President Obama continues to insist that climate change is the gravest threat facing our nation. He has even ordered the Defense Department and all branches of our military services to include climate change analyses in their combat planning, training exercises, intelligence gathering, weapons testing and procurement, fuel types and uses, and practically every other aspect of military operations. It is sheer lunacy - befitting a Gilbert and Sullivan parody, right out of The HMS Pinafore.

My article this week examines WHY this is such a colossal mistake - and why reliance on climate models is so misplaced.

Thank you for posting it, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.

Best regards,
Paul

Remember the Climate!

Obama orders Pentagon, generals and admirals to make climate change Job One

Paul Driessen

Military triumphs and catastrophes have often hinged on how well (or luckily) armies and navies employed, avoided or benefited from weather and other natural events. Severe storms helped the British navy defeat Spain’s Armada in 1588. George Washington knew horrid weather meant the Hessians would not expect an attack across the Delaware River on Christmas 1776.

Napoleon captured Moscow before leading his Grande Armee’s exhausted, starving, freezing remnants back to France through a bitter 1812 Russian winter. Hitler’s army never even reached Moscow; it was decimated by disease, starvation, bullets and frigid cold at Stalingrad 140 years later.

Eisenhower’s Normandy invasion plans anticipated a full moon that would illuminate bomber targets and bring low tides to expose German mines and obstacles along the beaches. Instead, overcast skies limited Allied air support - but persuaded the Nazi high command that no invasion would occur for several days. So senior officers stayed in Germany, leaving their army unprepared for D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Throughout history, commanders discovered that trying to predict the weather - or their enemies’ resolve = was fraught with peril. Even today, accurate weather forecasting is a highly uncertain science, even a few days in advance, especially for hurricanes or winter blizzards in Mid-Atlantic states where winds, storm tracks, temperatures and moisture are affected by the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Arctic.
But now President Obama wants to compound his social experimentation with the military, by ordering the Pentagon brass to focus not on imminent weather events surrounding battle plans - not on threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, ISIL, Hamas and other real hot spots but on climate change years or decades in the future. He wants to replace Remember the Alamo with Remember the Climate!
Mr. Obama has issued an executive order directing the Department of Defense (and all other federal government agencies) to make preparing for global warming impacts a top priority, and treat climate change as our most serious national security threat. He even warned 2015 Coast Guard Academy graduates that denying” climate change is a “dereliction of duty.” You can’t make this stuff up.

The EO directs the Pentagon to order all military commanders, down to battle planning levels, to include climate change analyses in combat planning, training exercises, intelligence gathering, weapons testing and procurement, fuel types and use, and practically every other aspect of military operations. This could include restrictions on the type and duration of training flights, amphibious landings and tank maneuvers.

It is sheer lunacy. It means bureaucrats and new layers of armed forces bureaucracies will waste time and money, and ignore real weapons and training issues. It means soldiers and sailors must now focus less on real natural and humanitarian disasters, and more on climate refugee crises that exist only in computer models, ivory tower studies and White House press releases. It could affect combat readiness and morale, make our warriors less prepared for warfare, and put them at greater risk of injury and death.

Other Obama orders forced the Air Force to spend $59 a gallon for “renewable” jet fuel and $67 per gallon for camelina-based F[22 Raptor fuel - and the Navy to spend $27 per gallon for biofuels from algae, waste grease and animal fat, and $424 a gallon for 20,000 gallons of “sustainable” diesel fuel. All that when conventional gasoline, diesel and jet fuel sell for $2.00-$3.50 per gallon (thanks to fracking)!
Like the other social experiments, this is being imposed by political operatives with little or no military service, few kids in the military, and minimal concern about how these policies, multiple deployments and stretched-to-the-breaking-point budgets might affect military readiness, morale, safety and families.

Even more absurd, the orders are based on pseudo-science and indefensible assumptions that carbon dioxide now drives climate change, and we have the knowledge and ability to predict climate shifts, extreme weather and related disasters years or decades in advance. Basing defense policies on these notions is ridiculous and dangerous. It’s like Eisenhower using tarot cards to predict Normandy weather.
The IPCC, EPA and White House continue to rely on still “murky” science, climatologist John Christy recently told the Senate Space and Science Subcommittee, “with large uncertainties on many crucial components, such as cloud distributions and surface heat exchanges.” This and other deficiencies cause predictions to be notoriously disconnected from Real World temperatures and weather events.
Contrary to those predictions, instead of rising a degree or more, average global temperatures have flat-lined for 19 years. Instead of more hurricanes, not a single category 3-5 hurricane has struck the U.S. mainland since November 2005 (a record ten-plus years). “Moisture conditions have not shown a tendency to have decreased (more drought) or increased (more large-scale wetness),” Dr. Christy noted.
Climate models still focus on manmade carbon dioxide and ignore most of the powerful, interconnected natural forces that have always driven climate and weather. In fact, “the theory of how climate changes, and the associated impact of extra greenhouse gases, is not understood well enough [for models] to even reproduce the past climate,” Dr. Christy explained to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. There is no way they can forecast future climates, and they have failed to do so.

Climate models pay minimal attention to significant effects of land use changes and major high-impact fluctuations like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (El Nino and La Nina) and North Atlantic Oscillation, University of Delaware climatology professor David Legates observes.

Adds Weatherbell forecaster Joe D’Aleo: they also disregard variations in the sun’s energy output; the important effects of the sun’s ultraviolet output, geomagnetic activity and cloud-enhancing cosmic rays; and the cyclical interplay of cold and warm water pools in our oceans, which significantly influence the severity of winters in Eurasia and North America (as just one example). All these factors affect weather and climate. They assume any warming is dangerous, rather than beneficial for people and agriculture.

Additional reasons for grossly deficient climate models are their “overly simplified and inadequate numerical techniques,” and the fact that decadal and century-scale circulation changes in the deep oceans “are very difficult to measure and are not yet well enough understood to be realistically included in the climate models,” says Colorado State University weather and hurricane analyst Bill Gray.

Reliable predictive capabilities require that we end our obsession with carbon dioxide as the primary driver of climate change and devote far more attention to studying all the powerful forces that have always driven climate change, the roles they play, and the complex interactions among them.

And yet, Christy noted ruefully, “demonstrably deficient models are being used to make policy.” That has been disastrous for domestic sectors, like coal and manufacturing. It could be lethal for military forces.
One can easily imagine how Gilbert and Sullivan would treat this insanity in an updated HMS Pinafore:

Now landsmen all, whoever you may be,
If you want to be admirals at the DOD,
If your soul isn’t fettered to the White House fools,
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule:
Heed the climate models and never go to sea,
And you all may be rulers of Obama’s Navee!

The revised D’Oyly Carte lyrics notwithstanding, Mr. Obama continues to use climate change to justify his drive to fundamentally transform our economy, society, military, and energy, legal and constitutional systems. Equally ominous, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders share his obsession and objectives.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon brass and line officers must battle these climate directives as forcefully as they would any of the real dangers that face our nation and world. So must we all.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

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Note see here how the NOAA/NASA temperature measurements are fraught with major issues that make their ‘politically correct - but scientifically deficient’ assessments worthless.

How not to measure temperature (or climate) #97 - California’s warming air temperatures are population and site bias related

A brutally cold air mass rode the arctic express from north of Alaska and northern Canada to the northeast in just two days. It arrived with temperatures surface and aloft that were more extreme than we have seen in decades.

We were 10 to 20 below zero here in central New England late on Saturday, Sunday morning and again Monday morning. Sunday barely reached the low teens. Wind chills reached the -30s and even -40s at times Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

Boston set records on Saturday with -4F (edging out -3F in 1967), and on Sunday with an amazing -9F, well below the old record of -3F in 1934. It was tied for Boston’s 4th coldest daytime low since the official measurements began at Logan Airport in 1936. It also was coldest temperature at Logan since January 1957, almost 60 years ago.  The average temperature was more than 30F below the normal for the date.

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It reached -30F at Saranac Lake and -37F at Watertown in New York State and -40F on Mt. Washington with wind chills to -80F.  Dozens of people were trapped for several hours on stalled tram cars on a snowy New Hampshire mountain Sunday, braving subzero temperatures while the cars dangled in mid-air before being rescued.

Even New York City dropped to -1F Sunday, coldest since 1994 with wind chills plunging below -30F. NYC cancelled their ice festival Sunday because it was too cold. Ironically last month they cancelled the Central Park Snow Festival because of too much snow.

For the 10 northeast states and DC, January to March in 2014 was the 11th coldest on record since 1895 (with March ranked coldest to second coldest here in northern New England). Last year, January to March was the all-time coldest (tied with 1904). February 2015 was the coldest month of any month in our part of New England in history and also the snowiest (100 inches in 39 days).

This year thanks to El Nino, the cold has been extreme but so far, episodic instead of more continuous and the record breaking January blizzard stayed just to our south.

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With the very warm December, temperatures for the meteorological winter of December to February will be above normal here in the northeast (though colder than normal to our south). However, January to March could again end up colder than normal here too, though it will not rank up there with the last two years.

I found the 60 year ago record broken interesting. We have a well-established 60-year cycle in weather, riding on many longer-term cycles related to behavior of the sun and oceans.  This is much like the waves on the ocean riding on the longer swells.  I have written about these in books and peer-reviewed papers.  A change occurred 60 years ago, which I catalogued in my master’s thesis on east coast snowstorms. At that time cold and snow for a few decades suddenly became biased to the latter part of winter. That certainly has been the case the last three years.

At Weatherbell, we advised out clients most of the winter would come January to March, with the potential for significant cold outbreaks and more snowstorms.

Here, we will continue to ride the roller coaster into early next week, but then stronger cold returns again with more snow threats.

In the last El Nino in 2009/10, when the Mid-Atlantic received all-time record snows in what was called ‘Snowmageddon’, we in New England ended up near to below normal for snowfall.  Though that may in the end happen this year, we will have numerous chances the next 5 to 6 weeks and one or more may track just right to bury ‘us’. If so, don’t blame me. I am just the messenger. Blame ‘Phil’.

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A non-profit watchdog group’s lawsuit against the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration may have spurred the agency to release documents to a congressional committee that reveal a “new climate data scandal.”

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Dec. 2, 2015, against NOAA “regarding methodology for collecting and interpreting data used in climate models,” the group said Tuesday.

Why Is NOAA Refusing To Hand Over Documents?

The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology subpoenaed the same documents earlier this year, but NOAA refused to hand the records over until a few days after Judicial Watch filed its lawsuit.

“We have little doubt that our lawsuit helped to pry these scandalous climate change report documents from the Obama administration,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “Given the lawless refusal to comply with our FOIA request and a congressional subpoena, we have little doubt that the documents will show the Obama administration put politics before science in advance of global warming alarmism.”

The documents revealed a “new climate data scandal,” Judicial Watch said in announcing the suit.

“Information provided to the committee by whistleblowers appears to show that the study was rushed to publication despite the concerns and objections of a number of NOAA employees,” according to the committee.

Committee Chairman Lamar Smith wrote recently that “NOAA often fails to consider all available data in its determinations and climate change reports to the public.”

The Texas Republican also noted that a recent NOAA study made adjustments to historical temperature records, which led the findings to refute a nearly two-decade pause to global warming.

The Judicial Watch’s lawsuit was filed after the Department of Commerce, which governs NOAA, failed to respond to an Oct. 30 Freedom of Information Act request seeking communications between NOAA’s officials regarding how climate data is collected, analyzed and used.

Smith subpoenaed the agency for the same documents on Oct. 13, and sent a total of four letters to NOAA requesting the information.

The year 2015, which started with the coldest January to March for the Northeast (10 states plus DC) and warm dry southwest, will end with an all-time warmest December for the United States (3rd warmest in the satellite era since 1979 globally). This is thanks in part due to a strong El Nino.

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It was colder west and snowy in the mountains. See how Colorado Weather Station Hits -51F, Ties One Of Coldest Temperatures Ever Recorded.

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On the morning of December 17 the thermometer at Antero Reservoir dropped to an astounding -51F. The last time that happened was on Feb. 8, 1989.

But like last year when December and Christmas were warm, the pattern will flip. The change will come a bit earlier than 2014/15. There are a lot of reasons to believe this.  Warm November and December El Ninos often flip in January to March.


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In the strong El Nino of 1965 the Upper Midwest including the Great Lakes and Minnesota and Iowa went from +7.9F in December to -7.2 in January. The second year El Nino of 1987/88 went from +6.5 to -1.8F in January and -3.7F in February. Last year it took a little longer in the weaker Modoki going from +6.1F in December to -8.4 by February. In the 10 northeast states plus DC we went from +5.9F in December to -2.6F in January, an amazing -10.4F in February and -4.5F in March. That made the region the coldest ever since 1895.

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The media downplayed this away from the buried cities and NOAA in their winter highlights focused first on the warmth and dryness in California. In the prior winter, which featured record snow in the Great Lakes area and the coldest December to March in Chicago’s long history, it got a media attention during the coldest days mainly because of the term ‘polar vortex’, which sounded like something unique and that we somehow caused.

We hear references to 1997/98 as proof super NINOs bring blow torch winters and high confidence that this will be one. However there are more than subtle differences with 1997/98 as JB, TD and I have discussed.

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We see the difference from 1997 shown below is significant east of 150W (this year is much cooler) while it is warmer near the dateline than 1997.

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The cooler east and warmer central makes it more Modoki like which means the east is able to see the arctic air come south around the retrogressing western and central Canada ridge into the developing eastern (southeastern) CONUS trough.

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Next we have good agreement on the seasonal tools we trust. The CPC CFSv2 as it always does, will be last to ‘see the light’. But our 22 input Pioneer Model, the CPC CA and JAMSTEC agree with the change.

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Though just January is shown, the CANSIPS (as shown on the Tropical tidbits site) model shows a similar pattern evolving.

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Then as I posted a few days ago, the EPO which has been positive (which favors warm central and eastern US), is not favored with the warm water off the west coast. Cold water like we had 1998-2002 and again 2011 to 2013 favors a +EPO. Warm water, which came on in 2002/03 and 2013/14 favors a -EPO.

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See how the developing warm northeast Pacific caused the dominant +EPO that had prevailed into 2002 to take a dive.

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See how quickly the EPO changes cause the temperatures to readjust - here for BOS.

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The warm water and El Nino becoming Modoki like should favor a -EPO increasingly by 2016.

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I had indicated the pattern would start to appear, somewhat inconsistently, in the models by the solstice. Indeed they have. The EPS long range shows it in late January. Come to Weatherbell and see the daily, weekly and even the 45 day European high resolution data.

The op run EC shows an impressive cold outbreak and developing east coast threats and widespread snows next month.

Even the warm CFS has a snowy period ahead.


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Note: Our team does daily briefings of which the above is an abbreviated version of. We do daily videos as well, explaining and further expounding on our forecasts and the reasoning them. We specialize in long range and correctly forecast up to 9 months in advance the last two winters and summers.  If weather is of interest or affects your business please consider becoming party of the Weatherbell clients family, 4000 strong. 

Rapid industrialization requires abundant, cheap energy!

China leads the world in 2015 with a growth of 7%. India is not far behind at 5.5%. As China and India have spurred growth to become centers of industry, they have employed cheap energy such as coal without, in many cases, the investment in scrubbing or removal of particulates and chemicals from the effluence that the industrialized west has invested in after similar pollution episodes 60 years ago.

In winters, as cold air settles in, inversions often form in the long nights and daytimes of feeble sun when the winds are light, trapping the pollution. Areas of China and India are suffering from severe pollution episodes this month.

In places like Beijing and other populous areas or eastern China, a cold outbreak with snow helped to ensure the inversions when the cold air aloft moved on.

Enlarged Source: NOAA.

See the cold air that invaded eastern China in recent weeks.

Enlarged Source: Weatherbell.com

The high-pressure overhead gets replaced with gusty northwest winds will clean out the air the next week but then cresting of high pressure overhead by week 2 will allow fog and smog to return.

Even with the attention to China, India is suffering too. Of the top 10 most polluted cities in the world, six are in India.

Though environmentalists make a big deal about the small particulate matter content as the problem because that is the ‘carbon pollution’ they are riding to their hoped for Paris agreement, in reality the real damage comes from chemical reaction of effluent gases like sulfur dioxide with water droplets in the ‘fog/smog’ that forms sulfuric acid mist. It is joined by hydrochloric acid. You will read that it is a CO2 problem but one has to remember with every breath, we emit 40,000ppm into air with around 400 ppm CO2 and that CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere.

In Europe and North America, we went through similar incidents that forced necessary changes to our air quality control. That improvement continues. We have decreased the small particulate loading of the air by 50% the last two decades to well below the target standards.


Enlarged Source: EPA

That brings to mind some of those trigger incidents.

THE GREAT LONDON SMOG OF DECEMBER 1952

As the UKMO described it “The weather in November and early December 1952 had been very cold, with heavy snowfalls across the region. To keep warm, the people of London were burning large quantities of coal in their homes. Smoke was pouring from the chimneys of their houses.

Fog formed in the calm air as the ground cooled. During the period of the fog, huge amounts of impurities were released into the atmosphere and trapped in the fog beneath the inversion. On each day during the foggy period, in addition to the small particulates from the combustion of coal, the UKMO estimates 140 tonnes of hydrochloric acid and 14 tonnes of fluorine compounds. In addition, and perhaps most dangerously, 370 tonnes of sulphur dioxide were converted into 800 tonnes of sulphuric acid.”

That acid fog is what did most of the damage.

Government medical reports in the following weeks estimated that up until 8 December 4,000 people had died prematurely and 100,000 more were made ill because of the smog’s effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, at about 12,000.

As the UKMO reports “This kind of smog has now become a thing of the past, thanks partly to pollution legislation and also to modern developments, such as the widespread use of central heating.”

DONORA PA SMOG EVENT OF 1948


Noontime smog in Donora. Pennsylvania in October 1948

The Donora killer smog event of 1948 was the result of a low level inversion in late October of 1948 resulting in a wall of particulate and chemical laden fog that killed 20 people and sickened 7,000 more in Donora, Pennsylvania, a mill town on the Monongahela River, 24 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Sixty years later, the incident was described by the New York Times as “one of the worst air pollution disasters in the nation’s history”. The Donora smog event, the worst air pollution disaster in U.S. history, let the public know that industrial pollution could kill. It eventually led to the Clean Air Act.

No one is opposed to clean air. I did my doctoral studies grant work on air resources (after a masters on explosive development in east coast storms). We had real pollution issues back then (CO, SO2, NOx, hydrocarbons), largely resolved now. They need to do the same in China and India.

But it is NOT carbon dioxide that is the killer. CO2 is a plant fertilizer that has helped feed the growing world population.

Enlarged Source: CO2 Science

Clean coal plants are being built now in China and in places like Japan and Germany as they have discovered that renewables are unreliable and expensive energy sources for not only the populace but also for industry that requires steady, dependable and economical energy sources to compete in the global economy.

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Help us maintain Icecap if you are able. Even small amounts help us pay the maintenance charges for the server that keep coming each month. We keep the site going without a support staff to try and provide you with information you can use. We have over 8000 entries searchable - to help you find the information you need. Alternatively, consider a subscription to Weatherbell.