Forbes: Global Warming to Blame But Definitely Not Linked to Early Snow in the Rockies

Mountain Goat at Hidden Lake near Logan Pass in Glacier National Park
Mountain Goat at Hidden Lake near Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. By Robert M. RussellOwn work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Although global warming might have been implicated in harsh weather in the Rockies, Forbes author Dr. Marshall Shepard definitely wants to make it very clear he is not trying to link this snow event to climate change, even though there is a growing body of evidence that global warming will make extreme cold and snow more likely.

The Blizzard In The Rockies Doesn’t Disprove Climate Change But People Will Say It Anyhow

Marshall Shepherd Senior Contributor 
Sep 29, 2019, 04:52pm

I predicted several days ago that some people would be tweeting that this early season snowstorm in parts of the Rocky Mountain region somehow refutes anthropogenic climate change. Rob Bailey, a computer engineer in Ohio, brought the Tweet at this link to my attention. I am sure there are many more just like it.

So why is the region experiencing such record cold and snow conditions in terms of magnitude of the event? To answer this question, we have to look to the jet streamAccording to the NWS Glossary, the jet stream is a region of “relatively strong winds concentrated in a narrow stream in the atmosphere, normally referring to horizontal, high-altitude winds….The position and orientation of jet streams vary from day to day.” The wavy pattern of the jet stream is a very strong determinant of general weather patterns, particularly in terms of temperature and wetness. With this storm, the jet stream plunged southward bringing extremely cold air into the region. An upper-level low approaching from the Pacific region supplied the moisture.

To be clear, this is a weather event. I am not attributing it to climate change at all. However, I do want to conclude with something that is very counterintuitive to many people. There is a growing body of evidence (and a few counter-narratives) in the peer review literature that suggests that because the Arctic region is warming, there is less of a difference in temperature between the polar and tropic regions. That difference, called a gradient, is what determines the strength of the jet stream. If the difference is smaller due to so-called Arctic Amplification (warming in the Arctic), the jet stream would be wavier. The “so what” is that a jet stream with greater wave amplitude means more extreme troughs or “dips” with cold air and more extreme ridges or “humps” with warm air. In other words, the extremes on both sides of the temperature range are amplified.

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/09/29/the-blizzard-in-the-rockies-doesnt-disprove-climate-change-but-people-will-say-it-anyhow/

The following image seems to have upset Dr. Shepherd, because some cruel contrarians are using this image to mock the urgency of our global warming emergency.

Now don’t any of you go upsetting Dr. Shepherd even further by suggesting what he wrote doesn’t make sense.

Update (EW): h/t Right-Handed Shark points out Dr. Shepherd was not nearly so coy a few months ago when he linked the record heatwave in Europe to global warming.

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Rudolf Huber
September 30, 2019 2:12 pm

I don’t envy those Alarmists. All their predictions go to crap all the time. Whatever they say turns out to be wrong in shorter and shorter time periods. Why cant the climate conform to their whims? Why cant it do what they say it must do?

Bryan A
Reply to  Rudolf Huber
September 30, 2019 2:33 pm

5′ in 24 hours…That is how glaciers are rebuilt

Rocketscientist
Reply to  Bryan A
September 30, 2019 5:23 pm

Not exactly…
only if it stays at that rate the entire season and it doesn’t’ melt for multiple years… but one blizzard not so much.

Reply to  Rocketscientist
September 30, 2019 10:46 pm

But just imagine how much it has to snow for a glacier to form and move down a mountain valley in a span of tens to hundreds of years, like we know occurred during the LIA.
I am thinking…a lot.
It takes cold to wring the moisture out of air and make snow.
And less heat transport from the tropics to the poles would seem to be required for that to happen on a hugely expanded scale while the TSI is more or less constant.
Which would increase evaporation from tropical oceans.
This increased moisture then meets cold air and is dropped as snow.
So it would seem perhaps for all of that to occur, would require a more zonal jet stream pattern to bottle up cold air so it is not transported south and modified.
All of this would require some sort of modification in the Hadley cells.
We know that sometimes two ITCZs can form over the Pacific.
I have long wondered just what must be happening in the tropics during an ice age, or when neoglaciation is leading to a new advance.
Two ITCZs would lead to a zone of descending hot dry air between them….
This would keep more heat in the tropics and less would go poleward.
They would each perhaps be not as high.
Pure speculation, but one thing is sure…during a glacial epoch, the atmospheric circulation must be greatly altered from what we see in present day conditions.
At some point, a growing ice sheet extending ever higher would have increased snow deposition on it from orographic (or whatever the right word is for winds forcing air kilometers high over ice instead of a rock mountain) lifting.
One prerequisite condition might involve a particular weather pattern becoming locked into place for a hugely extended period of time. We see such things in a small time scale now, but imagine a pattern that locked in for months or years.

commieBob
Reply to  Rudolf Huber
September 30, 2019 3:31 pm

When they can attribute everything to global warming, their theory becomes non-falsifiable and ceases to be science.

Barbara
Reply to  commieBob
September 30, 2019 7:42 pm

Exactly. Or, if it’s unusually cold, it’s just weather, but if it’s unusually hot, it’s climate change. As you say, the whole theory is non-falsifiable; ergo, not science.

Bill Powers
Reply to  commieBob
October 1, 2019 5:13 am

Too warm = AGW
True dat Bob

Too Cold = AGW
Too much, rain/snow = AGW
Too little, rain/snow = AGW
Forest Fire = AGW
Add any current undesirable condition here = AGW
e.g. : Trump = AGW

Don’t laugh its been reported.

How can they possibly be wrong. See What Did They Tell You.

Robert Clark
Reply to  Bill Powers
October 1, 2019 7:49 pm

Read Jerry Pournelle’s (and Niven and Flynn) “Fallen Angels”. It’s just a novel right. Guys. Right>

Goldrider
Reply to  commieBob
October 1, 2019 7:39 am

That’s why they changed the name from “global warming” to “climate change.” Like the Devil or the Boogeyman, it can be blamed for absolutely anything as a means to frighten idiots and children.

Remember that the average consumer of this “news” has daily contact with nature limited to the three steps from the foyer of the apt. building to the seat of their Uber, henceforth into the office elevator.
People who live a life in the hinterlands, outdoors, are not this easily fooled.

hseneker
Reply to  commieBob
October 2, 2019 8:30 am

Climate will do what climate will do as it has for hundreds of millions of years. Meanwhile, decisions and policy need to be based on hard fact.

There are some crucial, verifiable facts – with citations – about human-generated carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming – and what those hundreds of millions of years have to tell us – people need to know and understand at hseneker.blogspot.com

The discussion is too long to post here but is a quick and easy read. I recommend following the links in the citations; some of them are very educational.

Philo
Reply to  commieBob
October 2, 2019 8:34 am

Let’s not hit Dr. Shepherd to hard. The patterns in jet stream flow were discovered in the 1950’s. By the 1980’s it was pretty clear that the flow pattern of the northern jetstream varied periodically. The change between a smooth flow and a convoluted flow has happened at least 4 times since 1950.

The only difference recently is that some scientists have said they have measured a warming in the Arctic that causes the jetstream to fluctuate more widely. They are right. It is climate change. The cause(hypothesis: increasing CO2 in the atmosphere raises global temperatures causing the Arctic air to warm and increasing the variations flow of the Northern jetstream) has so many interconnecting variables, and at this point only one data point- the recent 20 years or so, it’s nothing more than the most recent conjecture. Even saying “associated with” is a giant leap.

Unfortunately for the leftisit/socialists who started this campaign weather and climate are so UNpredictable they take centuries of data to draw any real, significant conclusions, much less make predictions.

The only climate change I’m at all worried about is that a possible dual solar minimum is the first detectable step in the beginning of a new glaciation. That would be climate change. Variable weather is a nuisance.

Trebla
Reply to  commieBob
October 3, 2019 4:08 am

I would reply to the good doctor as follows: what you say about greater variability in the weather may be true, but it is also true that thanks to fossil fuels, we are easily able to adapt to these events (snow blowers, ploughs, air conditioners etc.). A transition to wind turbines and solar panels would not suffice to deal with a slight reduction in weather extremes.

Cosmic
Reply to  commieBob
October 3, 2019 7:57 am

I was in the dentist office waiting to be drilled (ok, no laughing) and here in MSP we had a real warm/humid last day of Sept. High 86F, dewpoints lower 70s. So I overhear a patient being escorted to his dental room and they were small talking and the weather came up of course. He says something to the tune of ‘ It’s sooo warm out. It’s scary. Global warming is really happening’ yadda yadda. I rolled my eyes and wanted to retort but bit my tongue. The 3 days leading up to this warm day were all below average, cool and wet. Wonder what this idiot-in-life had to say on those days. It’s so ingrained. The idiocy/naive that surrounds us is depressing.

Caligula Jones
Reply to  Cosmic
October 3, 2019 8:07 am

While Taleb can be an acquired taste, I do like his take on averages:

“Mix a $2,000 bottle of wine with a $10 one. The 2 bottles will be worth less than $1,005 each.”

MarkW
Reply to  Rudolf Huber
September 30, 2019 3:46 pm

If it’s bad, Global Warming did it.
If it’s good, it happened despite Global Warming and will soon stop happening.

DeNihilist
Reply to  MarkW
September 30, 2019 8:31 pm

Wish I could relocate that article that a senior scientist wrote a few years ago, stating that the higher CO2 is actually one of the onsets of ice ages. More heat creates more vapour which creates more snowfall which takes longer to melt, which eventually does not melt, which then leads to most heat being reflected, which leads to an ice age.

always thought this guy is gonna be proved right.

Crispin in Waterloo
Reply to  DeNihilist
September 30, 2019 9:34 pm

You are correct: if the snow lasts through one summer, it is more likely that the next year it will do the same but more. Once the ground cannot thaw completely, a real risk in Winnipeg, permafrost sets in and the next year it sets harder, and so on.

The frost reached about 15 feet down in Winnipeg a few years ago, freezing the water mains 10 ft down cutting off customers. If that happened 5 years in a row, it would take a long time to reverse.

Snow that makes it through the summer can become a glacier.

Patrick healy
Reply to  MarkW
October 1, 2019 3:23 am

Wot about the Russians? Or the Ukrainians? Tis them wot dunnit Shurely or is it Shirley?

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Rudolf Huber
October 1, 2019 1:36 pm

I’m afraid the alarmists have more unhappy times ahead with so many cycles turning down together in PDO, ENSO, AMO, and solar. A lot more trial balloons of global warming causes cold will need to be flown.

Caligula Jones
Reply to  ResourceGuy
October 1, 2019 1:39 pm

…and that’s going to be an issue.

I’m serious when I say I’m very concerning about what will happen when the reality of “not really an apocalypse” runs into “but I’ve lived my life like there was going to be one” meet.

We can joke about “drinking the Kool-Aid”, but remember where the term came from. We aren’t talking about rational folks here…

Earthling2
September 30, 2019 2:14 pm

If it is supposedly so warm in the Arctic, then why is the jet stream bringing such cold air down so far south in balmy September? This is just weather, and it is the 30 years of observed weather patterns that determines what the longer term climate trends are doing. Which is why every alarmist making claims about every tornado and hurricane and making climate attributions to CC are also false. Climate science is being reduced to the childish equivalent of monsters under the bed.

Reply to  Earthling2
October 1, 2019 8:29 am

It is very complimacated, and we are unable to understand it because we have not been subjected to sufficient edutainment of the properly filtered modern climate sciencism variety.

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  Earthling2
October 1, 2019 9:51 am

then why is the jet stream bringing such cold air down so far south in balmy September?

I guess that’s cause that’s what Jet Streams do. 😊

The polar vortex is a large area of low pressure and cold air surrounding both of the Earth’s poles. It ALWAYS exists near the poles, but weakens in summer and strengthens in winter. The term “vortex” refers to the counter-clockwise flow of air that helps keep the colder air near the Poles.

Many times during winter in the northern hemisphere, the polar vortex will expand, sending cold air southward with the jet stream (see graphic above). This occurs fairly regularly during wintertime and is often associated with large outbreaks of Arctic air in the United States.
https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-polar-vortex

Curious George
September 30, 2019 2:16 pm

“Global warming will make extreme cold and snow more likely.” I don’t like to be taken for a total idiot.

SMC
Reply to  Curious George
September 30, 2019 2:21 pm

Ah but Curious George, if you aren’t part of the politically correct intelligentsia, corporate donor elite or political elite, you, like me, are an idiot. At least as far as the above are concerned.

Dr. Bob
Reply to  SMC
September 30, 2019 2:52 pm

Well, Hillary had a term for a large segment of Americans, “Deplorables”. H and her ilk think the same of us skeptics, “Deniers”. And I am sure there are a great number of other ‘D’ words they would use as well.
Quote from H”
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.
Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/09/13/irredeemable-clinton-deplorable/

SMC
Reply to  Dr. Bob
September 30, 2019 3:04 pm

Simply put, if you disagree with any aspect of the leftist agenda, you’re deplorable.

Marv
Reply to  Dr. Bob
September 30, 2019 4:29 pm

“And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million.”

There is a message here somewhere. I think I get it and I think 11 million other people get it but I do not think Hillary gets it.

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  Marv
October 1, 2019 10:12 am

Hillary thinks she is going to get it. She’s making her move as we speak. She is back in the News and on the “attack”. Me thinks Hillary and her Democrat “worshippers” are planning on a “brokered” Convention on July 13–16, 2020, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ….. where all the current Democrat POTUS candidates will be REJECTED and Hillary will be nominated as the Democrat POTUS candidate opposing President Trump.

JEHILL
Reply to  SMC
September 30, 2019 4:32 pm

They are the ones falling victim to Wizard’s 1st Rule…..

But yes I am a nasty deplorable.

Goldrider
Reply to  SMC
October 1, 2019 7:45 am

As for the “politically correct intelligentsia,” I live in an enclave of these people so I am here to tell you that their “brainpower” is confined to whatever tiny narrow field they studied; the rest is slavish acceptance of arguments from authority. Since any “authority” is accepted without critical thinking, Gwenyth Paltrow or Dr. Oz have as much traction with them as the scientific pioneers of our age–they literally can’t tell the difference! Otherwise how could they be paying $200 a pop to “freeze their fat” in cryogenic cylinders while downing “green smoothies” with enough oxalates to give a horse a kidney stone? They may be good at trading bonds or inheriting Daddy’s hedge fund, but most of them are functionally idiots when it comes to anything real-world and practical. Hence all this silly drama.

Caligula Jones
Reply to  Goldrider
October 1, 2019 9:50 am

I once helped a colleague with his PhD dissertation (in emergency health medicine). Smart guy. Well qualified. In emergency health medicine.

He also believed in pretty much every conspiracy theory going, including, unfortunately, being a 9/11 Troofer, something that, in hindsight (as I haven’t seen him for a decade), ended our relationship.

BTW, my ‘hood in Toronto (actually, not far from Stephen McInyre) has political opinions that range all the way around the spectrum from moderate left to tinfoil hat left (usually indistinguishable form the lunatic right, of course).

And while I do respect someone with a reasonable job description, so many of them are “consultants” and “alternative” practitioners that I often wonder if I’m in a Twilight Zone episode.

wadelightly
Reply to  Curious George
September 30, 2019 2:58 pm

Yeah, that one jumped out pretty quick.

Taphonomic
Reply to  Curious George
September 30, 2019 3:27 pm

According to Presidential candidate, Tom Steyer, you are not “super-sophisticated” enough to understand.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Taphonomic
September 30, 2019 3:44 pm

Ole Tom managed to buy himself a seat at the next Democrat debate. I wonder what Bernie has to say about that? Bernie used to say millionaires and billionaires are bad for democracy but since Bernie has become a millionaire, he has dropped that complaint and focusing exclusively on the bad billionaires. Bernie, Tom Steyer is one of those bad billionaires. Perhaps you should raise this issue at the next debate. Tom will be standing right there.

MarkW
Reply to  Tom Abbott
September 30, 2019 6:04 pm

Democrats never had any complaints regarding millionaires and billionaires that supported them.
It was only the other side’s rich people who were a problem.

If liberals didn’t have multiple standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.

Derg
Reply to  Tom Abbott
September 30, 2019 8:01 pm

Wall Street doesn’t want Bernie or Warren. Dems can’t run Biden…it may be back to Hillary 🤓

Rod Evans
Reply to  Derg
October 1, 2019 12:43 am

That would be so funny to watch. Can you imagine round two of Trump versus MissSpoke Clinton?! Maybe they will give Chelsea a try, she could always claim to be a millennial and “well spoke”. Unlike her mother.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Derg
October 1, 2019 4:25 am

“it may be back to Hillary”

That’s what see is thinking. You can see the wheels turning when she talks. She is hoping the current field is so weak (and they are) that the Democrat elites will eventually come to her and ask her to represent the Democrat Party. Hillary told us the other day that she had 66 million endorsements for president, while whining about losing the election to Trump.

Trump has a year before the next election. That ought to be enough time for the Justice Department to show that Hillary tried to steal the 2016 election by using the Obama administration and foreign govenments to try to undermine and defeat Trump. And right after Trump was elected, Hillary and her people, includig the Democrats in Congress, started the current efforts to oust Trump in a secret coup.

The Deomcrats in the House of Representtives are abusing their political power for selfish, partisan purposes and the only hope for this country is to remove the Democrats from power in the House and Senate and Presidency.

The Democrats in Congress have become Domestic Enemies of the United States. They are trying to overthrow a duly elected President of the United States. It’s not going to work.

Curious George
Reply to  Taphonomic
September 30, 2019 5:34 pm

That’s the very essence of elitism.

Gerald Machnee
Reply to  Curious George
September 30, 2019 3:34 pm

Well the good doctor said,” If the difference is smaller due to so-called Arctic Amplification (warming in the Arctic), the jet stream would be wavier.”

So they make this up as they go along.

Duane
Reply to  Gerald Machnee
September 30, 2019 6:44 pm

Well, my theory is that as the Arctic warms, the jet stream gets kinkier and ends up tying itself in little knots.

My theory makes just as much sense and is just as well proven as his theory is. So Shepherd therefore is a Science Denier.

Reply to  Curious George
September 30, 2019 10:55 pm

The following report shows USA crop progress to 29Sept2019.

To this non-expert, it looks much later than last year. As I recall, planting across the Great Plains was ~one month late for the past two years. An early frost could reduce crop yields considerably. We will soon know.

The scoundrels and imbeciles out there will blame global warming for these wet and cold conditions. They will be wrong.

https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/8336h188j/cv43p9652/5d86pc14q/prog4019.pdf

Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
October 1, 2019 5:53 am

Again, to a non-expert it looks like the growing season is soon ending in the western prairies.
https://weather.com/maps/tendayforecast

The crop yields in the prairie states will be of interest.

Keen Observer
Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
October 1, 2019 7:29 am

Killing frost overnight in Calgary and area to end the third quarter, after a foot or more of snow was dropped since Friday. I’d say it’s over, at least around here.

buggs
Reply to  Keen Observer
October 1, 2019 10:30 am

Oh it’s largely over alright. Yields are going to be dismal. The growing season was ok but cooler in the Canadian prairies (and likely Canadian states to the south of said prairies) – interesting to note that heat isn’t really all that required to grow many crops, just light and nutrients/water. Corn of course does not fit this description. That said the “fall” weather thus far has been abysmal. Sprouting, disease and other quality issues are going to be substantial this year.

From the eastern prairies we had a “good summer” if you count summer as a six week block between end of June and early August. Otherwise we’ve been about 4-5 C below normal since around April.

Reply to  Keen Observer
October 1, 2019 8:54 pm

buggs – I had a similar talk this morning with my friend Joe D’Aleo of weatherbell.

I believe Joe and his partners are most reliable weather forecasters in the world. Joe and I are both worried about North American prairie crop yields this year.

It is notable that planting on the Great Plains was one month late in both 2018 and 2019. We had a good summer growing season in 2018 but 2019 has been poor.

In 2002 I (we) predicted global cooling to start by 2020 to 2030, and for the past !five years or so I’ve been saying “closer to 2020”. Maybe it’s already started. Hope not. 🙁

SMC
September 30, 2019 2:18 pm

Climate change and CO2 can do anything. It’s magic.

joe
Reply to  SMC
September 30, 2019 8:43 pm

When Al Gore, Justin Trudeau, Leo DiCaprio et al, stop flying, start walking, and move into 300 ft2 apartments I’ll consider global warming.

I still say it’s not a problem.

n.n
September 30, 2019 2:19 pm

They want to have the baby and … We’ll see if society will go along with them again.

September 30, 2019 2:25 pm

If decreased temperature gradient makes the jet stream wavier, then why have I never heard a claim that it is wavier in the summer than in the winter?

4 Eyes
Reply to  Donald L. Klipstein
September 30, 2019 3:09 pm

And if it does not eventuate it will be because of global warming. He has made a brilliant each way bet.

ironargonaut
Reply to  Donald L. Klipstein
September 30, 2019 3:19 pm

Bingo!
Why haven’t you heard that the oceans could be releasing more energy causing global warming? After all they say the oceans may have caused the “pause” by absorbing more energy .

xenomoly.bloom
Reply to  Donald L. Klipstein
September 30, 2019 4:00 pm

Thats not what makes the jetstream take meridional flow. When the sun is very inactive it produces less UV and heats up the tropical ozone layer less. When the tropical ozone layer is more heated it bloats out and keeps the jet stream suppressed underneath it – and unable to invade lower latitudes. When the solar activity is low – the ozone layer cools and compacts – allowing the jet stream to slide further south. This oscillation from zonal flow patterns to meridional flow patterns has been noted for a long time. I wonder why its not mentioned by the meteorologists trying to explain away aberrant weather.

Reply to  xenomoly.bloom
September 30, 2019 5:29 pm

“xenomoly.bloom September 30, 2019 at 4:00 pm
Thats not what makes the jetstream take meridional flow. When the sun is very inactive it produces less UV and heats up the tropical ozone layer less…”

Nope.
That explanation is pure sophistry.

The 50°-60° N/S region is where the polar jet located with the subtropical jet located around 30°N. Jet streams vary in height of four to eight miles and can reach speeds of more than 275 mph (239 kts / 442 km/h).

comment image

The remaining ozone (about 90%) resides in the stratosphere between the top of the troposphere and about 50 kilometers (31 miles) altitude.”

Isn’t it amazing how a bloating ozone layer at the top of the Stratosphere, 31 miles in altitude, prevents jet stream loops down in the Troposphere at a jet stream’s maximum altitude of 8 miles?

Marshall Shepherd’s explanation is almost as bizarre.

“Marshall Shepherd Senior Contributor Sep 29, 2019, 04:52pm
“peer review literature that suggests that because the Arctic region is warming, there is less of a difference in temperature between the polar and tropic regions. That difference, called a gradient, is what determines the strength of the jet stream. If the difference is smaller due to so-called Arctic Amplification (warming in the Arctic), the jet stream would be wavier. “

N.B. how Shepherd reverses the logic. He uses the less of a temperature gradient between air masses as causing more violent exchanges of temperatures…

Less of a gradient means less violent exchanges of heat towards the polar regions. Less violent heat exchanges means less violent storms. Completely opposite to Shepherd’s claim.
comment image

James Clarke
Reply to  ATheoK
October 1, 2019 11:58 am

It’s not that simple. Sheperd is correct that the temperature gradient between the North Pole and the Equator drives the jet streams, but that gradient is always at a minimum in the late summer and early fall every year, just before the Arctic starts to cool again. But what happened in the Pacific Northwest was not an indication of a ‘weak’ jetstream pattern. Such storms are more expected later in the fall, as the temperature gradient over the Northern Hemisphere is increasing rapidly, and the jetstream is ramping up.

While the gradient powers the global jetstream pattern, and a larger gradient produces stronger jet streams, the actual course the jet stream takes is the result of a large number of complicated things, and I would be willing to bet that we don’t know many of them, much less understand them.

The snow storm in the Pacific Northwest this past weekend featured an unusually strong and pronounced jetstream flow for this time of year. There was nothing ‘weak’ about it. I don’t know why it happened, but there is nothing in this storm that supports the AGW crisis argument. It does not refute it, but it certainly does not support it.

This is just a case of trying to stuff a round storm into a square paradigm.

Reply to  James Clarke
October 1, 2019 6:29 pm

“James Clarke October 1, 2019 at 11:58 am
It’s not that simple. Sheperd is correct that the temperature gradient between the North Pole and the Equator drives the jet streams,”

That is not what Shepherd wrote.

Shepherd explicitly stated that weak gradients cause wavier jet streams which allow more extreme troughs/dips with cold air.
i.e. Extreme storms.

The jet streams follow the angle of the sun. A decreasing angle of sunlight means the jet streams moves to the South. Large air masses and their circulation cause the waves in a jet stream.

Reply to  xenomoly.bloom
October 12, 2019 8:47 pm

There are named oscillations of the jet stream (the northern hemisphere polar front one) in terms of zonal-vs-meridional. Two that I am familiar with have acronyms of AO and NAO. These two mostly oscillate largely together, not always. The AO typically has its “low” state having the northern polar front jet stream being wavier and dipping farther south around central & eastern North America, and its “high” state with that jet stream taking a less wavy and more northern path through and around central and eastern North America. The NAO oscillation has its high state favoring a more-north position of the northern polar front jet stream in eastern North America and at least the west half of the North Atlantic. When NAO and AO disagree with each other with NAO being high and AO being low, usually $#!+ happens in central and/or eastern North America. I have yet to hear of NAO and AO having their states having significant correlation with seasons, and I see that as strong evidence that the amount of temperature gradient that powers the NH polar front jet stream does not have significant effect on how wavy/otherwise that jet stream is. Even though I agree with warming of the Arctic making that jet stream slower.

John Tillman
September 30, 2019 2:25 pm

An hypothesis which predicts everything predicts nothing.

Farmer Ch E retired
Reply to  John Tillman
September 30, 2019 2:35 pm

Or causes everything but predicts nothing.

John Tillman
Reply to  John Tillman
September 30, 2019 4:31 pm

Climate science (TM) predicts that whatever happens, it’s bad and all our fault.

Caligula Jones
Reply to  John Tillman
September 30, 2019 6:28 pm

Well, here in Toronto, when we had “record” low levels of water in the Great Lakes, someone rolled out the requisite “science is settled” super-duper model that said, indeed, this was the “new normal”. We needed to spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!! in dredging the channels, maybe spending a few hundred millions on the recreational boating industry (seriously: their boats were too far from the water…)

Of course, a few years later, when we had “record” high levels of water in the Great Lakes, someone rolled out the requisite “science is settled” super-duper model that said, indeed, this was the “new normal”. We needed to spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!! on infrastructure, etc.

Repeat as needed.

Reply to  Caligula Jones
October 1, 2019 6:31 pm

Aye Caligula and John!

Al Miller
September 30, 2019 2:25 pm

yes, yes, yes, Dr. Sheppard- there is some supposed, possible, maybe, evidence that Arctic warming produces cooling elsewhere. The point people like him miss entirely- intentional or not- is that people just like him love to jump on every single warm day or event or “hottest evah”. Remember how during the very first Climate Change meeting they intentionally picked the hottest day of the year, and intentionally turned the A/C off? Thinly veiled fraud from the start, so why wonder when ordinary people like me say Ha, told you so. There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary with the earth’s climate, and no number of young children taking a day off school will convince me otherwise.

September 30, 2019 2:31 pm

W/all the attention on the starving polar bears, is no one thinking of the poor mountain goats? I call out mountain goat discrimination!

ozspeaksup
Reply to  beng135
October 1, 2019 5:01 am

I was thinking theres a LOT of meat on that mountain goat;-)

paul
Reply to  ozspeaksup
October 1, 2019 1:25 pm

I noticed that also, That goat sure looks like it has been eating very good

Reply to  beng135
October 1, 2019 6:35 pm

There’s mountain lions to cure that problem.

SMS
September 30, 2019 2:31 pm

Would not the decreasing “temperature gradient” mentioned by Dr. Marshall Shepherd mean fewer tornados and hurricanes?

And if we use a hypothetical and say that due to global warming the Arctic/Antarctic poles become as warm as the middle latitudes; would that not make weather disappear?

It then doesn’t make sense that warming of the Arctic causes a wavering jet stream that then causes colder weather.

Last year the US had one of its snowiest winters and forest fires were at a minimum this summer. Was that due to global warming? If it was, we need more of it.

B d Clark
Reply to  SMS
September 30, 2019 3:29 pm

Not just the USA Europe too,USA also smashed cold records, more evidence of the GSM than a Dr Shepherd cold is a warming event. Open question for all how much does Dr shepherd get paid to come out with this nonsense.

Latitude
Reply to  SMS
September 30, 2019 4:22 pm

a more extreme temp gradient is unstable…..that would make the jet stream even more unstable
Just the opposite of what he’s claiming

Loydo
Reply to  Latitude
September 30, 2019 9:35 pm

“a more extreme temp gradient is unstable”

No, evidence suggests ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455715/ ) it strengthens the polar vortex ‘fencing in’ the Arctic air exactly as he is suggesting. A weaker gradient makes for a slower, wavier more meridional vortex bringing colder air south and sending warmer air north. It’s weather, it happens every year at some time to some degree – but the science suggests it will become more pronounced with a warming Arctic. Lo and behold – thats exactly what is happening – the Arctic is getting greater pulses of warmer air advecting in to replace the colder air being sent south.

None of this is news and this sort of post reveals the desperate extent to which this site and its adherents are willing to go to deliberately muddy the issue and spread mis-information – as evidenced by the misleading headline.

Reply to  Loydo
October 1, 2019 3:09 am

The linked article is not “evidence” of anything, it’s a hypothesis.

Loydo
Reply to  Right-Handed Shark
October 1, 2019 3:36 am

Do you think this hypothesis has any merit?

Reply to  SMS
September 30, 2019 4:24 pm

Tornadoes of stronger categories are actually on a slight downward trend. As for hurricanes, those (at least generally) aren’t powered by horizontal temperature gradients like most other storms are.

Reply to  Donald L. Klipstein
October 1, 2019 8:47 am

Hurricanes and tropical storms are by definition not powered by any horizontal temperature gradients.
They exist exclusively within a single air mass. If they move into a zone of air mass boundaries, they become extratropical.
I am curious why you would qualify the assertion?
And what is this about a slight downtrend?
The trend is sharply lower.
Many recent years have had numbers that were fewer than had ever before been recorded, even while we are almost certainly doing a far more thorough job of counting them all.
And most recent years have had numbers similar to what in past decades would have been a near record low year that only happened once or so a decade.
Another example of how alarmists have been not only wrong but the exact opposite of correct in their predictions is in the number and intensity of droughts.
Places which for many decades had frequent and severe droughts have seen few if any of them in recent decades. The northeastern US is an excellent example of this, but in fact the entire country has on the whole far fewer recent droughts that the historical averages suggest is normal for our country.
This past year has had the fewest number and least aerial coverage of drought in the recorded history of these events.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/24/2018-u-s-tornadoes-on-track-to-be-lowest-ever-noaas-temperature-trends-blow-a-hole-in-climate-correlation/

September 30, 2019 2:38 pm

I thought the wavey jet-stream was explained by a quiet sun, not the thermal gradient of the atmosphere by latitude.

Farmer Ch E retired
Reply to  Steve Keohane
September 30, 2019 3:02 pm

Natural causes not allowed in the climate wars.

Gary Pearse
September 30, 2019 2:41 pm

So the second lowest Arctic ice extent just occurred last week because of polar amplification of temperature caused by crisis anthropo global warming! And now a heavy blizzard, in Montana (in Glacier National Park where warmists recently had a ‘funeral’ for the final days of the famous glacier) caused by extremely cold air in a wavy jet descended. Cold air from yhe balmy Arctic.

So PhD* (new style KrackerJack^тм degree prizes) Shepherd thinks there will be snarky Twitters! That, Dr*S, is your brain trying get thru to you that the climate puppy is dead.

Phil Salmon
September 30, 2019 2:46 pm

Let ’em squirm!
All those maggots on a hook of their own making – let ’em squirm.
They’ve sold their souls to a Nongqawuse delusional prophecy about the weather.
Now let them rationalise and make fools of themselves as it falls apart.

Perry
Reply to  Phil Salmon
October 1, 2019 12:14 am

Millennialists! If a person doesn’t stand for something, they’ll fall for anything. Could be an Xhosa proverb!

By 1858, approximately 40,000 people had starved to death and over 400,000 cattle were slaughtered. Amongst the survivors was the girl Nongqawuse; however, her uncle perished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Cape_Colony_from_1806_to_1870#Xhosa_cattle-killing_movement_and_famine_(1854-1858)

Phil Salmon
September 30, 2019 2:51 pm

But the summer heat waves were because of a stronger, not weaker, jet stream.
Where was the gradient then?
Contradiction is the only constant in the warmist narrative that they make up as they go along.

MrGrimNasty
September 30, 2019 2:59 pm

But when the dippy jet stream brings a summer heatwave on the backside…… definitely climate change. A dippy jet stream was blamed on global cooling during the (now erased) global cooling scare. Can’t have it both ways – maybe it is all just natural earth climate/weather!

Why are alarmists so unaware of their own utter hypocrisy and bankrupt credibility and why does no one in the MSM/scientific community/authority/politics call them out?

Phil Salmon
Reply to  MrGrimNasty
October 1, 2019 4:05 am

Can’t have it both ways

They can have it more than 2 ways out of 2 – they can have five!
And every one of them worse than we thought.

September 30, 2019 3:01 pm

If warming causes cold, some people may call that negative feedback.
Perhaps how our climate remains quite stable for thousands of years.

Rick C PE
September 30, 2019 3:04 pm

Classic case of wanting to have it both ways.

Reply to  Rick C PE
September 30, 2019 11:34 pm

No. A classic case of a pseudo-scientist masquerading as a scientist.

A PhD does not a scientist make.

Timo Soren
September 30, 2019 3:06 pm

I hate their models BUT, their waving their hands and saying “see this makes sense” is a tiny step in knowledge, Need good data, theoretical equations and then they should model it for a nice tidy sosricsl world with simple layered atmosphere that first priduvrs a jet stream and then by forcing a lower gradient ( in two different ways: high arctic or colder equatorial) and show us the model that makes it wavey.

September 30, 2019 3:06 pm

“To be clear, this is a weather event. I am not attributing it to climate change at all.”

But when the same wavy jet stream brought France a couple of hot days in the summer, it was “climate change” and NOT a weather event.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/06/28/heatwave-climate-change-connections-in-one-simple-analogy/

Reply to  Eric Worrall
September 30, 2019 7:43 pm

“The following image seems to have upset Dr. Shepherd, because some cruel contrarians are using this image to mock the urgency of our global warming emergency.

What image?

Roger Knights
Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
September 30, 2019 10:07 pm

“What Image?”

Maybe it was added later. It’s a triptych of snow accumulating on a garbage dumpster, first 2 feet, then three, then four.

Chaswarnertoo
September 30, 2019 3:12 pm

Globull warming causes more snow. Negative feedback anyone?

Alan McIntire
September 30, 2019 3:22 pm

Marshall Shepard is using “apaphasis” to mention “global warming” by insisting the weather has nothing to do with global warming.
Could it be an indicator of “global cooling”, and is Marshall Shepard trying to conceal or deflect this by parenthetically mentioning global warming?

ironargonaut
September 30, 2019 3:22 pm

Wavier? Look up the largest temperature delta in one day in the lower 48. Extreme temp changes in MT are called weather.

September 30, 2019 3:25 pm

TCI down because of less UV because low of solar activity ,shrinking atmosphere, that induces the jetstream to meander and to send cold air in southern regions (Mike Lockwood) and is responsible for cold(rt) winters.

Max
September 30, 2019 3:28 pm

It doesn’t matter. Whatever the anomalous weather event might be, it will be blamed on human CO2 emissions and the anthropogenic climate cataclysm those emissions cause. It’s an assertion that’s impossible to refute or falsify because everything, weather wise, is attributed to it. You’ll have about as much luck convincing witch doctors that every malady and bad event isn’t caused by evil spirits. There’s no rational response to an irrational assertion and it’s rather unfortunate that so many, many people are so irrational about something as ubiquitous as the weather.

Yes, weather. That’s all it is and ever will be for us, lowly, short lived, humans is weather. We don’t live long enough to experience or to appreciate climate. Sure, we have ‘records’ of past weather but like so much in the past those records are up for interpretation and subject to the whim and whimsy of the personal bias of the historian, record keeper, or hack statistician that collected, collated, catalogued, copied or fudged the thing together. Whatever suites the purpose is included and whatever doesn’t suite the purpose is left out and then is cherry picked to death in wiggle-fit/trend-line fashion leading to endless food fights here and on other sites. I’m not making light of the debate or how important it is to keep the witch doctors from sacrificing us all to the climate god(s). I’m just frustrated that we actually need to have the debate to begin with and are wasting so much time, money and effort on a subject that should, rightfully, be relegated to small talk amongst strangers on a train. It’s weather. It doesn’t become climate until enough time has passed for a geologist to get involved in the discussion and then you can refer to my earlier thoughts on historical records for an idea on where that will lead.

Personally, if it is getting warmer? Good. Warmer is better as far as I’m concerned. Colder is bad news and, more than likely, bad news is on the way, eventually regardless of what we do. In the long view, on any significant time scale, what we do doesn’t matter. Ask any geologist. On a geological time scale we were never here.

Cheers

Max

Michael Hewson
Reply to  Max
September 30, 2019 9:57 pm

You’re right. This is all anthropocentric hubris. Sadly for the watermelons they chose the wrong apocalypse to sell ie. they should have gone for the cooling narrative. But there is hope for rationality yet : they will get bitten by the rebellion of their own spawn.

Cheers, Mike.

Taphonomic
September 30, 2019 3:30 pm

And what caused the extreme circumpolar jet stream excursions in the 1970s?

Sunny
September 30, 2019 3:31 pm

Doesn’t the lying get boring? Admit it’s weather and use the green billions we are about to waste, and build sea defences or replant trees along the cost to stop the now weak soil from breaking down, build strong river walls. Clean out the street drains so the roads don’t flood, paris needs to do this, and london… With the many billions left over, use it to on schools, train the unemployed so they can work, we need doctors and nurses in the uk, and more hands on work, bring the factories back.

September 30, 2019 3:37 pm

Children will no longer know what snow is.

Nik
September 30, 2019 3:41 pm

Has anyone noted any reports or made any sightings of AlGore in Montana in the past few days?

Christopher Hanley
September 30, 2019 3:42 pm

“… Dr. Marshall Shepard definitely wants to make it very clear he is not trying to link this snow event to climate change …”
Even though he is.
Doublethink the ability to maintain two conflicting notions simultaneously without mental discomfort is an ability the most successful alarmists can carry off with aplomb.

Sean
September 30, 2019 3:47 pm

Funny, the Washington DC area had it’s highest snow total ever in 2010 in the latter stages of the last solar minimum. Here we are 9 years later and we have just dropped into another solar minimum and we are having huge fall storms with a jet stream that plunged south. Australia has had snow in the last couple of months where it’s never been recorded before after a sudden and unusual Antarctic stratospheric warming. And about 1 month ago there was a very good post showing how the ENSO cycle could be correlated to different portions of the solar cycle. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/04/enso-predictions-based-on-solar-activity/ Dr. Shepherd reminds me of the cop in the old joke about a drunk priest that rear ended the car of a “person of color”. The cop asks the priest, “how fast was he backing up when he ran into you?”

September 30, 2019 3:47 pm

The 10000 year solar minimum might be implicated !!

Reply to  Eric
September 30, 2019 7:49 pm

“might” is a bit of stretch.
Maybe if you’d said the 11 year minimum might be implicated, then a “maybe” could be in order.
But 10 millennia… ???
Given how bad the Maunder Minimum of 330 years ago was for Europe in the historical records, I seriously doubt we’re anywhere like that now.

Reply to  Eric
September 30, 2019 8:07 pm

mods pls delete.
Thx.
J

Tom Abbott
September 30, 2019 3:51 pm

From the article: “If the difference is smaller due to so-called Arctic Amplification (warming in the Arctic), the jet stream would be wavier. The “so what” is that a jet stream with greater wave amplitude means more extreme troughs or “dips” with cold air and more extreme ridges or “humps” with warm air. In other words, the extremes on both sides of the temperature range are amplified.”

Cold air has been dipping into the United States like this. long before CO2 ever became an issue. You need to find some other cause than CO2 for the jet stream movement.

Farmer Ch E retired
Reply to  Tom Abbott
September 30, 2019 7:20 pm

I recall a 3-ft snow on top of an existing 2-ft in the 1950’s when I was a small lad near Bozeman, MT. My grandfather predicted a bad storm based on the circle around the moon & my parents talked about it for years.

xenomoly
September 30, 2019 3:53 pm

This was the result of meridional flow of the jetstream that is the result of low solar activity. If you look at the jetstream you can see it making these long looping dips into low latitudes and the accompanying Rossby waves. Its really annoying that these meteorological phenomena that have been happening for generations are not just explained rationally – instead of inferring that weather events are the result of some phantom warming or cooling.

n.n
September 30, 2019 3:54 pm

It is linked to climate change, an irregular, recurring change, but does not have a discernible anthropogenic cause, and could not in any conventional sense be classified as “catastrophic”.

jay Albrecht
September 30, 2019 3:59 pm

Extreme warmth and cold doesn’t necessarily result from just a wavier jet stream, but also a strong one. To get extreme cold or warmth, you need to transport air southward or northward in a hurry before significant modification can occur. To have a strong and amplified jet, you need a large temperature gradient across the jet. Climate change, if man made and true, will not be apparent for a long time. We are just seeing an unusual weather pattern that has occurred in the past and will happen again.

Persistence of extreme patterns (these happen from time to time) occur for a variety of reasons (ENSO, positions of anomalous systems on the other side of the world, soil moisture, anomalous deep snow cover, etc.) I wish I could predict these patterns on a seasonal scale with skill! We learn more as time goes on, but we really don’t have all the answers yet. It seems to me that the AGW religion has crept deeply into our science.

I don’t necessarily agree with Dr. Shepherd on this one. My comments may not mean much because I don’t have a PhD and am not involved in climate modeling, but I have been a meteorologist for about 40 years, have looked at tons of weather and climate data, and don’t see things that have not happened in the past. My long term prediction, these extreme weather events will continue to cold (cold and hot, dry and moist).

Gary Mount
September 30, 2019 4:22 pm

I am going to have to watch the video I recorded of Suzuki talking about the pine Beatle epidemic in BC. Is he still claiming it doesn’t get cold enough anymore?

Gary Mount
Reply to  Gary Mount
October 7, 2019 4:35 am

Well I watched the show but it was not as described in the tv guide, it was about leather back turtles.

Bruce Cobb
September 30, 2019 4:23 pm

To be clear, I am not saying that Marshall Shepard is a liar. It’s just that some of the things he says are untruthful. Well, pretty much all of them. OK, all.

J Mac
September 30, 2019 4:33 pm

Maintain ‘The Message’, in the face of all contrary evidence. The Message is the Priority!

TomRude
September 30, 2019 4:46 pm

Well, on the other hand, if it had been a late heat wave… LOL

Michael Jankowski
September 30, 2019 5:03 pm

According to Wikipedia, “Shepherd has written that African Americans may be more vulnerable to the effects of global warming, such as heat-related deaths.”

MarkMcD
September 30, 2019 5:29 pm

Now, now… You’re all being nasty to poor Shepherd. He just wants to science AND keep his funding. 😀

John Galt
September 30, 2019 5:41 pm

I live 17 miles from the main entrance to Glacier National Park on the west side. The road East was closed yesterday. However I could go 65 miles north to Canada through BC now that Global Warming has created those lush tropical paradises in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Thanks Al Gore and Michael Mann

Reply to  John Galt
September 30, 2019 8:09 pm

That’s called the “Banana Belt of Montana.”

Joe G
September 30, 2019 6:21 pm

It is true that the jet stream pattern determines the cold and hot regions. That is the whole point with El Nino’s and La Nina’s. They shift the jet stream which causes a shift in weather patterns.

So anything that can affect the jet stream has the ability to affect weather.

Patrick MJD
September 30, 2019 7:20 pm

On the morning news here in Australia a chunk the size of Sydney has broken off somewhere in Antarctica. Interestingly, the newsreader stated scientists say this is perfectly natural event and nothing to do with climate change. GOSH! SHOCK! HORROR!

Rod Evans
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 1, 2019 1:03 am

Patrick, note how even when an event has nothing to do with climate change climate change gets the obligatory mention. That is called subliminal messaging. Propaganda has very clear rules to be followed, and the MSM are constantly using them to push the Climate Crisis agenda. I wish I knew why?

B d Clark
Reply to  Rod Evans
October 1, 2019 2:23 am

Heres another article that has little to do with cc yet cc is in there,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49877237

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Rod Evans
October 1, 2019 4:53 am

“Propaganda has very clear rules to be followed, and the MSM are constantly using them to push the Climate Crisis agenda. I wish I knew why?”

They do this to gain political power for the Democrats. Most of the MSM are Democrats/Leftists so they are propagandizing for themselves as much as for the Democrat politicians. Fixing Climate Change would give the fixer absolute control over the lives and economy of the people of the United States. That is the goal of all socialists, so you should be able to see why the MSM and the Democrats push the Green New Deal so much because they want to control *everything*..

The radical Left has no problem lying to people if it gets them what they want. The Ends justify the Means, they think. Any Means is acceptable, including carrying out a coup against a sitting, duly elected President of the United States.

I hear Trump’s campaign contributions have been pouring in ever since the Democrats have started this latest trumped-up effort to oust Trump over the Ukrainian telephone call. The Democrat’s undermining game is firing up the Trump supporters. I look forward to November 2020. That’s when the People can fix this Political Crisis the Democrats have created.

Ronald Reece
September 30, 2019 8:02 pm

So how does this explain observed Meridianal Jet Stream flows PRIOR to the Global Warming hysteria, when CO2 was 300ppm or lower?

Asking for a friend who has a Magnetic, and Sunny, Personality… ;0)

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Ronald Reece
October 1, 2019 5:01 am

“So how does this explain observed Meridianal Jet Stream flows PRIOR to the Global Warming hysteria, when CO2 was 300ppm or lower?”

It doesn’t. It’s just another unsubstantiated claim by a promoter of human-caused climate change.

Unfortunately, climate science is inundated with unsubstantiated claims about CO2. In fact, just about all the claims about CO2 are unsubstantiated other than that it is a greenhouse gas, but noone can tell you if it actually adds any net heat to the Earth’s atmosphere, therefore, they cannot claim CO2 is doing anything in the atmosphere with confidence, including shaping the jet streams.

Alarmist Climate Science.= One Unsubstantiated Claim After Another. All based on the unproven claim that CO2 adds net heat to the Earth’s atmosphere.

September 30, 2019 11:21 pm

I think the assertion that a lower temp gradient with latitude means a wavier jet is false.
If there were such a correlation, it would be easy to demonstrate.
The interactions are far more complex than such a simple analysis could describe.

September 30, 2019 11:27 pm

I think there is a far more prosaic phenomenon occurring:
Whatever is happening recently that the warmistas need to ascribe to a failing hypothesis in order to avoid having the last thing they predicted falsify the whole wobbly house of cards they have constructed, is what new studies will demonstrate is caused by global warming.
IOW…studies show that the newest findings will invariably ascribe the most recent observations to global warming, no matter what those observations are.

old white guy
October 1, 2019 3:07 am

I could not get past the headline.

October 1, 2019 3:52 am

A 1951 book by Bertrand Russell, called The Impact of Science on Society, shows what is going on :
“The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray. “…
“Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Looks like the technique is being perfected.

Adam0625
October 1, 2019 5:10 am

Another journalist PhD who believes man-made global warming causes colder weather. And he tells you so with a straight face. These elitist alarmists have no shame … or critical thinking skills.

Bob Vislocky
October 1, 2019 6:21 am

Article is pure BS. If global warming is causing more frequent or severe cold outbreaks then this should manifest itself in the observational temperature history. Specifically, the warmest days should increase over time as one would expect with a warming planet, but if their proposed theory is true then the coldest days would not be expected to remain steady or drop.

So if the author’s theory is correct, the variance of temperatures should be expected to widen over time. However, the opposite is happening. The range in observed temperatures is actually slightly decreasing:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/04/disrupting-the-theory-on-pv-and-global-warming/

Thom
October 1, 2019 7:05 am

As Larry Kummer opined just the other day: “The volume of activists’ propaganda is too large; it makes rebuttal almost impossible. Joining the doomster parade is the fast track to fame for those in the physical and social sciences. Journals in an ever-widening range of fields just wave through studies about the effects of climate change (a travesty of peer-review). This influence on America’s communication systems is power. It is tactical genius resulting from decades of effort. But as the Germans learned in WWI and WWII (they had to repeat the lesson), tactical excellence cannot overcome strategic errors. Activists rely on doomster messages that are beyond the climate science consensus. This gets attention, might prove to be a strategic error. After generations of bombardment by doomster messages from scores of causes, the US public has become inured to them. “It’s an announcement that the end is nigh. It must be Tuesday.”

Caligula Jones
Reply to  Thom
October 1, 2019 9:40 am

“Journals in an ever-widening range of fields just wave through studies about the effects of climate change (a travesty of peer-review)”

Interesting, that nearly every other science admits to an issue with reproductability, yet climate science is immune.

Perhaps that is the most telling thing about this particular discipline…

Oh, that, AND the infamous email about keeping qualified people out of the peer review process itself.

Something that the cheerleaders in the “but…but…but that’s the Climategate emails were debunked” mob never want to discuss (along with the deleting stuff to get out of FOI requests).

ResourceGuy
October 1, 2019 7:40 am

It does get hectic at the command center for global warming messaging. Every twist of the jet stream and local weather event must now be managed with conformist statements, misdirection plays, and use of phrases like “growing body of evidence.” Such efforts do rely heavily on the assumption that the masses are too ignorant to question it.

ren
October 1, 2019 8:19 am

Frost in Montana. Snowstorm in the Dakotas.
comment image?_nc_cat=106&_nc_eui2=AeGaZUaocXjZpdNs6ijVC5mA5NXiExJxQfGsqKbcGn5qSZzMNMBLijtCznadVfyPESnkCTvL2NvLvDvwJBInZ-V38Wv2XG1un7LWXsc_KjEnjg&_nc_oc=AQmCBZ8T21cHKZ5y8J93DyRbc3ZVTRsRZRAnOO6WWtwVM0s-JysvQZ0xEKaIqkZ96mU&_nc_ht=scontent-frx5-1.xx&oh=85fb0199effc85137189f1c2972812e3&oe=5E2B0BBB

Steve Z
October 1, 2019 9:52 am

The original worry about CO2 was that additional CO2 in the air would absorb infrared radiation re-radiated from the earth, causing the atmosphere to become slightly warmer, which could induce more evaporation of water and possibly heavier rains, and/or melting of the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica.

But “global warming” CANNOT cause snowstorms. Snow can only form in a cloud if there is enough COLD air that can remove the heat of fusion (heat released when water turns to snow) without the air warming above the freezing point. If the entire atmosphere warmed up due to excess CO2, there would be fewer cold air-masses and fewer snowstorms.

Extreme weather (of both kinds) occurs when the jet stream flows northeast or southeast instead of due east. Storms which follow the jet stream (in the northern hemisphere) bring cold air southward to the north and west of the jet stream, and bring warm air northward to the south and east of the jet stream. If the jet stream is far south, areas to the north have unusually cold weather, and if the jet stream is far north, areas to the south have unusually warm weather. At the same time it was snowing in Montana, most of the southeastern United States had record heat. There was also an intense storm over the Plains last April, where the temperature contrast was such that there was snow in western Kansas while it was 85 degrees in eastern Kansas.

These “troughs” or “ridges” in the jet stream do cause extreme weather, but do not affect “global average temperature” much. The polar regions have a certain mass of air, and if polar air is drawn southward somewhere, it must be replaced by warmer air moving northward at a different longitude. Near an intense storm, the counterclockwise circulation leads to some warm air being pushed westward into the colder air mass along the north edge of the storm, and cold air being pushed eastward along the south edge of the storm, which tends to mix the air masses and moderate the temperatures. If there is enough mixing, the temperature gradient across the storm decreases, which weakens the storm.

ResourceGuy
October 1, 2019 11:03 am

Thanks for that summary.

Of remaining interest is the condition of stronger jet stream activity in NH summers during solar minimum conditions. If there are enough of those uncharacteristic summer storm patterns, could they collectively alter global averages? Then multiply that over 4-5 weak solar cycles such as SC 12-16 and SC 24, 25…

https://leif.org/research/Prediction-of-SC25.pdf
slide 18

B d Clark
Reply to  ResourceGuy
October 1, 2019 11:13 am

Excellent article thanks, I think we ha e been seeing the beginning of the GSM for the last two years

B d Clark
Reply to  ResourceGuy
October 1, 2019 11:32 am

Heres a snap shot video of the very early snow in USA and Europe heavely biased on the GSM theme, reduced crops and a time line for GSM

https://youtu.be/By-5akYR7Gc

Colin MacDonald
October 1, 2019 12:47 pm

You can make a good case for AGW resulting in more snow in already cold regions in the middle of winter. If Chicago gets 2metres of snow this January, yep, that could plausibly be due to a warming atmosphere, more evaporation, more moisture, more snow, the temperatures are normally well below freezing so even with warming you’ll still get snow.
Trying to use the same explanation for massive dumps of snow, in September, in temperate regions, is just witless. It’s the jetstream, AGW does something to the jetstream, this is post hoc reasoning, its a crock.

JS
October 1, 2019 1:55 pm

Oh, well you know, for 2 months of the summer here we had extremely normal weatherr and they were very quiet. In late spring and in late summer we had a warm dry spell and they began screaming that the sky was falling. Now it will get cold and they will scream the sky is falling. Is the weather not allowed to deviate more than 1 degree Fahrenheit from average norms before the panic sets in now?
As a side note one of my most liberal friends told me privately today she has just been ignoring the Greta thing because she thinks “having a 16 year old tell the UN what to do is stupid”. There is yet hope.

old construction worker
October 1, 2019 2:27 pm

While they are getting snow storms out west here Ohio we are have a heat wave. Depending where you are 100 year record highs are being broken. (Subject to weather station locations.)

October 1, 2019 3:04 pm

This is south of Jackson, WY – south of Montana …

https://www.wyoroad.info/highway/webcameras/US26287WindRiverLake/US26287WindRiverLake.html

– JPP

Reply to  Jon P Peterson
October 1, 2019 4:24 pm

That stop sign by mid or the end of winter usually gets buried in snow

– JPP

Denis Ables
October 1, 2019 4:12 pm

It’s no longer difficult to show that CO2, although increasing, has nothing to do with our current warming. Alarmists, rather than taking advantage of earlier global warming data, have instead used a cherry-picked short-term correlation between CO2 and temperature from 1975 to the 2000s. (The IPCC admitted there was a temperature “hiatus” in the 2000s. There was a global cooling between 1945 and 1975.)

The only other argument favoring CO2 is, when added to a closed container, the temperature therein increases somewhat. However, the open atmosphere is hardly a closed container. Satellites detect heat escaping to space and closed containers do not experience planetary-level feedbacks.

The proponents of anthropogenic-caused global warming invariably DENY that the Medieval Warming Period (MWP, 1,000 years ago) was global and likely warmer than it is now. The alarmists acknowledge only that Europe experienced the MWP. (They had no choice – climate in that region is too well documented!) Alarmists apparently must take this unjustifiable position because their computer models cannot replicate the earlier global warmings. Their computer models require an increasing CO2 level, plus depend even more on yet another ASSUMPTION – that water vapor feedback is the actual culprit, causing 2 to 3 times the temperature increase brought on by the increase in CO2.

The global temperature increase during the MWP and the earlier global warmings could not have been influenced by CO2 because there was no increase in CO2, not during the MWP, nor during any of the earlier global warmings before the MWP. The problem for alarmists is that it becomes obvious that our current warming (such as it is) might also be due to NATURAL climate variation. That, of course, conflicts with Mann’s hockey stick graph. Mann recently lost a suit he brought against Dr. Tim Ball years ago. Ball apparently implied that at least some of Mann’s work was fraudulent. Now Mann must pay all of Dr Ball’s legal expenses. Mann succeeded in extending the duration of that lawsuit by delaying a dismissal, agreeing to provide his “work”, at or before the new termination date, but chose to ignore that agreement later.

In case you have any doubt about Mann’s dubious hockey stick, it’s also easy to show (and easy to understand) that the MWP was indeed global and at least as warm as now. While that proves nothing directly about the cause of our current warming (such as it is) it speaks loudly about the credibility of the folks who DENY that the MWP was global and at least as warm as now. The link below provide the MWP global study, among other things.

https://principia-scientific.org/empirical-evidence-refutes-greenhouse-gas-theory/

Nonetheless the question remains. Why did the alarmists choose CO2 as the culprit when there is no evidence that CO2, a trace gas, has ever had any impact on our planet’s temperature? There was obviously some uncertainty. Phil Jones, one of the prominent alarmist early players, stated that if the MWP was global and as warm as now, then that was a “different ballgame”. Alarmists decided instead to deny that the MWP was global and at least as warm as now.

It’s obvious now, if not then, that a more rational approach would have involved a closer investigation of the earlier global warmings, particularly the MWP, before introducing speculation about CO2.

Some time ago Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, and some associates, came up with a theory which does make use of, and explain, the historical data. Svensmark’s theory involves sun activity modulating the level of a rather steady steam of cosmic rays intent on penetrating the lower atmosphere. (CERN certified some time ago that cosmic rays may influence cloud cover.) Until very recently we have been experiencing a high level of sun activity. During such periods the cloud coverage of the earth is lower. More radiation reaches the earth so it becomes warmer. However, a very low level of sun activity is now underway. If the sun remains inactive for a significant duration, Svensmark would expect a cooling.

At this stage of the game, whether or not Svensmark’s theory holds up, it appears that more attention needs to be directed at historical data, and increasing CO2 should be of more concern to botanists and health researchers than climatologists. Since CO2 increase was the only possibility for human activity being responsible for warming, it appears that humanity is off that hook.

Brian
October 2, 2019 12:55 pm

Oct 1, 2019 Big Business’ Climate Charade | NEO Review: 59/19

There is no doubt human activity is destroying the environment. The only thing worse, however, is when the worst environmental offenders on earth – massive corporations, banks, and governments – hijack public interest in undoing that damage.

https://youtu.be/UbTuIHH6ArA