Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
There is a form of argument called reductio ad absurdum. If you can reduce a position to the absurd, it was absurd in the first place. It doesn’t work as well as it used to because there is an embarrassment of absurdity in today’s world. However, there are arguments that are exposed by such an approach.
Al Gore’s fairy tale movie, An Inconvenient Truth claimed global temperature was “just right.” It is as Goldilocks said about porridge, “Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.” The movie fully deserved the Oscar because it was a fairy tale produced in Hollywood, the land of make-believe. The great Goracle declares we must maintain this normal because the wicked witch CO2 threatens it. From whichever castle he currently resides, he dictates we maintain the status quo, so he can continue his “normal” lifestyle, including profiting from selling the tale. He delights in referencing people from the past, such as Arrhenius, Callendar, or Roger Revelle, conveniently ignoring that they all lived through different “normals”. He also ignores the “normal” conditions his Ice Age ancestors enjoyed.
Gore wants to maintain his “normal” by reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says this was 270 ppm. This is incorrect, but let’s assume it is true in order to consider the consequences of achieving that level. Assume also that the IPCC is correct and that virtually all the increase in global temperatures from the nadir of the Little Ice Age, especially since 1950. The IPCC says current levels are 400 ppm, so presumably to achieve pre-industrial levels requires a 130-ppm reduction. According to the science of the IPCC and fellow Nobel winner Al Gore CO2 levels determine temperature, so this will result in a return to Little Ice Age conditions. A multitude of sources itemizes these conditions, particularly Jean Grove’s The Little Ice Age and a listing at CO2Science.org, and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
The IPCC and Gore only consider the temperature implications of CO2, but it is essential to plant life, which in turn determines oxygen levels essential to all life. How much vegetative loss would occur with a 130-ppm reduction? It is only a computer model determination, but Donohue et al., (pay-walled) abstract explains.
Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. The role in this greening of the “CO2 fertilization” effect—the enhancement of photosynthesis due to rising CO2 levels—is yet to be established. The direct CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process.
Again assuming they are correct, a 14% increase in CO2 resulted in an 11% increase in vegetation. What impact would a reduction of 130 ppm, approximately a 32% decrease, have? What would the combined impact of reduced CO2 fertilization and temperature have? Grove and others showed the impact of temperature reduction, but not CO2.
In the 1970s when global cooling was the consensus, Martin Parry produced studies of the impact of cooling over the course of the LIA (Figure1).
Figure 1
Figure 1 shows the county of Berwickshire in the Borders Region of the UK with a high percentage of land lost to cultivation over the period. What was normal for the people living through these times? The answer is whatever they experienced.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) introduced the 30-year normal, purportedly to help this problem of what is normal or average for planning and other applications. As they explain,
“The Standard Climate Normals underpin many climate services and applications, including climatologies, and also comprise the reference period for the evaluation of anomalies in climate variability and change monitoring.”
A problem becomes evident when comparing historic records, such as for the period 1781 to 1810, with the modern normal. Which modern normal would you use, the first one, 1931 – 1960, or the current one 1981-2010? William Wright wrote a paper about the problem in which he
“…argued in favour of a dual normals standard. CCl-MG concurred with the conclusion that there is a need for making frequent updates in computing the normals for climate applications (prediction and climatology purposes), based on the need to base fundamental planning decisions on average and extreme climate conditions in non stationary climate conditions.”
And there is the rub, “non stationary climate conditions.”
There is also the problem of adjustments endemic with all “official” data. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says,
“Several changes and additions have been incorporated into the 1981-2010 Normals. Monthly temperature and precipitation normals are based on underlying data values that have undergone additional quality control. Monthly temperatures have also been standardized to account for the effects of station moves, changes in instrumentation, etc.”
Presumably this means you cannot compare the results with those of earlier “normals”.
NOAA informs us that
“Normals are a large suite of data products that provide users with many tools to understand typical climate conditions for thousands of locations across the United States.”
No, they aren’t! They are only 30–year averages that add nothing to understanding typical climate conditions for any location. Since the 30-year average changes because of mechanisms that operate on longer than 30-year timescales, they simply tell you the climate for that period. The problem illustrates the omission of Milankovitch mechanisms from the IPCC. As reported, Professor Lindzen observed in the recent APS workshop,
He also notes that the IPCC estimate of the man-made effect is about 2 Watts/m2 in AR5 and that is much smaller than the Milankovitch effect of 100 Watts/m2 at 65 degrees north, see Edvardson, et al.
Figure 2 shows the 100 Watts/m2 insolation variability at 65°N calculated by Berger in 1978 and discussed in my article “Important But Little Known “Earth “ scientists.”
Figure 2: Variations in the amount of insolation (incoming solar radiation) at 65°N
Source: BERGER, A. 1978. Long-term variations of daily insolation and Quaternary climatic changes. J. Atmos. Sci. 35: 2362–2367.
While on a radio program, an IPCC modeler told me they omitted Milankovitch because they considered the time scale inappropriate.
Apparently people are planning and making management decisions on the basis of these “normals”. NOAA reports,
In addition to weather and climate comparisons, Normals are utilized in seemingly countless applications across a variety of sectors. These include: regulation of power companies, energy load forecasting, crop selection and planting times, construction planning, building design, and many others.
They are assuming that these conditions will continue. It reminds me of the presentation by Michael Schlesinger at a conference in Edmonton on the future of climate on the Canadian Prairies. A bureaucrat said we are planning reforestation in parts of Southern Alberta, and your data shows it is a desert in 50 years. How accurate is your prediction? Schlesinger said about 50 percent. The bureaucrat said, “My Minister wants 98 percent.”
It is no better today. Figure 3 is a map of 12 – month precipitation forecast accuracy for Canada. It is less than 40 % for 95 % of Canada when compared to the 30-year normal for 1981-2010.
Figure 3
I understand 30 years was chosen because 30 is considered a statistically significant sample size (n) for any population (N). It is of no value for climate patterns and the mechanisms that create them that operate over much longer time periods. NOAA acknowledge this when they write,
In fact, when the widespread practice of computing Normals commenced in the 1930s, the generally-accepted notion of the climate was that underlying long-term averages of climate time series were constant.
That idea permeated and became the fundamental public understanding that climate is constant, making current changes unnatural. What also happened was the 30 – year normal became the average for radio and TV weather people. NOAA confirms this adaptation.
Meteorologists and climatologists regularly use Normals for placing recent climate conditions into a historical context. NOAA’s Normals are commonly seen on local weather news segments for comparisons with the day’s weather conditions.
When media meteorologists say a weather variable is above average today that is usually only for the 30-year average, not the entire weather station record. This narrows the range and creates a distorted picture of how much climate varies. It enhances the effectiveness of Gore and others claiming that current weather is abnormal The climate “normal” is now as distorted as Goldilocks Gore’s “normal”. It might work for porridge and climate fairy tales, but it doesn’t work for the actual climate. Claiming that normal is abnormal appears to be an absurdity.
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“look man, I only need to know one thing; where they are. “
“… nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
“They’re real tough hombres”
Frost has the best line in the entire movie: “What are we supposed to use … harsh language?!”
The Goldilocks hypothesis is sheer nonsense; about as stupid as the Gaia hypothesis.
If there exist(s) any form of chemistry, which allows for the formation of complex molecules, which somehow are able to replicate themselves; then that would fit any definition of a life form.
And such reactions would likely take place under circumstances that favored those reactions, and in places where the required elements and reaction conditions both existed.
Those optimum conditions would be a property of the elements and reactions needed to get that kind of life form.
If any of those life forms developed some sort of intelligence (whatever that is), they might think they are in some special place; and they might call it “Earth”.
Well there’s nothing special about those places. What might be regarded as “special” would be the elements and chemistry that would allow the evolution of self replicating molecules, in such places.
Life; meaning self replicating systems, could develop, any place at all where that is possible.
Our life forms are possible on earth. (our earth that is; and we have as much as a 150 deg C temperature range to develop life in.
Just my opinion of course.
Carbon seems to be the only atom capable of being the basis for complex molecules that living organisms contain. Also crystals are replicators but the are far from life.
The Earth is indeed a privileged planet. There are some 20 factors required for complex intelligent life. A large stabilizing moon is one of them. And within our system the only planet with total solar eclipses is the only one with observers to appreciate them, scientifically. With the rate of recession it appears that we arrived at exactly the right time, too.
Well Joe, isn’t it convenient that your list of 20 factors required for intelligent life; which list you didn’t give us, happens to contain factors present on this planet. Well of course that also includes your definition (which you didn’t give us), of what is intelligence, or why it is of any relevance to the existence of life.
The dinosaurs existed just fine, for 165 million years by just being big and mean and ugly.
Intelligence is just one of the recent experiments of mother nature in the art of survival (or persistence if you wish).
There’s not a shred of evidence, that intelligence promotes survival. Indeed it would seem from the daily news, that “human intelligence” is rather unlikely to survive even one million years; maybe not even 100 k years.
And aren’t we so self centered in our thinking to believe that somehow we are an important species.
There are far more creatures on this planet that look like Lobsters, than there are that look like humans. So evidently there are better morphologies for life forms than the human one.
So just what miracle is it that a moon performs to make us humans possible.
Plants seem to be far more diverse and pervasive than humans, and it is not too apparent, what if any role intelligence plays in their survival.
For example, take a plant like a dandelion, which sprays seeds into the wind on the slopes of a mountain perhaps.
Typically, the temperature is lower further up than it is further down so there are usually more plants at lower altitudes.
So when a dandelion sprays its seeds to the winds, those that blow up the mountain have a better chance of landing on open ground (soil) than seeds which blow down the mountain, and have a better chance of landing on some other plant already occupying that spot; so they will never get a chance to grow into another dandelion, like the uphill ones will.
NO intelligence at all needed for propagation of the dandelion or other species as well. Just sheer random chance will do it.
Why is it that we humans can’t get away from the mirror and stop looking at ourselves as something special.
It is we who have narrowed our survival range with our central heating and air conditioning, and our artificial clothing and housing. And that is why we go gaga if the temperature changes by a tenth of a degree for a while. And we build mountains of paperwork laws to define what is food that we are allowed to eat or make available for somebody else to eat.
Yes we are sowing the seeds of our own demise by driving our existence requirements into a smaller and smaller corner.
There are countless species better suited to survival, than humans, and not a great deal of what we regard as intelligence among them.
So how much intelligence does a venus fly trap have; yet it captures plenty of food, of presumably more intelligent organisms.
There’s intelligent life on Earth?
Joe
The silicon atom has the same combining power as carbon, and silicon life-forms appear in star trek. On Earth, however, all known life is carbon-based and depends on the ability of plants to photosynthesise CO2 to form basic sugars and carbohydrates. This is the base of the food chain for all living things.
Thus, all life on this planet depends on that particular pollutant being in the atmosphere
George E Smith
Very good!
Joe G
??? Jupiter has lots of solar total eclipses.
Hi George- Read “The Privileged Planet”, all the factors are listed in it. Intelligence is nothing more than the ability to manipulate the environment for a purpose. All organisms exhibit that intelligence.
No, Jupiter does not have total solar eclipses. There is a scientific paper that goes over this- that the earth is the only planet in this system that has total solar eclipses
http://astrogeo.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/3.18.short
@ur momisugly George E. Smith March 17, 2015 at 11:47 pm
In the grand scheme of things, …”survival of the fittest”, …. you are correct on the above. Human intelligence does not promote “survival of the fittest of the species”.
But in the “short term”, …. human intelligence promotes survival, ….. but it is ”survival of the un-fittest”, which is, per se, …. slowly polluting the “gene pool”.
And as the human population continues to increase, …. the resources required to maintain a continuing ”survival of the un-fittest” will increase exponentially (Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, etc., etc.) …. and thus the Law of Diminishing Populations will rear its ugly head, to wit:
“The law of diminishing returns is an economic principle that states that as investment in a single goal increases, while all other variables remain constant, the return on investment will eventually decline.”
The legacy of Easter Island, ……. perhaps?
Samuel C Cogar
March 18, 2015 at 7:31 am
…
In the grand scheme of things, …”survival of the fittest”, …. you are correct on the above. Human intelligence does not promote “survival of the fittest of the species”.
But in the “short term”, …. human intelligence promotes survival, ….. but it is ”survival of the un-fittest”, which is, per se, …. slowly polluting the “gene pool”….
One of the profound errors that most people make when attempting to talk about evolution is the mistaken concept of what “fittest” means. Selection, which is the only means of determining what “fittest” means at any given moment, acts like a filter that shifts through the “noise” of adaptive ranges present within living beings exposed to the specific selective filters in play. Those filters change with time, leading to the obvious but generally ignored fact that “fitness” can only increase with reference to specific filter and that can resulting in limiting fitness in terms of other acting filters. That’s how bull dogs, beefsteak tomatoes and Sphynx cats come into existence (humans are an evolutionary selective force when we deliberately decide which dog has pups).
At the same time, entropy acts on genetic information creating transcription errors, methylization and other noise, which might or might not come to be a selective advantage under some circumstances. Human intelligence was selected for within the population because the folks bright enough to invent a new “extrasomatic” means of catching a fish, or hooking down fruit were able feed their own. That lead pretty inexorably toward an approach to survival that was partially immune to the common selective filters. Can’t venture into an area because it’s too cold? Kill that bison and steal the coat. Too breezy in the coat? That bird stitches the nest together, suppose we do that to these captured furs of ours. Desert too dry to venture into? Let’s make a “puddle” of drinking water we can carry with us. This sort of behaviour exists elsewhere, but humans are uniquely adapted physiologically to take advantage of it (opposable thumbs). New Zealand crows are smart enough to make tools, but it is considerable work for them compared to a human with two functioning hands.
Last time I checked there were approximately 92 different elements found here on earth, and much of the life we know about seems to contain compounds of Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Sulfur, Phosphorus, and maybe a few more.
The carbon chemistry enables a wide range of molecules made from those few. Some compound’s isomers exist in living organisms, while other isomers of the same compound never are found in living organisms. And in many instances the non-existing ones are energetically favored over those that are in living organisms.
But in any case, the other 85 or so elements are also able to form many arrangements. Silicon forms the silicones which are a fairly diverse group of materials.
But when you add in to silicon, some other elements, for example Boron, or Phosphorous, or Arsenic, along with Oxygen, Nitrogen Aluminum, gold, and plenty of others, you can get quite elaborate resulting forms.
Right now, materials based on silicon are capable of replicating themselves and other things, and are slowly subjugating other intelligent forms to second class ratings.
You only have to watch some carbon life forms getting down the street, obeying the wishes of their silicon finger toys, to realize that the carbon forms are rapidly getting dumber and dumber, while the silicon ones are rapidly getting more and more intelligent.
Pretty soon the silicon life forms, will supplant the carbon ones in processes like large scale movement, and the carbon forms will have their ability to move freely will atrophy while the silicon ones take over the movement of other organisms, and materials as well from place to place.
Our appendix is already superfluous, and to some extent, so is our gall bladder. Eventually arms and legs will not be needed as silicon life forms will be perfectly capable of moving us from place to place, with little need of input from us.
And they already think for us, so more and more people can’t even give you change from a dollar bill, for a MacDonald’s Senior coffee, and have to call on a silicon life form to show them how to do it.
So while most life forms on earth, and those we call “intelligent”, are based on carbon chemistry, they are quite rapidly being overtaken by the intelligent forms of silicon based life forms, that are allowing the carboniferous ones, to get ever more stupid.
Now some people explain “life” on earth as being the result of “intelligent design.”
But why would an intelligent designer start off populating the earth with the dumbest things that have ever lived, such as Trilobites for example.
For how many millions of years was earth inhabited by “intelligently designed” organisms, that were as dumb as a box of rocks ? Why not make the intelligent ones first.
And why would an intelligent designer create billions of tons of squished “fossil” organisms that store enormous quantities of chemical energy, and then create an “intelligent life form” that chooses to eschew that source of energy, to the detriment of the well being of the majority of its total earth population.
Clearly the design of earth’s flora and fauna, was not the result of the application of any intelligence.
But we humans are so full of ourselves as being important in the universe, that we think it was all done for us.
So I prefer to believe, that we actually have learned to adapt to the climate that was given us on this non Goldilocks planet, and so have the many other life forms that share it with us.
But silicon life forms are capable of thriving in a much wider Temperature range than carbon life forms are, and at the higher Temperature extremes, there are plenty of other chemistries, that work very well.
Silicon carbide, is capable of functioning while glowing red from Temperature.
So the only thing special about planet earth is that we are on it.
G
George E, … I loved it, loved it, loved it, ….. especially this paragraph, to wit:
Thanks for posting that.
@ur momisugly Duster March 18, 2015 at 11:29 am
Well now, Duster, after reading your explanation of “survival of the fittest” it doesn’t surprise me any that so many people are profoundly confused about the “fitness of the fittest”, ….. ‘descent-with-modification’ speaking, ….. that is..
“””””…..
Joe G
March 18, 2015 at 4:07 am
Hi George- Read “The Privileged Planet”, all the factors are listed in it. …..”””””
The privileged planet is privileged, only in that we are on it. And since we defined what the word privileged means, then of course we can claim that the planet is privileged.
As for Jupiter’s “Total solar eclipses, can anybody on Jupiter’s surface, even see the sun at any time ??
Why is this and it’s mates here? Where is the relevance to the article?
Game over man; game over.
I think it is rather amusing that those who call themselves “progressives” wish for the climate to be unchanging while the conservatives are keen to encourage adaptive change in the face of any changes that might happen. Talk about having things upside down, like Tiljander really.
And taking a typical hurricane and claiming that it’s abnormal is equally absurd.
Thank you Dr. Ball.
And taking a tropical storm and calling it a “Super Storm”, is nearly criminal. I still know people who think it was called super storm Sandy because it was even worse than a hurricane.
There are legions of estimates about how much damage was done, but I have two friends on the East Coast, who are dyed-in-the-wool-tree-huggers, who admitted that 90% of the damage was done within 2 feet of sea level. Crap, we get 2 foot storm surges on Lake Michigan in November.
… instead of it being a massively amplified disaster due to the incredibly awful response of federal, state and local government agencies (except the USCG) and poor to non-existent preparation on the part of the population due to the almost total dependence on government in the urban NE. If Sandy had hit down here in Florida no one would have mentioned its name after two weeks had passed. It would have faded away almost immediately like TS Fay (which dumped far more rain than Sandy did.) I was absolutely horrified at that response. There were emergency utility crews from Florida turned away from working in NY and NJ because they weren’t union, truckloads of supplies routed far from the places things were needed.
On average Storm Sandy didn’t do much of anything. For most of its existence it simply stirred up the ocean surface a bit and the atmosphere. It is only when you cherry pick data, and consider only the few hours of Sandy’s life when it was in proximity to humans or human structures, that anything untoward happened.
I just flew to Auckland NZ partly in the fringes of Hurricane Pam, which slammed Vanuatu. Yes it was quite bumpy coming in to land.
And as a result of that storm, which is a disaster for Vanuatu, the six Volvo ocean race boats moored in the Viaduct Harbor, were unable to leave port for the southern ocean on Sunday. I don’t know yet whether they succeeded in leaving on Monday or not.
So I flew to Melbin on Monday, and it was a perfectly calm and uneventful flight.
It’s a terrible tragedy for those folks who were in the path, but they are already starting to pick up their pieces and lick their wounds. They will survive; they have for maybe thousands of years on those islands.
It was a ‘superstorm’ as it arrived in the closing stages of a presidential election race and hit states where the politicians were more concerned with the size of soda cups than in basic planning laws and protection against storms which they, like New Orleans, had been prewarned about for decades. The storm had to be talked up otherwise these politicians would have been held accountable. However, unlike New Orleans the NE politicians have still not learned their lesson and the continuing lack of sea defenses and poor planning decisions will lead to more loss of life in future extra-tropical storms.
Iffen you want to talk about “superstorms” then you should be talking about the Tri-State Tornado that occurred on March 18, 1925, which was the deadliest tornado in U.S. history with 695 confirmed fatalities with a one (1) mile wide, 220 mile long path of death and destruction that began in southeastern Missouri and ended in southwestern Indiana.
Try to guess what a REPEAT of that storm would result in if it occurred in 2015.
Read more @ur momisugly http://www.ustornadoes.com/2014/03/18/the-tri-state-tornado-of-1925/
In geological timescales, there’s no such thing as a “normal” climate.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/the-steady-state-environment-delusion/
Pointman
Yes Pointman, If there is a great architect of the universe, that being must surely find some of our popular naive assumptions amusing. We obviously don’t have the longevity of lifespan or a vast enough perspective to judge what is normal for the third rock from sol.
What history paints is a slow-motion roller-coaster ride, where it is normal to gain and lose inertia but not normal to stay at the same elevation for long.
The one thing of which I am convinced, is that no single forcing is omnipotent. The interplay of cycles with random events determines the amount of heat which this planet retains at any given locale and juncture. If anthropological CO2 is actually abundent enough to be a forcing factor, it must compete in that arena of interplay, where it is challenged by other forces, terrestrial, heliospheric and cosmic.
Indeed Pointman. The end of the last glaciation saw rapid climate change. The Holocene saw wild climate changes come and go. PS I vaguely recall that the ‘normal’ state of the Earth over the last million years is ‘ice-ages’!
It may be normal climate but I don’t want any of it thanks.
Agreed Jimbo, speaking as a Homo Sap, 70% of our estimated 200,000 existence has been in ice ages. Gimme at least our current interglacial. As for CO2 being the big controlling knob of climate, you’d have to be a big knob yourself to believe anything so simplistic.
Pointman
A million years? 1/4,500 of Earth’s history? A minor episode.
What is normal for the climate?
t.dT/dt = 0.2C
for most periods from a year to a century.
California thinks it is in a drought because the last three years of precipitation have been lower than they wish were average. Reference timeframes matter.
California is in a drought because that’s what deserts do.
Shear madness to build enormous cities in the desert and expect not to have water problems.
Sheer, even. Cutting not necessary.
California is running out of water because we were stupid enough to build cities of millions of people in a desert.
If we use know “cheep” sources of energy that not a problem, if we do not allow the use of such energy sources it is, that where California is at today! Fresh water in today world is moot, the only question is are we willing to apply the know technology to change salt water to fresh?
There was a time when stories of Man controlling the climate were considered science fiction.
Today such stories are political science fiction.
🙂
Excellent. I was thinking the same thing. I also recall that one of the ‘rules of war’ that were extent at some point on the recent past, and possibly still today, is that you don’t modify the weather on purpose to damage your enemy/help your guys.
I may be missing something but if ‘normals’ are gradually shifted to the right of the timescale, in a warming world won’t anomalies understate the ‘warming’? I’m not a warmist by the way. Just want to understand how useful normals and anomalies are as opposed to absolute temperatures.
The new normal will be worse than the old normal. No matter what happens. It will just give people something else to moan about.
Yes, indeed. What is normal?
The Romans enjoyed a balmy English climate with vineyards during the RWP. The Norse enjoyed Greenland’s farming colonies, and the Anasazi of the American Southwest could grow maize on high Colorado plateaus during the MWP. CO2 levels followed natural temperature variations with the terrestrial biosphere holding down natural CO2 venting from the oceans and thawing permafrost.
Today, with a natural warm period returning, the growing seasons will slowly lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere. It will only take about an additional 20 days, 10 days in earlier in Spring, and 10 days later in the Fall into October to reverse the secular trend of increasing CO2 even with the “business as usual CO2 scenario”release from human activity. The sinks are far from saturated and are expanding to soak up the rising pCO2. Instead of 155 growing days from early May to mid-September, 176 days of CO2 NH biosphere sink activity will reverse the CO2 secular trend. CO2 is the effect of warming, not the cause.
But if the Climate cools due to natural internal variability and/or diminished solar forcings, then the CO2 will slow its rise, yet still be elevated, and thus assisting the biosphere in resilience, and helping to buffer the cooling.
CO2 is our friend. It feeds the plants which feed the world. It may buffer against the calamity of a cooling world.
Climate Change is no longer a scientific question. The pseudoscience of the IPCC has been unmasked. Carbon emissions are now only a political battlefield for the control of the mankind’s wealth and industry. As for nature, the biosphere is content with elevated CO2. We should be too.
I know it is a popular meme but melting permafrost is not a net source of CO2. Once the underlying ice melts trees grow rapidly – well as rapidly as they can. The subtraction of CO2 from the air is larger than the CO2 and other carbon sources.
Trees bury a lot of carbon in the ground actually, that is where the vegetation in the permafrost came from.
The permafrost line shifts north and south over hundreds or thousands of years with all sorts of thirty year normals.
There are different ‘normals’ for Toronto and Waterloo. So what? Does it tell me what the temperature will be today? Or is it just a method of making people feel they are being cheated? It is bloody cold again and not very spring-like.
What is normal climate?
Climate where Norm lives.
I had more pictured Normal, Illinois and it’s sister city, Bloomington. Pretty cold there these last few years.
(Go ISU Redbirds!)
IOW, Boston. Record-breaking snow this winter.
Are you sure it not Leiif, as in Leif Erickson, after all he knew where vinland was and not only that that were the grapes grew, cold chance in hell if the grapes grow there today! Oh i forgot it suppose to be warmer today day than when Leif sailed the North Atlantic.
The Sahara, ” a lush savanna, teeming with wildlife, fish-filled lakes, …”
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/sahara-desert-savanna-climate
I’ll take the climate of 9,000 years ago; can you dial it up for me?
From 10,500 to 7,300 years ago much of the Sahara was habitable by humans, hippos, elephants, rhino, crocodiles, and 30 species of fish. For over 3,000 years that was the “normal”, and so it may be again in another 100,000 years. In the interim the normal for Chicago at some point will be a mile-thick ice sheet cover, and San Franciscans will have to go west 26 miles to reach the coast. The Great Barrier Reef will once more be a high and dry plain, as it was until just 12,000 years ago.
This is normal climate – http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/climate.htm . What’s changed?
Thanks for that link.
I live in Pennsylvania. When I was growing up, summers got hot and winters got cold, and it warmed up in the spring and cooled down in the fall. Some summers got hotter than others, and some winters got colder than others. Some years, spring weather got an earlier or later start, or end, and some years fall weather got an earlier or later start, or end.
And that’s what happens now, too. So, I’m not sure in what sense the climate here has actually changed at all.
Re Gary in Erko – from your link:
“Trade winds north of the equator blow from the northeast. South of the equator, they blow from the southeast. The trade winds of the two hemispheres meet near the equator, causing the air to rise. As the rising air cools, clouds and rain develop. The resulting bands of cloudy and rainy weather near the equator create tropical conditions.
Westerlies blow from the southwest on the Northern Hemisphere and from the northwest in the Southern Hemisphere. Westerlies steer storms from west to east across middle latitudes.”
Now that is an interesting speculation, that the trade winds meet near the equator and push the air up! Perhaps my Geography and Physics masters were wrong at school – they thought the air was warmed in the near equatorial regions, expanded, and as it was less dense than surrounding air, was buoyant and so rose. The trade winds were cooler, denser, air which flowed in to fill the gap.
And westerlies ‘steer’ storms? Intelligent westerlies which can steer storms? Puleeze!
30 years is, at a minimum, 1/2 of a “normal” 30 year cycle.
Consider the AMO compared to NH T.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut4nh/from:1850/mean:12/detrend:0.8/plot/esrl-amo/from:1850/mean:12
(At east this version of normal captures a real ocean observation. Yet it tells us nothing of a general trend over larger cycles.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SmDoZBIkB3I/AAAAAAAABAc/KkUzrz2abwI/s1600/Vostok-140Kc.jpg
I am curious how the nations on this planet would get along with a sudden reduction to 270 ppm CO2. As every crop on the planet would suddenly reduce production by about 10% to 15 %, I imagine the “new normal” would be quite stressful.
A productivity decrease of 10 to 15% in the Public Service would be unnoticeable.
You would be into negative figures.
Ø x 90% = Ø.
True that. 10 to 15 percent less harm is not much.
“After*” the Wintah for the Ages in Greater Boston — I favor reverting to the “Normal” of 130k years ago
* — while it will be Spring tomorrow we are also predicted to pick-up some additional snow and more “Below Average Temps”
A “Normal” climate, is one which hasn’t been tampered with, by the Climate Alarmists.
In psychology “normal” and/or “norms” are determined by the gestalt or broad behavior patterns of a group of people. Cultural Norms can be very different from each other, one peoples normal can be another peoples crazy. Point being to even attempt naming a “climate norm” is in itself absurd. Normal in both psychology and climate science is a moving target.
I have a lot of respect for Bruce Krasting’s articles. What would the opinion of this be for the WUWT crowd?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-17/pam-was-so-big-she
The Trade Winds drive the El Nino.
A big storm could disrupt them. Pam was a Cat 5 storm – that’s big.
So it seems reasonable, in my opinion (despite the sensationalist writing style).
But we’ll have to wait and see. The storm was big but not long-lived by the standards of the Trade Winds.
If it pans out then we would have a mechanism for triggering El Ninos – Big storms blocking the Trade Winds. But does the blockage last long enough to cause a complete change? I don’t know.
Donch’a mean, “If it pams out”? /;-p
In English, what is the normal meaning of the word “normal”?
Take your pick:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/normal#Adjective
In the 60’s, I remember playing soccer in shorts on the front lawn for my brother’s birthday in late November. The following year we played ice hockey and cut it short because it was too cold.
To this day I don’t know which year was “normal”.
Both
The last 3 decades have featured the most favorable weather and climate that life on this planet has experienced in at least 1,000 years, going back to the Medieval Warm Period.
Taking into account the additional CO2 and you have an even better environment.
However, we have a group of humans that decided that they know what the perfect temperature and CO2 level is………………. exactly where they were at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Nothing else matters.
Warmer, even by a small amount=bad.
CO2=Pollution, even if it greens up the earth and massively increases the food supply
“History shows that whenever man achieves a civilization of peace and plenty some one has found a way to wreck it and send the world back to the old hard life again.”
Dr. Edith Boyd
Assistant Professor
Department of Anatomy
University of Minnesota
The Straits Times (Singapore)
8 December 1935
normal is probably a bad choice of words. the right word is ‘scaled’
you can choose any length period you like.
Maybe average is a better term.
no. you scale by subtracting the average.
No. Scaling is multiplicative, not additive. You scale by multiplying a value times a scale factor.
Hum, well numbers are certainly malleable.
I think this raises some important definitional issues that get swept under the table.
First “climate” is typically applied to a region, how do we define a “global climate”? What artifacts of the atmosphere can we abstract out (using for example 30 year time frames) to define a global climate? Particularly if we want to discuss climates over centuries past and future?
When you look at the regional definitions most of the criteria become meaningless at a global level so I suspect we are reduced pretty much to using global temperatures as the surrogate measure. This may be fine, but I haven’t seen this issue being addressed in the literature (and I’ve looked).
Second we talk of “climate change”. To get beyond the non-trivial interpretation that climates are always changing we need to have some predefined categories of “global climates” so we can judge when the climate changes from one state to another. We do that at a regional level.
To focus the mind on this issue it is worth asking how many discrete climates we have had over the last 2000 years say, when did the transitions occur and how do we all agree are the requirements to say we have made the transition to the next state. I’m not prejudging whether we’re are going up or down in temp – just looking for the definitions of the next adjacent categories to the category we are in (this presumes the categories are basically a function of temperature).
I think this is important for the policy debate. Some definition would make the measurement and forecasting problems clearer. We might well decide we don’t need GCMs to help.
“First “climate” is typically applied to a region, how do we define a “global climate”?
this definition of climate ties climate to a location ( not a region) allthough many locations in a region can have a similar climate. the global version of this is merely an enumeration. further in this definition climate never changes. climate change happens in the weather.
The Koeppan classification is location independent (but is “applied to a region”). It would become reduced to little more than classifying global temperatures if applied globally. We could alternatively measures the size of the regions in various Koeppan classes and develop a score from that. My point is that I have not see either done, and the latter becomes difficult for the historic record.
On either definition the climate will change (global temp or distribution of Koeppan classes), but the problem remains: how do we classifying these climates into categories of global climate?
The problem doesn’t go away if you define the global climates as the set of all observed weather. Putting aside the question of how we move from average weather patterns to global climate, we are still left without any agreed classification of the latter.
Help
I’m running a simple competition. The rules are simple: get an alarmist to call you a denier.
I thought it would be really easy, but I’ve been asking all night and no one’s playing ball.
Perhaps I’m doing it wrong? Any suggestions.
http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/2015/03/17/the-shear-denier-challenge/
Easy. go onto getup.com.au and challenge global warming.
Easier. Go over to HotWhopper. I guarantee you be hit with denier quicker than an AK47 on full-auto.
Denier! Ah never mind I am not an alarmist.
Are you banned at the Guardian?
If not, I have an idea.
Wool that be people who don’t believe wool comes from sheep?
Ya, as soon as you appeal to “normal” you reference someone’s usual, or tolerable. Well, Bring back, Bring back, Bring back the Holocene Optimum to me, to me! It was really great! Just after all those nasty ice sheets, that lasted so long!
Some day, when computers become cheap enough that rich multi-billionaires and mega-corporations will not be the only ones that can afford them, we will be able to move beyond static 2 dimensional presentations of data and instead utilize a dynamic, user selectable interactive user interface method of displaying data. Someday, the digital divide that separates society into the rich that have access to computers, and the rest of us will be overcome.
On a serious note, I am at the coffee shop with 3 computers, this one I am typing on, a smartphone orders of magnitude more powerful than my first computer, and an e-ink eBook reader. When I took my first year of university studies, there was not one single laptop in existence at the university.
What I am getting at is, there are ways of overcoming some of the problems as presented by Dr. Tim Ball in this essay. One of my specialties is in the presentation of data.
Back in the early 1980s, I programmed mini-computers that had 1,500 MB of RAM. About the size of a refrigerator, they had to be kept in climate-controlled rooms.
Now, my smartphone with 1,500 MB of RAM fits in the palm of my hand.
I frequently told my students that when I was an undergraduate, I never wasted time playing computer games. Very few of them could guess why I didn’t.
In the 1960s the University of Adelaide had two computers: a big one in an air conditioned room, and a smaller one that was about twice the size of a large fridge. My brother learned to programme FORTRAN on them.
When my dad was head astronomer at the University of Chicago in the 1950’s the only air conditioned room on the campus was Univac’s home and I remember being amazed at how cool it was in that part of the building during summer.
Univac was a big. And mainly crunched big numbers calculating astronomical details (and nuclear bomb stuff).
And RAM memory was magnetic “core” memory …. and “quick” random-access mass storage was a Fastrand Drum … with about 90 megabytes of storage, … which makes us ole computer dinosaurs appreciate the SanDisk USB Flash Drives they we now have in the desk drawer or carrying on a key chain. to wit:
Source: http://oldendaysbp.blogspot.com/2011/02/univac-fastrand-ii-what-beast-of.html
Climate and every component that contributes to that term varies on all time frames and at all spatial scales. To even link the words ‘climate’ and ‘normal’ just provides further evidence of the utter absurdity of thinking characteristic of those (post-normal?) ‘climate scientists’ pushing the ‘man-made climate change’ meme. ‘Normal climate’, I suspect, is simply another psuedo-scientific ¨trick¨ used by the CAGW cultists because the word ‘normal’ is used by real scientists to describe a specific type of statistical distribution as a standard for analysing other types of statistical distributions.
The whole notion of language is critical to the debate, or lack of it. Look at the comments on yesterday’s debate. Even the word anomaly plays into some degree of fear mongering. In scientific communities the term generally means “difference,” but the colloquial meaning is “irregularity,” as in “not normal.”
A normal climate is one that is constantly changing. heh