Washington Post columnist catches Gore Derangement Syndrome
Look, if Godzilla appeared on the Mall this afternoon, Al Gore would say it’s global warming, because the spores in the South Atlantic Ocean, you know, were. Look, everything is, it’s a religion. In a religion, everything is explicable. In science, you can actually deny or falsify a proposition with evidence. You find me a single piece of evidence that Al Gore would ever admit would contradict global warming and I’ll be surprised.
That would be Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who like his colleague George Will, is a climate science denier. Of course, it is Krauthammer and Will whose denial can never be falsified because it isn’t actually based on science, but rather ideology (see Krauthammer: The real reason conservatives don’t believe in climate science and below).
The scientific literature is clear that indeed global warming will cause more snow “” especially in warm years (see “An amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact: We get more snow storms in warm years!“). Indeed, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) U.S. Climate Impacts Report from 2009 reviewed that literature and concluded:
Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent.
But because Krauthammer doesn’t have the most basic understanding of climate science — more warming means more water vapor in the atmosphere available for more intense storms — he not only labels all of climate science a religion, he falls victim to the full Gore Derangement Syndrome that has infected conservatives like they’re in some sort of zombie apocalypse (see Stop the madness: Mark Kirk, a U.S. Senator, blames his climate flip-flop on “¦ Al Gore’s personal life).
UPDATE: Some commenters seem to think January saw record-breaking cold for the entire nation or glob. Globally, NASA reports that January was tied for 10th warmest January on record (see here). January 2011 was more than 0.1 C warmer than the average January temperature in the 1990s.
And it wasn’t even the coldest U.S. January in 20 years — January 1994 was colder, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Since record highs and record lows are set pretty much every day, regular readers know I prefer the statistical aggregation across the country, since it gets us beyond the oft-repeated point that you can’t pin any one daily record temperature in one city on global warming.
As CapitalClimate reported last week “preliminary data for January from the National Climatic Data Center indicate that, for the U.S. as a whole, record high temperatures actually exceeded record low temperatures.” The long-term statistical trend is unmistakeable (see “Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.“):
CapitalClimate notes, “This is now the 10th month out of the last 13 since last January that heat records have exceeded cold ones. The ratio of high temperature records to low temperature records over that period is 2.18 to 1, and the cumulative excess of heat records is almost 7000.”
Back to Krauthammer. Here’s the video:
Again, Gore’s statement comes directly from Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who explained to Gore what he explained to me:
- “There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change.”
- “We’ve seen other examples out in Seattle last year, and also of course the flooding in New England and the exceptionally heavy snow storms in Washington DC this year“¦. The same mechanism actually applies to the heavy snow, all you have to do is have the right weather conditions and for it to be cold enough and this precipitation just turns into snow. The very heavy snowfall amounts are actually related to the fact that the moisture that’s coming into that region is coming off of the tropical or sub tropical Atlantic where there’s abundant moisture and more moisture than there used to be: demonstrably more moisture than there used to be 30 years ago.”
Trenberth has pointed out that “Maximum amounts of snow occur close to freezing: any warmer it is rain and any cooler then the water holding capacity goes down (4% per deg F). Colder conditions mean less snow. In general in continental mid-lat climates one should expect more mid winter snow with warming, but a shorter season and less snow pack by about April.”
Again, let’s look at the results of an actual, detailed study of “the relationships of the storm frequencies to seasonal temperature and precipitation conditions” for the years “1901-2000 using data from 1222 stations across the United States.” The 2006 study, “Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States“ (Changnon, Changnon, and Karl [of National Climatic Data Center], 2006) found we are seeing more northern snow storms and that we get more snow storms in warmer years:
The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity”¦..
Results for the November-December period showed that most of the United States had experienced 61%- 80% of the storms in warmer-than-normal years. Assessment of the January-February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%-80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years. In the March-April season 61%-80% of all snowstorms in the central and southern United States had occurred in warmer-than-normal years”¦. Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901-2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.
Since conservatives can’t attack the science or the scientists on this, they know it is safer to attack Gore than to .
None of this is terribly surprising. We learned from a 2008 column that Krauthammer doesn’t know the first thing about science or scientists (see Krauthammer’s strange denier talk points, Part 1: Newton’s laws were “overthrown”). As someone who studied physics for 9 years, my favorite denier talking point is his strange version of the old claim that “scientists are flip floppers, constantly changing their theories.” He writes:
If Newton’s laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming “” infinitely more untested, complex and speculative “” is a closed issue.
Now that was a strange, but illuminating, claim. Newton’s Laws of Motion are still taught in every high school, in every introductory physics class in college, and even in graduate physics classes. Indeed, they are widely used everywhere to explain and estimate wide varieties of motion. Heck, even NASA still uses them: “The motion of an aircraft through the air can be explained and described by physical principals discovered over 300 years ago by Sir Isaac Newton.”
But Professor Krauthammer said they were overthrown and that 200 years of experiments and observations were wrong. What gives? Why aren’t all our planes falling out of the sky?
Newton’s laws are “excellent approximations at the scales and speeds of everyday life” that, along with his law of gravitation and calculus techniques, “provided for the first time a unified quantitative explanation for a wide range of physical phenomena.”
They fail in very special cases “” speeds close to the speed of light (where you need Einstein’s special theory of relativity), near large gravitational fields (where you need to Einstein’s general theory of relativity) or at a very, very small scales (where you need quantum mechanics). Interestingly, many of the laws of those three theories are written in the same form as Newton’s and they revert to Newton’s equations for everyday life (see an example in my original post).
So Krauthammer’s statement was absurdly misleading, since he was implying that “200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation” were “overthrown” “” when they weren’t. So his implication that all the unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation of climate science would be overthrown was equally absurd. Indeed, anybody seeking to replace climate science will have to come up with a more comprehensive theory that still explains everything we know from existing climate science and observations.
It is Krauthammer whose beliefs can never be falsified because they aren’t actually scientific in nature, but rather ideological. The 2008 column, “Carbon Chastity: The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment,” makes that clear:
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. “The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity,” warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”
Do you know any serious scientists? “Compliant” is the last word one would ever use to describe them. Indeed, the best way to get famous in science is to be a skeptic, to disprove a widely held belief.
This paragraph restates the heart of why conservatives hate climate science. It requires action by government, which, for conservatives, is the same as socialism (again, except when it comes to government action on behalf of the nuclear and fossil fuel industries, which is good ‘ol capitalism). Krauthammer continues:
Environmentalists are Gaia’s priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect”¦. And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment “” carbon chastity “” they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat”¦.
There’s no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
Here is where the conservatives have it backwards. The solution to global warming “” the strategy needed to avoid 450 ppm “” does not require rationing food or energy. It primarily requires a government-led strategy to aggressively deploy clean energy technologies (see The full global warming solution: How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm). That strategy preserves the energy abundance that has made modern civilization possible.
But if we hold off today on government action that focuses for several decades on preventing catastrophe, we will almost guarantee the need for extreme and intrusive government action in the post-2030 era, perhaps lasting centuries. Only Big Government-which conservatives say they don’t want-can relocate millions of citizens, build massive levees, ration crucial resources like water and arable land, mandate harsh and rapid reductions in certain kinds of energy-all of which will be inevitable if we don’t act now (see “Real adaptation is as politically tough as real mitigation, but much more expensive and not as effective in reducing future misery“).
Ironically, Krauthammer is afraid of climate strategies that are “economically ruinous and socially destructive,” and says the greatest form of rationing is food rationing.
If we continue to follow the talk-much do-little climate strategy of conservatives, then we are all but certain to end up at 800 to 1000 ppm by century’s end, and that would be economically ruinous and socially destructive (see “Royal Society special issue details ‘hellish vision’ of 7°F (4°C) world “” which we may face in the 2060s!” and “A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice“). And long before then, with peak oil prices that we haven’t prepared for, hundreds of millions more people to feed and increasing desertification, drought, and loss of inland glaciers, we will be rationing food. And water. Heck many parts of the world are getting close to food rationing already!
The scarcity and deprivation of 1000 ppm could last for generation upon generation (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).
Conservatives can’t stop 1000 ppm by their anti-science anti-government rhetoric. But they can prevent progressives and moderates from stopping 1000 ppm by continuing to block aggressive action to reduce CO2 emissions. How ironic “” and tragic “” it would be if conservates’ short-term quest to avoid a bigger government led to a permamently huge government. Talk about an inconvenient truth.
Related Post:
- George Will embraces Walter Russell Mead’s risible anti-science revisionism
- The day DC journalism died: Washington Post is staffed with people who found ZERO mistakes in George Will’s error-filled denial column
- In a blunder reminiscent of Janet Cooke scandal, the Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones
- The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages
- Will the Washington Post ever fact check a George Will column?
- Memo to Post: If George Will quotes a lie, it’s still a lie
- Washington Post reporters take unprecedented step of contradicting columnist George Will in a news article
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
God, these people are so annoying.
Charles, of course, was one of the original “true believers” in Iraq’s WMD.
Famously he wrote in April 2003
“Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.”
Yes, Charles, you still have a major credibility problem. Come back in five decades.
http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.274/transcript.asp
I would just like to ask why, whenever we see a period of hot weather, you publish the details, but you do not publish the details of all the record low temperatures we have sen recorded>
[JR: I publish the details of extreme weather events that are way off the charts, 100-year events, 500-year events, 1000-year events, since the deniers say nothing special is happening. This is especially true for events that are sustaining in time and space (i.e. area). Record lows and record highs are set every day. I publish the statistical data on record highs versus record lows on a very regular basis.]
Look, you cannot reason with people who think Jesus is coming soon. I am usually optimist but this time I cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Get a farm in New Zealand if you can. If you can’t, don’t think about it and enjoy while it lasts.
“But if we hold off today on government action that focuses for several decades on preventing catastrophe, we will almost guarantee the need for extreme and intrusive government action in the post-2030 era, perhaps lasting centuries.”
but isn’t that almost what is required nowadays to prevent disaster?
[JR: What is needed on the clean energy side is far less intrusive than what would be needed on the adaptation front -- and it would last far shorter (decades rather than possibly centuries).]
Hey, Mr. Joe Romm, Sir, why aren’t you interested in all the record low temperatures and snow?
[JR: It's Dr. Romm to you. Try reading the post. Record snow is in no way inconsistent with climate science. As for temps, there weren't record low temps globally or nationwide -- not even close. As for the statistical aggregation of record highs versus lows in the United States, looks like highs won in January!
Try not getting all your 'facts' from the anti-science blogs.]
What makes you think either Krauthammer or Will or any of the deniers are acting honorably and state their sincere opinions?
Because they’ll be dead before the worst comes to pass.
Hey Joe, was wondering exactly why record snows and record cold is not being covered here. Are records not interesting when they are not heat related?
[JR: Interesting that I'm getting the same exact question from so many different IP addresses.
Did you read the post? Record snow is in no way inconsistent with climate science. As for temps, there weren't record low temps globally or nationwide -- not even close. As for the statistical aggregation of record highs versus lows in the United States, looks like highs won in January!
Yes, I know, if you only read the anti-science blogs, you'd think we had returned to the Ice Age. Try sticking with the science-based blog for a while.]
What would be some good ways to falsify AGW? Hopefully simple examples that can be understood by the layperson.
[JR: I've answered this question many times. When a theory has been validated by so many different independent lines of inquiry, falsification is certainly more challenging. But obviously if -- absent any known external negative forcing (such as multiple large volcanoes) -- global temperatures (surface and ocean subsurface) reversed their steady upward long-term trend over a period of two or more decades while greenhouse gas concentrations remained constant or grew, that would essentially falsify the theory. If Arctic warming weren't significantly greater than average global warming over a period of two or more decades, that would also big a pretty big blow to the theory. Various predictions concerning the human fingerprint analysis could be falsified in theory, but in practice, of course, they have been substantiated for decades now.
The question, however, typically comes from deniers who don't understand how thoroughly substantiated the theory is, to the point where the National Academy of Sciences calls it a settled fact that the planet is warming and humans are very likely the major cause.]
The focus of conservatives on Al Gore as the fount for all the concern on climate change is starting to get INANE. They need to be called on this BS.
A film titled “People who demand action on climate change not named Al Gore” that is a parade of faces of scientists, each who say “I am a scientist, I have concluded that climate change is a threat to humans and the planet”, with their credentials listed at the bottom of the screen, might be effective.
Scientists need to be more vociferous and organized in the political realm, push back, and take more responsibility for being understood. The Media will NOT and can NOT be trusted to help them.
I’m not sure what its going to take, but if I hear one more scientific no-nothing politician, media hack, pundit, or think-tanker use Al Gore as the sole emodiment of our concerns I’m gonna PUKE.
Hey Joe why are you not interested in all the record low temperatures and snow?
[JR: Uh, did you read the post? Record snow is in no way inconsistent with climate science. As for temps, there weren't record low temps globally or nationwide -- not even close. As for the statistical aggregation of record highs versus lows in the United States, looks like highs won in January!
Yes, I know, if you only read the anti-science blogs, you'd think we had returned to the Ice Age. Try sticking with the science-based blog for a while.]
@Jeffrey Davis:
There are so many people who are willfully ignorant, stupid, or self-serving obstructionists (like Krauthammer), that nothing is going to get done. Nothing. What the world needs is for rational progressive people to find a backbone or a representative with a backbone, which will simply force the medicine needed down all our throats. It will have to take force, a benevolent dictator if you will. Anything short of that is just much to do about nothing.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is like a religion, Krauthammer is like an intellectual.
Climatology is a science, like chemistry, physics or astronomy. Climatology has predicted climate change and global warming that has come to pass. More is predicted in the near and more distant future.
That’s OK 2 feet of rain is going to convert Mr . Krauthammer. DC is a swamp after all. So is Houston.
“Indeed, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) U.S. Climate Impacts Report from 2009 reviewed that literature and concluded:
‘Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent.’ ”
Would you say both parts of this statement are true for the 2010-2011 Cold Season? Or, are there other, more dominant influencers of storm track and intensity that could override (or magnify) the effects presented here on a year-to-year basis?
Taste of storms and life disrupting weather extrems, Today:
3rd Feb.
========
Violent Storm Heading towards Scotland
A powerful storm is heading towards Scotland and the north of England. Storm force winds gusting at 130 km per hour [80mph] are predicted. There have been warnings of hurricane force 12 winds hitting the Hebrides and already winds reaching 100 kph [63mph] have been recorded in Tiree and at South Uist. The storm is predicted to bring up to 60mm of rain and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued flood alerts.
The storm is caused by cold air from the North Pole crashing into warm air from the south. When the two air masses crash into each small eddies of unstable air develop at the boundary between the air masses. In these eddies warm and cold air swirl around each other and can grow into a storm. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/23degrees/2011/02/violent_storm_heading_towards.html
4th Feb.
========
Oil workers evacuated from North Sea storage vessel
Floating oil production ship Gryphon Alpha is partly adrift in storms battering northern Scotland http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/04/oil-workers-evacuated-north-sea
Hurricane wreaks havoc on Scotland http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/hurricane-wreaks-havoc-on-scotland-1.1083395
5th Feb.
========
Fire crews have been dealing with a large number of flooding calls in central Scotland after gales battered parts of the country. “It was extremely busy, probably one of the busiest nights for a long time in the service … http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-12372917
7th Feb.
========
Weather warnings have been issued over parts of Scotland, Wales and northern England as snow and heavy rain continues to hit the UK.
The Met Office said heavy rain was expected in parts of southern and central Scotland on Monday (7 February), including Strathclyde, Lothian and Borders and Dumfries and Galloway. Rain is expected to make way for snow, with up to 20cm (8 inches) possible on higher ground. http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2011/02/07/125404/Weather-warnings-as-Scotland-braces-for-more-snow.htm
“It will have to take force, a benevolent dictator if you will.”
oooh, don’t like the sound of that…
Funny . . . Charles Krauthammer doesn’t LOOK coolish . . .
Look: the campaign will intensify as pressure is put on the EPA.
This is all so comically predictable, as is the reliance on facts as counterarguments. Come now. When in the past 472 campaigns just like this one did using facts ever work? When? Ever?
New argumentation please.
Best,
D
For those crowing about cold regional and local weather, please actually read the article, and please take not that AGW refers to the long-term increase of the planet’s mean temperature:
“Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. “ [NCAR]
No-one is claiming that no cold records will be set, but they are currently being outpaced by cold records by a factor of 2-1. AGW is not going to change the tilt of the earth’s axis of rotation, we will still have winters, only difference being that fewer and fewer cold records will be set with time.
The fact that January 2011 was the 10th warmest on record globally is striking given that we are currently experiencing a very strong la nina and that we have just emerged from a prolonged solar minimum.
I hope that next week the same contrarians crowing about the cold refuting AGW, will cite the unusually warm weather that is on its way (next week) for the US Midwest and Great Plains as evidence for AGW ;)
And how convenient that the deniers forget that the Arctic ice extent in December 2010 and January 2011 were the lowest on the satellite record.
Anyhow, the long term-trend in the mean global temperature is what this is about, and that trend is very much up.
Its tough trying to figure out how to respond to denier arguments. Does it work to argue using science. To understand why warmer air which holds more moisture means more snow is middle school science. Those that argue saying we have cycles that have made it cooler or warmer before makes it seems their understanding is limited to fourth grade science. It would be nice if we could debate the real questions, but with people like the Kochs who are stuck at the fourth grade level and is apparently higher than what is allowed in the ranks of the GOP, it makes me wonder if any debate does any good.
“As for temps, there weren’t record low temps globally or nationwide — not even close. ”
Geeez, who is the real denier here?? Say it aint so, Joe!
Oklahoma snow: Oklahoma record-low temperature set today
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-snow-oklahoma-record-low-temperature-set-today/article/3539681#ixzz1Da4wrDO1
Record events
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/7day/us.html?c=maxtemp,mintemp,lowmax,highmin,snow
[JR: I knew deniers don't know basic science, but I figured you knew geography. Oklahoma wasn't the entire nation. Are you really Jim Inhofe?]
Did David Koch ordered another denial campaign? Judging from repeated questions and the style from so called concern trolls in this thread.
Wow, now the deniers are so desperate that they are citing daily records as evidence that AGW is a hoax. What is important is the long-tern trend in the mean global temperature folks and that is increasing. Do we really ahve to have this debate each and every time it gets unusually cold somewhere? Also, for the last few days temperature have been exceeding 35 Celsius or portions of southern Argentina and Patagonia…..
That is also a complete strawman, because the ratio for record highs to lows is 2:1, nobody is saying that no record slows will never be set anywhere ever again because of AGW, just that there will be fewer record cold events with time.
In the next week the southern and southeastern USA is probably going to be setting near record (or perhaps even record highs in paces)– what will the deniers be saying then? See the latest CPC outlooks:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/index.php
MikeTheDenier
yet there is historic low ice extent and volume in the arctic
go figure- what happens if that becomes ice free in late summer in a few years
seems like the weather in OK is small stuff.
Wait, is Oklahoma a “nation” or a “globe”?
Good grief, like I said earlier, how do you argue with someone in OK who says its cold out today SEE. Now what I see as to what we should be discussing is if this is going to be the winter norm in the midwest because of increased moisture and someone leaving the arctic refrigerator door open all because of GW.
UPDATE: Some commenters seem to think January saw record-breaking cold nationally or global.
That’s because they’re stupid. They come out every winter. I wonder if they go to Australia every summer?
Apparently the crabs in Antarctica have found religion!
http://news.discovery.com/animals/king-crabs-antarctic-waters-110208.html
MikeTheDenier, please tell me you understand the concept of climatic averages, and the difference between regional weather fluctuation (largely a matter of heat distribution) and global climate change (related to a planetary energy imbalance).
the godzilla story itself was a big blowback metaphor, about human industry releasing the wrath of nature, so krauthammer-the-great-blowback-denier using it to tell several lies at once about industrial pollution’s harmlessness is just so very lovely i can’t stand it.
further, let’s say something like godzilla, but not so radioactive, did actually suddenly appear. nobody would seriously offer mutation as an explanation. instead ocean biologists would be asking, “why did this individual leave wherever its species had been living?” and it’d be professionally remiss to ignore how human fishing & pollution have altered ocean habitats.
MikeTheDenier : The post is about January temps (it’s February now), and since when was Oklahoma a nation, wide or otherwise?
MikeTheDenier,
You misunderstood what Joe meant. He is not saying there were no record lows anywhere in the country. He was saying that the global average temperature and the nationwide average temperature were not record lows.
#23 Don’t forget to ask him about his reading comprehension skills. Last time I heard, Feb 10 was in the month of February. When someone uses the word “January” at least 4 times it seems clear to me that they mean the month of January which ended 10 days ago.
No Scrooge, this will NOT be the new winter norm in the midwest. Climate change is chaotic. Weathermen cannot use this year’s climate to predict next year’s weather. But it’s more likely to have more extreme events of any, and/or maybe all types, than fewer extreme events.
To be clear, I think the point Joe was making about record lows is that there were no national low records set, in sharp contrast to the 19 all-time national record highs set last year. Even when we’re talking about single locations, there’s a big difference between a record for a given date and and an all-time record. The bar chart above shows the former for the U.S. I don’t know if there were any all-time individual lows recently set in the U.S., but even if there were it’s likely that they would be outnumbered by last summer’s highs.
Joe, a clarification of this stuff would be good since I don’t think the post was very clear on it.
LOL ok catman. If a forecaster just used persistence they may be able to forecast it next year. But I do know that this is one area where a lot more work needs to be done to understand it. That is why I say it would be nice to move to areas that are really debatable. I know that is just wishful thinking.
Hey, Joe, why are you interested in the sock puppet? :)
Teaching reading comprehension seems to be a waste of a perfectly good Physics doctorate.
[JR: He has a lot more readers/viewers than most!]
Her Krauthammer’s risible ignorance and stupidity concerning Newton’s Laws shows that he is simply a more ‘high-profile’ member of Dunning and Kruger’s merry band. He is so dumb that he believes simply stupid things to be true (because they suit his quasi-religious ideology)yet he is so stupid and arrogant, that he believes himself a genius. The same can be said of his little mate Vaclav Klaus, although here you must add a dose of Eastern European paranoia and excessive fervour in proving himself fanatically anti-’Communist’ (an all-purpose term of abuse for anyone to the Left of…Vaclav Klaus!)and worthy of being taken seriously by the big boys in the West, hence his trademark venomous hyperbole. Trying too hard, Vaclav!
Krauthammer is a perfect example of where the West went wrong and took the High Road to Oblivion. The Right purged the MSM and the academies of dissenting opinion years ago. Reagan getting rid of the FCC ‘fairness doctrine’, the rise of Murdochian agit-prop, the handing over of talk-back radio to insane hatemongers, the oligopolisation of the media all narrowed the range of acceptable opinion. Even worse they created a cadre of extreme Rightwing ideologues who dominate the media at every level. You end up with a gigantic brainwashing apparatus designed to indoctrinate the rabble to the advantage of the bosses. It is, in fact, an anti-Enlightenment project where rational inquiry has been replaced by a return to declamations of revealed, quasi-religious, ideological truth, the questioning of which is heresy and apostasy, and, of course, being psychologically disturbed in all ways imaginable, the Right then projects this religious fervour on its enemies, the ones who are actually still adhering to Enlightenment methods.This Rightwing triumph has had hideous repercussions in destroying social solidarity, increasing inequality to unknown levels, fomenting hatred of Islam and justifying an ongoing war of aggression against most of the Middle East and in stoking hatred of other ‘enemies’ like Russia, China and Iran. But where it has involved the ecological crisis, where the media not only gives equal treatment to science and to the anti-scientific lies and distortions of a vast, well-funded denialist industry that refutes the science concerning not only climate disruption but every ecological crisis (plus Peak Oil and any other calamity that threatens elite control) it is simply suicidal.
I often wonder what it would be like to even have a balanced debate in the MSM, where crude censorship of comments did not plainly favour Rightwing rabble-rousers and trolls and the media opinion pages and editorials was even-handed rather than ferociously biased towards the denialists. Of course in a sane world the imbeciles and obscurants of denialism deserve nought but contempt(I refuse to pity them)and even giving them an equal say is an insult to science, truth, rationality, and our children. As things stand there is no penalty for denialism, no reproof even when their lies and idiocies are exposed over and over again. They enjoy impunity both to well merited scorn for their dishonesty, but also to conscience, because they possess none. It is their utter amorality that gives them such a wholly negative advantage, that and the sponsorship of the really big banditti that control our world and who simply do not care what will happen after they die,
I always thought his main concern was Israel. But, I often look at weather.com for T at various parts of the globe. Israel and Cairo have had a very warm winter; often 20F above average. I wonder how their summer will develop and I wonder why he is not concerned?
As Joe mentioned, January was globally the 11th warmest on record. Here is the NASA map showing the temperature anomalies relative to the 1951-1980 January average:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2011&month_last=01&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=01&year1=2011&year2=2011&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
And here is how January 2011 compares to 2005 and 2010:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/2011vs2010+2005.pdf
Also this graph posted today really demonstrates just how large local monthly, seasonal and annual mean temperature fluctuations can be when compared to the global mean and shown on the same scale:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/global+NYC.Jan.pdf
This graph and others are updated monthly on this webpage:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/
Young earth creationists/ID’ers habitually blame the scientists for misquoting, misunderstanding, misusing, twisting, fabricating, etc various studies and facts. They often say evolution is a religion. It seems they project their own faults and errors onto what they perceive is the opposing side.
If you take Charles’ article and change the relevant words (e.g. AGW to evolution), you’ll have an article that pretty much echoes many of those anti-evolution rants, complete with the projection issue. Check out AIG…the resemblance is uncanny–in fact, one might think that Charles just downloaded some of their articles, picked a few choice paragraphs from each, substituted words and strung the new paragraphs together with continuity sentences and passed it off as something original.
Beautiful line from end of recent Onion article:
After concluding the week’s examination of the history of gay marriage rights, classroom sources in the year 2083 said they would be moving on to the topic of how their grandparents’ generation was too late to do anything about global warming.
Source: http://www.theonion.com/articles/future-us-history-students-its-pretty-embarrassing,19099/
I wonder whether Krauthammer has ever tried to do the “some liberals are atheist –> no one can truly lack religion –> therefore they’ve adopted global warming as their religion” tack. Two stupid shots for the price of one! (and, for the record, I’m catholic and still believe that global warming is very real, and I’d be happy to show Krauthammer the SI’s from any number of articles I’ve read!)
I am a gay man and do not have children of my own, but I do have nephews and nieces who are in their 20′s and 30′s and am also a great uncle.
I fear for their future but particularly my grand-nieces who will be my age when the hellish part of climate clicks in after 2050 and possibly even earlier still. I am astonished at people who have children and grandchildren who seem to be willfully indifferent or choose to remain callously ignorant of the climate they will be bequeathing their offspring. It amounts to a crime of depraved indifference and completely devoid of any sense of responsibility, morality, ethics or worse still in being able to truly love another person.
I understand that for many people in Canada and the US the people what happens to them in Pakistan, China, India etc. is nothing more than an abstraction that flickers across their TV or computer screen. But what about their own flesh and blood? Can nothing move them to want to protect them?
“JR: What is needed on the clean energy side is far less intrusive than what would be needed on the adaptation front — and it would last far shorter (decades rather than possibly centuries.”
I think of clean energy and adaption as both sides of the same coin that we’re going to have to spend.
In my opinion, eliminating 90% of all emissions by the year 2020, ridiculous as that sounds, is not going to prevent the Arctic ice cap from shrinking with the ensuing effects that I’m sure all on this site know about.
Such a radical cut in emissions will simply prevent things from turning from disastrous (With the radical cut.) to catastrophic (No cuts or token cuts.). In my opinion, without the 90% cut there will be a massive outgassing of the Siberian permafrost. Even with the radical solutions, we may have a moderate outgassing.
I like to phrase it in the most metaphorically blunt way possible. Like;
If we make radical changes like cutting 90% of emissions next decade, we’re going to be kicked in the teeth by Global Warming.
If we do nothing or make the type of cuts that most people who believe in Global Warming propose, we’re going to be kicked in the teeth and sometime later, get our skulls bashed in.
And no, you’re not going to prevent both. So be happy to be able to spit your teeth out while you can.
My what a lot of deniers we have checking in today, It’s always better to comment after you read the post it makes it some much more interesting for the rest of us.
First, Bill McKibbon renames Earth, Eaarth. And now, this, from Joe:
“UPDATE: Some commenters seem to think January saw record-breaking cold for the entire nation or glob.”
The globe has become a glob. It doesn’t surprise me. I have been expecting it for a while now.
I understand the argument that warmer weather could mean more snow in areas that normally get snow. That explanation seems insufficient to explain snow storms in southern areas that normally get rain.
You also reference an article about storm tracks taking a more northerly track. How does a more northerly storm track explain colder than normal weather in the Southern states?
I see that Northwest Arkansas just got 2 feet of snow out of this last storm. That implies colder weather than normal, and a cold air mass traveling much further South than normal. For this particular weather event, the explanations that you cite don’t seem to fit what happened.
Vaclav Klaus is Heatland’s tenured Major International Figure, the only one they can find out here that isn’t Monckton.
George, #47, it is explained here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/07/AR2011020703936.html
For all those people that like to show local record low temperatures, take a look at GLOBAL temperatures:
Daily:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_01a.rnl.anim.html
Weekly:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_07a.fnl.anim.html
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_07a.rnl.anim.html
Monthly:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_30a.fnl.anim.html
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30a.rnl.anim.html
And the GISTEMP map for January:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2011&month_last=01&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=01&year1=2011&year2=2011&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
There are many areas that have big WARM anomlies: the Arctic, the Antarctic, Canada, Alaska, Europe and the Tropical Atlantic. The main cool areas is the Tropical Pacific, where there is a strong La Niña, and Central Asia.
Things are quite warm, despite the cooling from the strong La Niña.
Before accusing JR of denying some cold records in the US (that is under mild cool weather), make a trip to Canada, Greenland or Italy (where people aree going to the beach thanks to a spring-like weather that ocuured in the last weeks)
I don’t know why but several people recently seem to imply that some kind of restriction on freedom would be necessary to respond to AGW. That’s nonsense.
PRICE THE EXTERNALITIES.
Simple as that.
George “I see that Northwest Arkansas just got 2 feet of snow out of this last storm. That implies colder weather than normal, and a cold air mass traveling much further South than normal.”
Hi George, you ask very basic question which have been answered many times now. (And not only here at CP) Further you miss the entire point of the discussion, try harder.
An amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact: We get more snow storms in warm years! http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/13/more-snow-storms-warm-years-climate-change/
George : Two feet of snow does not suggest colder weather than normal unless the equivalent amount of rain would be normal at this time of year. What’s certain is that there’s more moisture in the air worldwide than there was twenty or thirty years ago, and it can travel quite a distance before it precipitates. So snow in Arkansas could be a sign of warmer seas a long way off.
Was it actually colder than normal in Northwest Arkansas before the snow? Snow itself tends to lower surface air temperatures, through albedo and latent heat of melting, so temperatures after the snow are more problematic. What’s really telling about temperature is how long the snow lies, aka the Inhofe Igloo Index of snowfall.
Cugel, see the link in #45. The arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet because of the albedo effect, disrupting the oscillation, bringing cold air south (I think, in the 3rd to last paragraph there is a typo – usual should be unusual):
“Over the past two years, the polar vortex has been strikingly unstable, according to meteorological data. James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cites a couple of measures in particular: One, called the Arctic oscillation, tracks air pressure and related atmospheric variables over the North Pole. The other, the North Atlantic oscillation, takes into account similar variables in the neighborhood of Iceland. Both indexes are reliable indicators of the strength of the polar vortex.
Last winter, both indexes reflected higher air pressures and therefore less vortex stability than scientists have ever recorded. This year, both were again seriously off-kilter.
Any number of meteorological factors contributed to those anomalies. Some were undoubtedly random, Overland says. But he and other experts suspect climate change is contributing to the unusual pattern, and if they’re right, things could get a whole lot worse in the years ahead.
The root of the problem, Overland says, is melting sea ice. Sea ice forms in the Arctic Ocean during the cold, dark days of fall and winter and hangs around, melting slowly but not completely vanishing, throughout the summer. In recent years, more sea ice has melted during the warm months than can be replenished during the chillier ones.
As a result, scientists have found, the total amount of arctic sea ice has shrunk; at the end of the past few summers, it has been consistently down some 30 percent when compared with historical averages of the 1980s and 1990s at that time of year. In the decades ahead, climate scientists have predicted, the amount of sea ice surviving into the late summer may fall as much as 80 percent below historical levels.
Sea ice reflects sunlight, redirecting some of the the sun’s energy away from the planet. When sunlight strikes open ocean instead of ice, however, the water absorbs much of the solar radiation. So low levels of sea ice allow water temperatures to increase more than usual during the summer, when the sun is shining on the Arctic. Even as the days grow short and cold, the water’s tepidity can release excess heat, which tends to increase pressure in the air above. And remember, excess pressure in the far north poses a threat to the polar vortex.
“The breakdown of the vortex is very usual,” says Overland. “We’ve had it two years in a row. That makes you wonder.
“My speculation,” he says, “is that the extra heat stored in the ocean and given to the arctic atmosphere has a tendency to support the breakdown of the vortex.”
In other words, some melting ice and a moat of warmish water in the Arctic may be spawning the blasts of frigid air that keep pummeling us. How’s that for a cold irony?”
Krauthammer appears to understand neither religion nor science. And MikeTheDenier’s post–where he cites a one-day temperature reading from (count ‘em) two weather stations in an entire state as some kind of proof of dropping temperatures–shows the unfortunately appalling ignorance that surrounds the issue. And we’re likely to hear and see more of this kind of ignorance in the months to come.
George at 47 that is a good question and wit’s end provided an excellent link to explain it. Truth is I have never noticed polar outbreaks two years in a row. Overall the weather patterns will move northward and I personally hope hurricane tracks move with them away from FL. But anyway we have to throw in a jetstream pattern that gives us weird events like what happened across the globe this past year and a half. I normally just make statements and move on because supplying links seems like work and I am like Maynard G Krebs when I even think about the word.
For those who think that it was cold last month, here is a list of recent Januaries during moderate-strong La Ninas, from GISS:
1974: -0.14
1976: -0.08
1989: +0.03
1999: +0.16
2000: +0.38
2008: +0.17
2011: +0.46
As you can see, January 2011 was the warmest January on record during a La Nina. Not only that, it was warmer than December. Also, the anomaly for January 1998, during a record El Nino was +0.52, only 0.06°C warmer, and the current La Nina is still pretty strong:
The latest (31 January) 30-day SOI value is +21, comparable to the highest January monthly SOI value on record (20.8), recorded in both 1974 and 1890.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
(that follows a record high December and October-December SOI)
Krauthammer may not understand religion or science (or at least not show that he does) but he definitely understands propaganda. The religion reference ties into the psych profile of the target audience for amplifying denialist talking points: the libertarian wingnut. These charming folks thrive on projecting their flaws on others.
Shilling for the oil industry is a long-time career for this individual, including shilling for Bush and Cheney’s manufactured war for oil in Iraq. What a piece of work.
We many not be talking about La Nina much longer either; NASA’s GMAO model shows a quite strong El Nino developing later this year, peaking close the the last one; which, while not of 1997-98 levels, was fairly strong:
http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/products/climateforecasts/index.cgi
That would also make Hansen’s prediction of record temperatures in 2012 a good bet (with the caveat that La Nina could last another year, as it did last time).
[JR: Am working on La Nina post. Why does NASA use Nino3 rather than Nino3.4, which is the normal indicator?]
Rejection of science seems increasingly to be the ‘ new ‘ in neocons
OT, but Larry Cobb from the Center for American Progress just gave an excellent interview on BBC News on the (imminent) departure of Hosni Mubarak. He talked about the ways the Egyptian people can tell that the U.S. supports their quest for Democracy.
Michael @58 and 60,
Thanks– great posts, and perhaps not surprising that global SATs are currently much higher than observed for historic La Ninas. Thanks too for the GMAO link– very interesting. The CFS is still persisting with the La nina into the late spring. However, it is know to be too slow in transitioning between events. Recent data from the TAO/TRITON array and remotely sensed SSTs, show rapid warming of SSTs east of about 160 W and with westerly wind anomalies east of the date line. The La Nina seems to very likely be weakening and quite rapidly too….
Still waiting for the latest ECMWF plumes, and IRI updates. Either way ESNO neutral conditions now look likely by summer.
Just an quick addendum– sub-surface ocean temperatures over the eastern tropical Pacific are still around 3 degrees c below normal, so a burst of strong easterlies over the eastern pacific could force a change back to la nina conditions. Time will tell.
George @49:
Although the cold temperatures were not dramatic record setters (Only back a couple of decades.) there was a lot more happening.
The Arctic sea along with Greenland, East Canada and East Siberia were up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal last December. 12.6F this January. That warm air rose and pushed the frigid polar air southwards.
Look carefully at the links below and you’ll see why the cold went so deep south.
The extensive snows, which are confused for very cold weather (It’s possible for cold winters to be dry), are the result of warmer oceans. The fringes of the Arctic Sea, and the other oceans, are evaporating more; thus creating more precipitation, rain or snow.
Check out the temperature anomaly image for December, 2010:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2011&month_last=01&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=12&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=pol
And January 2011 which was a somewhat cooler according to the temperature bar:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2011&month_last=01&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=01&year1=2011&year2=2011&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=pol
Well said, Wits End, @ 56: People have no problems accepting “Lake Effect Snow” from late frozen Great Lakes. I do not understand why the denier faction have such a hard time accepting climatic disruption from a far larger region of open water only a few miles further north. By my rough calculations we went into the Arctic fall with about two times more open water than all the Great Lakes combined below the 1979-2000 average. We remain at record low ice extent to this day. Climatic Disruption because of all that open water would appear to be a no brainer to me, but but than again the Tea Baggers have seldom been accused of oozing gray matter.
Sorry to be late to the discussion. Would have liked to arrived before the number crunchers. Oh, well.
There is a kernel of truth in the observation. Similar to the way some Repugnants express strongly their fundamental religious conviction while their behavior contradicts, some Demorats garner support by showing they’ve got that ole time AGW religion while their behavior contradicts.
George #49 is the living embodiment of Dunning Krugerism. The mechanism behind these great snowfalls and the link to climate disruption has been explained several times, but he either cannot, because intellectually insufficient, understand it, or he willfully refuses to do so. Another example of what we face was beautifully explicated in yesterday’s edition of Murdoch’s oily rag ‘The Fundament’ (aka The Australian). One of the rag’s pet letter writers, one of the handful who can expect to have their opinions sprayed about several times a week (one wonders if so few people bother writing to the rag, or is it just rank editorial bias)was having a blast at our PM, Julia Dullard. He accused Dullard of faking a tearful response to the flood disaster in Queensland. He wrote ‘..it’s impossible to be overcome by emotion if we are not personally close to someone who has suffered a grievous loss’. Dullard had become a little choked up after recounting the story of a pregnant woman rescued by helicopter just after her young child had been swept away from her grasp by the floodwaters.
Now, I think that is a pretty fair summation of Rightist psychopathology. Human empathy is limited to those that you are ‘close’ to. I like the projection, too, where the lack of empathy is projected onto others and those with a wider circle of emotional concern are labeled fakers. And, of course, not only is this the correspondent’s moral understanding, but also that of the propaganda apparatchik at The Fundament who thought such an offering fit for publication. Need I add that the creature in question is one of The Fundament’s menagerie of reliable anthropogenic climate change denialists as well.
Rob C (#60) gets it.
Krauthammer, like the paid propagandists at Fox, isn’t stupid.
Their effluent is not intended for intelligent & actual skeptics.
Tossing in the reference to Newton & Einstein is to make their
viewers/readers to drool with incredulous gratitude that one of
theirs can give those uppity liberal intellectuals a dose of their
own medicine.
They really don’t care how stupid they sound to someone who knows
science; all they care is that their base gets it and keeps voting
the Inhofes & Shimkuses into office.
Hey, let’s make “inhofe” and “shimkus” synonymous with “doofus”.
I hate to repeat myself, but to all you deniers out there who have for some reason decided to attack this post, if you live in the mid latitudes all your weather comes from some place else, no matter what time of the year it is. Last time I checked, Oklahoma and Arkansas were in the mid latitudes. The cold and snow that have occurred this winter over the southern plains and even into northern Mexico is a direct result of a very sluggish jet stream getting stuck in a north south orientation across central North America. As long as some cold air forms in the dark polar and sub-polar continental regions in the weeks before and after the December solstice, atmospheric mechanics are going to force it to go south somewhere. And as it does, it’ll follow the jet stream pattern that happens to set up. If the north polar region hadn’t been so warm over the last few years, it would have been less likely that the jet stream would have been so sluggish and less likely that it would have gotten stuck the way it has the last two winters. It is a well known meteorological fact that stuck patterns bring extended extreme weather to certain areas that don’t usually experience them when patterns don’t get stuck. Also, as the north polar region continues to warm over the coming years and decades since the denier religion is doing everything in its power to preclude taking any significant action to forestall such a thing, you can expect more extreme weather in Oklahoma and environs. That means more snow and cold in some years when the jet stream gets stuck just right, but more drought if it gets stuck in a different pattern, as the overall temperature gradient (the basic driver of all weather phenomena) between the poles and the equator grows steadily weaker. Of course, if storms do hit, no matter what the season, they’ll be dumping a lot more precipitation of whatever form the temperature regime dictates. In between, one can expect drought and the threat of wild fires. At least the next flood and heavy snow storm will put out the fires if they’re still burning. This feast or famine weather regime can be expected to continue and accelerate as the Arctic continues to melt and more of the Arctic Ocean becomes exposed for longer periods of time. Unless this trend is reversed before the really big positive feedbacks kick in, I think at some point in the future nobody will have to worry about winter snow and cold coming to Oklahoma any more. But by that point we’ll all have a lot of other more important things to worry about, if many of us are still here, that is.
Likely off-topic, but on these days it’s hard to tell, at the time of the bible there weren’t any turbines or such present that I’ve heard of, and probably the scribes wouldn’t have even recognized those as such, so the heavenly approval of about post-15th hundreds tech is pending, i’d think.
It may be too soon to use the weather as a proof for or against Anthropogenic GW. I personally believe that an atmosphere with 40% more CO2 in it will stir up some weird weather, but to base one’s “religion” on that is, still rather sketchy. I base mine on this undeniable FACT:
CO2 is an infrared absorber which humanity has upped the count by 40%.
If many of us are still here, that is.
Re 61 what actually triggers nino/nina’s? Is it just currents?
Krauthammer got off with a venomous spit of propaganda… due to the rushed structure of the tv show. This is not thoughtful discourse.
He needs to talk for a few hours on this subject in order for us to see a clear display of his thinking.
Blame goes to media, again.
Once after a talk to a liberal audience at the liberal Conference on World Affairs in liberal Boulder, I overheard a liberal approach Charles Krauthammer and tell him (when Bush was President and Repugnats held both houses of Congress) “You must be happy your side’s winning” and Krauthammer replied “I’m happier that your side’s losing.”
Krauthammer’s ego is such that he just tries to win arguments and political wars, never considering the truth or collateral damage in the hundreds of thousands (Iraq), millions (Pakistan, Russia, Australia, Sri Lanka, etc) and ultimately billions (maybe just during this current global food spike, and certainly during those to come).
@ Daniel J. Andrews:
I’ve also noticed the similarities between AGW-denialism and Young Earth Creationism.
It’s not at all surprising though since denialism in all of it’s variants seems to share characteristic defense mechanisms and has the same enemies (i.e. science, logic, and facts). I’ve noticed that many of those that support the Y.E.C. position are almost invariably AGW-denialists too, although the AGW-denialists have a much bigger tent than just religious fundamentalism.
——————————————————————————————————————————
@ the denialist peanut gallery (not directed at those truly “on the fence” but you may find it helpful):
If you really want to undercut the idea that the Earth has been warming it’s really very simple, in fact I’m going to help you do it. But for this to work I’m going to assume (for the moment) that you are sincere in your position and don’t want to be intellectually dishonest on the subject of AGW, since that is the only way to discredit AGW in the scientific community.
Besides, you don’t want to be dishonest do you? What would it say about your position if the only way you defend it is to lie about the subject of AGW? (rhetorical questions)
1) Understand that a relatively small area of the globe does not represent the whole planet. You make think that the USA is almost the whole world, but it’s not. Not by a long shot. Therefore, what happens in several states is not necessarily representative of the whole planet. If you want to understand what is happening the the whole planet, then you need to examine as much of the planet as possible.
In other words:
Local Weather Reports =/= Global Weather
2) Understand that a long term trend is just that…a long term trend. Looking at just one or two snow storms in a few years is not a trend. This is referred to as “cherry-picking” and is dishonest.
Looking at the daily temperature over decades is a trend.
Here’s the hard one now for you denialists (I don’t expect this one to sink in for many, if not all, of you since it seems fundamental to the denialist mindset/defense mechanisms)…
3) Understand that attacking the other side’s people or position does nothing to prove that your side is right. No positive assertion (i.e. “AGW isn’t happening”) is “proven” correct by default if the opposing side is flawed. Only evidence that positively supports your position will make your case.
Additionally, even if you knock out one important piece of evidence (which denialists have been unable to do over decades) there is still all of the other evidence supporting AGW. For example, even if Mann’s “hockey stick” had been discredited for flawed research (and no… it actually wasn’t in spite of what you may want to believe) it still would do nothing about all of the other evidence of increasing temperatures from around the world by other parties. Trying to discredit a few pieces of evidence does nothing to change the reality of the situation, or the remaining evidence that shows you are wrong.
If you really want to discredit AGW all you really need to do is provide credible scientific evidence that either the planet isn’t warming over the long term global average (which is what AGW is all about), or provide credible scientific evidence that some other natural explanation fits the observed warming and explains it better than GHG emission build-up. So far the AGW-denialists have done neither after having had decades to provide such evidence. Just like how Young Earth Creationists don’t spend much effort trying to provide credible scientific evidence that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or that Noah’s flood was real.
Meanwhile the evidence that shows the Earth is getting warming and that GHGs are causing it just continues to build up in the scientific community, year after year. That’s why the majority of the climate science community says you’re wrong.
And, No… You don’t get to cry “conspiracy to hide the truth” when your side isn’t even actually trying to make a good scientific case. Even more so when the surest way to fame and fortune as a scientist is to overturn the orthodoxy through good evidence and research (as has happened many times in the past, and recently).
———————————————————————————————–
So here’s your chance denialists….
Since your group seems to be running on a “it’s not warming because winter is cold” routine in your group-think meme this week, just provide a chart from a peer reviewed study and backed by credible scientific evidence that shows that the global average long-term temperature trend has either been level, or has been declining.
The AGW-is-real side has been providing credible peer-reviewed evidence for decades now showing increasing global warming. Surely if global warming is not real you should have not trouble providing credible scientific evidence to support that position, after all your side has had decades to do so now.
So where is it?
“The solution to global warming — the strategy needed to avoid 450 ppm — does not require rationing food or energy. It primarily requires a government-led strategy to aggressively deploy clean energy technologies (see The full global warming solution: How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm). That strategy preserves the energy abundance that has made modern civilization possible.”
Joseph Trainer wrote a book entitled “Renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society” which tends to give the lie to that kind of wishful thinking. In a future of reduced oil availability, increasing population with a desire for more food and more energy and the rapidly expanding consumer demand from China and India, the idea that we can keep emissions down to a safe level without energy (carbon) rationing seems delusion of a high order. The alternative is that all those demands rise forever and are constantly met by renewables – does that really sound plausible?
[JR: Not what I wrote. Renewable energy by itself won't solve the problem. Obviously.]
The deniers come from Goddard’s… They are congratulating themselves over there for the witty comments they are leaving here!
I have run into Deniers everywhere on line; Some at the Huffington Post- who rely on extreme right wing blogs for their science, like Anthony Watts, Steve Goddard, to name a few.
Also over at the American Weather forum- here the science is pretty good- for those who believe we have huge problems; the Deniers seem to get the same broken records of information from a central clearinghouse.
Also City Data (City-Data.com) in The Green section- global warming- someone who I believe might be Steve Goddard himself- who monopolizes the forum, which CD- a basically right wing company, trivializes AGW into a tiny segment.
Over at CD- on the Connecticut forum- One long thread ‘Weather in Connecticut’ we have one so called ‘well informed’ trained Meteorologist’ talk about weather and climate- yet he still sees AGW as a myth. I left CD a few years ago- since my liberal insights on a whole host of issues, made me feel unwelcome-
I find it easier to be here at CP- and some other blogs and sites, where reality trumps fantasy.
I’m impressed by Ed Hummels description of the weather pattern over the midwest. First time I ever heard sluggish jetstream. But definitely makes sense since a weaker gradient means weaker winds. I know we are talking weather here but it ties in with AGW because that is what’s causing the weaker gradient.
The deniers come from Goddard’s…
Ah, I see he’s trained them well… He must be proud. They’re probable competing with this bunch. ;)
[JR: Yeah, I got a whopping 66 deniers from Goddard's cite last night. Background noise.]
Always instructive to see the denier posts: ignore science and data and then press repeat.
Dr. Romm to you :) About record high and lows (great graph). Your graph misses the real differences of Hi-Low. your graph should use the aggregate of a period and not the Extremes. In actuality the Hi-low events should be larger then what your graph suggests.
For you are chasing a rising scale instead of finding the means of some normal Hi-Low. What your graph should do is determine what is an average Hi-Low event over a long period of time. Then from this much lower average determine the extreme Hi-Low temperature events.
What is needed is to take the average of each day of the year over a hundred year period. Once we have this average over a time period, we can use this to determine a Hi-Low temp event. Now since we have a fixed point of reference, we can get a more accurate graph.
Except, we need to eliminate the GW effect to have an accurate reference point. If the 90′s and 2000′s are effective by mans GW. then that periods should not be included in the aggregate of the large average period. we can determine what a natural average is by removing ten years periods and then comparing Hi-Low events. After determining the normal average we see what the percent of Hi-Low events are. Foe example if the 50′s has a 1.5:1 event and the 40′s has 1.7:1 then these may be considered normal. Then compare 20′s with the 50′s, how do they compare. The reason we can compare such extremes is because we included these periods in our aggregate. from these sampling We have determined what our fixed average is. Any extremes will now be prevalent when compared with our fixed average.
What is nice on our fixed average is that we can compare any time period with different periods in the past. We also can compare larger blocks such as 20 years or even 30. These larger blocks will have a smoothing effect for a normal time frame. Extremes will be made more prevalent.
JR. I know that this would take some programing (I program also). If you would post or e-mail me where you got you data, would be glad to program this data set for you (if I can get my COBOL compiler running again).
Don’t laugh I can program this simple set in a day or two. Then can make changes In less then hour. Comparing 20,30 years periods a few minor changes, less then 5 seconds to run and print a usable format. It is a dead end program, but it’s easy and I like programing in COBOL. Would be glad to help.
I have often wished that I could create a religion that incorporated my political and philosophical beliefs. That would be the true and sure road to ultimate success. The science of climate change and other elements of rational policy should be the factual core and doctrine of an emotionally rich religious movement. I would want my people to feel the spirit of the struggle, weep with passionate commitment for it’s ideals and study it’s doctrine with diligence.
It would be fun as a big box of puppies. Unfortunately, I’m not smart enough to pull it off. You do it.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India