Article written by Joe Bastardi:
If it changes to something else beforeyou read this, just type it in.
Joe Bastardi co chief meteorologist, Weatherbell Analytics.
As many of you know, I am 1st Hand Weather Blogger Garrett Bastardi’s Father and like my father before me will do anything to fuel his childrens passion for what they are made to do. He appears to have the same kind of drive I had for this, and of course with my dad as a meteorologist, there is a genetic predisposition toward it.
Besides the title of Garrett’s Dad I am also the chief meteorologist, along with Joe D’Aleo at Weatherbell Analytics and hope you will give our site a try as we post extensively and I seek to explain the why behind the what before hand. Most forecasters will tell you what will happen but most of the time you wont hear a why until they are explaining it after if something went wrong. I encourage you to give our site behind the paywall a test drive, it s 50 cents a day for two cups of Joe ( D Aleo and I) if after the test drive you decide to climb aboard. I post a couple of times a day and do some videos,but right or wrong, always lay out my case before hand. The weather is not a snapshot, its a movie, a relentless constantly changing opponent that to paraphrase Rocky Balboa, will beat you down and keep you there if you let it.. So you must fight back, and view it as challenge, forming an opinion based on what you see in the PHYSICAL reality of the pattern, not a virtual reality. Most of the time someone will see a model then start to post on it. The trick is not going to the model, but having the model come to you, because you have a working idea of what the atmosphere is doing. It is the reason that getting a degree in meteorology involves more than just being able to stand in front of Tv an look good. A someone who has done TV work, (I prefer to sit, and there is nothing I can do for my looks) t is interesting to note, right off the bat, that modeling that says it is going to get warmer is virtual, and the only objective temperature reality we truly have is since the start of the satellite era in the late 70s, at the end of the last cold PDO. We do know over the past couple of hundred years we have warmed, but that was out of the little ice age. If we had not warm, we probably would not have progressed to where we are today as a species.
Something you should read is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/09/durban-what-the-media-are-not-telling-you/#more-52760
It’s alarming.
But here’s why am I so into this global warming fight.
1) Its a test of right and wrong, and I think on multiple levels. It should just be about the weather, no different than you and I forecasting a snow event and then see who is closer. However it has been turned into something much bigger, and the right or wrong on that idea involves a desire to curtail freedoms because of what some think is a ticking time bomb of co2.
2) It is a fight on a higher plane. I am not a very humble person in front of others, I have been told, but I am humble before the atmosphere and its creator. Arrogance abounds in many that think somehow they have the right idea on how to control the atmosphere, as if they can control something they did not create, nor have any influence over. They can however have influence over other people, by using distorted science to drive home their agenda.
3) I know my climate history, as I have been as fascinated with that as much as the forecast since i was young. I have a father who regaled me with stories about how bad the weather was when he was growing up, and unlike the tired rants of those saying this is the worst that has ever happen, he will tell you it was far worse , heat, hurricanes, drought etc in the 30s-50s, the last time of climatic hardship as now. And because I know that, I am simply seeing the same things happen now in front of me as he saw the last time the pdo/amo were in similar cycles, The difference is we now have the chance to objectively measure it.
4) One never knows when one is called to fight, but its how you respond. Over the years, the words of Edmund Burke have echoed louder in my ears over this. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” Imposing ones will upon someone is evil, and not allowing the answer to play out is simply not allowing a chance for the truth to come out, which is also evil. I am no saint, but I will avoid the sin of doing nothing when I see I can do something to make sure the truth, even if it means I am wrong, can come out.
5) The idea that by spending your life in research, and not in actually doing something that demands an answer that has to be right (as in the private sector) or you get fired, runs counter to the idea that not only must you know how to do something, you must actually do it. Recreations of the past are a good tool to for a basis to forecast the future, but unless you are out in the real world, you have no idea what its like to apply virtual knowledge to a future event. In fact, the disdain that many with higher power degrees that look upon the “laborers” among us that actually have to forecast for a living, it matched only by our distrust of them. Its like someone sitting in a castle telling someone in the trenches taking bullets, how to fight.
If you go into a gym, who are you going to trust. an overweight trainer or the trainer that is in shape?
I respect the advanced degrees, for what they are, sgns that the person persisted in their education. But it does not give them license for them to be an authority on something that have never practically applied! When I was in school there was a saying ( mind you at that time PSU was out and out the unchallenged number one meteorology department in the country, something I am well aware can not be said today as there are many great schools) among the meteorologists ( we were a cocky bunch) that if you can’t do the meteorology, you can be a climatologist. I still bust my brother on it, cause his degree is in climatology though HE IS VEHEMENTLY AGAINST AGW. But the point is the idea that a meteorologist can’t weigh in on this debate when in reality a good forecaster has to know his clime is simply another way to try and silence dissent.
So there is more behind this than the tired old argument that people that resist this tide of agenda driven drivel are shills of the fossil fuel industry. Is about allowing the light or truth to determine who is rig and who is wrong, and if there is going to be a benefit for society, it will only be that the truth wins the day.
Here is the crux of my argument.
Since the little ice age, the earth has been warming up, but only since the late 1970s have we had the way to objectively measure it with the accuracy we have today . There is plenty of reason to believe that sunspot activity may have had something to do with the warm up, but also reason to believe, since there has been a drastic increase in industrialization that man may have had something to do with it. What is not known is if this warm up was simply a reversal back to where we should be, and is partly because we were so cold to start with, or is the doomsday clock ticking faster with each passing minute because we are pumping so much co2 into the air. A simple test will give us the answer. If CO2 is the culprit, then temperatures should continue to rise. Unfortunately they are not rising as seen here.
Since someone can accuse me of “cherry picking” lets look a the relationship between co2 and temp over a longer period of time.
If we square the correlation, we have the strength of correlation. You can see there was very little correlation before 1980, and as we saw above, since the late there is little also. In the entire period, the correlation of CO2 was only positive with the temperature for about 30 years!
Is there something has a stronger relationship.?
Actually yes, the PDO and AMO together!
Even more damming evidence against CO2.. the direct relationship between the enso and the global temps with the overall rise correlated with the warm PDO and the spikes with warm enso episodes, the cooling with La Nina or Volcanic activity. You cant get much more cause and effect.
In May, I predicted we would fall to levels we fell to in 2008, Overall the rise has stopped as it should given La Chateliers principle, which states any system in abnormally fights to return toward normalcy. Even without the PDO flip, the process of balancing had begun! The latest figure is plus 0.033C and we should go below normal in December. How the media does not pick up on this and ignores this shows.. well if you ignore something, that makes you ignorant of it. It’s all there, so its ignorance out of choice.
So the question is: How can any rational observer claim that CO2 HAS TO BE CAUSING this when its plain that there is a much closer relationship between the warming of the tropical Pacific and Atlantic and the earth’s temperature? But as you will read below, just because the measured temp warms, it does not mean the earths energy is being trapped.
We have a way of objectively measuring temps now, which we did not have until the end of the last cold cycle of the PDO, which was in the late 1970s. Warm the tropical Pacific and you are naturally going to warm the air, since it means more heat gets into the air. Kick in with the warm AMO and look out, its Katie bar the door.
But here is the dirty little secret that few pushing AGW will address. Because there is much more energy in warm moist air than cold dry air, in terms of the total energy, there is no detectable change. That means that all we are seeing is a distortion of the temperature pattern. Suppose for instance we totaled the temp up along the date line from pole to pole and had many of the areas north of 40 north warm. There may be many more warm readings than cooler but a 15 degree rise where the air is cold and dry is offset energy wise by a 1 degree fall where its warm and moist. So all we are seeing is a distortion and the key may be in the ice caps. Since the NORTH polar ice caps are surrounded by land, it stands to reason that warming the Pacific and Atlantic in a way where warm water is near their coasts and in their equatorial areas would warm the continents next to them (75% of the land is in the northern hemisphere). SInce those continents surround the ice cap, and warmer water is flowing around the cool pool that is in the middle in the warm phases of these oscillations, what should happen to the northern ice cap? It should shrink But if there was true warming so should the south pole. Since it is tougher to heat or cool maritime air, it would be tougher to grow the southern ice cap but over all it has slightly anyway. In other words the shrinking in the north should outweigh the gain in the south, if it was simply a cyclical matter, rather than something that would signal the actual demise of the ice cap and a true build up of heat in the oceans and atmosphere. Well lets take a look. SEE MORE HERE.
JB concludes:
I encourage people to open their minds. I have never asked for people to accept what I say, BUT ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE OF WHAT I AM SAYING and then go look for themselves. I think you will see that at the very least there is reason to doubt this and as many have, dismiss it as a red herring to cover up a bigger issue that is at play. That the weather and climate are now being prostituted this way, that something we love is used as a cheap tool to drive ideas down people throat, should be alarming enough for you to arm yourself with the knowledge that will form the armor to resist such assaults on free thinking people of good will.
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity.
AS OBAMA PROMISED
Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. That’s the largest sustained increase since a run-up in electricity prices during the 1970s.
Electricty is consuming a greater share of Americans’ after-tax income than at any time since 1996 - about $1.50 of every $100 in income at a time when income growth has stagnated, a USA TODAY analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data found.
Greater electricity use at home and higher prices per kilowatt hour are both driving the higher costs, in roughly equal measure:
•Residential demand for power dropped briefly in 2009 but rebounded strongly last year to a record high. Air-conditioners and household appliances use less power than ever. A new refrigerator consumes half the electricity as a similar one bought in 1990. But consumers have bigger houses, more air-conditioning and more electronics than before, outpacing gains in efficiency and conservation.
“People have made a lot of money selling weight loss programs. It’s the same for energy. Behavior is hard to change,” says Penni Conner, vice president of customer care at NSTAR, a Boston-based utility.
•Prices are climbing, too, hitting a record 11.8 cents per residential kilowatt hour so far this year, reports theEnergy Information Administration. The increase reflects higher fuel prices and the expense of replacing old power plants, including heavily polluting — but cheap to operate — coal plants that don’t meet federal clean air requirements.
“Higher bills are a huge problem for low income families,” says Chris Estes, executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition, which opposes a proposed rate hike in its state by Duke Energy. “Utilities are what people’s budgets start with.”
Duke Energy says the rate increase is needed to pay for replacing old power plants and making the transmission system more reliable. The Charlotte-based utility has reached a tentative agreement with North Carolina to raise rates 7.2% in February, lower than its original 17% request.
“The industry as a whole is facing higher costs because we’re retiring our aging fleet” of power plants, says Duke Energy spokeswoman Betsy Conway. Electricity cost varies widely depending on where you live. Cheapest: Northwest communities near hydropower dams - as low as 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Most expensive major utility: Consolidated Edison, supplier of New York City - 26 cents per kilowatt hour, according to EIA.
High taxes, limits on air-polluting fuels and the expense of maintaining an underground transmission system keep consumer costs high, says ConEd spokesman Chris Olert.
A potential bright spot: Electric bills appear roughly the same so far this year as last when adjusted for inflation, based on preliminary reports.
However, the future of energy prices and the upcoming closure of more polluting coal plants makes the long-term outlook cloudy for consumers. Duke Energy plans to ask for another rate hike next year to cover the costs of new natural gas-fired plants.
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: December 12th, 2011
The Durban climate conference has been an abject failure. But that hasn’t stopped those who were there desperately trying - with all the plausibility of Monty Python’s Black Knight - to spin their disaster as though it represents some kind of massive triumph. Among them is a man named Michael Jacobs, formerly climate adviser to Gordon Brown.
In his Guardian column today, Jacobs argues that “the conference that has ended in Durban, South Africa, amid considerable drama, should be regarded as very much a success.”
I disagree. And today we met on Sky News to discuss it.
By the time Jacobs left he was not a happy bunny. He left the set very quickly, apparently not a little discombobulated that I had just accused him (off camera, unfortunately) of talking “weapons-grade b***ocks”. But then, he had started it by turning to me immediately after we’d done our recording and saying: “You are entitled to your opinion. What you are not entitled to are your own facts.”
In other words, Jacobs was accusing me of having lied on TV. This was more revealing about the mindset of committed warmists than it was about the veracity of what I had actually said. If you can find a link to our encounter you can judge for yourself: I said Durban had been a flop (TRUE); I said if the 15,000 delegates really cared about Climate Change they would have done it by teleconferencing rather than hopping onto planes and creating an enormous carbon footprint (TRUE); I said global warming had stopped in 1998 (TRUE); I said that “green jobs” were a nonsense – quoting the Verso Economics statistic that for every “green job” created by government subsidy in the UK economy another 3.7 jobs are lost in the real economy (TRUE); and I said that if the former Climate Adviser to Gordon Brown was uncomfortable with any of this, well that was surely a sign that things must be going well (TRUE).
So what was the best response Michael Jacobs could muster? To call me a liar.
That opinion/facts phrase he used sounded familiar. And sure enough, up it crops in that rather embarrassing report that Steve Jones did for the BBC Trust – the one arguing that the BBC really ought to be more biased in its coverage of global warming because, er, well, it should.
“All of us involved in this debate need to remember that we are entitled to our own opinions but none of us are entitled to our own facts.”
Good phrase, that. (Though personally I’d prefer the more grammatical “none of us is"). Presumably it has been doing the rounds quite a bit in Warmist circles. As it would, I suppose: after all, when you’ve got so very few scientific facts on your side, you need all the handy slogans you can muster.
What really impresses me, though, is the bravura hypocrisy of such accusations. I mean if there’s one thing we’ve established with absolute, 100 per cent, cast iron certainty in the climate debate which has been raging these last few years it’s this: that climate scientists are a bunch of epic liars.
In the Climategate and Climategate 2.0 emails they’re shown time and again fudging data, breaching FOI requests, lying to outsiders who’ve requested to see the raw data on which they’ve based their dubious prognostications, grossly exaggerating their degree of certainty about the threat of AGW, tweaking their Assessment Reports to make them look more scary, pretending those Assessment Reports are the work of divers hands when really the people doing all the legwork and rewriting comprise a relatively small core of committed activists.
Yet for all this, Michael Jacobs has apparently never stopped to ask himself whether this might not suggest something ever so slightly dubious about the quality of the science underpinning his cherished theories. So certain is he of the unimpeachable virtuousness of his cause, it seems, that he has no need to respond to sceptics with facts or arguments. All he has to do is call them liars and the problem will go away.
Except it won’t.