Remarkable Weather We Are Having

How many weeks of cold weather remains?

It can't be longer than four weeks right? IIRC from previous winters, it warmed up a week or two after March. One thing I do recall, the cold fronts were never this consistent throughout the months.

 

Thanks for posting that B-Bob. I'm amazed at how consistent you are in trying to provide rational discussion on this topic. I got burned out a long time ago.

 

Hey MojoMan -- Do you have a copy of that graph which shows the fluctuations in Earth's climate over the extreme long-term.

Basically, the one that Gore showed in An Inconvenient Truth but extended out over a longer period.

If so, could you please re-post it? I'd like to see that again. Thanks.

 

From what I understand, global warming leads to more extreme weather, hot and cold, so a first-ever blizzard isn't inconsistent with that. Makes you wonder...

 

When you unravel all of your points you can always trace it back to some bedrock of incorrect assumptions. Trying to imply that environmentalists are the ones playing language games here is another example.

Frank Luntz a conservative REPUBLICAN political consultant for the Bush White House and Fox News is the one who decided to "re-brand" the issue, because focus groups determined that 'climate change' didn't sound as scary or bad as 'global warming':

[rquoter]
Luntz' specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”
...
Although Luntz later tried to distance himself from the Bush administration policy, it was his idea that administration communications reframe "global warming" as "climate change" since "climate change" was thought to sound less severe. Luntz has since said that he is not responsible for what the administration has done since that time. Though he now believes humans have contributed to global warming, he maintains that the science was in fact incomplete, and his recommendation sound, at the time he made it.

[/rquoter]

Of course, as the article points out, even Luntz realizes now that he was misguided. But feel free to keep blaming liberal hippies.

 

Global warming? you betcha! right jorge?

After warmest January in history, Vancouver airlifts in snow for Winter Olympics.

Record warmth is forcing the organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia to helicopter in snow to cover mountains. The planet’s changing climate is threatening the start of the Olympics, as “sloppy, foggy weather” has canceled training runs on both Whistler and Cypress Mountains. In Vancouver, the “average temperature in January was 44.9 degrees, besting the previous warm record of 43.3 in 2006 and well above the historic average of 37.9 degrees”:

After the warmest January in Vancouver history, organizers moved more than 5,000 cubic meters of snow onto Cypress by helicopter and truck from nearby mountains. Some 750 workers are bringing in snow and building courses before competition starts on Saturday.

Vancouver’s troubles are part of a broader trend of warmer winters across the Northern Hemisphere. Increased warmth and changing weather patterns have led to glacial retreat and unreliable snowfall across the globe, putting the future of alpine sports in jeopardy. Globally, we are in the warmest winter on record. Locally, the weather forecast for the Olympics “calls for more rain and warm temperatures for the next five days.”

 

You are exactly right here, which is why we defer to scientific publications rather than journalistic ones when evaluating the validity of claims about climate. If you really are interested in discussing the problems of global warming, you might want to stop obfuscating the issue by posting every media report of nippy weather you come across.

 

For interested parties, the reason someone like the skeptic physicist Richard Muller thinks the science of the role of CO2 in global temperature is rock solid is because he has read the 100+ years of scientific literature in great detail. I base the following summary on Richard Muller's review of the literature. Keep in mind that Muller has been incredibly critical of IPCC and even debunked the notion that hurricanes are increasing in frequency, etc. But he agrees with the bottom-line: excess CO2 is most likely a contributing factor to the warming we have observed. Not the only factor, not absolutely a factor. Probably contributing.

This started in 1895 with Svante Arhennius, a chemist who noted the striking ability of CO2 to absorb infrared radiation in exactly the wheelhouse that the earth tries to emit its radiative heat to space. He predicted that excess CO2 from human activity could tweak the climate.

From his 1895 conference paper:
“temperature of the Arctic regions would rise about 8 degrees or 9 degrees Celsius, if the carbonic acid increased 2.5 to 3 times its present value. In order to get the temperature of the ice age between the 40th and 50th parallels, the carbonic acid in the air should sink to 0.62 to 0.55 of present value (lowering the temperature 4 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius).”
Here is an evil, liberal NASA bit on him.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/arrhenius_2.php

People agreed with his basic calculations, but then the issue went to the bck burner for decades because scientists thought the oceans would suck up the excess CO2 as fast as, or faster than, we could put it in the atmosphere.

*** In 1957, a critical paper was published by the oceanographer Roger Revelle with the physical chemist Hans Suess. They discovered the exact chemical processes in the upper ocean that actually makes CO2 absorption way too slow for the oceans to suck up our excess CO2. Here's more about Roger Revelle. (The 2nd one is a long and detailed essay, but I'm confident, given the obsession some of us have with this topic, this will become popular reading, and not just for cherry-picking a phrase or two.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Revelle

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Revelle.htm

Very simple calculations in the late 1950's showed what a doubling or tripling of CO2 would do to atmospheric temperatures. They pretty much agree with Arhennius and subsequent, fancier calculations. You double CO2, and you warm up the globe a few degrees C, many degrees F.

*** In 1979, the most thorough treatment imaginable was conducted by a group led by Gordon J. McDonald. Here's the reference:
MacDonald, G.F., H.Abarbanel, P.Carruthers, J.Chamberlain, H.Foley, W.Munk, W. Nierenberg, O.Rothaus, M.Ruderman, J.Vesecky, and F.Zachariasen (1979). The long term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate, JASON Technical Report JSR-78-07, SRI International, Arlington, Virginia.

(The JASONS, if you don't know about them, I'll leave for another time. Look them up! Hardly a left-wing group. Very hawkish, one could say.)

McDonald and a couple of other co-authors, all deeply respected scientists of their era, wrote a report for the white house that starts like this:

“Man is setting in motion a series of events that seem certain to cause a significant warming of world climates over the next decades unless mitigating steps are taken immediately... Enlightened policies in the management of fossil fuels and forests can delay or avoid these changes, but the time for implementing the policies is fast passing.” 1979 report issued by McDonald, Woodwell, Revelle, and Keeling.

You can read an entire National Academies report on climate, from 1979, here:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12181&page=1
It's all open to you!

Again, calculations agreed with Arhhenius and the 1957 calculation, and these agree with the newer fancy computer models. So feel free to dispute the IPCC as they have made some sloppy steps around the edges of their work.

But know this (and this is why I, as a scientist, am so heavy-handed on this scientific topic): if you want to dismiss the "shady science" (sic) of man's possible effects on global warming, you are saying you and your sources are somehow smarter than 115 years of very solid chemistry and physics.

The science, at a fundamental level, is very simple. You can measure the solar radiation coming in. You can measure exactly what is reflected. Then you can measure, from space, the total radiation coming OUT. (This is what CO2 messes with, our output to space.) What you can currently measure, and nobody disputes this: more heat is coming in than is going out. IPCC and its most esteemed science skeptics put the range of probability that we're partially to blame for this at 70-90% probability.

That's why I sometimes feel that non-scientists throwing stones at climate science is kind of like me saying all basketball experts are wrong and that Brian Cook, who was MVP of the big ten, should get more playing time. I'm not enough of a basketball expert to tell Adelman about Brian Cook. But the parallel to certain other posters would continue as: you guys debunk my Brian Cook ravings by showing me detailed stats and film of his practice time... and in the next thread I just repeat "But he was MVP of the Big Ten!"

Cheers all! And happy reading.

 

If we add one more member we would be known as The Baltic Tigers.

 

So does global warming make weather more erratic and extreme like the "Day After Tommorow"?

It seems so.

 

It's cold outside. Global warming is weak. I was going to buy a Prius but I like brakes. I like to save money. I like household plants. They remove contaminants in the air. I like guns as well. I'm the ultimate hybrid of collective assumptive thought I guess...Seriously I'm ready to move back to Houston, why did I accept a job promotion?

 

You don't understand. I said we should defer to scientific publications, as in the data. No matter how "tainted" the peer review process might be, the data can always be scrutinized and experiments can always be repeated. That is how, and why, science works. Your method, taking single data points and drawing ad hoc conclusions, is decidedly inferior. But I guess that's how your "thinking functions".

 

just a word of advice I wouldnt use a movie as an example of Global Warming. Especially a ridiculous movie that was also a very bad movie. You should watch the South Park episode which is pokes fun of that very movie.

 

This is interesting. What are your thoughts on geo-engineering? I think it could work, but the unintended political consequences would be enormous.

 

I end up sympathetic to geo-engineering. Sure, there's a huge worry of unintended physical consequences, but a lot of these worrying types kind of ignore the fact that we've run the experiment (for high-atmosphere sulfates or whatever) every time there's been a major volcanic eruption. You can study that data to death and just try your best to simulate it.

I can't state loudly enough though: I'm not a climate scientist.

I'm not sure what you mean by "political consequences," but there is a huge point that the globe could never agree on what CO2 level (and temperature) it really wanted. You have island nations on one side, and then places like Russia on the other, where they can get some new northern ports and arable land if the globe warms.

 

Yeah, that's what I mean by the political consequences. How could all the nations agree on the level of warmth? Some are going to want it warmer, some cooler. And if some nations are hurt by the weather under geo-engineering, even indirectly, are other nations obligated to help them or give them subsidies? And will developing nations say it is no longer necessary to curtail carbon emissions if geo-engineering is successful? What if not all nations agree, how many nations do we need before we can shoot stuff in the sky to change global temperatures?

It just seems like it will be a big mess. Even if it works, not everyone will like it.

 

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995


*Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
*There has been no global warming since 1995
*Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.
The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.


Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.
According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.
Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.
Enlarge

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.
‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.
Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’
Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.
Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.
He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html

 

Senior Scots scientist in climate probe row Premium Article !
By JENNY FYALL
ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT

AN EMINENT Scottish scientist is facing calls to resign from the "climategate" inquiry, amid concerns over his impartiality


Only 24 hours after another panel member quit, questions emerged over Professor Geoffrey Boulton because of his previous views that climate change is caused by human activity.

The investigation was set up to look into whether scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) covered up flawed data.But some have cast doubt on whether the inquiry results can be trusted if Prof Boulton, general secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, remains on the panel.

The leading geologist was one of five people chosen by former University of Glasgow principal Sir Muir Russell to carry out the high-profile investigation. A statement released at the launch of the inquiry on Thursday said none of the panel members had a "predetermined view on climate change and climate science".

It added: "They were selected on the basis they have no prejudicial interest in climate science."

However, The Scotsman can reveal that only a few months ago, Prof Boulton, from the University of Edinburgh, was among a number of scientists who, in the wake of the climategate scandal, signed a petition to show their confidence that global warming was caused by humans. And for at least five years, he has made clear his strong views on global warming. He has given interviews and written articles – including in The Scotsman – that have spelled out his firmly held beliefs.

In one article for Edinburgh University, he wrote: "The argument regarding climate change is over." And for 18 years, he worked at the University of East Anglia (UEA) – the establishment at the centre of the scandal.

Last night, on being questioned by The Scotsman, Prof Boulton insisted he was a "sceptical scientist" prepared to change his views "if the evidence merited".

The controversy follows the resignation of another panel member, Dr Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature magazine, just six hours after the inquiry launch. He stepped down after it emerged he had given an interview to Chinese radio about the climategate scandal, defending the behaviour of the scientists at the CRU.

Dr Benny Peizer, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank which claims the debate on climate change has become distorted, called for Prof Boulton to step down, too. He said: "Prof Boulton obviously is a very distinguished geologist. The problem is, he is a very outspoken campaigner on this issue and he's given talks calling for galvanising public opinion. He also worked at the very institution that he is now going to be investigating. That, we think, is a conflict of interest."

He said he was "speechless" about why Prof Boulton and Dr Campbell had been appointed in the first place.

"It looks like a shambles and it looks like the chairman of this panel hasn't really thought this through," he said. "Everyone must have told him (Sir Muir] that it's a very contentious issue and he should make sure the panel members have no bias at all."

He added that he thought it was "impossible" that Prof Boulton could remain in post.

The UEA, one of Britain's leading climate-change research centres, helps compile a global temperature record published by the Met Office. This data is used by the government to justify its targets for cuts in carbon emissions.

The university appointed Sir Muir in December to head an inquiry into a series of allegations over manipulated data.

Prof Boulton said he had been open about having worked at the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA between 1968 and 1986.

"Since then, I have had no professional contact with the University of East Anglia or the Climatic Research Unit," he said. He added that he had "declared my current view of the balance of evidence: that the earth is warming and that human activity is implicated. These remain the views of the vast majority of scientists who research on climate change in its different aspects".

But he added: "As a sceptical scientist, I am prepared to change those views if the evidence merits it. They certainly do not prevent me from being heavily biased against poor scientific practice, wherever it arises."

A spokeswoman for the inquiry said Sir Muir was "completely confident each member has the integrity, expertise and experience to complete the task."

Where eminent academic stands and what he's said in past

Dec 2009: In the wake of the scandal over leaked "climategate" e-mails, Professor Geoffrey Boulton signs a Met Office petition. It says: "We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming."

• Dec 2009: He gives an interview to The Scotsman in which he expresses his concern that public belief in climate change might be damaged by the scandal.

• Oct 2009: Writes an opinion piece for The Scotsman, in which he spells out the evidence that humans are responsible for climate change. It reads:

• Oct 2008: Is one of 18 scientists who write an essay about the likely impacts of climate change by 2050, commissioned by the David Hume Institute. He predicts melting icecaps causing "the potential demise of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Kuwait, flooding of large areas of the US Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and east coasts of Myanmar, Thailand and north-east China".

In Scotland, "the Forth, Clyde, Moray and Solway lowlands were at risk".

Governments are guilty of "misplaced optimism" and being "too preoccupied by the credit crunch".

• 2005: In a paper produced for Edinburgh University's Annual Review, Prof Boulton is quoted as saying: "The argument regarding climate change is over."

• 1968 to 1986: He spends 18 years working at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia – the university at the centre of the scandal.

However, Prof Boulton does not work in the Climatic Research Unit.

HOTTING UP

THE "climategate" scandal broke just days before the Copenhagen climate change summit in December, when world leaders gathered to thrash out solutions to global warming.

A hacker obtained thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and posted them on a website. They appeared to suggest efforts by CRU scientists to cover up evidence that did not fit theories climate change was caused by humans. There was a reference to a "trick" to "hide the decline".

On Thursday, an inquiry into the scandal started, carried out by a panel led by former University of Glasgow principal Sir Muir Russell.

This inquiry will examine the quality of scientific practice by CRU researchers as well as investigating whether they complied with the university's freedom of information rules.

It will not examine the evidence on whether or not global warming is caused by human behaviour.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/Senior-Scots-scientist-in-climate.6069702.jp