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Tuesday evening President Obama will present his State of the Union to the nation on one of the coldest nights in years. All 50 (57?) states will see sub freezing temperatures. Up to 30 states will have temperatures drop below zero F!
Snow will be falling from near Houston to New Orleans, the Florida Panhandle and the coastal Carolinas. Models suggest Charleston, SC may get over 7 inches of snow, some models have a foot.
Maps available on Weatherbell.com
Charleston, SC’s modern record snowstorm is 6.6 inches in 1989. Some models exceed or even double that. In 2010, 3.4 inches (8.6 cm) fell on the evening of February 12, the heaviest in 20 years. The record for Charleston was in January 9-11, 1800 when 8.1 inches fell. 7.1 inches fell on February 9-10, 1973.
The nation is suffering from a serious propane shortage and with heavy icing on the nation’s lakes and rivers slowing or stalling barge traffic for grains and fuels. The President will no doubt reassure his green supporters he will continue his war on fossil fuels and support for alternative energy to fight the ravages of global warming. Despite any promises that renewables will save the middle class money, the EPA if not reigned in will cause the prices of electricity, natural gas and fuel oil to in Obama’s own words “necessarily skyrocket’. Suppliers might not have supplies to sell you as we saw in places early in January and may see this week/next month. Blackouts and brownouts will become more common in the years head. Unemployment will go up as it did in Spain (27.5%). All these problems have been experienced in Europe, where they are running as fast as they can away from the green agenda. We aren’t learning from their mistakes. The EPA is running rampant and the senate is proposing legislation to force unreasonable renewable energy standards.
The Gore effect lives on. The lunacy continues.
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SOTU, 2014: Obama will use wintry weather as example of global warming
January 26th, 2014 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I predict that, despite the brutally cold weather in DC this Tuesday, Obama will preach on climate change in his State of the Union address. I predict he will even use the cold weather as evidence to support his case.
During his address it looks like there will be a wintry mix starting across the southern reaches of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and the Florida panhandle. I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses the event as evidence of human-caused climate change.
Precip and cloud forecast for around midnight, Tuesday night.
For those of us old enough to remember, similar events happened back in the epic cold winters of the 1970s. Many instances of snow falling in Florida in the 1800s surely weren’t due to humans. Believe it or not, more snow tends to go with colder weather, not warmer. Go figure.
Snowball fight on the steps of the Florida capitol building, Feb. 10, 1899.
Has everyone forgotten that the global warming prophets predicted winters without snow?
And there is no credible evidence that climate change (induced by global warming) can produce colder than normal temperatures. There has been no long-term change in mid-latitude storminess. One climate model out of a hundred might produce colder weather over less than 1% of the Earth with global warming....those are damn long odds to hang your hat on.
But you know that if this winter was 20 deg. above normal rather than below normal, that would be used as evidence of global warming. Some people want to have it both ways. That sounds to me more like political spin than science.
Still, I’m sure the President can find a few scientists who will support him. So he’s covered.
Yes, we live in interesting times.
On January 6, we wrote
“After a couple more cold days, moderation will take place but note that winter when the cold does this, it often repeats and models indicate it may after 10 days, probably extending a little further east. Join us at weatherbell.com and read about the threat. We correctly forecast this cold winter and this outbreak many days in advance.”
Well for the last several week we have been telling subscribers commercial clients for over the last two plus week that that cold reprise was coming. That cold has started and unlike the early month cold will keep on coming in waves with the cold early next week probably COLDER than that with the now famous ‘polar vortex’. Here is the forecast anomaly for the next 8 days:
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Temperatures are forecast by the model 30F below normal and well below zero into the midwest shattering long term records. I would not be surprised to see lows of 40 to 50F below zero in Minnesota and 20 to 30 below in the Ohio Valley where the coldest air is forecast to settle. That is not wind chill but actual temperatures.
The cold doesn’t end then though the core may shift west and northwest again while it reloads. The following period may be characterized by big storms. The next week will feature fast moving ‘clipper’ storms the bring in fresh cold. The southern storm track may be activated by changes in the tropical Pacific. with the potential for a snowstorm between the 3rd and 6th of February. Here are the week 2 anomalies - still well below normal. Chicago, Philadelphia and NYC have already exceeded there normal seasonal snowfall and more is coming.
This is the anomaly so far this season.
Note it is 1.22C below normal for the lower 48 states. If that persists through February (and the models are cold for February, the winter would rank with the cold winters of the late 1970s. I have aded that to the NCDC graph of winter CONUS temperature anomalies. Of course NOAA has its magic adjustments it makes to the actual data so we will see. This analysis is based on actual observations that go in to the forecast models 4 times daily.
Here is the CFS model February forecast,
At Weatherbell, we saw this winter coming months ago. Here is a forecast issued in the fall to clients in our ag service. It is based on our own proprietary multivariate statistical model approaches. We have expanded inputs into the approach and have been hitting it out of the park this past year.
Joe Bastardi had a similar forecast for the energy clients and last week when one operational 16 day forecast model run suggested the cold broke, JB told our clients NO and indeed the market has soared when all the models came back to a cold solution. The energy market sold off but then went into panic buying mode. Our client made money.
Please join us at Weatherbell and you will get our insights and forecast, videos and Dr. Ryan Maue’s superior model graphics and value added products. JB and I have been posting and forecasting for the markets daily since March 2011 at Weatherbell. Not only can you find superior temperature forecasts, but we have hit every major snowstorm, hurricane and tornado outbreak event many days in advance. If you have a weather sensitive business, you cant afford to rely on the unreliable model based point and click on the internet nor the model hugging forecast services. You need dependable guidance and hand holding. (Weatherbell.com)
By the way, the impact of this coming cold will be far reaching. the Great Lakes ice will increase to levels of 1993/94 or greater. Great Lakes barge traffic and barge traffic on our major rivers will be stopped by ice. Look for the Potomac, Hudson, parts of New York Harbor to freeze. The chart below shows the ice coverage in % (black is 100% coverage, white open water, greys partial ice).
Enlarged
By: Lachlan Markay, Washington Free Beacon, January 15, 2014 2:47 pm
Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emails show extensive collaboration between top agency officials and leading environmentalist groups, including overt efforts to coordinate messaging and pressure the fossil fuel industry.
The emails, obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (EELI) through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, could fuel an ongoing controversy over EPA policies that critics say are biased against traditional sources of energy.
Emails show EPA used official events to help environmentalist groups gather signatures for petitions on agency rulemaking, incorporated advance copies of letters drafted by those groups into official statements, and worked with environmentalists to publicly pressure executives of at least one energy company.
Nancy Grantham, director of public affairs for EPA Region 1, which covers New England, asked an organizer for the Sierra Club’s New Hampshire chapter to share the group’s agenda so EPA could adjust its messaging accordingly in an email dated March 12, 2012.
“If you could, it would great [sic] if you can send me an email describing what you would like to do in early April in NH that way I can coordinate messaging with our air offices here and at HQ,” Grantham wrote.
Critics of the agency and its nonprofit allies were surprised by the cooperation.
“The level of coordination in these documents is shocking,” EELI said in a statement.
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, said the emails suggest that the EPA is straying from its mission by working hand-in-hand with hardline green groups.
“It’s unfortunate that EPA has spent more of its resources promoting and coordinating a political agenda with environmentalists instead of doing its job,” Pompeo said in an emailed statement.
“In Kansas, we expect public officials to serve the public interest, not the interests of radical environmentalist groups.”
The documents also reveal some of the internal deliberations behind recent controversial EPA decisions, such as the locations of public hearings on an agency rule imposing stringent emissions limits for power plants.
The agency came under fire from legislators representing coal-producing states for holding those hearings far from regions where most of the nation’s coal is produced.
“Instead of the EPA holding a coal hearing in the heart of Coal Country, Kentucky, he has chosen locations such as San Francisco and Washington, D.C.,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said at the time.
McConnell accused EPA of “once again showing its contempt for Kentucky’s coal miners and their families.”
Emails released by EELI show that EPA decided on the locations for those hearings after consulting with leading environmentalist groups that advocate the complete phase-out of coal power.
“San Fran and Seattle would be friendlier forums but CA has no coal plants and WA is phasing out its one plant,” noted EPA region 8 administrator James Martin in an email to Vicki Patton, general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
“Choosing either may create opportunities for the industry to claim EPA is tilting the playing field,” Martin told Patton. “Denver would not have that problem.”
The EPA would later deny that Martin used a personal email for EPA business. The FOIAed messages reveal that that was not the case. His email to Patton was sent from a “.me” address.
Martin also advised Patton that hearings in Denver could be used to pressure the natural gas industry. “The gas industry has way more presence here, too. One last point in its favor it will make Roy Palmer nervous!” he wrote.
Palmer is an executive at Xcel Energy, a leading natural gas utility in Colorado.
Amy Oliver Cooke, the executive director of the Independence Institute, a Denver-based free market think tank, said she was surprised at the hostility towards Palmer and Xcel, given their past cooperation on legislation imposing renewable energy quotas in the state.
“It shows that Xcel and natural gas aren’t welcome at the eco-left’s cool kids table anymore,” Cooke said.
“It’s really no surprise,” she added. “We warned them they would be next. When you sleep with rattlesnakes eventually they will bite you. With friends like Patton and Martin, Xcel and natural gas don’t need any more enemies.”
A Sierra Club employee also sent a list of their preferred locations for public hearings. The list was forwarded to EPA staff.
The emissions rule on which EPA held those hearings - one of which ended up taking place in Denver - is expected to effectively block the construction of new coal-fired power plants.
The EPA has denied that that was the purpose of the rule, or that it will have that effect. However, other emails obtained by EELI show that top EPA officials were aware that it would devastate the industry.
These newly released emails show that officials also used events surrounding the rule to help environmentalist groups gather public comments on the rulemaking process that supported the EPA’s position.
Deputy EPA administrator Bob Perciasepe attended an April 24, 2012, meeting with 24 leading environmentalist groups, including EDF, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resource Defense Council, according to a notice of the meeting sent by Teri Porterfield, Perciasepe’s assistant. “The purpose is to create a photo-op and narrative beat for the comment-gathering efforts on the issue,” Porterfield wrote.
“Groups will use materials from the event to communicate with supporters and recruit additional comment-signers via newsletters, emails, and social media,” she added.
The EPA also incorporated environmentalist groups’ messaging into then-administrator Lisa Jackson’s communications with members of Congress, the emails reveal.
On November 30, 2011, John Coequyt, who headed the Sierra Club’s “beyond coal” campaign, sent an advance copy of a letter publicly released the following day to a number of EPA officials, including “Richard Windsor,” the pseudonym Jackson used for her personal email address.
The letter addressed a pending EPA rule on emissions from industrial boilers.
“Administrator, I’ll summarize all this in your briefing document for the Hill meetings regarding Boiler MACT,” Arvin Ganesan, a top official in EPA’s congressional relations office, wrote in a follow-up. The following paragraphs of Ganesan’s email were redacted by EPA’s FOIA office.
These emails were released weeks after EPA’s inspector general released a report examining apparent coordination between the agency and environmentalist groups prior to EPA issuing an endangerment order against Texas natural gas company Range Resources.
The IG found that EPA’s actions “conformed to agency guidelines, regulations and policy,” but observers say it either failed to take into account significant pieces of evidence or deliberately ignored that evidence.
Internal EPA regulations prohibit officials from leaking information about administrative orders prior to their public release. However, the IG said that the EPA had done no such thing with respect to the Range order.
“A review of the evidence showed that this communication occurred after the region issued its press release and that it is not out of the ordinary for the EPA to inform interested parties of press releases after they are released,” the report stated.
That statement seems to contradict evidence showing that Al Armendariz, a former EPA region 6 administrator infamous for comparing his enforcement philosophy to Roman crucifixions, gave environmentalist groups the heads up before EPA put out its press release.
“We’re about to make a lot of news,” Armendariz wrote to a handful of Texas environmental activists prior to that release. “There’ll be an official press release in a few minutes. Also, time to Tivo channel 8.”
By Greg Campbell
Is global warming real? Despite what Al Gore has repeatedly claimed, the debate is far from “over.” As much of the country deals with plunging temperatures, with some states experiencing temperatures in the -20’s and -30’s, the politically-charged issue of global warming, or “climate change” to those who favor a catch-all phrase to explain any kind of weather fluctuation, has emerged once again.
Scientists on both sides of the issue are battling it out and scientists and political pundits on the left are scrambling to try and explain the cold weather as a sign of, you guessed it, global warming.
TIME Magazine recently denounced skeptics in an article entitled, “Polar Vortex: Climate Change Could Be the Cause of Record Cold Weather.” Bryan Walsh wrote,
“But not only does the cold spell not disprove climate change, it may well be that global warming could be making the occasional bout of extreme cold weather in the U.S. even more likely. Right now much of the U.S. is in the grip of a polar vortex, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a whirlwind of extremely cold, extremely dense air that forms near the poles.”
That would be, perhaps, an understandable explanation if TIME Magazine and other assorted leftist, agenda-driven journals had not already made claims to the contrary. In 1974, TIME Magazine, the same magazine that blamed the cold on global warming, blamed the cold on “global cooling.” In a June 24th, 1974, article entitled, “Another Ice Age?” the magazine claimed,
“Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds -the so-called circumpolar vortex - that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world.”
It’s not just TIME that cherry-picks their explanations for the cold streak; with the emergences of ‘’green” technologies and the billions of dollars being made in the field of advancing environmentally-friendly products and services, it is undeniable that there remains a strong motive for many to ensure that “global warming” or “climate change” not only exists, but that it is a man-made problem.
The industries behind “green” technology do serious business. Gaining money from government grants and guilty liberals, companies that claim to produce products that are less harmful to the environment have a vested interest in the preservation of the idea that global warming exists.
In fact, Al Gore, the guru of the environmental hysterics, allows liberals to assuage their guilt by selling “carbon credits,” modern day indulgences that the hummer-driving liberal can buy to try and offset their carbon footprint. Of course, the biggest beneficiaries of the carbon credits are those selling these environmental pardons, including Al Gore himself.
As scientists work to try and discover the truth behind the divisive issue, the left maintains a policy of intimidation by routinely discrediting skeptics as modern-day heretics. “Consensus science” now dominates the discussion surrounding global warming just as “consensus science” once dominated the discussion surrounding whether the sun rotated the Earth.
When the Earth experiences higher-than-normal temperatures, without fail, the left proclaims it as a result of global warming. When the Earth experiences the exact opposite, a plunging of temperatures, the left warns us that such cold weather is the result of global warming. More tornadoes in a given year, less tornadoes in a given year, more hurricanes, less hurricanes, all thanks to global warming.
However, having noticed this pattern of contradictory language, the left now seems to favor “climate change” as a means to encompass any slight variation in Earth’s conditions.
Global warming may be real and it may not be. If it does exist, we should try and discover if it is man-made or if it is a natural, cyclical pattern the Earth has seen long before man. However, we will never get to the bottom of the issue so long as the left attempts to maintain a stranglehold on the prevailing narrative. With the left hell-bent on tampering with the science behind Earth’s temperatures, the scientific method has been thoroughly contaminated.
So long as companies turn tremendous profits from selling products and services predicated on the notion that global warming is real, the “science” behind it will never be real science.
So long as researchers are dependent upon grants offered by those with a vested interest in proving the existence of man-made global warming, we will never be offered real, legitimately-obtained data extracted through the use of the scientific method.
So long as academia bullies and discredits the scientific heretics who dare to question the validity of the agenda-driven science, we will remain in the dark.
And until the left admits that the debate is far from “over,” we cannot have an honest discussion about global warming, global cooling, climate change or whatever preferred term used to justify the increasingly-absurd, politically-charged narrative.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
It was quite a storm. I have never seen Logan Airport report heavy snow with an air temperature of 1F (not wind chill) before. The ended up with 15.1 inches. Boxford had 23.8 inches.
Even as more cold and snow invades the central, near the east coast, the post storm blues have set in with the inevitability of an inside runner following rapidly on its heels. But snow loving friends, we have lived through quite a decade and the millennium so far has been a boon to snow lovers despite the continuing claims that snows are becoming rare and hurting winter sports as erroneously reported last week in Boston Magazine.
We here are using NOAA’s own NESIS scale - which we used to call the Kocin/Uccellini storms.
The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS)
Overview
While the Fujita and Saffir-Simpson Scales characterize tornadoes and hurricanes respectively, there is no widely used scale to classify snowstorms. The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) developed by Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini of the National Weather Service (Kocin and Uccellini, 2004) characterizes and ranks high-impact Northeast snowstorms. These storms have large areas of 10 inch snowfall accumulations and greater. NESIS has five categories: Extreme, Crippling, Major, Significant, and Notable. The index differs from other meteorological indices in that it uses population information in addition to meteorological measurements. Thus NESIS gives an indication of a storm’s societal impacts. This scale was developed because of the impact Northeast snowstorms can have on the rest of the country in terms of transportation and economic impact.
NESIS scores are a function of the area affected by the snowstorm, the amount of snow, and the number of people living in the path of the storm. The diagram below illustrates how NESIS values are calculated within a geographical information system (GIS). The aerial distribution of snowfall and population information are combined in an equation that calculates a NESIS score which varies from around one for smaller storms to over ten for extreme storms. The raw score is then converted into one of the five NESIS categories. The largest NESIS values result from storms producing heavy snowfall over large areas that include major metropolitan centers. For details on how NESIS scores are calculated at the National Climatic Data Center, see Squires and Lawrimore (2006).
References:
Kocin, P. J. and L. W. Uccellini, 2004: A Snowfall Impact Scale Derived From Northeast Storm Snowfall Distributions. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 85, 177-194
Squires, M. F. and J. H. Lawrimore, 2006: Development of an Operational Snowfall Impact Scale. 22nd IIPS, Atlanta, GA.
They had added the mid December storm to the Northeast NESIS list as a category 2 (Significant) event.
The table below is enlarged with hyperlink snow amount VIEW maps here.
Enlarged Part 1
Enlarged Part 2
This week’s storm was at least as impactful and covered a wide stretch back to the Midwest.
If it joins the NESIS list, it will be storm 49 and make the 2010s the snowiest decade for the east coast in the record, surpassing the 1960s.
Of course we are just beginning the 4th year of the decade. Also note that 21 of the 49 have been this millennium.
As we have shown before, 4 of the top 5 snowiest years have occurred in the last 6 years for the Northern Hemisphere and the snow extent for November to April was the greatest on record.
See PROGRESSIVE DISORDERS FOR ALL THE LINKS TO THE FOLLOWING STORIES THAT CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS
Global Warming Means Less Snow.
“The probability of any precipitation falling as snow rather than rain is going to decrease, and any snow lying on the ground is going to melt more quickly,”
LESS SNOW
A Rare and Exciting Event
“Looking at the United States of America, the IPCC clearly warned that unchecked global warming will lead to reduced snow pack in the western mountains, critically reducing access to water, which is our lifeblood.” Senator Barbara Boxer (D)
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
Gore’s claim of snow being “consistent: with global warming is also at odds with is Oscar Winning 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore never once warned of record cold and increasing snowfalls as a consequence of man-made global warming in that film. But Gore has hyped the lack of snow as “evidence” for man-made global warming.
“He also remarked that the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70% of the snow pack will disappear. Now, no wonder we have people visiting our offices who are just already hurting from the recreation industry in this nation. They see what’s happening.” -Barbara Boxer, October 29th, 2007, on the Senate floor
1 foot less snow in winter? Minnesota Climate Change Forum highlights dramatic changes
Average winter snowfall may drop by as much as 1 foot by 2100 as more winter precip falls as rain in a warmer winter environment.
CTB: less snow, smaller glaciers, thinner ice
Greenpeace: less snow, smaller glaciers, thinner ice.
(Sure I’m mocking them, but they don’t know where I live. -RB)
Reduced Snow Pack
Barbara Boxer 2009: “Looking at the United States of America, the IPCC clearly warned that unchecked global warming will lead to reduced snow pack in the western mountains, critically reducing access to water, which is our lifeblood.”
Decadal to century scale trends in North American snow extent in coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models
Our conclusion that these models predict a significant decrease in snow extent over North America during the 21st century is robust, in the sense that all available models agree for two different yet realistic SRES future emissions scenarios, while no model predicts such a decrease for the unrealistic COMMIT scenario.
IPCC: As temperatures rise, likelihood of precipitation falling as rain rather than snow increases
“As temperatures rise, the likelihood of precipitation falling as rain rather than snow increases, especially in autumn and spring at the beginning and end of the snow season, and in areas where temperatures are near freezing. Such changes are observed in many places, especially over land in middle and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, leading to increased rains but reduced snowpacks.” (IPCC)
Global Warming Reducing Snowfall at Ski Resorts
BOULDER, Colo. The hard-pressed American ski resort industry could be facing a serious problem in coming years if European researchers are correct: less snow because of global climate change.
IPCC IV: Decreased Snow season length and snow depth
Snow season length and snow depth are very likely to decrease in most of North America, except in the northernmost part of Canada where maximum snow depth is likely to increase.
...Children just aren’t going to know what snow is…
Warmer world means less snow
Among the warming’s effects: Arid regions will dry out further. And some of the water that they do receive will come in the wrong form (rain instead of snow) or at the wrong time.
Global warming to shorten ski season
CSIRO climate change expert Dr Penny Whetton says Australia’s mountain snow cover could be reduced by up to 54 per cent by 2020. “The probability of any precipitation falling as snow rather than rain is going to decrease, and any snow lying on the ground is going to melt more quickly,” she said.
Warming: Ski Resorts Threatened by Lack of Snow
Like those who rely on the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian ski industry sees itself as a frontline victim of global warming. A 2003 CSIRO report, part-funded by the ski industry, found that the resorts could lose a quarter of their snow in 15 years, and half by 2050. The worst case was a 96 per cent loss of snow by mid-century.
Global Warming Means Less Snow
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, October 4, 2006 (ENS) - Global warming will cause major changes to the climate of the U.S. Northeast if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, scientists said today. Warmer annual temperatures, less snow, more frequent droughts and more extreme rainstorms are expected if current warming trends continue, the scientists said in a new study, and time is running out for action to avoid such changes to the climate.
Global Warming: Less Snow
The idea that global warming will bring more rain and less snow goes back to at least 1999, when a University of California, Santa Barbara researcher said “There will be too much water at the wrong time and too little when we need it.”
Democrats: Less Snow = Global Warming
Less snow is what the models predict due to warming.
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past - Environment - The Independent
Sleds, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
Senate Science Caucus: Warming = Less Snow
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
MORE SNOW
Global Warming Means More Snow.
“If the climate continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few decades.”
They’re snorting more snow.
That snow outside is what global warming looks like
“As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming.” -Al GoreGlobal warming means more snowstorms: scientists - “Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet,” said ‘scientist’ Jeff Masters, as part of a conference call with reporters and colleagues convened by the Union of Concerned ‘Scientists’.
John Christy, the Alabama state climatologist who authored the study, said the amount of snow in the mountains has not decreased in the past 50 years, a period when greenhouse gases were supposed to have increased the effects of global warming.
Snowstorms: One More Sign of Climate Change - TIME
One theory is that a warmer Arctic may actually lead to colder and snowier winters in the northern mid-latitudes.
East Coast Blizzard Tied to Climate Change - TIME
Brace yourselves now - this may be a case of politicians twisting the facts. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm.
Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow : NPR
Climate scientists say they can’t prove any single weather event is due to climate change. Thus, they say, Hurricane Katrina or the heat wave in Vancouver that’s dogging the Winter Olympics isn’t proof that climate change is happening. Nor can southern and eastern snowstorms prove that it’s not.
Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming - New York Times
Blizzard: Sign of Global Warming
But while piles of snow blocking your driveway hardly conjure images of a dangerously warming world, it doesn’t mean that climate change is a myth (just a damned lie)
Snow is consistent with global warming, say scientists
Britain may be in the grip of the coldest winter for 30 years and grappling with up to a foot of snow in some places but the extreme weather is entirely consistent with global warming, claim scientists.
Global warming means more snowstorms: scientists
“If the climate continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few decades, until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where it’s too warm for it to snow heavily.”
Al’s Journal: Increased heavy snowfalls
As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming
Snow is consistent with global warming, say scientists.
Dr. Kaku: Global Warming = More Snow
Dr. Kaku agreed with the suggestion: “‘Yes. It seems to violate common sense, but as the Earth begins to heat up, that means more moist air in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico on average. Which creates more precipitation, and eventually more snow.”
Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming - NYTimes.com
Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.
Gore global warming = heavy snow fall
“As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming,” Gore wrote. Unfortunately for Gore and others who have claimed that the snow this winter is a global warming byproduct, their own authorities have said climate change will result in less snow.
Yes, global warming could mean more snow
In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.
That snow is what global warming looks like
That snow outside is what global warming looks like: Unusually cold winters may make you think scientists have got it all wrong. But the data reveal a chilling truth…
NO CHANGE
...no evidence that anything has changed as a result of climate change…
Sierra snowfall consistent over 130 years
Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has remained consistent for 130 years, with no evidence that anything has changed as a result of climate change, according to a study released Tuesday.
4 of the top 5 snowiest years for the Northern hemisphere have occurred in the last 6 years.
By Steve Goreham PDF
Originally published in The Washington Times
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Earlier this month, Representatives Jared Polis (D Colorado), Ben Ray Lujan (D New Mexico), and Ann Kuster (D New Hampshire) introduced the National Renewable Electricity Act of 2013 (RES Act), into the US House of Representatives. The act mandates that all US retail electrical suppliers buy an increasing amount of electricity from renewable energy sources, or pay fines for the shortfall. But if the law is passed, it will raise electricity prices for Americans for questionable environmental gains.
The act calls for solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and other renewables to provide 6 percent of US electricity in 2014, rising to 25 percent by the year 2025. Representative Kuster says, “This common-sense bill will help create good middle class jobs, cut pollution and reduce our dependence on foreign oil-all while saving consumers money on their utilities.” Unfortunately, Ms. Kuster’s statement is not supported by actual industry experience and economic data.
Forcing consumers to buy a product that is more expensive, like renewable energy, never saves them money. A prime example is the recently completed California Valley Solar Ranch in San Luis Obispo County that was constructed under the 33 percent renewables mandate of California’s Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) law. The solar ranch covers a huge area of 1,500 acres, more than 100 times the area of a typical natural gas-fired power plant, but produces an average output of only about 55 megawatts, less than one-tenth the output of a typical gas-fired plant, at the exorbitant price of $1.6 billion.
Consumers will pay twice for the California Valley Solar Ranch. Electricity from the ranch will be priced at 15 to 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, four times the price of current California wholesale electricity and over 50 percent more than projected prices during the next 25-years. Consumers also paid for a tax subsidy package totaling $1.4 billion, including a 30 percent federal investment tax credit worth $462 million, a $1.2 billion US Department of Energy loan guarantee worth $205 million, and other tax benefits.
Representative Kuster’s comments about reducing “our dependence on foreign oil” are nonsense. Today only 0.7 percent of US electricity comes from petroleum. Claiming that a national renewable electricity standard will reduce foreign oil imports is about accurate as claiming that it will promote world peace.
Politicians repeatedly state that subsidies and mandates for renewable energy will produce “green jobs.” But the Beacon Hill Institute developed more than ten studies on the impacts of state RPS laws, including Colorado and New Mexico, the home states of Representatives Polis and Lujan. In all cases, the implementation of RPS laws was found to increase electricity prices, reduce real disposable income, reduce investment, and cause a net reduction in jobs.
Today, 29 states follow renewable portfolio standards laws and another 8 states pursue renewables goals for electricity. The sponsors of the RES Act want to force mandates on the remaining 13 states, the only states with a sensible energy policy. Note that in 2012, citizens in states without RPS mandates paid 10.7 cents per kw-hr for residential electricity, about 19 percent less than the 12.7 cents per kw-hr paid by citizens in states with RPS laws or goals. Higher electricity prices disproportionately impact the poor, as a larger part of their family budget.
Neither is a reduction in pollution a good reason for a national renewable electricity standard. According to Environmental Protection Agency data, all real air pollutants, including lead, ozone, nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides, and carbon particulates have been falling for more than 40 years and continue to decline. US air pollution levels have fallen an aggregate 72 percent since 1970. At the same time, US electricity production from coal is up 115 percent and from natural gas is up 230 percent.
The unmentioned reason for the RES Act is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for man-made global warming. But carbon dioxide, a harmless, invisible gas that trees use for photosynthesis, has been wrongly labeled a pollutant. By forcing the construction of expensive wind and solar plants, proponents of the theory of dangerous climate change believe that they can save polar bears, reduce the strength of storms, curb droughts and floods, and probably promote world peace.
But RPS laws don’t even reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Installation of wind systems creates stop-and-go electrical utilities. Output from wind turbines is erratic, forcing back-up coal and natural gas plants to inefficiently ramp power up and down to maintain continuity of energy supply. Studies of utilities in Netherlands and Colorado show that combined wind and hydrocarbon systems use more fuel and emit more CO2 than stand-alone hydrocarbon-fired plants.
Rather than enacting a national renewable electricity law, we should instead roll back our costly state RPS laws. Suppose we return to energy policy based on economics and common-sense, rather than global warming ideology?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
By Charles Battig, MD, Virginia Free Citizen
The school lunch program is a resounding success here in Albemarle County, Virginia. School kids are awash in food; no child is left behind in the new standards-of-lunch excesses.
As reported in Charlottesville on December 5, 2013:
“Albemarle County Public Schools is conserving energy and teaching students green lessons while doing so. At its annual conference in Williamsburg, the Virginia School Boards Association honored Albemarle with the top environmental prize in the “Green Schools Challenge,” which encourages divisions to implement practices and policies to reduce their carbon footprints.”
“Nowhere are the efficiencies more apparent than at Henley Middle School’s Renewable Energy Resource Center, which features solar photovoltaic panels, a solar thermal system that heats water, and a wind turbine. The Center, which was funded in large part by a grant from the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy, has produced 120,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and prevented 88 tons of carbon dioxide emissions since 2012.”
The article concludes with:
“In addition to harnessing the wind and sun, Crozet and Meriwether Lewis elementary schools, and Jack Jouett and Sutherland middle schools have developed composting programs. These schools kept more than 126 tons of food from landfills and reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 900 metric tons.”
The standards of environmentalism see success through a different set of creeds than do ordinary folks. What was the taxpayer cost for the Henley Middle School Renewable Energy Resource Center? A savings of 120,000 kilowatt hours of electricity over two years represents an approximate saving of $6,000 per year. The human body produces approximately 2.3 pounds (1.0 kg) of carbon dioxide per day per person just in its basic biological metabolic processes. Over 365 days, the averaged production of carbon dioxide by these bodily processes adds up to about 840 pounds, or 0.4 ton per person. The 88 tons of carbon dioxide prevented over two years by this project is therefore the approximate amount of carbon dioxide generated by 110 adults breathing over the two years.
Wow, that is a science lesson; was that what the students were taught? What were the students told would be the impact on the climate, or of any other environmental system, of their saving these 88 tons of carbon dioxide? The impact on global temperature would be unmeasurable..a grain of sand on the world of beaches.
Were they told that carbon dioxide is absolutely necessary to plant physiology and our survival? Their carbon dioxide saving deprived some plants of this atmospheric plant food.
The children are being indoctrinated in a scientifically meaningless ritual of minding their tiny carbon footprints. It does establish the State as the source of authority at a young age. Rather than the sensible question as to why schools were generating 126 tons of food waste and at what taxpayer cost, school kids are being taught “green lessons.” Waste-not, want-not is replaced with composting programs and environmentally meaningless carbon footprint reductions. (See Virginia Tech Report)
Carbon dioxide reduction bragging rights become the reward. They are now praised for seeing their food waste become high-priced compost, rather than seeking solutions to reduce the initial food becoming waste.
This all brings to mind the recent movie hit The Hunger Games and its sequels. The recent Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a box-office hit with audiences young and old. The story’s theme dramatizes an inspirational saga of individual courage in the face of centralized authoritarianism, and cult-media exploitation of a subjugated populous. Why do the movies and the original books of the trilogy find such an enthusiastic audience with the youth? The central theme of the story must resonate with the youthful quest for adventure, and an idealistic yearning for a super-hero to follow.
The youth of today are awash in multi-media driven news and news masquerading as entertainment. They can recognize the hypocrisy in the real world around them which abounds in movie-personality worship, sport-event analogues of the ancient Roman Coliseum arena, and central-government propaganda masquerading as fact. At their youthful age they can already sense the underlying shallowness in a life dominated by these substitutes for inner virtue, self-sacrifice, and un-politicized learning. A victorious warrior comes forth and challenges the system, and survives...that image is part of our cultural heritage spanning Homer’s Odyssey, David and Goliath, Washington at Valley Forge, our “Greatest Generation” of WWll, and many others.
It is somewhat ironic that District 12 in the “Hunger Games” book is set in the coal-rich region that “was formerly known as Appalachia” where today hunger is no game, and a place not so far away from present-day Albemarle County. Rather than our schools so boastfully wasting food and redeeming themselves by making compost out of it, why not garner some real honor and send it, or its dollar equivalent, to current-day Appalachia?
The fictional country “Panem” of Hunger Games is mirrored by a governmental educational system in which our school children are indoctrinated with “green environmentalism” and a morbid preoccupation with meaningless carbon dioxide emissions. They are taught that in order for them and the environment to survive, they must monitor the carbon footprints of themselves and family, and perhaps that of their neighbors as well. Neither harmful climate change nor global temperature extremes have been factually linked to man-made carbon dioxide, even after Federal Government expenditures of over $100 billion. During their lifetimes, none of these children have experienced increased global temperature, which has remained flat for seventeen years, yet they are being taught mandated ritualistic behavior to solve a non-problem.
It is not surprising to see these innocent participants in the “climate games” cheer on a mythical hero in The Hunger Games. Let a new hero step forward.
Dr. Charles Battig, (online here) is a retired physician and electrical engineer. In the 1960s he served as “principal scientist in bio-medical monitoring systems” at North American Aviation Los Angeles in support of the Apollo Moon Mission. Later he served in the U.S. Public Health Service at NIH, Bethesda MD, in the biomedical engineering branch. Following teaching appointments in anesthesiology at UCLA and Mt. Sinai, NYC, he entered the private practice of anesthesiology until retirement.
“The journals want the papers that make the sexiest claims. And scientists believe that the way you succeed is having splashy papers in Science or Nature - it’s not bad for them if a paper turns out to be wrong, if it’s gotten a lot of attention.” Michael Eisen
Last October, LaTimes had an interesting article in the business section titled Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity, subtitle Researchers are rewarded for splashy findings, not for double-checking accuracy. So many scientists looking for cures to diseases have been building on ideas that aren’t even true. Excerpts:
A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology. But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid.
The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they’re investigated further,” says Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Eisen says the more important flaw in the publication model is that the drive to land a paper in a top journal - Nature and Science lead the list -encourages researchers to hype their results, especially in the life sciences. Peer review, in which a paper is checked out by eminent scientists before publication, isn’t a safeguard. Eisen says the unpaid reviewers seldom have the time or inclination to examine a study enough to unearth errors or flaws.
Eisen is a pioneer in open-access scientific publishing, which aims to overturn the traditional model in which leading journals pay nothing for papers often based on publicly funded research, then charge enormous subscription fees to universities and researchers to read them.
But concern about what is emerging as a crisis in science extends beyond the open-access movement. It’s reached the National Institutes of Health, which last week launched a project to remake its researchers’ approach to publication. Its new PubMed Commons system allows qualified scientists to post ongoing comments about published papers. The goal is to wean scientists from the idea that a cursory, one-time peer review is enough to validate a research study, and substitute a process of continuing scrutiny, so that poor research can be identified quickly and good research can be picked out of the crowd and find a wider audience.
PubMed Commons is an effort to counteract the “perverse incentives” in scientific research and publishing, says David J. Lipman, director of NIH’s National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is sponsoring the venture.
Earlier this month, Science published a piece by journalist John Bohannon about what happened when he sent a spoof paper with flaws that could have been noticed by a high school chemistry student to 304 open-access chemistry journals (those that charge researchers to publish their papers, but make them available for free). It was accepted by more than half of them.
One that didn’t bite was PloS One, an online open-access journal sponsored by the Public Library of Science, which Eisen co-founded. In fact, PloS One was among the few journals that identified the fake paper’s methodological and ethical flaws.
It was the traditionalist Science that published the most dubious recent academic paper of all.
This was a 2010 paper by then-NASA biochemist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and colleagues claiming that they had found bacteria growing in Mono Lake that were uniquely able to subsist on arsenic and even used arsenic to build the backbone of their DNA.
The publication in Science was accompanied by a breathless press release and press conference sponsored by NASA, which had an institutional interest in promoting the idea of alternative life forms. But almost immediately it was debunked by other scientists for spectacularly poor methodology and an invalid conclusion.
To Eisen, the Wolfe-Simon affair represents the “perfect storm of scientists obsessed with making a big splash and issuing press releases” - the natural outcome of a system in which there’s no career gain in trying to replicate and validate previous work, as important as that process is for the advancement of science.
The demand for sexy results, combined with indifferent follow-up, means that billions of dollars in worldwide resources devoted to finding and developing remedies for the diseases that afflict us all is being thrown down a rathole. NIH and the rest of the scientific community are just now waking up to the realization that science has lost its way, and it may take years to get back on the right path.
JC comments: This article raises some important issues, convolutes several of them and then concludes that science has lost its way. Has it?
In thinking about this issue, I find it useful to return to the previous CE post on Pasteur’s quadrant, and the distinction between pure discovery research, use-inspired research, and applied/regulatory research. The arsenic study is arguably pure discovery research, whereas most of the rest of the research (including the deliberately fake paper discussed in this Science article) is use inspired research. It doesn’t really matter outside the scientific community if pure discovery research is incorrect, i.e. it is not immediately obvious what kind of adverse societal impacts might be associated with arsenic and the bacteria in Mono Lake. On the other hand, with cancer research, there are substantial societal and financial impacts involved. The other distinction is between mechanistic research, whereby physical/chemical/biological processes are postulated, in contrast to epidemiological research which is fundamentally statistical. Mechanistic flaws are more easily identified, whereas flaws in epidemiological research is much more difficult to identify and to replicate.
There should be different reward structures for scientists working in the different quadrants, novelty and pushing knowledge frontiers is key for Bohr’s quadrant. However, in use-inspired research there is tremendous potential to provide a misleading foundation for applied/regulatory research, and this is where I see the biggest problem. Replication/auditing and robustness should be key goals for use-inspired research (and part of the reward system for scientists working on these problems). Unfortunately, scientists are rewarded in a way that makes sense for Bohr’s quadrant, and not so much for Pasteur’s quadrant.
Where does climate research lie in all this? Elements of climate research and mechanistic focused on processes, whereas other elements are statistical in nature. In terms of money being thrown down a rathole for climate research, I argued in the Pasteur’s Quadrant post that taxonomical studies of model-based regional impacts rests on the premise that climate models provide useful information for regional impact studies, and they do not.
And finally, I am a big fan Eisen’s models for open access publishing and extended peer review, and I am not a fan of the Nature/Science model with its press releases and press embargoes. Eisen’s model provides the right incentive structure for scientists, whereas the Nature/Science model IMO does not.
So, has science lost it’s way? I don’t think so, but the Science/Nature publishing model and the way that universities reward scientists are providing perverse incentives that do not serve well the societally-relevant applications of science.
By Anthony Watts
A couple of days ago, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. updated his famous graph of hurricane drought, and despite some ribbing from me on what could happen in May 2014, has confidently extended the drought out to the start of the hurricane season in June 2014:
Data here.
NOAA issues this press release today:
Slow Atlantic hurricane season coming to a close.
No major hurricanes formed in the Atlantic basin, first time since 1994
The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends on Saturday, Nov. 30, had the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982, thanks in large part to persistent, unfavorable atmospheric conditions over the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and tropical Atlantic Ocean. This year is expected to rank as the sixth-least-active Atlantic hurricane season since 1950, in terms of the collective strength and duration of named storms and hurricanes.
“A combination of conditions acted to offset several climate patterns that historically have produced active hurricane seasons,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service. “As a result, we did not see the large numbers of hurricanes that typically accompany these climate patterns.”
Thirteen named storms formed in the Atlantic basin this year. Two, Ingrid and Humberto, became hurricanes, but neither became major hurricanes. Although the number of named storms was above the average of 12, the numbers of hurricanes and major hurricanes were well below their averages of six and three, respectively. Major hurricanes are categories 3 and above.
Suomi NPP satellite peers into Tropical Storm Andrea, the first storm of the season. (Credit: NOAA/NASA)
Tropical storm Andrea, the first of the season, was the only named storm to make landfall in the United States this year. Andrea brought tornadoes, heavy rain, and minor flooding to portions of Florida, eastern Georgia and eastern South Carolina, causing one fatality.
The 2013 hurricane season was only the third below-normal season in the last 19 years, since 1995, when the current high-activity era for Atlantic hurricanes began.
“This unexpectedly low activity is linked to an unpredictable atmospheric pattern that prevented the growth of storms by producing exceptionally dry, sinking air and strong vertical wind shear in much of the main hurricane formation region, which spans the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea,” said Bell. “Also detrimental to some tropical cyclones this year were several strong outbreaks of dry and stable air that originated over Africa.”
GOES East satellite tracks Subtropical Storm Melissa, the last storm of the season. (Credit: NOAA)
Unlike the U.S., which was largely spared this year, Mexico was battered by eight storms, including three from the Atlantic basin and five from the eastern North Pacific. Of these eight landfalling systems, five struck as tropical storms and three as hurricanes.
NOAA and the U.S. Air Force Reserve flew 45 hurricane hunter aircraft reconnaissance missions over the Atlantic basin this season, totaling 435 hours, the fewest number of flight hours since at least 1966.
NOAA will issue its 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Outlook in late May, prior to the start of the season on June 1.
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No mention of the failure of the predictions in 2013, nor the fact that this year goes against wild claims made by alarmists of increasing hurricanes due to global warming, something Pielke Jr. also illustrates with a new graph:
The graph below shows total US hurricane landfalls 1900 through 2013.
The five-year period ending 2013 has seen 2 hurricane landfalls. That is a record low since 1900. Two other five-year periods have seen 3 landfalls (years ending in 1984 and 1994). Prior to 1970 the fewest landfalls over a five-year period was 6. From 1940 to 1957, every 5-year period had more than 10 hurricane landfalls (1904-1920 was almost as active).
The red line in the graph above shows a decrease in the number of US landfalls of more than 25% since (which given variability, may just be an artifact and not reflecting a secular change). There is no evidence to support more or more intense US hurricanes. The data actually suggests much the opposite.
Dr Ryan Maue adds:
Here’s a sorted list of North Atlantic hurricane ACE numbers from 1950-2013 - this year tied for 5th lowest on record
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By the way the tornado season was the quietest on record and the wildfire season the quietest since 1985 when the current monitoring method began.
Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. Members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.
In January 2012, the AMS surveyed its members via email and found 52 percent believe global warming is happening and is mostly human-caused, while 48 percent do not. The survey also found that scientists with professed liberal political views were far more likely to believe global warming is human-caused than others.
Authors of the survey recommended that the AMS should “acknowledge and explore the uncomfortable fact that political ideology influences the climate change views of meteorology professionals; refute the idea that those who do hold non-majority views just need to be “educated” about climate change; [and] continue to deal with the conflict among members of the meteorology community.”
The “early online release” of the survey, to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is available for free viewing
I did an informal survey of 30 professional AMS member known to be skeptics. I was not surveyed. Only 2 received and one responded to the survey. There were weasal worded questions as is typical of surveys in which Ed Maibach is involved. One of those who have advocated a more open approach among the 30, Mike Smith says it like it is. “I am a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist. To the best of my memory I never had a chance to respond to this poll of the AMS membership.
That said, the fact that 70% of scientists say that humans affect the climate is utterly unsurprising. That has been known scientifically since Changnon’s METROMEX study in the early 70’s. The fact that 9 out of ten that publish on the subject of climate believe humans affect the climate is also utterly unsurprising.
For me, the money question was #6, “How worried are you about global warming?” Only 30% answered “very worried.” This would make 70% of the respondents “deniers” since that pejorative term seems to be applied to anyone who does not accept the “IPCC consensus” of catastrophic global warming. A statistically similar number (28%) is not worried or “not very worried” about global warming.
So, you can spin the results any way you want but this survey of a small number of AMS members doesn’t reveal any great concern about global warming.”
I could add a long list of former active professional members including fellows who have left the society because of their stance on climate change. I have kept my powder dry and stayed in the society hoping to be around to pick up the pieces when the lies are openly exposed and the scam collapses.
by Neil Frank and E. Calvin Beisner, November 20, 2013
Super Typhoon Haiyan and the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy should remind all of us of the tragic suffering that is part of living in the post-fall world, affected by both human sin and the divine curse (Genesis 3).
But is Rev. Darren A. Ferguson, of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Far Rockaway, NY, whose home and church Sandy destroyed, right to insist that “climate change” made Sandy stronger than it otherwise would have been?
Assume for a moment (though there is good reason to doubt it) that the world’s been warming rapidly and beyond the bounds of natural variability and that, as he put it, “we are the primary cause.” Does that entail that Sandy was more powerful because of it?
Contrary to Rev. Ferguson’s claims, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) denies that there is good evidence that global warming, manmade or not, causes greater frequency or intensity of hurricanes. In its 2012 special report on extreme weather events it said, “There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.” In its just-released Fifth Assessment Report, it said, “Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century...No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.... In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low.”
Nonetheless, it’s widely thought that even if global warming didn’t cause Sandy, it did make it worse a stronger or bigger storm, or with storm surge exacerbated by global warming-driven sea level rise. What of those ideas?
Did higher sea level caused by global warming make Sandy’s storm surge more devastating? No. Land subsidence and natural sea level rise, both happening ever since the Ice Age, account for all of the apparent sea level rise at Battery Park in New York City.
In fact, as geoscientist David Middleton reports, Sandy’s “storm surge was likely surpassed in the New England hurricanes of 1635 and 1638” and “at least seven hurricanes of intensity sufficient to produce storm surge” greater than 3 meters “made landfall in southern New England in the past 700” years. All seven occurred prior to 1960 before manmade global warming. In 1821, at low tide and with sea level a foot lower than today, a Category 3 hurricane brought a 13.9 foot storm surge to New York City. The same storm today, hitting at high tide, as Sandy did, would have caused much greater flooding than Sandy did.
Was Sandy bigger or stronger because of global warming? In strength, Sandy never exceeded Category 3 (out of 5) and was actually no longer a hurricane but only a post-tropical storm when it made landfall at Atlantic City. The diameter of Sandy’s gale-force wind field was greater than any Atlantic hurricane in recorded history but only by about 3% and for this measure “recorded history” reaches back only to 1988.
Rev. Ferguson says those who disagree that manmade global warming was to blame for Sandy “would have trouble explaining the fact that in this New York City peninsula where I live and pastor a church, the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay had not met in over 50 years” before Sandy. But if they met 50 years ago, before any significant manmade global warming, why invoke it to explain their meeting last year?
While at the time those who blamed Sandy on global warming included a handful of climate scientists (Kevin Trenberth, whom Rev. Ferguson cites, plus Katharine Hayhoe and James Hansen, none of whom is a hurricane specialist), they also included nonscientists (Al Gore, Joe Romm, Bill McKibben, Chris Mooney, Roseann Barr, Michael Oppenheimer, Jennifer Granholm, Van Jones, Chris Matthews, Bill Clinton, Stephan Lewandowsky, and Michael Moore).
Although those who disagreed include a handful of what Rev. Ferguson calls (when they disagree with him) “know-it-all pundits, who lack any scientific credentials” (Limbaugh; UK Telegraph science writer Tom Chivers; New York Times environment blogger Andrew Revkin), most are scientists. Two, though not climate scientists, specialize in climate change (Norman Page, a consulting geologist; Eric Berger, science writer for the Houston Chronicle). Most are climate scientists (Martin Hoerling, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Roger Pielke Jr., University of Colorado; Karsten Brandt, Donnerwetter.de; Patrick Michaels, formerly University of Virginia, now Cato Institute; Judith Curry, Georgia Tech; Gerald North, Texas A&M; Roy Spencer, formerly NASA, now University of Alabama), and four are hurricane specialists (Chris Landsea and Stanley Goldenberg, National Hurricane Center; Ryan Maue, Florida State University; and William Gray, Colorado State University).
As NHC’s Goldenberg put it in an email to Dr. Beisner, “If someone says Sandy was stronger due to AGW, that goes against even the current hurricane climate studies which suggest that in the future, there could be a very slight increase in intensity for the stronger storms… although Sandy was strong for that region, it was by no means among the strongest Atlantic hurricanes. As for increased flooding due to sea-level rise firstly the total sea-level rise since the great 1938 Hurricane is only about 7 inches, and about 1/2 of that is due to land subsidence. Of the other several inches, some would certainly be due to natural climate fluctuations (especially the natural warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-1800’s) and if there is any contribution from AGW, it would be at the most on the order of a few inches. Compared to the contribution from the lunar high tide and the actual storm surge (together totaling 10 to 17.5 feet in the hardest hit regions), these few inches… are hardly significant.”
Rev. Ferguson claims “97% of scientists agree that climate change is real and we are the primary cause.” He says “Rush Limbaugh and other climate change deniers” “recklessly deny climate change because [doing so] confirms their ideology and advances their agenda.”
Although Dr. Beisner has read about forty-five books on the science of climate change, large parts of all five IPCC assessment reports, and thousands of articles on it over the past twenty-five years, and consults regularly with climate scientists, he’s not a climate scientist, so Rev. Ferguson can, as he does with others who disagree, write him off as one of the “know it all pundits, who lack any scientific credentials” - on condition that he write himself off as well. But he can’t write off Dr. Frank, for he is a Ph.D.’d meteorologist and former director of the National Hurricane Center.
What about Ferguson’s claim that “97% of scientists agree that climate change is real and we are the primary cause”?
Science isn’t about consensus, it’s about evidence and reasonable explanations.
Consensus among scientists has changed radically, and repeatedly, in the past as, for instance, from nearly universal rejection to nearly universal acceptance of continental drift.
As Georgia Tech climatologist Dr. Judith Curry has shown, such “consensus” as there is among IPCC and other global warming true-believer scientists is worthless because it was intentionally constructed, not spontaneous.
The publication survey on which the 97% claim rests had such broad criteria (e.g., not specifying that people are the primary cause or that the warming was dangerous, let alone catastrophic) that it would have counted most critics of CAGW (catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming) as in agreement. As Dr. Roy W. Spencer, an award-winning NASA climate scientist and Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow, put it recently on CNN, “I’m one of the 97%!” Both of us would be, too. In reality, while repeated attempts have been made to prove a consensus on dangerous, manmade global warming, none has succeeded as if it would matter if they did (see 1 above).
In short, Rev. Ferguson is wrong to blame “climate change deniers” (the pejorative term meant to equate them, viciously, with Holocaust deniers) for global warming and to blame global warming for Sandy’s size, strength, and devastation.
If Rev. Ferguson is going to call natural disasters divine judgments, he should, as the Bible often does (e.g., Genesis 19; Exodus 7-14; Psalm 107:33-34; Isaiah 35:6-7; Jeremiah 14; Zephaniah 1:2-3), attribute them to sins clearly revealed in God’s law - worshiping false gods, idolatry, blasphemy, Sabbath breaking, dishonoring parents, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and coveting (Exodus 20:1 -17) - not burning fossil fuels to provide energy to lift billions out of poverty, disease, and premature death.
Rather than assigning blame, though, we would do better to reduce the risk of future catastrophes by eliminating policies, like government-funded flood insurance, that encourage construction in high-risk shoreline locations. What made Sandy and Haiyan so devastating was not their size and strength (many surpassed them) but where they struck: densely populated regions with vast amounts of property on vulnerable shorelines.
And when people are harmed, we should act compassionately: We should pray for and donate to their rapid recovery. We should pray that the Christians among them will come to understand, as they seek God in the midst of their suffering, how God works it for their good (Romans 8:28); that it is not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed to them (Romans 8:18); indeed, that “this slight momentary affliction is preparing for [them] an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as [they] look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). And we should pray that the unbelievers will become Christians, lest after this life they enter upon suffering that will make Sandy and Haiyan seem like paradise.
[A slightly modified version of this article was published in The Christian Post Tuesday, November 19, 2013.]
Neil Frank, Ph.D., a meteorologist, is former Director (1974-1987) of the National Hurricane Center, former Chief Meteorologist of Houston CBS affiliate KHOU-TV (1987-2008), and an evangelical Christian. E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., author of Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate, is Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a coalition of evangelical theologians, pastors, ministry leaders, scientists, economists, policy experts, and committed laymen promoting environmental stewardship and economic development built on Biblical principles.
PLEASE HELP:
Unlike the alarmists blogs and media sites, realist sites aren’t funded by Soros or Fenton Communications, or foundations like Rockefeller, Pew and Heinz or the enviro groups. Instead all we get we get harassment. and ironically the alarmists like to claim WE are motivated/well funded by big dollars from big oil and the Koch brothers. I assure you we get no such funding. We hobble by, paying the rather steep maintenance fees (needed for security and to stop the Denial of Service Attacks we experienced before). Some months we end up paying the fees from our own pockets. I am fortunate to work at Weatherbell Analytics but my salary goes to pay my bills and college loans and we live a simple lifestyle. I don’t post as much as I used to as my duties at Weatherbell are 7 days per week. But I try and keep this and redneckusa.wordpress.com going after my other duties are finished. I have been asked to keep ICECAP going because of the 6700 stories that can be used (our search can provide you a wealth of info on most topics). We tend to focus on data not as much on papers which suffer from a failing peer review process.
I am also working with lawyers and scientists to battle the EPA and this month to do another in a series of cable TV shows exposing the fallacy of AGW and lunacy of the energy policy in Washington and NH. My partner Art Horn will again be part of the cable show. He has to travel almost 4 hours to get here. Your DONATIONS (left button) would be greatly appreciated to help us go the extra mile. We will post the cable show YOUTUBE video and can help you do the same in your local area to educate you neighbors and if you wish provide you the graphics. As always, we greatly appreciate your help. Of course, we all will be giving aid to our friends in the Philippines who suffered from Haiyan as well as out returning soldiers who have given so much for our country and those hit hard by the rash of November tornados in Illinois and Indiana this weekend. We hope you will think of them too and find a way to help these people in need.
Sincere thanks,
Joe D’Aleo and Art Horn
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By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
A strong outbreak of severe weather hit the central states Sunday as Joe Bastardi on Weathrbell warned Saturday. Tornadoes were concentrated in the Midwest with Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and southeast Missouri hardest hit.
High risk areas and outbreaks in November do happen - most recently in 2002 and 2005 as SPC noted.
The ORD NWS showed animations of some supercells.
Left loop is from the NWS Lincoln and Chicago Radars, 0.5 degree Reflectivity. The right loop is centered on the long-lived supercell that likely produced multiple tornadoes from the Pekin and Washington areas northeast in the Dana area and across Grundy and Will Counties.
And here are rotation tracks of the long track storms in the Chicago area.
Other November Chicago outbreaks occurred in earlier years.
But we are tracking beneath all years in the record for number of tornadoes year-to-date.
So as of November 16, we appeared to be running 187 tornadoes BELOW THE ALL TIME QUIETEST SEASON on record since 1954. With the 81 tornadoes (there are likely many duplicates as the long track storms are observed multiple times by observers. NWS will eliminate duplicates. They average a reduction of 15-20% and in some cases more (like thi with longer tracks) but even if it was 70, we will still be running 117 below the all time record lowest.
This time of year you can get tornadoes even without extreme surface heating because the jet stream is stronger. You need that contrast so it will occur not in warm November but cold ones which provide the contrast. Warm Novembers have the jet stream up in Canada and people enjoy Indian Summer not severe weather. WIth the warm temperatures in between cold air masses this weekend, some areas popped temporarily above normal but that will be short lived. We had temperatures 10 to as much as 20 to 30F below normal in the air mass prior to the storms and will se 20F below again with snow. With that kind of cold, strong jet streams can develop even with temperatures in the 60s and 70s and the winds can with shear spin up tornadoes.
Here are days 1-5 and 6-10 anomalies (weatherbell.com). Going to be a cold and in many areas not expecting it a white pre Thanksgiving.
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Snow cover shrunk back west and globally the early positive anomalies have gone but that is temporary as snow is coming to the US, Asia and Europe this week.
See how it has been more snow since October 1 in the Rockies and northwest.
See how a few systems promise more the next 10 days.
Note how the snow extends into the central AND southern Plains, northern Delta and Midwest.
See it explode in Asia above and Europe below.
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Last year November to April snow extent in the hemisphere was the highest on record. We started faster this year than last. 4 of the top 5 snowiest winters on record have occurred in the last 6 years. UKMO, NOAA, UCS all had predicted snow would be decreasing a decade ago due to warmer conditions. Temperatures have not warmed for 16 years and cooled since 2002 globally.
Source: TDS
by Suzanne Hamner
On Friday, Obama signed an executive order that instructs federal agencies to work with state and local governments to boost preparations for the impact of global warming. Obama’s war on coal has threatened one sixth of America’s electrical output by placing 150 coal-burning power plants on the chopping block all due to global warming. Citing global warming has already having an effect on communities and public health across the nation, Obama directed infrastructure projects to take into consideration future climate conditions which naturally could result in a higher price tag for new projects or repairs to already existing structures. However, new scientific evidence has surfaced that “the solar activity is decreasing at the fastest rate as anytime in the last 10,000 years”.
Enlarged
Environmentalist Lawrence Solomon wrote in the Financial Post, “Now an increasing number of scientists are swinging back to the thinking of the 1960s and 1970s. The global cooling hypothesis may have been right after all, they say Earth may be entering a new Little Ice Age.”
The Daily Caller reported:
Solomon adds that Columbia University’s George Kukla. who warned the US government about the dangers of global cooling in 1972, postulated that “global warming always precedes an ice ago… The warming we saw in the 1980s and 1990s, in other words, was expected all along, much as the calm before the storm.”
Recently, scientists have been looking to solar activity as a predictor of world climate. Low solar activity has been connected with cold periods in human history, while high levels of solar activity have been connected with warming periods, like the one from the 1950s to 1998.
The United Nation’s climate authority has tried to downplay the influence of solar activity on the Earth’s climate, but climate scientists have been more assertive that the sun plays a role in affecting global temperatures.
According to Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, the public debate is moving away from the 15 to 17 year pause and toward the cooling since 2002.
Professor Cliff Ollier of the School of Earth and Environmental Studies at the University of Western Australia indicates a correlation between sunspots and climate change. Prof. Ollier postulated earlier this year that the sun was the major controller of the climate.
According to Ollier, “Solar cycles provide a basis for prediction. Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Many think that political decisions about climate are based on scientific predictions, but what politicians get are projections based on computer models.”
Scientists from Russia and the UK are also positing global cooling based on Solar Cycle 24. Habibullo Abdussamatov of the Russian Academy of Science expects global cooling to begin as early as 2014 with another “Little Ice Age” in 2055. Professor Mike Lockwood of Reading University predicts a “Little Ice Age” for Northern Europe because of the decline in solar activity.
Prof. Lockwood bases his postulation on the examination of certain isotopes contained in ice core samples, indicating how active the sun has been over the last thousands of years. Lockwood believes the sun is declining in activity “more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.”
The last Little Ice Age occurred in the 1600s and coincided with an inactive sun, called the Maunder solar minimum. According to Don Easterbrook, professor emeritus of geology as Western Washington University, the earth has been thawing out for the last 400 years.
Easterbrook states, “So the warming we saw, which lasted only from 1978 to 1998, is something that is predictable and expectable. When the ocean changed temperatures, global cooling is almost a slam dunk. You can expect to find about 25 to 30 years yet ahead of us before it starts to warm up again. It might be even more than that.”
So, scientists studying solar activity and the sun along with isotopes from ice core samples have identified a cycle correlating warming and cooling periods of the earth with the solar cycle. These correlations are based on actual observation and study, not a computer model whose predictions are based on information supplied by scientists who cannot identify all variables to enter into the equation. The computer model information then becomes faulty, inaccurate and cannot satisfy the requirements for the scientific method. Model prediction versus observational, data gathering analysis is a no win scenario for model prediction.
Since Obama has declared “global warming/climate change” a dire threat to the US, a threat that must be acted on immediately, all other scientific data opposing the big myth of global warming is ignored. It is ignored because it does not meet the political agenda.
The identification of solar cycles leading to periods of warming and cooling flies in the face of Obama’s agenda to cripple the United States. If these postulations are correct, instead of destroying one sixth of America’s electrical output, measures should be taken to secure electrical output. America should sustain dependable energy sources instead of chasing the pipe dream of “renewable energy.” America should be working to increase its security from invasion, shore up its economy and stimulate job growth and independence of its people. This is not done by expanding federal government, but holding it to its constitutional limits with the possibility of dismantling unconstitutional agencies and declaring null and void strangling regulations based on controlling businesses and the citizenry.
This administration and Congress would rather cripple this nation’s resources, by stalling a pipeline project and destroying the coal industry, to make Americans more dependent on the government, the more people that are dependent on the government, the easier they are to control. If the government controls resources, such as water and electricity, an entire community could be deprived of resources to bring it in line with the government agenda. The theoretical myth of global warming accomplishes this whereas the cyclical climate trend of the earth caused by solar activity does not.
By ignoring these scientific facts on solar activity and ice core samples, Obama is demonstrating hard headed, stubborn, narcissistic and dictatorial behavior. He supports a lie instead of the truth. It isn’t a far stretch to see that last statement as fact. Every time he opens his mouth to speak, an entire repertoire of lies is forthcoming; Obama lives a lie. To him, a lie is truth as long as you can hide the facts, berate others who bring forth the facts, and hypnotize a population of low intellect individuals. A lie benefits an agenda to where the end justifies the means.
As I learned as a child, if you tell one lie, you have to tell another to prop it up; then, you have to keep telling lies to prop up all the previous ones. At that point, you have built a house of cards that comes tumbling down at the slightest of disturbances. Lies end up catching up to the liar as it is harder to remember what lies you have told than it is to tell the truth; truth does not change. The point eventually comes when there are no more lies to tell and the house of cards cannot stand; the lies then become the card that topples the house.
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US Has Its Least Extreme Weather Year On Record
Steve Goddard, Real Science
The number of 90F readings in the US has been steadily declining, with 2013 recording the fewest in the modern record.
Enlarged.
Index of /pub/data/ghcn/daily/hcn/
The US was hit by no hurricanes in 2013, and suffered the fewest tornadoes on record.
Storm Prediction Center WCM Page Enlarged
Forest fire burn acreage was the second lowest in a decade, and the number of fires was lowest since 1984.
Enlarged. National Interagency Fire Center
Enlarged. National Interagency Fire Center
Obama believes global warming is getting worse because apparently he’s sweating a lot more during his second term
- Jay Leno
by Senator Sessions
It has been eight years since the last major hurricane struck the United States - a lull that experts call an “extended and intense hurricane drought,” the longest such drought since reliable records began in the 19th century.
This is welcome news for Alabamians. The nation still remembers Hurricane Camille (a Category 5 storm) that hit our region in 1969. Hurricane Frederic (a Category 3 storm) made landfall at Dauphin Island in September 1979, leaving widespread devastation and a tree on the roof of my home in Mobile. Hurricane Opal (a Category 4 storm) struck Alabama in October 1995. And it doesn’t take a major hurricane to cause tremendous damage, as “Superstorm Sandy” demonstrated.
We face other forms of extreme weather too, like droughts, floods, and tornado outbreaks that can leave a wide path of destruction. Extreme weather happens, and we should all take common-sense, cost-effective steps to plan, prepare, and respond. The federal government has a key role to play there.
But the Obama Administration, congressional Democrats, and other climate alarmists are now pointing to extreme weather in a desperate attempt to promote their political agendas at the expense of hardworking Americans.
There is a reason for this dubious strategy: We are in the midst of a 16-year period without a measurable increase in global temperatures. It’s hard to sell voters on a trillion-dollar plan to fight global warming - already rejected by Congress - when the globe isn’t actually warming as much as they predicted. So the alarmists are increasingly citing extreme weather to convince Americans that we need a carbon tax, more job-killing regulations, and more wasteful federal green energy subsidies.
Al Gore recently asserted that “all weather events are now affected by global warming pollution.” Senator Barbara Boxer (D CA) called last year’s Superstorm Sandy “evidence of climate change mounting around us.” In his “Climate Action Plan,” President Obama contends that we are having more weather disasters than before. The facts disprove this argument.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, of which I am a member, recently held hearings about climate change and extreme weather. A clear finding of those hearings frustrated the alarmists: The frequency of extreme weather events is not increasing.
The testimony of Dr. Roger Pielke - a noted climate-impacts expert who even endorses the idea that global warming is partly caused by humans - was particularly compelling. Dr. Pielke testified: “It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally.”
He also said that it is “incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”
And Dr. Pielke provided data to back up his position:
Globally, “weather-related losses” have not increased since 1990.
In the U.S., hurricanes have not increased in frequency or intensity since at least 1900.
Since at least 1950, the intensity and frequency of floods in the U.S. have not increased.
The frequency and intensity of tornadoes have not increased since 1950.
Drought has not increased globally in half a century.
Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama-Huntsville also testified that “there is little or no observational evidence that severe weather of any type has worsened over the last 30, 50, or 100 years.”
And when climate alarmists made the unsubstantiated claim at a Senate hearing last year that we are experiencing more extreme temperatures, State Climatologist Dr. John Christy showed that there were, in fact, many more high temperature records set in previous decades, particularly the 1920s and 1930s, than we see today.
This is a serious matter. President Obama has asked the American people to accept higher energy prices, fewer jobs, and a lower standard of living to prevent storms, droughts, and other changes in climate. Senate Democrats are pushing for a tax on carbon emissions that will increase the cost of gasoline and electricity for every American.
When it comes to understanding and predicting the Earth’s climate, I believe we need to be more honest and humble. No one person knows everything about the future of the planet’s climate. Earth’s history has seen ice ages and warming periods long before modern technology came around. Meanwhile, many technological advances - like electricity and automobiles - have resulted in improved quality of life and lifespan for billions.
We certainly can’t say that any particular weather event is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Just five months ago, government experts were forecasting an “active or extremely active” hurricane season.
Good policy should be formed on the basis of rational, humble and fact-based judgments. It should improve, not degrade, the conditions for working Americans.
(Jeff Sessions of Mobile was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996.)