Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Does record breaking winter cold cast doubt on climate predictions of milder winters? Could ANY weather or climate shift cast doubt on the dominance of that wicked little trace molecule? Apparently not, according to leading climate explainers.
It’s cold outside, but that doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real
Sammy Roth, USA TODAY Published 5:13 p.m. ET Dec. 28, 2017
This week’s cold snap has brought record-low temperatures, freezing rain and heavy snow to much of the United States. But 2017 is still on track to be the second- or third-hottest year ever recorded globally — and scientists say climate change is to blame.
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Even this week’s cold weather is probably being caused at least in part by global warming, said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan.
The Arctic is warming much faster than most of the planet, leading to a dramatic decline in the amount of sea ice that covers the region each winter. That loss of ice has allowed more heat to transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere, causing a weakening of the polar vortex winds over the Arctic. Those winds usually “insulate the rest of the Northern Hemisphere” from freezing Arctic temperatures, Overpeck said. But as the winds have weakened, it’s gotten easier for freezing Arctic air to swoop further south, he said.
“That is due to the warming of the Arctic, which in turn is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases and primarily burning of fossil fuels,” Overpeck said in an interview.
Arctic warming may also be contributing to the long-term drying of the U.S. Southwest, although the science on that front is less certain, Overpeck said. Unlike most of the rest of North America, the Southwest is warmer than usual right now, and 2017 will “without a doubt” go down as one of the region’s hottest years ever measured, Overpeck said.
“This is contributing to our record wildfires in California, and the drying out of vegetation that’s leading to those wildfires, and the drying out of the Southwest’s water,” he said.
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So what happens if global temperatures take a real plunge for a sustained period? Don’t worry, the explainers have that one covered as well – James Hansen, former NASA GISS Director, published a paper which suggests global warming will trigger a short ice age in the near future (see the graph at the top of the page).
… Global temperature becomes an unreliable diagnostic of planetary condition as the ice melt rate increases. Global energy imbalance (Fig. 15b) is a more meaningful measure of planetary status as well as an estimate of the climate forcing change required to stabilize climate. Our calculated present energy imbalance of ∼ 0.8 W m−2 (Fig. 15b) is larger than the observed 0.58 ± 0.15 W m−2 during 2005–2010 (Hansen et al., 2011). The discrepancy is likely accounted for by excessive ocean heat uptake at low latitudes in our model, a problem related to the model’s slow surface response time (Fig. 4) that may be caused by excessive small-scale ocean mixing.
Large scale regional cooling occurs in the North Atlantic and Southern oceans by mid-century (Fig. 16) for 10-year doubling of freshwater injection. A 20-year doubling places similar cooling near the end of this century, 40 years ear- lier than in our prior simulations (Fig. 7), as the factor of 4 increase in current freshwater from Antarctica is a 40-year advance.
Cumulative North Atlantic freshwater forcing in sverdrup years (Sv years) is 0.2 Sv years in 2014, 2.4 Sv years in 2050, and 3.4Sv years (its maximum) prior to 2060 (Fig. S14). The critical issue is whether human-spurred ice sheet mass loss can be approximated as an exponential process during the next few decades. Such nonlinear behavior depends upon amplifying feedbacks, which, indeed, our climate simulations reveal in the Southern Ocean. …
Read more: http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.pdf
Global warming is an infinitely flexible, unscientific, unfalsifiable theory which can be stretched to accommodate any observation. Some Climate Scientists even shamelessly reject the very concept of scientific falsification with regard to the conduct of climate science.
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1. Methods aren’t always necessarily falsifiable
Falsifiability is the idea that an assertion can be shown to be false by an experiment or an observation, and is critical to distinctions between “true science” and “pseudoscience”.
Climate models are important and complex tools for understanding the climate system. Are climate models falsifiable? Are they science? A test of falsifiability requires a model test or climate observation that shows global warming caused by increased human-produced greenhouse gases is untrue. It is difficult to propose a test of climate models in advance that is falsifiable.
Science is complicated – and doesn’t always fit the simplified version we learn as children.
This difficulty doesn’t mean that climate models or climate science are invalid or untrustworthy. Climate models are carefully developed and evaluatedbased on their ability to accurately reproduce observed climate trends and processes. This is why climatologists have confidence in them as scientific tools, not because of ideas around falsifiability.
The Conversation: Climate change has changed the way I think about science. Here’s why
No matter what happens to the weather, the climate explainers shamelessly cobble together an explanation which blames bad weather on your sinful lifestyle.
Whatever the observation, the climate explainers have their theory – their infinitely adaptable theory, which they claim is science. Warm weather confirms their worst fears. Cold weather is waved away. Whatever the observation, the explainers shamelessly adapt their theory to provide an explanation, based on their “scientific” theory which cannot be falsified by any conceivable observations, event an abrupt plunge into a new ice age.
It is very convient to have a theory that explaines climate science regardless of the facts!!!! Jim Mueller
In the warmistas’ book, this is like a “tails I win, heads you lose” game. No amount of evidence will ever shake their faith in the fairy tale of AGW. It doesn’t matter because the common sense of the average person tells them that their global warming theory is “frozen over.”
It’s settled science. With all the answers. Just like any other scam or cult.
In short: it is a new age religion.
George Orwell, 2914 in real life.
ACK 1984…. see no coffee, don’t post.
There is exactly one test of science. It is the ability to provide useful predictions. Time and again we find no useful predictions from the current group of self-identified climate scientists.
Does the term “goofball” come to mind?
“based on their ability to accurately reproduce observed climate trends and processes”
Um, that’s not science. That’s retroactively saying your model fits the data.
In contrast, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics are PREDICTIVE to an exceptional degree of accuracy within their physical regimes. In fact. real scientists didn’t buy into the relativity theories until experimentslists verified those predictions (of the deflection of starlight by the sun’s gravity).
The ability to retroactive curve fit the data is computer programming, not science. That the last little bit of ice in the arctic is melting, an ice sheet that once covered huge swaths of North America as far south as the US Rockies, upper Midwest and all of New England, is hardly proof that humans are changing the climate. After all, that ice melted long before fossil fuels were developed…long before humans arrived on the scene at all.
Sad what gets called “science” these days. If your science predicts every eventuality from cold weather to hot from no snow to snow from more hurricanes to less…you don’t have a science any more.
You have a religion.
I’m sick and tired of hearing the term climate change. Everyone knows that climates change. No one can prove we can change climates. No one has proved we changed our climate. As long as so-called researchers feel compelled to alter data and use tax dollars we should reject their scare tactics.
Global warming enthusiasts need to realize that if they are ever put on the witness stand about anything, their credibility is going to be shattered like a hailstone hitting concrete if the opposing attorneys get wind of their position on climate.
Let me see if I can think like a lunatic global warming liberal. How about this: The deep freeze is the warmest on record. It’s the warmest ice ever recorded.
That actually sounds more like a Trump post, “We’re gonna make Ice Warm again!” (Sorry not against Trump, not a huge fan or anything but that’s what I heard when I read this. Don’t read too much into it beyond me giggling at my desk)
Liberals are being chimp slapped, contradicted and confronted at every angle. It’s a beautiful thing. Climate liars will have many years to reconsider their junk science while the sun takes a vacation in it’s quiet period.
I am finally starting to understand.
California on fire – global warming.
Chicago freezing – global warming.
Donald John Trump elected – global warming.
Boy gets beaten up by bully on the playground – global warming.
Rosie O’Donnell an idiot – global warming.
FINALLY! It’s clear.
Neither alarmist or denier am I, just follow the money & you can see more greed than Ali Baba & the 40 thieves!
Got a question for these Climate Researchers. How the hell can you predict world temperatures 200 years in the future, when you cant tell me accurately if I need a jacket or raincoat next week?
Global warming alarmists…scientists…shamans, are the “anti-science” flat-earthers of the modern era. NO science, only an endless trough of Soros money for supporters.
Here is what their models predicted for this winter:
All the pundits are in error: The climate change problem is caused by GRAVITY. When gravity is understood we will have understood climate change!!!
How does the climate engineering that even “rocket man” says he has using decades old technology come into play? Weather wars much.
So the Believers are still ignoring evidence and keeping the faith. How dedicated they are to their Climate Change religion!
So if we had dozens of ice ages, then have we also had dozens of global warming ages?
“While scientists routinely find themselves explaining that day-to-day weather patterns are not the same as long-term climate trends, they also widely agree that human-caused climate change is exacerbating extreme weather.
Along the New England coast, the cold appeared to be at least partially the culprit in the deaths of three thresher sharks found washed up on the shores of Wellfleet and Orleans on Cape Cod over the past several days, according to scientists.”
Well it looks like our toothy friends haven’t found the missing heat in the oceans just yet and it’s a travesty that they can’t I guess.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/even-sharks-are-freezing-to-death-winter-rages-and-the-nation-reels/ar-BBHtPVf
So, there’s long term drying of the southwest because of man made climate change? I’m sure it was a lush tropical paradise before the industrial revolution, and it’s only become desert in the last 100 years. Give me a break.
Its like Hell’s furnace has frozen over. What’s a pathological conformist to do?
Do you notice how these “scientists” (they are more akin to grant money “gold diggers”) fail to mention the affect the wobbling tilt of the earth has on climate?
The earth’s procession is beginning to enter a phase where sun light will be less direct on earth’s surface causing cooling for next 100 years.
Just what makes these fools believe that the present climate is the true and correct one just because it happened to be this way during their pitiful few years on earth. And why do they think that they should make it stay thus way, if they could?