reporter (shivering like mad and dressed in a t-shirt) heard about the firing and asked the climatologists for their opinion.
“That this man was fired is proof of his incompetence. He wasn’t even a meteorologist. He obviously had a conflict of interest by receiving money from companies that might benefit from his work. This proves the model the weatherman is using is a good one.” And the reporter believed.
Meanwhile, a team of scientists argued that the model didn’t work and they offered a suggestion why it might be busted. They published their thoughts in a science journal, which caught the attention of the small fraction of the public who were tired of having to wear skimpy clothes in frigid temperatures merely to prove they were not science deniers.
The climatologists quickly called another conference to assure the public that all was well in hand. “The team’s suggestion of why the weatherman’s model is broken can’t possibly be right. Therefore the weatherman’s model must be a good one. Only science deniers can deny this.”
The weatherman continued predicting hot air, but only cold air was to be seen. Some in the public grumbled louder. So the climatologists contacted the state authorities. The governor and state legislature were brought in, as were educational, union, and business leaders. All begin promoting the climatologists’ message that the weatherman was right and the weather wrong. The president of the United States eventually came to the rescue with an official list of Science Deniers. He said that those who love Science should “go after” the deniers.
Which they did. And then everybody died of pneumonia.
Quaint tale. The Boy who cried “DENIER”.
Yes, I also immediately thought of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”!
“Yes, I also immediately thought of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”!”
And the boy who cried, “ICPP!”
But it was just running down his Leg…and that is another story
I like Animal Farm where some pigs were more equal than others.
Brilliant analogy
Somehow I think it would benefit from having the modeller also hold undisclosed large holdings in the pharma companies for pneumonia vaccines and treatments. It’s the undisclosed conflicts of interest driving this nonsense.
Yes, and with a happy ending.
Totally agree, too bad there aren’t 10 gold stars to “click” on.
Bit unfair to make out that it’s the weatherman who gets it wrong (as I’m sure Anthony would agreee).
What is the difference between a meteorologist and a climate scientist? When a meteorologist is wrong, he loses his job; when a climate scientist is wrong, he gets another grant.
As they say, “To err is human, but to really § ‰♣ up, you need a government.”
Ah yes, but the theme seems to be “you need a government sponsored model”.
“Written observations from the period of the Maunder Minimum referred to the wind coming from the east during particularly cold winters, which strengthened the team’s “blocking” hypothesis.
The way in which solar activity affects the behaviour of blocking episodes is linked to the amount of ultraviolet (UV) emissions being produced by the Sun.
Solar UV heats the stratosphere (20-50km above the surface), particularly the equatorial stratosphere. This results in a temperature gradient, which leads to the formation of high level winds.
“The change in solar activity undoubtedly changes the stratospheric winds,” said Professor Lockwood.
Studies have shown that the state of the stratosphere can make a considerable difference to what happens in the troposphere, which is where the jet stream occurs, Professor Lockwood explained.
“There has been some quite simple modelling that indicated that heating the equatorial stratosphere with more UV would actually move the jet streams a little bit, by just a few degrees.
“That, of course, has the potential to change the behaviour of the jet streams – and that is the sort of thing that we think we are seeing.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8615789.stm
17 km polar vortex.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-157.40,91.70,344
Do you really blockade works “locally”?
An enjoyable fictional homily. It must be fictional as no weatherman or climatologist could possibly be as stupid in real life as those in this fictional story, right?
No. No, of course not. 😉
I am reminded of a story a co-worker told of a TV weatherman in Denver in the late 60’s / early 70’s. Seems he was almost always wrong, so much that the residents could depend on it. If he said it would be sunny and clear, better take the raingear. Forecast of rain this weekend, go ahead and plan the picnic. Everyone was happy. Then a big surge of outsiders moved in, didn’t know about the system and got him taken off the air. The results, they when from 95% of what not to expect to 60% of knowing what to expect. The old timers that knew the code were not happy.
His forecast should have been: “Cloudy otherwise clear”
I have posted this before – but at about eight or nine, I and three co-pupils forecast weather to Mrs Elam’s class (at a school in London); our take – in Spring, I think – was that tomorrow will be just like today.
We [Dicky, Vil, Uppy and me] did this for a week – and I think we were as good as the Met. Office.
I would still like to know when the Met Office [or any other forecaster] beat ‘same as today’ in temperate climes like the UK over – say – three consecutive months.
Auto
Melbourne has a $24billion desalinisation plant to prove you wrong.
Oddly enough there is a commercial on TV recently in Ontario (I think) – A weatherman who predicts a sunny, warm day, only to come outside and find it snowing heavily.
I think someone in one advertising agency is a Skeptic….
The most famous ‘epic fail’ weather forecast in England is that by Michael Fish on 15th October 1987.
Weather forecasts in England are not interactive phone-in programmes where members of the public give their own opinions. So it was odd when, the now infamous weather presenter Michael Fish said “Earlier on today a woman rang the BBC to say she’d heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you’re watching, don’t worry there isn’t ”
It was also odd, because we don’t get hurricanes, ever.
But Michael Fish’s words of reassurance have passed into the national consciousness.
From Wikipedia
We don’t know who the woman who phoned in was.
I fully remember that day, night and the following morning morning! Thanks Mr. Fish. I can’t believe this, it’s actually on YouTube!!
To be fair to forecasters and public officials, the 1987 hurricane was an example of the storm suddenly getting more intense as it arrived in Southern England.
There have several cases in the US the past few years where serious storms have been forecast on the East coast, warnings have been issued and then the storm was less bad than expected.
Reality is: sometimes you’re going to get it wrong.
Reality is: sometimes you’re going to get it wrong.
==============
a coin toss gets it wrong less often than the climate models. this takes real skill and suggests that whatever the models predict, bet on the opposite being true.
ferdberple
February 27, 2015 at 5:35 am
A 50%/50% chance from a meteorologist’s perspective is quire a high probability. Like playing Russian roulette with 3 rounds loaded in the chamber.
Reality is: sometimes you’re going to get it wrong.
==============
The modellers think reality is what gets it wrong.
I think the woman’s son was studying the weather charts and told his mother to stay at home because it looked like a severe storm was on the way. So she called in to the BBC and was mocked on TV that night.
P.S. She did choose her son’s advice over that of the BBC and suffered no ill effects.
For me, the most infamous weather forecast was in Maine when I was going to college. The local Channel 5 weatherman said that there was a light dusting of snow coming in over the weekend – “you’ll be able to sweep it out of the driveway with a broom.” 36 hours and 40 inches of snow on the level – 6 feet or more in the drifts later, the light dusting finally stopped.
Gaia? 😉
@ MikeB “we don’t know who the woman that phoned was” … Gaia?;)
How about this one in 1979 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Fastnet_race
Sarah Jane?
Yes that is (or had been this winter) a regular commercial in Ontario and was an ad for an SUV. At least when he picked up his freezing wife/girlfriend at the corner, in the snow, his next prediction was for “an expensive meal” or not a threat.
I think some of the idea is modeled on the poor forecasting by a major network here, but the intent is to show it is best to be prepared with a reliable SUV.
http://youtu.be/6oTG-6U6YGs
At the time, I felt quite sorry for the Met Office because I never expected their models to have sufficient skill and thought they were doing the best they could. But they copped a lot of grief.
I think it may have marked a turning point where they decided they were better off predicting disaster than actually trying to tell the truth as they saw it. As a result, I now trust their weather predictions less.
If the Met Office predicts bad weather and they’re wrong, nobody gets hurt. If they predict good weather and they’re wrong, chances are somebody gets hurt. Better to play it safe and err on the side of pessimism. Or use loaded dice and a bad penny.
Otter, you may enjoy this vid on Canadian weather forecasting.
We will always have Environment Canada’s (motto – Cloudy with a chance of making stuff up.) +1 degree weather near the end of the 7-day forecast to give us hope.
My wife and I were acquainted in the late 1970s with a local weatherman in Terre Haute, IN, named Dave Kirk, who often spoke about the vagaries of actually predicting the future (which tomorrow’s weather assuredly is). He said, “My biggest worry is when folks have to shovel eight inches of partly cloudy.” While Dave was an excellent local weatherman, he did have the occasional missed forecast–as many weathercasters still do, even with far more sophisticated and comprehensive gear to work with.
It would have improved the article if he or she gave us a time frame other than an old picture from the Godfather era.
…or instead used the image of the War Room from ‘Dr Strangelove.’
Paul: My guess is that as the head pic is marked IWM, I figure it’s from the Imperial War Museum. I think it shows a pre-sortie briefing for air-crews during WWII.
It won’t be a pre-mission briefing because (a) all the top table are in civvies (b) none of the audience are in uniform or flying kit but most telling (c) the map display is far too wide ranging and large scale from Moscow on the left, Italy in the middle to India on the right. More likely it’s some sort of strategic conference – but the lack of uniforms is puzzling.
Harry: Good guess
PRESS GETS PICTURE OF AUSTRALIA AT WAR: PRESS CONFERENCE HELD AT THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION, LONDON, ENGLAND, UK, 1944
In the Ministry of Information conference hall at Senate House, journalists listen to speeches given by three members of a delegation of British Newspaper Proprietors, who have just returned from Australia. Left to right, the panel are: Sir Neville Pearson, Sir Walter Layton, Mr Ernest Thirtle (parliamentary secretary to the MoI), Mr Samuel Storey MP and Mr J H Brebner (director of the MoI news division).
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205195748
Unfortunately, most of the characters in this little parody will not recognise themselves and so will carry on their merry way.
This graphic goes very nicely with the above post. The story is more or less where we are now. No matter what the evidence they insist they are right or will be right – then move the goalposts as usual.
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
This image should be added to the following wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Many thanks to William Briggs for writing this, and to Anthony for cross posting it.
You forgot to add that the climatologists ran it through their models too and that, when adjusted to account for the increase in co2, it was indeed the hottest temperatures ever modeled.
“You forgot to add that the climatologists ran it through their models too each model generated a totally different result some very much hotter and some slightly cooler but the climatologists averaged the results of all the models and that average ‘temperature’, when adjusted to account for the increase in co2, it was indeed the hottest temperatures ever modeled.”
Please do not conflate “climatologist” with “climate modeller”. An important distinction.
Cheers.
Climastrologists ?
Good allegory, but leaves out the part where it is the people’s fault that it “will” be so warm, and that they need to all make sacrifices, lowering their living standards even if already low, “for the good of the planet”.
Below is a WUWT post that tells the real story of the cattle killing movement of the 19th century Xhosa of South Africa. After suffering defeats and subjugation from the British the following is what happened.
This is where we are headed with the war on co2.
The cattle killing true story continues:
The failure of the prophecy is blamed on the deniers. Never does it occur to the believers that the prophecy itself might be at fault. Each failure of the prophecy simply reinforces the belief that someone else is to blame. Never do the believers consider that the problem lies in their belief system.
Sounds familiar somehow. Almost like a pattern that is repeated time and time again throughout history. Until the false belief leads the system to collapse, and a new system replaces the old.
Very funny, but you forgot the “We are talking GLOBAL – New York City is not the globe, weather is not climate, extreme weather is caused by CO2 emissions, what is happening is exactly what the model predicts” cliches.
But it was a “computer model!” Al Gore has assured me that computer models are “very sophisticated” and that we should faith in them, since Al Gore said they are “very sophisticated.” And we all know that Al Gore knows science, after all he invented that inter-web device thing
That’s how Enron accounting was described. “Very sophisticated”
Ah, but you are leaving out a key part of this, and one that actually happens without any exaggeration.
As you note and as I believe although it is on a somewhat anecdotal basis, weather forecasts these days seem to have a built in high bias in their temperature estimates, generally a bias of around 1-2 F or 1 C. I have observed this, day after day, on the Weather Underground forecasts for Durham, for example. There are two problems with this. One is the obvious statistical one that if the weather prediction was as accurate as it should be, it would have zero bias and be too high as often as too low, but without a set of data to analyze to prove it, I almost never see it being too low but too high is “all the time”.
The second is more important and insidious. People don’t actually go back and look at what the weather was. The forecast in the newspaper or on the web is their perception of the temperature on any given day. If WU says (as it does today) that we’ll have a high of 42 (though on their own running forecast graph the high is forecast to be 40 F) then to most people that is what the high temperature will have been even if it never gets over 38F. Ditto for the lows, only worse. I often see that the low temperature for today is (say) 32 F even though the temperature outside at the time I’m reading the day’s forecast is 27 F. They can’t even hindcast the daily high/low temperature, and somebody who got up an hour later might look at the temperature outside of 32 and go “Yeah, dead on”. (It’s been very amusing looking at the nearly total inaccuracy of WU’s prediction of air pressure, BTW — the running graph nearly always has a huge discontinuity at the line representing the present.)
So you see, there is a purpose to the too-high forecasts. It perpetuates the illusion of GW. Of course on the good side, they are just predicting the weather that we are supposed to be having 50 years from now and it is amazingly non-catastrophic (or no more so than usual).
Sigh,
rgb
Before you condemn them, check the minimum temperatures
They may be using a trick of perception. If you give a low of 50 and a high of 80, people think: temperatures 50-80 and if it is to 55-79, they think “Accurate”. However, if you predict low of 60 and high of 78 and the the temperatures are 55-79, people think that you were wrong despite having the exact same error on your two measurements.
If the minimums are 1-2C high too, it could be a warm bias in the model. However, if they are 1-2C low, they are expanding their range to avoid being considered “wrong”
Weather underground is run by one of the biggest alarmists’ out there….
At one time, about a decade ago, I thought WU was the most comprehensive weather site. About 3 or 4 years ago the alarmist CAGW propaganda began to reach a feverish pitch on the site. It was like a warmists hive and they would seek to indoctrinate the children and spawn new warmists.
I have never returned to the site and began to use wxweb at MeteoStar instead. Unfortunately it looks like they are in the process of becoming a fee based site, so that option may be limited in the future. For me, a visit to WU is akin to financially backing the CAGW position.
rgb we have this constantly on our ozzie ABC TV weather where ‘above average temperatures’ is what one hears but very rarely ‘below average’ Even the predicted temps for the next day are often said that they will set a record.Of course the next day the temps are nowhere near the predicted values. FW’s
In Oklahoma City it seems that they are generally pretty temperature accurate when it’s cloudy but don’t seem to factor in the sun’s warming when not cloudy so tend to undershoot on sunny days.
The one big mistake noted during the 1999 F5 tornado is when one TV station was advising going to the center of the house and 2 other stations were telling people to leave their homes and go to shelters. Not bright to stay in a house with an F5 approaching unless there is no choice.
Dr Brown … I have noticed the same high bias in the Australian BoM forecasts for Brisbane. To my mind this is a psychological ploy to get people to talk about “high” temperatures and believe that the temperatures are increasing.
Greetings RGB,
I think you are being a tiny bit too harsh, (but only a little). I have noticed the same effect for the local Chicagoland forecasts, but over the years I have come to attribute the discrepancy to Urban Heat Island effects.
A while back I used to live a few blocks from 42N,88W … https://www.google.com/maps/@42,-88,13z … and if you look at the map in satellite view you will see an excellent example of the Urban Heat Island effect in one google map panel. The officially quoted thermometer for Chicago is located amongst the concrete runways at O’Hare field, four miles to the east. Just a mile to the east is the world’s largest industrial park, almost completely covered with buildings and asphalt parking lots. The center of the map is typical suburbia, with about 50%-50% coverage between homes and roadways versus green lawns and open parks. And just a mile to the northwest is the Busse Woods Forest Preserve, which includes almost 7 square miles of forests and lakes, with just a trace of parking lots and bike paths. The prevailing winds are west to east.
Anybody want to guess at the temperature difference between Busse Woods and O’Hare airport, just 6 miles away? It usually averages about 6°F. I have measured it exceeding 10°F.
Some of the local bicycle racing teams use the north south boulevard dividing the residential half of the village from the industrial park for interval training during the spring and summer months, as the traffic is light and the road is just long enough for good interval work at +30 mph. After an hour or so, we head off to the forest preserve for a few cool down laps on the bike path. Most of us ride with a Garmin Edge GPS or similar device to record workout telemetry, and many of these devices have built-in thermometers. As we leave the edge of the industrial park and traverse the residential portion of the village, the temperature immediately drops about 2°F. As we enter the forest preserve, the temperature drops another 2 or 3°F. The north end of the preserve in the deepest part of the forest can be another 2 or 3°F cooler yet, especially in the hollows near the water around sunset on calm days. The temperature gradient is such a permanent and reliable landscape feature that many of us bring arm warmers to the training rides well into June just to make sure we do not get chilled on our cool down laps.
Those of us living near the forest preserve all think the weatherman is nuts, as the temperatures at our homes never get close to the official forecast. Those living on the east side of the village near the industrial park think the weatherman does a better job. Those of us working at a business in the industrial park right next to the airport think the weatherman is spot on.
The astonishing thing to remember is that NONE of the buildings visible on the map were present in 1950, as the landscape was predominantly farm land west of O’Hare (then called Orchard Field, or ORD), so the thermometer had to read at least 6°F cooler back then. (Not to worry though, as I’m sure the official record as been “adjusted” correctly. Ha!)
I suspect you might be a victim of similar geography, as I note that Duke is on the western edge of Durham and looks to include the last few blocks of civilization before the town breaks up into farms and forests.
A bit rough but in the right direction.
Matt Briggs’ farce is not that different from what really happened in the past two winters in North America.
The US National Weather Service/Climate Prediction Center (NWS/CPC) and Environment Canada (EC) both predicted a warm-to-moderate winter of 2013-14, and it was bitterly cold in the eastern 2/3 of North America. Both NWS and EC utterly failed in their predictions for last winter.
Again for this winter of 2014-2015, NWS and EC predicted a mild winter and again it has been bitterly cold over the eastern 2/3 of North America. Both NWS and EC utterly failed in their predictions AGAIN this winter.
It is apparent that NWS and EC have NO predictive track record, and do not even learn from their mistakes.
It is notable that some private weather forecasters accurately predicted the last two cold winters as early as July. Both NWS and EC apparently rely on big computer models to do their forecasting. The successful private forecasters that I know use analogue models – techniques that have been utilized for a very long time.
Allan: Do you the links to those predictions readily to hand? They make an interesting demonstration and extension of rgbatduke’s point.
Hi Bernie,
I have our PowerPoint sent to warn the USA and Canadian governments but I do not know how to post that.
I will ask for help and may be able to respond to your question..
You could also check on http://www.icecep.us as there may be something there.
I believe I posted two if the duelling forecasts on open thread weekend last week. I’ll go look for them.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2014/20141016_winteroutlook.html
NOAA: Another warm winter likely for western U.S., South may see colder weather
Repeat of last year’s extremely cold, snowy winter east of Rockies unlikely FAIL
October 16, 2014
Temperature.
(Credit: NOAA)
Below average temperatures are favored in parts of the south-central and southeastern United States, while above-average temperatures are most likely in the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii and New England FAIL, according to the U.S. Winter Outlook, issued today by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
***************************
Allan’s comments:
“Repeat of last year’s extremely cold, snowy winter east of Rockies unlikely” FAIL
This winter is like last winter, two very cold winters for the eastern 2/3 of North America, record-breaking cold and snow last winter and again this winter. Cold and snow down to South Carolina to date this winter. NOAA/NWS was wrong in last winter’s long range forecast too, predicting a warmer-than-average winter.
“… above-average temperatures are most likely in … New England ” FAIL
Boston will report record-breaking snow in February. All-time cold records may also be broken.
My weather-forecaster friends correctly printed both cold winters and I have asked them to publish their story. If this thread is still open, I will post it by about Tuesday of next week.
Bernie – here is the one set of dueling forecasts for November of 2014 from NOAA and AccuWeather along with an interesting article on what may be bringing on the cold in Eastern North America:
http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/perspective/13043/burning-questions-about-winter-cold
Bernie – Here is WeatherBell’s North American forecast vs. actual for Dec2014 thru Feb2015.
It is much more accurate than the NWS long-range forecast that I posted above,
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=88ff3822-9aad-4bc1-a1db-c4f84d39ce5f&c=be14c940-0dc1-11e4-8d9d-d4ae528eaba9&ch=be7a41d0-0dc1-11e4-8d9f-d4ae528eaba9
Repeating from above:
Matt Briggs’ farce is not that different from what really happened in the past two winters in North America.
The US National Weather Service/Climate Prediction Center (NWS/CPC) and Environment Canada (EC) both predicted a warm-to-moderate winter of 2013-14, and it was bitterly cold in the eastern 2/3 of North America. Both NWS and EC utterly failed in their predictions for last winter.
Again for this winter of 2014-2015, NWS and EC predicted a mild winter and again it has been bitterly cold over the eastern 2/3 of North America. Both NWS and EC utterly failed in their predictions AGAIN this winter.
It is apparent that NWS and EC have NO predictive track record, and do not even learn from their mistakes.
It is notable that some private weather forecasters accurately predicted the last two cold winters as early as July. Both NWS and EC apparently rely on big computer models to do their forecasting. The successful private forecasters that I know use analogue models – techniques that have been utilized for a very long time.
***********************************
All together now, all you frozen folks in New England and especially at the New York Times:
:”I BLAME GLOBAL WARMING!”
***********************************
This from icecap – The Blogosphere – great job by Joe d’Aleo and colleagues!
See http://icecap.us/ for Figures and Tables.
Mar 01, 2015
A remarkable February 2015
By Joe D’Aleo
The last three years had heavy snows and last March was coldest ever in VT. 2nd coldest in NH, ME, 5th in MA. Despite the fact that winters have been cooling in the CONUS (all 9 climate regions) for the last 20 years and snows have been increasing, the Union of Concerned ‘Scientists’, an advocacy group whose environmentalists have taken over most universities at least here in the northeast have been advising the state goverments that warming was producing less snow and threatening the ski and maple sugar industries.
They have been repeating this since at least 2007, ignoring new snow records not only in ski areas but in the big cities. Boston 10 year running mean is at a new high. A lot of bad energy and regulatory policy has been already enacted based on ‘failing climate models’ on the state and federal level.
Enlarged
While some democrats with full mainstream media support, are trying to silence scientists who don’t accept the so called consensus ‘warming’ position, mother nature is voting ‘Nay’.
Last three years had heavy snows and last March was coldest ever in VT. 2nd coldest in NH, ME, 5th in MA. It was the coldest and snowiest December to March ever in Chicago and snowiest ever in Detroit. NOAA and Enviornment Canada had projected at the end of November 2013 a warm winter for the Great lakes and east in 2013/14. NOAA’s winter outlook in October for 2014/15 smarting from a busted 2013/14 headlined the politically correct forecast
“Repeat of last year’s extremely cold, snowy winter east of Rockies unlikely.”
Note that we have high respect for NOAA forecasters at all levels who strive hard to provide accurate forecasts and life saving warnings. However, the last two years were high confidence cold forecasts based on ocean temperature patterns. I was told over dozen years ago, NOAA seasonal forecasters are not permitted to work with any factors not statistically determined by the universities or labs to be valid. Private sector forecasters can play detective and look at all factors- like ocean warm and cold pools outside the tropical Pacific and solar. See how well the ocean pools and other factors’ analog pattern (left) fit the actual November to February mean (through February 27) (right).
Enlarged
After a frigid November, in late December’s mild weather got the official winter off to a slow start nationwide. January brought cold but the thaw mid month knocked down the anomalies. Then came this February. The month has been a remarkable one from the Great Lakes to the Northeast and Mid Atlantic.
Enlarged
This February has been 2nd coldest winter month EVER in BOS behind only February 1934. BOS had 8 feet of snows since January 24th and will set the all-time record this week (they are now at 102”, record 107.6 inches in 1995/96).
In Boston, where they have had 8 feet of snow since January 24th, it was the 2nd coldest February and month ever. It was the snowiest winter (DJF) on record and will be the snowiest season perhaps by Monday. There is some evidence this may be the snowiest year since the Pilgrims were here in 1717.
Enlarged
It was the coldest month ever in Worcester and Hartford, 2nd coldest in Providence (like Boston trailing 1934).
In Concord it was the 2nd coldest February just 0.1F behind 1934. In Nashua the next town west from me, it was the coldest month ever beating out January 1888! Records go back to 1886. Nashua had 18 days at 0 or below and 25 days below freezing, both records for any month. We are foot away from the all time record.
Enlarged
In Chicago where it was the 3rd snowiest February, it was the coldest since records began in 1872. February 2014 was 8th coldest.
It ranked between 2nd and 5th coldest month in lower Michigan.
Enlarged
In Cleveland it was the coldest February and trailed only 1977 for the coldest month.
The ice cover has increased to 88.8%. Last year this is when the ice made its run for the gold, topping out at 92.5%. They were 85.4% on the same date.
Enlarged
The next 5-10 days, cold temperatures will help challenge the record. As with Antarctica, when the facts are inconvenient, expect the media to dredge up some story that implies the opposite. The last two weeks there were stories that Lake Superior may be warming faster than any other lake in the world. The last two years it has frozen over (rare because it is so deep) and last year ice flows remained into June with lake temperature 7F below normal.
In New York CIty it was the 3rd coldest February and 9th coldest month since records began in 1869.
Enlarged
In Baltimore, it was the 5th coldest month since 1871.
Speaking of icy water, this is from a photographer on Nantucket.
The waves captured by NBC photographer Jonathan Nimerfroh are so thick with ice that they’ve drawn comparisons to ‘Slurpees’ and other frozen beverages, but the texture and shape of the wave also suggest a giant, grey tongue, licking the shores of Nantucket.
Enlarged
Here’s what the photographer had to say about his images: “When I pulled up to the beach I could see the horizon just look strange. When I got to the top off the dunes I saw that beginning about 300 yards away from the shoreline the ocean was starting to freeze. The high temp that day was around 19 degrees. The wind was howling from the southwest which would typically make rough or choppy conditions not so good for surfing, but since the surface of the sea was frozen slush the wind did not change the shape. What resulted was perfect, dreamy, slush waves. Most waves were around 2 feet with some larger sets slushing through around 3 foot or waist high. What an experience to be absolutely freezing on the beach watching these roll in while I mind-surfed them! I wonder if a shaper can make me a special designed slurfboard?”
“The next day I drove up to see if they melted but beginning that same 300 yards away from shore the water had frozen solid and there were no waves at all. I’ve been asking all the fishermen and surfers I know if they have ever seen such a thing and they have all reported that this is a first, a result of it being the coldest winter we’ve had in 81 years. I guess the people I asked weren’t old enough to remember a colder winter than this!”
One last thought, we hear that warming is why we are seeing more snow because warm air holds more water. Meteorologists know that cold weather produces snow. Indeed most big snow years are cold years, warm years lean on snow.
Enlarged
What about in, say, six months later when temperature actually is 70F and the weatherman says, “See, I told you so!”?
Gee, mod, I made a mistake. Could you erase all evidence of it?
[No. It’s easier to fix the italics than the problem. .mod]
Sorry PiperPaul, that only works with an ignorant, compliant, complicit, Progressive news media wandering around in the CAGW herd.
“Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), resigned today following accusations of sexual harassment by a former employee at the energy think tank he heads in New Delhi”
In his defense, Raj was quoted as saying “97% of woman love me”
A very sensual consensus!
So … he runs a (government-funded?) “energy think tank” AND he is (actually, was, I guess) IPCC boss. I see no conflicts of interest there at all, in fact, SQUIRREL!
Very good, but nothing beats “Two Days Before the Day after Tomorrow”; climate crises due to beaver dam vandalism. South Park, of course.
“It’s Global Warming! It’s right behind us!”
“It’s coming the other way!!”
It is unfortunate that the fable of “The Emperor’s Cloths” ends when the young boy exclaims that the Emperor was naked.
What happened next was probably too ugly to put in a child’s fable. I suspect the child was sold into slavery, the parents killed, the home razed, and the Emperor continued to prance around naked until he died of exposure for relying on the naked climate scientist’s forecasts.
Not at all. He went and spent the whole treasury on carbon credits, thus creating a comfortable aura of do-good, which kept him nice and warm ever after, until he tried to melt a glacier by imperial fiat alone. The polar bears had a good day.
My favorite was
“The first on-air meteorologist was Percy Saltzman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation who hit the airwaves on Sept. 8, 1952. Saltzman later served as meteorologist with Global TV from 1980 to 1982”
“The president of the United States eventually came to the rescue with an official list of Science Deniers. Unbeknownst to the public, a second list of high priority Science Deniers was drawn up in Top Secret and Drones were dispatched to terminate the offenders. This was an urgent matter of National Security, after all!”
The base station for Melbourne’s temperature was closed down last year, allowing the BoM to cherry pick high temperatures at new suburbs and airports to represent the temperature of “Melbourne.”
That’s why Nick Stokes graph from a few weeks ago represented January temperatures in Melbourne as “above average” in bright glowing red, which Nick described as being overstated.
Coldest January in my life described by the BoM:
=====================================
Melbourne in January 2015: warmer days and nights
Despite a cool end to January, both daytime and night time temperatures were still slightly above average for the month. January began with high [normal] temperatures, with several locations around Melbourne recording maximum temperatures over 40°C on the 2nd, 3rd and 7th.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/vic/melbourne.shtml#summary
=====================================
When they say the “end of January” was cool, they mean the entire three weeks that followed the first one!
yeah, they are trying to uphold their outlook for january-
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3571
BOM are complete failure for the last decade or so. their outlooks are always wrong, they fudge storm intensities, acorn data etc. what is left? they are not a service any more, they are just an arm of a propaganda machine.
at least they still have rain radars available to the public i suppose.
There is the story about the great Enrico Fermi and one of his physicist proteges who ran up to him to show him the latest findings of his research: Fermi, asked, How did you get those results? I used a model, was the reply. To which Fermi’s rejoinder was, With a model I can prove the moon is made of cheese. (Or some such substance, I forget which).
Models produce data, the same way video games produce organ donors.
rgbatduke points out an issue that I too have noticed with Environment Canada’s 7 day forecast for our area.
7 days out a high will be listed that is never achieved. As the day approaches that phantom temperature high is adjusted downward and usually 24 hours out the highs and lows come in fairly accurately.
To compound matters checking back to the actual historical highs and lows for our area is no longer easy because EC and has turned their daily records over to a 3rd party whose web site is nearly impossible.
Reminds me of Rick Mercer’s Seven Day Forecast
Simple.
Brilliant.
Devastating.
Briggs for Science Czar!
A couple of facts:
1.The number of weather related natural disasters have skyrocketed since the 70’s, in spite of Pielke’s attempt to make it appear otherwise by considering cost vs rise in GDP, (which makes about as much sense as measuring them against any other constantly rising number, for example the average mobile phone bill) . Here are some hard numbers: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/bild-1020406-816277.html
2. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have been since 2003. Even most “skeptics” don’t deny this anymore, including the WSJ. http://www.wsj.com/articles/2014-ranks-as-earths-hottest-year-since-1880-1421427411
In that light, all the moaning about models is essentially irrelevant, It’s happening. All we can do is figure out what to do about it.
To the other lines of “skeptic” argument (“it’s not us! it’s natural – climate always changes!” ) I offer an allegory of my own.
Once there was a town several miles down the road from a large wildlife park. A man who lived in the town observed that the gates at the park were flimsy and getting flimsier, and there was a good chance that elephants could escape and wreak havoc in town. Some people checked the gates and confirmed they were in poor condition, and should be repaired – a small cost against the damage the elephants could potentially do. A smaller group declared themselves skeptics, saying the structural examinations were flawed and alarmist and that the gates were in fine shape. Anyway, they said it would bankrupt the town to try and fix them. So no one did.
About a week later, a few elephants started turning up in the streets of the town, doing a little damage here and there. The original “alarmists” pointed to this as proof of their theory, and suggested there was still time to repair the gates before things got out of hand.
The “skeptics” responded that the sudden presence of elephants proved nothing; there were many reasons why elephants could be in the streets, and in fact evidence showed that elephants had lived in the area as recently as 50,000 years earlier. Plus even though the elephants were turning over a few cars, breaking windows, and otherwise proving problematic, they pointed out that they would likely be more beneficial than otherwise, since they provided valuable fertilizer, could be trained to haul loads, and would turn the town into a thriving tourist attraction. India, they said, was full of elephants and their economy was thriving. And anyway, the idea that elephants could escape or be dangerous was a myth manufactured by the rich and powerful gate repair industry.
A couple of weeks later, the gates collapsed completely, and hundreds of elephants stampeded through the town, destroying it completely. The surviving “skeptics” threw their hands up in the air, and said “If only there was something we could have done to prevent this!”.
Sir Harry Flashman
Storms are not elephants.
Anyway, I have been sprinkling talcum powder on the ground to deter elephants, and it seems to be working because no elephants have been seen near this town.
Please contribute to my costs in removing the elephant threat which you fear.
Based on expenditures wasted – sorry, I mean expended – on AGW activities, a mere $2billion a year contribution would be adequate from governments.
Richard
It is really illuminating when references cited for supposed objective data, are magazines and newspapers.
Can noone here read? Here is the end source. http://www.emdat.be/
Flashperson says:
Can noone here read?
Who’s “Noone”? Is that Peter Noone, the erstwhile singer?
Edumacated folks write “no one”. Learn it, before you start trying to teach others your globaloney carp.
Also, I note in your completely irrelevant link, it lists many events such as:
• shipwreck
• Avalanche
• Cholera outbreak
• fire in warehouse
• Forest fire
• Military truck accident
• Fire in a gold mine…
…and similar randumb events.
Are we to believe that they were caused by man-made global warming? Is that what you’re trying to imply??
Or, did you post a random list of events that has nothing to do with anything?
You are truly the trolliest of trolls, db. Please read the data before typing, Anyway, I’m not sure what you’re looking at, but the site breaks down into meteorological, climatological, and other types of disasters so not sure why you think these numbers include truck accidents. Every one knows that.
SHF says:
You are truly the trolliest of trolls, db. Please read the data before typing… not sure why you think these numbers include truck accidents.
The truck accident was right on the first page of your link, flasher. How could you possibly call that trolling, when I just repeated what you posted?…
…oh, right: Projection.
Bravo Sir Harry, excellent allegory.
Ri-i-i-i-i-i-ght.
Nice to see you get to post on here Sir Harry Flashman. Wonderful how open the debate is here, even for those who post such disagreement with the local consensus. Too bad not all sides are open to considering other opinions. Those other sites make me think of Natzis and communists. Thank you for proving our ability and willingness to consider others.
You stand as a testimony of our open minds.
LOL you may reconsider that if you read some of the responses I get.
Masochistict tendencies?
“All we can do is figure out what to do about it.”
Relax, and enjoy your shoes.
Flasher says:
Nine of the ten hottest years on record have been since 2003. Even most “skeptics” don’t deny this anymore
That is as much nonsense in one sentence as in the whole comment.
Let’s deconstruct, shall we?
Here is the satellite record of temperatures by year since 2003. Count the number of years that were warmer than 2014. See the trend?
And here is the global temperature record since the mid-1990’s. You falsely imply that the past decade is the hottest EVAH!!
But as we see, that is nonsense.
And, although DB doesn’t make a point of it, the satellite data he shows is not Dr. Christy’s. It is RSS.
Duster,
I was making the point that there is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening. Sorry I wasn’t more clear. I can post other temperature databases. If you would like to see them, just say the word and I’ll include a link. Tell me which ones, and I’ll be specific.
SHF, there are several ways to view that graphic. One is that since about 2005 the numbers of “disasters” is plummeting; in fact it is down about 40%. Also, the class “disaster” as listed is a hodgepodge of different classes which is not what Dr. Pielke Jr. addressed. He addressed damages related to storms. The curve of increase, IF you ignore the last ten years, tends to correlate to population growth and that is a cat that needs skinning in an entirely different manner. “Disasters” as currently employed is measured by the number of people affected. Since population is roughly 180% of what it was in 1970, the number of “disasters” needs to increase at least that much, since there are that many more folks. However, the increased population also occupies space, and so you might suspect that the “increase” in disasters due to increased exposed population alone would actually be a geometrical increase, Worth a thought, but then …
Thanks for reading it. Firstly we need to look at the trend, not cherry pick start and end dates, given that 2005 was obviously an exceptional (in a bad way) year. And yes, there’s a component associated with population growth, I agree. But given the bar is set at only 100 people affected to qualify as disaster, the uptick is vastly disproportionate. The planet’s population has not grown by 500% since 1970.
There would have to be an accounting for the vast increase in population for the world not to mention communications and surveillance (satellites, etc..) . For example an area that had zero inhabitants and zero method of observing the area 100 years ago had 20 hurricanes…. how many of those would be reported or recorded?? correct the answer would be none, zero, zilch. Same place 100 years later, population 500,000, with 3 hurricanes in a year… “OMG it is worse than we thought hurricanes are on a catastrophic rise! Quick destroy our economy!”
To truly capture what is happening all of the relevant conditions and parameters need to be recorded and considered otherwise it is all just hype and garbage to manipulate and control.
Cheers!
Joe
We’re talking about since the 70’s, not a century ago. We were certainly aware of hurricanes and floods globally in 1975. You’d definitely expect to see a rise in costs and human injury, due to the increase in population and built-up areas. However, the number of disasters themselves rising so precipitously is a different thing altogether.
As well SHF does not seem to take into account the majority of the worlds population growth still is in the same vulnerable areas as before. And those areas have not seen an increase of said calamities
The people who feared that the gates were weakening got together and acquired funds to do a survey on whether the gates should be rebuilt or just strengthened – many people were paid to cast their opinion and a consensus was arrived at that the gates were getting weaker. More money was spent on commissioning papers on why gates are used to keep in elephants, what materials are best for gates, what elephants are most likely to do when in town. A small band of citizens noted that even though gates had come and gone in history at no time had elephants come in to the town. This immediately inspired the experts to ask for funding to commission a report on how this was not true and they built model elephants and villages to prove this historical theory wrong.
In all this time the gates did indeed deteriorate further but the elephants showed no sign of testing them or passing through them – in fact it looked as if they didnt like the area of the town and were increasingly reported to be moving away. This produced another flurry of reports where the measurement of distance was increased so that the numerical value of distance decreased. Another set of researchers went back through historical documents and decided that the use of the distance measurement was too high and reduced it. Another report combined the two results and concluded that in actual fact the elephants were getting closer. They then constructed elephant models bigger than the originals and house smaller than the originals and produced a report that said that it was worse than they originally thought.
The small group of elephant deniers got together and voluntarily examined the gates and concluded that yes indeed the gates were in a poor state and that it would be a good idea to look after them better but only if it was proven that the cost was relevant when the elephants were seen to be moving away and the money didnt mean that they would all have to go back to sleeping in mud huts. This was ridiculed because it was known that one of this group had once received food from a person who sold old gates.
This infuriated the true elephant catastrophy researchers…………..and so it goes on.
Bs for your bs Sir HF
LOL I don’t agree but that’s kind of awesome.
Harry Dear, I seem to remember you flouncing out, saying that you were “…out of here, permanently”. Your word is clearly as good as your namesake’s.
Would you believe I was just talking about the thread? I guess I can’t lie my way out of this one, I just can’t keep away. I think I’ve said that at least three times and meant it each time but I keep coming back. My namesake would have had a more plausible excuse.
Flashman, I went to the stated source pbl.nl and searched for weather related natural disasters. The most apposite publication seemed to be “A statistical study of weather-related disasters: Past, present and future” http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2012/weather-related-disasters-past-present-and-future. It discusses “How can trend patterns
be explained?” in chapter 6 and the role of climate change in 6.4.
The overall conclusion of the chapter re extreme weather events:
“As for the third factor, changes in intensity or frequency of extreme weather events, it was found that trends in the drivers of disasters which led to the highest disaster burdens (storms and
floods) are unclear. Finally, the role of changes in vulnerability is difficult to quantify. Here, two
counteracting factors play a role: positive influences from adaptation, negative influences from poverty and/or political instability.”
SHF:
Some analogies are good. But that one was preposterous…
…Carry on.
Except to repair the gates cost 3000 trillion dollars and might not even contain the hypothetical elephants. To repair the town cost little as the damage (if it occurred) would be little and people adapt to such slow changes and, even better, the farmers made lots more food and fed the poor and hungry.
There fixed your story for you. HTH
Harry……..
Your elephant analogy is incorrect. They are not elephants that are in a corral that has a weak gate. They are mosquitoes. You are going to spend $billions on gates that are never going to stop a mosquito.
The elephants in the atmosphere are N2 and O2. CO2 is the mosquito. It is harmless.
Having read the Flashman series I’m not sure that you’ve chosen the best internet name, given that Harry Flashman was (let’s see): A coward, a liar, a rapist, a thief, but really really good at being the last man standing and getting all of the credit as he accumulated his laurels and knighthood and rank and honor and wealth. The best that could be said for him is that, although a sociopath, he could simulate being charming, bluff, honest, and brave and was amazingly lucky (in the hands of a black humor author) so that every time his cowardice or dishonesty or abuse of women was about to be exposed by someone who had found him out (and/or was blackmailing him), that person would “miraculously” perish in the nick of time so that he came up roses.
It’s interesting to note that even Gavin Schmidt isn’t willing to state on national television that there has been any observable change in the frequency or violence of storms. It’s even more interesting to note that the simplest of physics suggests that in a warming world violent storms will be less likely (if anything, probably indiscernibly so given the number of decades or even centuries required to determine a meaningful “probability” of a locally non-stationary process). Storms are caused by temperature contrasts, and the standard dogma of global warming is that the temperature differential between poles and equator will decrease, not increase.
Finally, the really amusing thing about your anecdote is that (having grown up in India) elephants are not, actually, confined in parks by fences. In fact, the whole idea is pretty silly. The “fence” would need to be tens to hundreds of miles long and elephants are used in India to do things like tear down trees and carry them and place them into postholes to build fences in the first place.
As such, you have inadvertently (much like the literary Harry Flashman!) constructed an almost perfect metaphor. You think that the thing confining the elephants to the forest is a fence, but in reality the elephants laugh at fences. What keeps the elephants in the forest is sufficient food and shelter and room for baby elephants. The thing driving the elephants into the village is a mix of natural cycles of drought and flood and the fact that the villagers keep cutting down trees and shrinking the forest.
rgb
Flashman may have been dishonest, cowardly, and often flatulent, but he was resourceful.
I WISH….
…that someone could examine the ‘Piltdown Man’ saga, paying particular attention to the role of the authorities and establishment. because I believe that that was VERY similar happened then. Only the anthropologists were affected, of course….
You want to consider the close involvement of Teilhard de Chardin. The “authorities,” if by that you mean the government, had little involvement. But the churches of the time were pretty antagonistic to what they thought Evolution meant. It was also a beautiful example of confirmation bias because very, very few scientists at the time – or even now – are clear about how they define evolution or what it is.
@Flashman
…2. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have been since 2003. Even most “skeptics” don’t deny this anymore, including the WSJ. http://www.wsj.com/articles/2014-ranks-as-earths-hottest-year-since-1880-1421427411…
Alas for your argument, they DO. I understand that there is going to be a congressional inquiry into why all the earlier temperatures have all been artificially lowered recently, in a vain attempt to make your scam last longer.
Note that the satellites don’t show the same rise at all. I wonder why this is?
Christy’s satellite claims have been pretty thoroughly debunked, http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2014/02/20/mcnider-and-christy-defend-inertia/
I look forward to the next climate circus in Congress.
Wow, flashman, that place is so unbiased and really good. You are so smart. I like how you say Christy makes claims, it helps to paint him as not a real scientist. It is so wise of you not to refer to his research and data, but instead to unspecific claims. Your reference about climate circus makes me think of the meeting where all of the window were opened the night before to set the right atmosphere for the circus.
Flasher,
The U.S. government spends hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring satellite data from multiple satellites. Just because you found someone who claims that the data is “debunked” means nothing.
If satellite data was bad data, the government would be under intese pressure to stop using that data. But the only people who claim it is “debunked” are those playing to an audience of like-minded lemmings like you.
Satellite data is the most accurate record of global temperatures. You just hate it because it makes fools of the alarmist crowd’s man-made global warming Narrative.
Harry, thanks for the Disaster Site link in your earlier post. Have you looked at it recently?
Two feet of snow in Istanbul, Turkey. How does that happen?
Also a recent huge avalanche in Afghanistan in the news this week, killing dozens. More snow than they have seen in 60 years, one old man said.
Maybe exceptional cold might have something to do with it.
And then here in New England (US), we have had 100+ inches of snow in the last 5 to 6 weeks,and temperatures 5 to 10 C (10 to 20 F) below normal, and not one day of melting.
Bad winter last year also. But worst than that, the worst in 30 years or more.
Gee, I am thinking exceptionally cold weather has something to do with it.
Maybe even the solar minimum we have had now for two years now.
What do you think?
The jet stream is shifting, so the Arctic melts while points south freeze. This could be the new normal, caused by, yes, climate change. http://phys.org/news/2014-02-jet-stream-shift-prompt-harsher.html
Hi Harry,
May I please know whether you, like me, have no formal qualifications in “climate science”?
Is it a fair question?
Andy
At 6:39 PM on 27 February, jones had asked:
Whether you “know” that fact about this Flashman putz, is that knowledge relevant to the subject at hand?
Little though I like or value the spew inflicted by “Sir Harry” in this forum, argument from authority is a fallacy I prefer to see perpetrated by the climate catastrophe quacks and their idiot supporters.
“Little though I like or value the spew inflicted by “Sir Harry” in this forum, argument from authority is a fallacy I prefer to see perpetrated by the climate catastrophe quacks and their idiot supporters.”
Aww, somebody gave their kid a thesaurus. As a great man once said, never use a five dollar word when a fifty cent word will do. It doesn’t make you sound smarter.
Anyway, the argumentum ad verecundiam is only a fallacy when the authority is wrong, which isn’t the case here. For this reason, it remains superior to the “argumentum ad pulled out of my butt”: or the “argumentum ad crazyconspiracyblog.com”. Hypothetically, of course, I’m not thinking of anything specific.
Perfect;ly fair, and you are correct.
Guess what SHF!?!?!? They wouldn’t allow me to post over there. I can only assume that you are ok with that.
Indeed Tucci. However, I was not going to come from the direction you suggest at all but I accept you weren’t to know that in advance as I hadn’t yet had the chance to follow up due to waiting for Harry’s reply.
.
Anyhoo…
Thanks Harry, aye, I’m not either although I do have a significant science background.
The reason I went down this road with you was because frankly there are simply so many different conflicting sources one can draw upon to support a position that one ends up pandering to a personal prejudice and at the moment due to my own prejudices I cannot support the current paradigm. I used to but changed over time.
Anyhow, don’t have much more to say cos I’m going to bed…
See yer….
I get that. That’s why |I started reading this site. However, I have yet to see evidence to change my mind.
Fair enough.
A lot of what I read anyway I don’t understand to be honest but then I will NEVER be a statistician so sod it…
Can read a graph though…..
Cheers.
Sir,
1. Regarding the ‘spiegel’ chart – where did the numbers come from and how were they collected? Thanks.
2. About temperature: This proves what?
And “All we can do is figure out what to do about it.”
I intend to enjoy it. My tomatoes love it (it being the extra CO2 they can now use).
Finally, “through the town, destroying it completely. The surviving “skeptics”
There is something about this that just does not make sense.
Do I have to do everything? The source is right on the graphic, it’s a site that tracks disasters. It;’s not a climate site, it is a group that ” provides an objective basis for vulnerability assessment and rational decision-making in disaster situations.” http://www.emdat.be/
Rising temperatures. Like the models predict. You cannot truly be this simple.
Sir Harry Flashman
You say
If by “simple” you mean ‘gullible’ then your acceptance that the group “provides an objective basis for vulnerability assessment and rational decision-making in disaster situations” shows you are very, very “simple”.
And I still await your contribution towards my costs of overcoming the elephant crisis which you say you fear.
Richard
PS I regret that some people gave serious answers to your original post instead of only providing that post with the ridicule it deserved.
The basic belief that you have, that is the root of all you blabber on about, is that you actually think that a trace gas, CO2, can cause global warming, hence Catastrophic GW.
Please provide empirical proof. There have been 4000+ papers and 65+ computer models that fail to prove that “man-made” CO2 is responsible for global warming.
Sir,
Your first link takes me to a DER SPIEGEL site, that does have a “Source:Em-Dat” link, and that takes me to another DER SPIEGEL site, and that has a source of PBL/EDGAR. Whatever that is!
Now, let’s look at fires – I use the USA because that is what I know.
Here is the link:
http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm
Under Year-to-date statistics it shows that the average burn for the past 10 years is 138,454 acres. For today 2/27/2015 the burn has been 91,581 acres. At the end of last year the burn was only about 60% of the ten year average. [That table is no longer seen.]
This is information from the folks that fight fires. Real Data.
This is not the kind of garbage you seem to think is relevant.
If you want to be taken seriously, get serious.
Thanks & goodbye.
Very funny and yet sad
This is a repost from 2011. Still works though
Big Bob
January 14, 2011 at 8:49 am
A Tiger named AL
A story of global warming
Once upon a time, thousands of years ago there was clan of cavemen. The whole clan lived together in a cave and spent all their available hours hunting and gathering to keep from starving.
On day, while out hunting and gathering on his own, one of the clan members, Al, came across some strange tracks at the edge of the clan’s hunting area.. He wasn’t sure what they were from but they seamed really BIG. Young Al thought about it for awhile and decided that these tracks could be from the dreaded Saber toothed tiger.
Al had never actually seen a saber toothed tiger nor had he ever seen their tracks. But, thought Al, what else could the tracks be from?
Al rushed back to the clan cave to tell the others of what he had discovered. To young Al’s surprise most of the clan didn’t seem too concerned. Al said “ we need to take precautions to keep the saber toothed tiger from killing us” “ We need to build a high fence around our camp to keep the tiger out.”
To this the clan elders said “ Sorry Al, we don’t have time to stop hunting and gathering to build a fence. We have to hunt and gather every waking hour just to keep alive. We don’t have time to waste on fences to keep out a tiger that probably doesn’t even exist”.
“ But”, Cried Al” I saw the tracks, there may even be lots of saber toothed tigers about . I can’t be sure how many tracks I saw”
The clan elders sat young Al down and tried to explain things to him.
“First”, they said, “ You don’t know what those tracks were from. Could be from a big fluffy dog named Rex. Second, nobody around here has ever even seen a saber toothed tiger. We don’t even know if they still exist. Thirdly, Even if they do exist, we don’t know that they would hurt us. Fourthly, Even if all you said was true, we don’t know that a fence would keep the tiger out.”
“ Tell you what, You go out and get some really good solid information and we will re-visit the issue”
Well, young Al didn’t like that response. He vowed to do whatever he could to save his clan. Al went back and took a second look at the tracks he had found. The tracks had been trampled over by other animals and were hard to distinguish. Now it seemed to him there were many more tracks than he first thought. Maybe the tracks of a HUNDRED tigers. He also saw something that looked like a spot of blood. Probably from an eaten member of a neighboring clan. Also, he was able to calculate that the tiger was at least 10 feet tall. So now he had his proof. There were over a hundred tigers. They were ten feet tall and they loved to eat cave dwellers.
“ Now they will have to believe me and build that fence.” Thought Al.
When young Al went to the clan elders and explained of his very scientific findings he was very surprised that they still refused to stop hunting and gathering and build a fence.
When Al came back the next day and told the elders that he was now sure that there were a THOUSAND tigers and that they were 25 feet tall they still weren’t convinced. In fact they seemed even less convinced.
That’s when he knew what he had to do. He packed his bags and headed to Copenhagen. If those stupid clan elders wouldn’t believe him, He’d talk directly to Obama. That will get some action. Maybe even a few hundred million of those new paper dollars he keeps hearing about. Al wasn’t going to let no tiger cause any GORE in his cave.
Hey, Al thought as he headed for his private jet, He would need a last name when he got to Copenhagen. Maybe that would make a good last name, “Tiger”, He would be: “ Al Tiger” That would be a COOL name.
Good one……….. right on.
“the engineering professor said” Oh sure, blame it on an engineer.
Ah, the tyranny of the model.
Emotionally-potent oversimplifications have a tremendous sway.
If you think the tyranny of the model is bad in climate science, consider that nothing beats the Quantity Theory of Money for global reach and sheer destructive power.
Coldest Canadian winters mostly 60+ years ago. Ie- not in the memory of most of the population except for us dodgy old geezers:
http://globalnews.ca/news/1066315/will-this-be-canadas-coldest-winter/
@ Wayne I might be a “dodgy old geezer” today but then I was a 20 year old that remembers those 1970-2 winters well, made a few bucks shoveling snow and digging people out of ditches, no SUV’s in those days and a lot of “highways” were 2 lane horse trails. But no one ever thought of calamities you just went on with the day. As Tim said earlier “very funny but sad” I agree this guy Harry is sad. Using Spiegel as a reference would be like using Entertainment Today.
Comparative forecasts and reality. This is not what I posted in a different topic but close enough.
Tough to be a weather forecaster as the darn weather changes so much. Must be even harder to do climate.
http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/08/another-failed-outlook-noaancep-totally-botch-2013-2014-winter-outlooks-for-usa-and-europe-exact-opposite-occurs/#sthash.KXQqKWpt.dpbs
“He obviously had a conflict of interest by receiving money from companies that might benefit from his work”
That was good.
In the TV series “Star Trek Deep Space Nine”, a human tells an alien the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. At the finish, the human pompously tells the alien that the moral of the story was you shouldn’t tell lies.
“Are you sure?”, asks the alien. It seems to me the moral is “You shouldn’t tell the same lie twice.”
I think the Star Trek lead in for a CAGW storyline would be “Science, where no warmists has gone before”.
Obviously proving they were a bunch of hypochondriacs since it couldn’t possibly have been cold out… [/sarc… duhh]
Thanks, Dr. Briggs.
Very humorous way of showing the sad situation we are in.
Praying for Global Warming in Jerusalem
http://gdb.voanews.com/CDB9D737-924A-4081-92AF-583F75D17720_w600_r1_s.jpg
It is a crap analogy because the weatherman’s supposed model was fictionally designed to predict next week’s weather. However the climate models are designed to predict underlying climate changes (not superimposed natural weather variability) over a period of a few decades. It is only the deniers who decided to use the results to do superficial comparisons with temperatures over a shorter period (up to 20 years) then declare the climate models did not match the weather.
Further, if you filter the model results to include only those runs whose Nino 3.4 area (2% of the earth’s surface) are in phase with the actual Nino 3.4 readings you are left with a set of models that track actual global temperatures pretty well.
And finally if you compare trends separately for ENSO states El Nino, La Nina and neutral then you get a good match of temperature rises with the average of the complete ensemble of model runs.
Bear in mind the post above is not really intended to present evidence an actual informed scientist would believe, more to confirm the views of climate deniers which are generally influenced more by political ideology than by even the far too superficial science which the denier blogs put out.
Well said Pete, but if you’ve spent time here you know the site has nothing to do with science and everything to do with ideology – every debunked antiAGW meme you’ve ever heard of gets trotted out here daily to a round of thunderous applause. Facts rarely come into play (not never, but rarely). Tip: call Obama a Communist and you might be able to slip in some science while everyone is nodding their heads frantically.
SHF complains about WUWT, saying that it…
…has nothing to do with science and everything to do with ideology
Flash is just crying because no one is buying his load of carp. Or “Climate Pete’s”, for that matter. The best they can do is haul out the old “denier” label.
This is the internet’s “Best Science” site, and WUWT has remained at the top for three years running. No alarmist blog even comes close. There are regular articles here by climatologists, statisticians, geologists, physicists, and many others with expertise in the hard sciences, and the readership is top-heavy with the same kind of experts.
But Flashman and Climate Pete are unhappy because no one is buying their pseudo-science.
They get to comment here all they want, while skeptics are routinely censored out of existence at almost every alarmist blog, even including formerly great magazine blogs like Scientific American.
When the alarmist contingent feels it must censor different points of view, they are on the wrong track, and they know it. They cannot allow their readership to view any skeptics’ arguments, because if they do, skeptics will become more and more numerous on their blogs, until the only complainers are few and far between — just like Flash and CP are here. As CP admits:
Bear in mind the post above is not really intended to present evidence an actual informed scientist would believe…
Well, no kidding. The small handful of climate alarmists posting here are anything but scientific. They don’t present credible evidence, but only wild-eyed “what if” Chicken Little scenarios. Not only are they not informed scientists, but they are not scientists at all. The media has colonized their minds with the MMGW scare, and as a result they have become True Believers.
Fortunately for science, their kind is very rare — and they are getting more rare with every year that global warming remains in stasis.
db – you’re talking about the Bloggies, where the online free voting was repeatedly gamed by climate “skeptics” to the point where they actually had to remove the science category (lest you doubt this fact, know that in 2013, 13 of 17 in the category were anti-AGW sites, meaning that either that most people everywhere think this is the only scientific question worth discussing or somehow they were wildly overrepresented. Probably nothing to do with constant, undignified and embarrassing shilling for votes… http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/nominate-your-favourite-blogs-for-the-2015-bloggies-how-many-categories-can-skeptics-win/).
I honestly don’t understand what you’re fighting for here.
SHF says:
…the online free voting was repeatedly gamed by climate “skeptics”
That’s a lie, Flash. Who gave you that misinformation?
Since the climate alarmist crew has had just as much of a chance as skeptics to vote in the internet Awards, your complaining is meaningless carp.
Also, I note that after repeatedly winning the internet’s Best Science award, it was changed to the Best Science & Technology award.
WUWT won that award, too.
Next: Anthony Watts has stated in every nomination, and before the vote, that skeptics SHOULD NOT attempt to game the system by multiple voting or any other underhanded means. His message: win fair and square, or don’t win. He has stated that repeatedly. You could look it up.
I challenge you to post just ONE link from any alarmist bloggers, instructing their handful of readers to refrain from multiple voting, or doing anything underhanded. I’ve looked; I can’t find anything like that.
In fact, alarmist bloggers have actively encouraged their small clique of readers to do exactly that, and their readers have bragged about their multiple voting. But still you couldn’t win, even by cheating.
Face reality, Flash: scientific skeptics far outnumber your fantasy “consensus”. You just don’t have the numbers — and you never did. The “consensus” was always a fictional narrative, just like your “97%” is.
SHF says:
I honestly don’t understand what you’re fighting for here.
Then you’re both dumb and blind. Skeptics are fighting for scientific veracity. Why not just tell the truth, using verifiable facts and scientific evidence? But of course if you do that, you lose the argument.
Can’t have that, can you? Your misplaced ego won’t allow it. So now you complain that you lost every Science Award. But they were fair and square contests.
You still lost, so why not man-up and admit it? Because complaining about it looks bad. No one likes a sore loser.
1) Science is not a popularity contest.
2) Are you saying the “consensus” view is that WUWT is popular?
I still reckon that quote in Animal Farm sums it up well, where the animals just got tired of listening to endless streams of statistics on how things were just getting ‘better and better’, whilst their bellies were telling them different.
“The Animals would have just preferred to have more food and less statistics”
dbstealey said :
Your comment ignores the substantive points on climate models in my first three paragraphs. But hey, why spoil a good argument with facts. Just focus on the last paragraph and don’t take the trouble to understand the main points.
Science is not about votes for the most popular climate denier web site. Who did or did not pack the polls on the survey is not important.
Most expert climatologists would not dream of posting on this web site, because the lack of understanding of relevant science here means it just not worthwhile. For instances, how many posters here have actually been through a course on atmospheric physics, which you might think is the minimum you would need to understand climate change? Count me as hal I’m mid-way through while during a PhD in another area of physics. Have you? Do you understand optical depth, optical transmittivity, specific temperature (a measure of entropy) and how it affects convection? Do you understand the simple statistical test which the (initially climate denier) BEST team would have used to determine whether Time of Observation affects daily average temperature readings or not?
At 3:31 PM on 2 March, Climate Pete asserts:
Translation: “The members of the academically vested ‘consensus on the climate’ don’t dare engage or identify themselves on WattsUpWithThat.com because they know they’ll expose themselves to critics of their quackery who are eminently qualified to dissect their Cargo Cult Science approach to climate catastrophism.”
The truth of the matter being evaded by Climate Pete is that it’s the job of those with alleged “understanding of relevant science” to make their methods of observation and analysis utterly transparent to any interested parties, particularly as those putative “science” experts are pressing their conclusions as support of aggressive government actions against the lives, the liberties, and the property of real human beings.
The “consensus” fraudsters have been pushing their preposterous crap as of extraordinary value in determining economic, trade, and industrial policy throughout the civilized world, and extraordinary assertions require extraordinary levels of proof before being received as actionable.
Thus far Climate Pete‘s holy cluster of “expert climatologists” have refused either to conform with demands for lucidity or to engage in real public dispute on their work, and that’s a strong presumptive indicator that their work can’t SURVIVE either detailed examination or reasoned dispute.
Do you know enough atmospheric physics to be able to debate with an atmospheric physicist on the detailed contents of a paper published by them? I doubt it. If you wish to dispute the experts then it is incumbent on you to learn sufficient to be credible and sufficient to be able to understand the points they are making. Otherwise you should just leave it to them.
The lucid summary of AGW is available in as much detail and depth as you could ask for in the form of the IPCC AR5 report, which doubtless you have not read, probably not even the Summary for Policymakers. The three AR5 projects give summary conclusions on the science and implications, gradually taking the level of detail down to citing a group of individual papers from which the conclusions were drawn. So what is your excuse for not reading it if lucidity is what you are demanding?
If by “reasoned dispute” you mean the production of lots of sound-bytes or an allegory like the one heading this thread then this is a complete waste of everyone’s time.
At 12:47 PM on 2 March, Climate Pete perpetrated expertism with a post beginning:
Yeah, right. And an experienced primary care physician can’t know cardiology well enough to be able to debate an electrophysiologist on atrioventricular nodal re-entrant tachydysrhythmia. However, in order to convince the many general practitioners, internists, family physicians, and other primary care grunts in his referral base to screen for the clinical symptoms of arrhythmias which can benefit from EP evaluation and therapeutic intervention, the cardiologists in this clinical subspecialty have to make the nuts and bolts of their theory and practice in their assessment and treatment of the various rhythm disorders lucidly intelligible to those of us whose own practices embrace the management of common medical conditions in populations ranging from neonates to nonagenarians.
Were I to encounter a cardiologist desirous of interventions – pharmcotherapeutic or instrumental – in the course of which he was proposing to subject one of my patients to risks of therapeutic misadventure he was not willing to discuss against a hypothetical benefit potential about which his assertions were at odds with readily observed clinical experience in the therapeutic area, I would be unarguably derelict in my duty to said patient were I to endorse this guy’s recommendations and treatment.
We get expertism out the wazoo in clinical medicine, and even in my own lifetime, I’ve seen the “experts” in all sorts of therapeutic areas be proven absolutely, horribly, pathogenically wrong by virtue of dissident contentions predicated upon hard evidence which upstart practitioners and investigators were willing to pursue when the “experts” were not. Pursuit which the “experts” received with active hostility as well as dismissal out-of-hand.
And that’s just in clinical medicine. How much more so in “atmospheric physics” and the complexities of potentially anthropogenic global warming on the basis of a conjecture continually contrary to evidence over decades of investigation that a trace increase in a trace component of the earth’s atmosphere – an increase “lost in the noise” of atmospheric CO2 emissions geological and biological which are bereft of any anthropogenic signature whatsoever – could possibly be of significant effect in terms of the “greenhouse gas” mechanism?
Is there a lucid argument for “treatment” including extraconstitutionally attacking the purposeful combustion of coal in order to make the average American homeowner’s “electricity rates…necessarily skyrocket,” as Michelle’s Metrosexual Meatpuppet threatened to do in 2007, at the earliest stages of his campaign for the U.S. presidency?
Certainly not in “atmospheric physics” as the catastrophist quacks have handwaved before the Gruber’d public, nor in the reports of the United Nations’ IPCC, emphasis on the substances thereof – a you’d mentioned – much less the arguably mendacious summaries for “Policymakers” like Obola and his fellow transnational progressive kakistocrats.
The fact that there ARE eminently qualified experts – on “atmospheric physics” and allied scientific disciplines – attending upon WattsUpWithThat.com and sites similarly hospitable to open debate – is precisely what deters participation by the charlatans of the ever-shriveling “climate consensus.”
You fear “sound-bytes,” eh?
Now, just how robust is an allegedly “scientific” premise if it can be hammered into nullity by “sound-bytes”?
“Is there a lucid argument for “treatment” including extraconstitutionally attacking the purposeful combustion of coal in order to make the average American homeowner’s “electricity rates…necessarily skyrocket,” as Michelle’s Metrosexual Meatpuppet threatened to do in 2007, at the earliest stages of his campaign for the U.S. presidency?”
Ah, there it is. Insults and fear-mongering work with a certain percentage of the population (the angry and terrified, principally) but it’s not necessarily the best strategy when up against facts.
At 6:11 AM on 3 March, in response to a citation of the 2007 interview at which Michelle’s Metrosexual Meatpuppet (alias “Barry” Soebarkah, alias Harrison J. Bounel, et alia) had stated that “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” we’ve got the critter defiling George MacDonald Fraser’s most famous character irrelevanting:
Oh, it’s “fear-mongering” to quote His Illegitimacy in observation of his explicitly-stated intentions and manifest actions?
Of course, this non-response “response” evades address of the “therapeutic misadventure” factor in the policies predicated on the Cargo Cult “science” of climastrology waggled before those (like himself?) so thoroughly Gruber’d as to be gulled, cullied, and diddled by such masters of cork-screwing, back-stabbing, and dirty dealing.
Were the factors of anthropogenic “climate change” (by way of the greenhouse gas global warming for which there’s less than no evidence whatsoever) so irrefutable, how come Flash-in-the-Pan can’t keep focus on that subject and avoid diversion into vacant sputtering indignation at an incidental note about how our Fraudulence-in-Chief has made this preposterous bogosity a central pivot upon which his domestic industrial and economic policies turn?
Re: “vacant sputtering indignation”. I bow to the master, sir.
Climate Pete says:
Science is not about votes for the most popular climate denier web site.
That’s a climbdown admission from the side that always claimed ‘consensus’. But as soon as the ‘consensus’ turns against you, well then, “Science is not about votes.” heh
Next:
Most expert climatologists would not dream of posting on this web site…
Wrong. You’re making a habit of being wrong, “Climate Pete”, viz:
Many climatologists have posted articles and comments here, including Dr. Christy, Dr. Spencer, Prof. Lindzen, and many others — also including numerous physicists, geologists, statisticians, chemists, mathematicians, and many others with advanced degrees in the hard sciences. Anthony’s invitation is always extended to folks like Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, and any others in the climate alarmist contingent who wish to post articles. But they don’t take him up on his invitations. Why not?
The reason is obvious: they would quickly see their conjectures demolished by experts who know the subject just as well as, or even better than they do. They would not have their protective pal-review gate-keepers to run interference for them. And they would actually have to justify their position for once. But they can’t, so they avoid posting here like the plague. But it isn’t because they are ever barred; quite the opposite. They are simply chickens.
Next, you ask:
…how many posters here have actually been through a course on atmospheric physics…
More than you realize. I refer you to Prof Richard Lindzen’s CV, which is much more extensive than any alarmists like Mann, etc. [scroll down to see his twenty dozen (!!) peer reviewed publications]. Dr. Lindzen heads M.I.T.’s atmospheric physics department. Since you threw out ‘atmospheric physics’ for discussion, your point has been thoroughly trumped.
Finally, you refer to the BEST results as if they mean anything. It is interesting that BEST deliberately tried to hide the most recent global temperature data, in their effort to pretend that global warming is still chugging along. It isn’t:
You are a newbie here, CP, and you have a lot to learn. Just because you jumped on the climate gravy train in an attempt to cash in on that passing fad, that does not mean you know much. Clearly you don’t, since it was so easy-peasy deconstructing every aspect of your comment above.
I try to give well meaning advice to anyone who jumps into the discussion without knowing the background: spend a few months reading the WUWT archives, including the comments. You will learn more that way than in all your schoolin’. Even better advice: change your major to finance, engineering, or marketing. You will make a much better living, since the cashing in by the climate crowd is mostly in the past. Going forward, it will be slim pickins due to the bulge of newbies wanting a cut of the action. There will always be a need for engineers. But who really needs a climatologist?
“Climate Pete”,
You are no more a climate specialist than anyone else here.
If you are, prove it. Put up or shut up, poseur.
dbstealey said :
Since my comprehensive response to your last but one post has been deleted instead of approved, what mechanism do you suggest I should use to respond to your challenge?
Nice try Pete, but you may be sure that db will never offer up, nor respond to, actual facts when insults and improbable assertions about his own level of knowledge will do. He’s an abusive troll, but his views are popular here so he won’t get his wrist slapped. But I get it, it’s their sandbox and I am happy to play by those rules.
Climate Pete
You ask
Allow me to help.
You can “prove” you are a “climate specialist” by using your real name then stating your employment as a “climate specialist” or, alternatively, listing your specialist publications on climate.
I look forward to your response to “the challenge”.
Richard
(modified to adhere to site policy)
For a start there’s a big difference between the votes of the average member of this site who has never studied climate science and 97% of the climate scientists who are the experts.
Further, climate science is not even about the concensus of 97% of climate scientists. It is about the expert research performed and published which is then tested and either confirmed or modified by other skeptical experts until the core of the science is solid. This is what happened to climate science, starting more than 100 years ago.
In 1964 Manabe and Strickler published a paper which showed how the general average atmospheric temperature distribution could be derived from a combination of the greenhouse effect and convection working up to the tropopause – http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/sm6401.pdf
This is climate science that was confirmed and improved for decades before the issue of AGW ever came up, but which few here seem to understand. Most here claim it is “groupthink” induced by “political considerations”. This cannot possibly be true because of the timing.
There are only about half a dozen significant contrarian climate scientists. There are thousands of mainstream climate and atmospheric scientists, many of whom were in the field contributing long before AGW was discovered by Mann or became a political issue in the USA.
Here’s an image showing how Christie and Spencer’s published projections of temperature trends have changed as they have been forced to revise them due to mistakes pointed out by other climate scientists – http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Christy-Spencer-638×379.jpg .
Unless they understand a reasonable amount of climate science then what is their contribution worth?
I doubt that very much indeed. They do not come here because most of the readers here do not understand climate science in enough detail to have a meaningful discussion. The IPCC AR5 Summary for Policymakers documents would be a pre-requisite for any level of understanding of what the real experts were talking about. Ask yourself why few here have read them if they are really interested in the truth.
The BEST team started out as climate skeptics, funded by Koch brother institutions, and after doing the hard graft of analysis came to the conclusion independently of any other climate scientists that the mainstream temperature data set adjustments were correct. Now they are villified, not because of the quality of the work they did, but because of their conclusion. If you always extend the supposed climate conspiracy scope to anyone who becomes convinced of AGW by the evidence, you will never get to know the truth, will you?
Your last two paragraphs are effectively an admission that you have not actually taken the trouble to get to grips with atmospheric physics – the basic science behind climate change, but instead think you can evaluate the evidence at a much more superficial, sound-byte, level. Please correct me if this is wrong.
The funding (in real terms) and number of climate scientists and atmospheric physicists has not changed much in 30 years – since well before AGW surfaced and then became an issue, and probably will not change much in the next 30 years either. I have retired and can please myself as to what I do after the PhD. It’s clear from your comments that there is a huge job of science communications which needs doing.
Climate Pete
Thankyou for your post at March 3, 2015 at 12:45 am which immediately follows my post to you.
Your post is very funny and I really laughed because I always enjoy Pythonesque humour.
However, it asks (I assume me)
Sorry, but I do correct you because that is very wrong.
And I fail to understand how you see that “admission” in my “last two paragraphs” that said to you
Richard
Richard Courtney,
“Climate Pete” seems to be a sockpuppet, so we can disregard him as inconsequential. Anyone claiming legitimacy will post his name here. “Climate Pete” is nothing but a poseur, a self-described “expert” who collects his talking points at thinly-trafficked alarmist blogs, and parrots them here as if they are his original ideas or reasearch.
The field of climatology is not that crowded. As a published, peer reviewed author yourself, you would no doubt promptly recognize “Climate Pete” if he was legitimate and used his real name. This site is occasionally infested by fake screen names pretending to be someone of account. CP is one of those [he can post his name and afffiliation if I’m wrong in my assessment].
Next, CP says:
“(modified to adhere to site policy)”
Amusing, no? That seems to be an admission that CP uses name-calling to support his arguments, because that is the typical moderator response to someone calling people “denialists”, “contrarians”, or other pejoratives. When they lack credible arguments, they typically resort to those ad hominem insults.
Next, the poseur says that alarmists like Mann don’t submit articles here because…:
…most of the readers here do not understand climate science in enough detail to have a meaningful discussion.
The real reason, of course, is that Mann would be ripped to shreds by numerous highly educated readers who know more about his own chosen field than he does. That has been repeatedly demonstrated by Mann’s amateur use of statistics, by his juvenile name-calling when corrected, and by his reprehensible scientific misconduct in his flagrant misuse of the discredited Tiljander proxy.
If Mann [or any other alarmist] had confidence in his beliefs, he would not tuck tail and run at the mere suggestion of posting an article here. Rather, he could show the world that he was able to take on the #1 climate site, and prevail. But instead Mann hides out in his ivory tower, hoping that know-nothings like “Climate Pete” will carry his water.
“Climate Pete” — he of the putative, self-anointed “PhD”, says he has retired and thus can devote all the time he wants to blogging commentary. If that is so, then why not start a blog of his own? Anthony runs WUWT in his spare time. Surely CP could do even better — if he was being truthful.
But as we see, “Climate Pete” is only a fake name pretending to be credible. Therefore he can be disregarded until and unless he decides to man-up and state who he is. For all we know, he is an unemployed twenty-something posting from his bedroom.
To richardscourtney :
My response was intended for dbstealey. It got out of sequence as the moderator insisted on a change. Apologies for any confusion.
To dbstealey :
I am not a climate scientist and did not claim that I was. That is very clear from the end of one of the previous posts which says “I’m mid-way through while during a PhD in another area of physics”, which for your information is condensed matter theory. The undergraduate atmospheric physics course is not part of this research. However, the PhD fees entitle you to attend any other course at the college free of charge, and relevant or not, with the permission of the lecturer. It makes sense to take advantage of this.
If I tell you as well that Joanna Haigh was our head of physics until recently and has occasionally helped me understand aspects of climate science that come up on blogs then you have sufficient information to track me down if you wish. Email me if you need absolute confirmation.
As to where my points come from, the graph of John Christy’s published estimates of trends has been posted on Skeptical Science and Climate Progress that I know of and probably elsewhere. I am not aware of any of the climate change sites making a point using Manabe and Strickler’s 1964 paper, which came up in the undergraduate atmospheric physics course, but feel free to search for this if you wish.
So, if there really are “numerous highly educated readers who know more about his own chosen field than he does” then why does one of them not write a paper for publication in a reputable and peer-reviewed climate journal exposing the supposed flaws in Mann’s work? Anthony Watts himself had a paper accepted for publication which contributed to the information available on the USHCN sites, so why not someone else from here explaining in a learned climate journal where Mann has gone wrong? Mann’s work, incidentally, has now been corroborated quite a few times by other researchers.
I suggest the reason no-one from here has published such a paper is that the required quality of the science is too high for peer-reviewed publication, and no-one here who rejects the conclusions of mainstream climate science is sufficiently skilled. Oh, and the fact Mann’s conclusions are correct.
And on that subject, there are a number of free online courses in atmospheric physics and climate science available. MIT offers a selection at – http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/earth-atmospheric-and-planetary-sciences/. Why not take advantage?