Joe Bastardi, Meteorologist(PDF);
The maturation of the La Nina to its classic major cold look, both in the equatorial Pacific waters and the amazing amount of the Northern Hemisphere troposphere that is covered by colder than normal temperatures, is not only a major driving force in the every day weather picture of earth, but is a sign, that in the end, it is nature, not man, that will have its way with the weather.
Why?
It is straight out of the book of climate. The pattern is so much like the 1949-1950 La Nina, which was signaling the start of the reversal of the warming of the earth’s climate in the 1930s, ‘40s and early 50s. Only someone choosing to ignore it, or not wanting to see it, would not be cognizant of it. But because such a pattern leads to warmer than normal conditions in areas where the greatest centers of human induced global warming information comes out of, western Europe and the eastern part of North America, no attention is being called to the fact that the winter this year does have outstandingly large areas of colder than normal temperatures and in areas, the vast expanses of the tropical Pacific, and the vast expanse of the air above us.”
[…]
Why the model bust? It is because most of these climate models have little or no ability to foresee regime changes in the oceans short and long term. It should be a warning shot to climate modelers that their longer term climate models are clueless as to the parameters predicted. In the end, it may be ice, not fire, that is the problem. As this powerful La Nina could be the sign of the regime change back to cool like the one in 1949/50.
“In the end, it may be ice, not fire, that is the problem.”
Bingo!!!
A few degrees rise in temp means a bit more air conditioning use, longer growing seasons and a few people have to move inland from low-lying coastal areas.
Thick ice sheets moving down from Canada is going to mean more energy required for heating, shorter growing seasons, and crowded conditions in the southern US. Also probably polar bears in Lake Michigan and the Winter Olympics in Iowa. 😉
No wonder Suzuki and Gore are becoming hysterical.
Yet more inconvenient truth for Al Gore.
To counter his inconvenient LIE.
Watch the Leftists come up with yet another way to deny this, say it doesn’t matter, citing the Holy Consensus of the IPCC of the UN as their “irrefutable proof”, “sound science”, “see, it’s settled; submit or else, Infidel!”
Makes no difference what they cite, as long as they believe. Apparently, even atheists need to believe, need their own special form of “religion” and their own special Prophet, the Goreacle…
They might as well cite Necronomicon: Book of the Dead or, perhaps, the Koran…
Neat post. Especially like the graphs from Christy’s data. Definite cooling.
There is still a slight upward trend in the data set for the last 20 years or so but a definite flat trend in the 10. It will be interesting to see if the cold anomolie continue and cause a break in the trend line. That should be newsworthy and would be a good indicator that things have really changed.
Re the la nina piece. It would be nice if this guy showed some graphs or other evidence that this la nina is like the 1948 one. I dont disbelieve him, just like to see the reference he he is using.
In general it fits my general view that there are big cycles that provide small amounts of input to.
So much remains unproven since climate is a highly complex system. And AGW is one of those unproven theories that lately is wobbling quite a bit.
If you wanted a conspiracy theory I would have said that the stridency is because the AGW crowd know there are cycles and humanity’s contribution isnt what they are selling and that they know that that cycles are changing, which they would like to take credit for. But thats crazy talk.
Time’s definitely against the AGW crowd. I think they realize they’re under a lot of time pressure to get their grants, political agendas and public adulation ASAP because the whole house of cards is about to come tumbling down. The longer this continues to play the more blatantly obvious it will become that their predictions are simply bogus — like the doomsday cults the day after the end-of-the-world-date. That being said, like all good cults, they’ll have a series of rationalizations as for why their “models” with their “settled science” need just a little bit more tweaking to be absolutely, cast-in-stone, 100% right. “Settled science” is an oxymoron; “sceptical scientist” is a redundancy.
This falls in line with what Russian climatologists have been saying about a looming Ice Age and what could also be the result of NASA’s latest observation of the sun’s cycles.
Canadians better prepare their great-great-grandchildren for migration to the US. Funny, does that mean Mexicans will move back?
Snow.
In the streets.
Of Vancouver.
Today.
In February.
Killing the early flowers.
Ohh the inhumanity of Global Warming.
This morning here in Ottawa, -10c with snow, while making small talk with other bus commuters about the weather, I suggested that there is a growing body of evidence that the earth is actually cooling, growing ice caps and all that.
You should have seen the blank stares.
The biggest problem with any computer modelling is that there is nobody smart enough to know how to program a ‘discontinuity’ into a program.
For example, if you were using river flow data from the previous hundred years of the Nile River, how could you program the inexplicable, sudden drop in the flow rate that happened to it back in the 1890s?
The weather is one of the best every day examples that you can find of a discontinuity.
Hotter than Mercury one day, and colder than Pluto the next.
Air temperature is probably the least reliable measurement of what the blackbody earth is actually doing.
Further to Joe Bastardi’s excellent article, the fact is that winter in the Canadian Arctic started sooner than normal as evidenced by the much earlier than normal shutdown of shipping on the Mackenzie river, due to river ice. Since Oct 07, our ‘north of 60’ weather has been at or slightly below normal consistently and currently is 15 to 20 degrees normal with temperatures to minus 50 frequently occurring C (58 blow zero F). With 2 to 3 more months of sub zero conditions remaining, both the area of Arctic ice will increase to normal or above normal and it’s thickness. And the polar bears won’t drown, the pine beetles may be halted, the sky won’t fall and the Gores and Suzukis agenda will be revealed as being ‘an inconvenient hoax”.
Poor, poor Suzooooki. He’s in a war with Mother Nature and he’s showing extreme frustration when she won’t co-operate.
When it gets down to suggesting politicians be jailed for not going along with his dictates, it’s time to haul him off to the Loony Bin.
He should stick with bugs, he’s got something in common with them, he’s gone totally bugs.
What should concern us even more is the standing ovation he got from the university students with that remark.
If global warming contiues at this rate, I’m going to invest in a snow blower.
I wouldnt get excited about one year of cold just like I dont get too excited about one year of hot.
Over at Steve McIntyres blog he mentions that many of the young climatologists he speaks to agree that his work has effectovely deconstructed the hockey stick and that it will take another 15 to 20 years of temperature data to properly get a handle on things.
Co2 measurements dont go up in a stratight line. Month to month there are significant variations…more than measurement error. Of course we, mankind, are pumping out C02 over and above “natural” sources. But the changes are hard to explain, and despite the calculations in the past it really is not clear how much Mankind is contributing.
The next link to question is how much the unchallenged rise in C02 is affecting temperature. The mechanism just is not clear, especially since it is such a small percentage of the atmosphere and the one of the smallest amounts of GHG, Water Vapour being the largest, about 98%.
Too many loose ends, bad predictions and no unequivicol supporting data. What you have is a simple correlation at a particular moment in time tthat as time goes on begins to diverge significantly. Essentially two trends matched for a short time frame and thats it so far.
It may be true, but right now it really remains unproven and not even a likely explaination by any other scientific standard right now.
Are there supporters, sure, are there people opposed, sure….but the vast majority are in between trying to gather data to see what it says rather than working from the hypothesis to force the data.
A little more time and study will set the direction. At best I think we may find we will come nowhere near the doomsday predictions, but still require action. At worst it will be a major mistake the equivalent of Piltdown Man.
Suzuki better get the politicians jailed while he can.
Sentinel: “Watch the Leftists come up with yet another way to deny this” . . . not likely. The MSM (as usual) is not really following the debate. Obserations such as Bastardi’s simply go unacknowledged. The other day (when temperatures were viciously cold — and I know, day to day isn’t supposed to matter), I checked Google to see if there is yet any questioning of global warming . . . well, fridged temperatures and all, universities and other educational instututions were have a “teach-in” about global warming. It’s a done deal. It’s a cult. Rational thought factual information don’t matter. Canadians will continue to behave just like Phil’s bus stop people — blank stares. “The Country of the Blind” by H.G. Wells captures the phenomenon quite well.
Several cold years are no more proof for global cooling than some warm years are for AGW. But if snow on the ground is what it takes for the media and politicians to take a breather from their silly histrionics on a very complex issue, so be it.
The AGW cultists are now saying “Yeah, this may period of global cooling but it is just masking over global warming and watch out when global cooling stops”.
They are one delusional bunch.
Yep, I got yer global warming right here, about 20 cubic yards of it in my driveway this morning.
Time to get out the Monster Garage snowblower and boost some more CO2 into the atmoschmere. ~:D
If a major cooling cycle is upon us, and Global Climate trends decouple from CO2 concentration trends, then we will begin to see the capitulation of AGW and some more serious scientific investigation into the relationship between the Sun and Global Climate: which should have been done the past 20 years. For all we know rising CO2 concentrations may be the effect of warming and not the cause.
Ahhh, but they’ve already set the stage. The renaming of GLOBAL WARMING to CLIMATE CHANGE ensures many research dollars in their coffers for years to come.
“For all we know rising CO2 concentrations may be the effect of warming and not the cause.”
Many AGW skeptics, including most here at SDA, doubt there is any warming at all. Indeed the 1930’s appear to have been the warmest years in the last century (not to mention all those weather stations near A/C vents and barbecues!).
That the CO2 increase is caused by our burning of fossil fuels is still the simplest explanation. The effect of that extra CO2 is debatable. This whole thing is far, far from being settled, and this is the essence of Bastardi’s message. Fortunately, his prediction of imminent cooling will be verifiable in the next few years. If he’s right, the AGW crowd will be silenced.
As for recent weather events, they prove nothing. Arguing that cold snaps in the Prairies prove global warming is wrong makes no more sense than arguing tornadoes in the US in February prove it is right.
Just back from forty days in Cabo San Lucas, the locals were saying it’s the coldest it’s been in thirty years.
Interesting piece at the below site
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080204172224.htm
The say the following regarding tipping points.
“As sea-ice melts, it exposes a much darker ocean surface, which absorbs more radiation than white sea-ice so that the warming is amplified. This causes more rapid melting in summer and decreases ice formation in winter. Over the last 16 years ice cover during summer declined markedly. The critical threshold global mean warming may be between 0.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, but could already have been passed. One model shows a nonlinear transition to a potential new stable state with no arctic sea-ice during summer within a few decades.”
I find myself wondering about this “causes more rapid melting in the summer and decreases ice formation in the winter”. Ice on the surface of water acts like an insulator thus reducing the cooling effect. One would think that open water cools much faster than ice crusted water. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
If Suzuki wants to jail politicians who don’t agree with him, imagine what he would do with guys like Joe Bastardi. A firing squad at sun rise would be in order for guys like Joe Bastardi.
“Poor, poor Suzooooki. He’s in a war with Mother Nature and he’s showing extreme frustration when she won’t co-operate.”
I SUSPECT SUZOOOOKI WOULDN’T OBJECT TO THROWING MOTHER NATURE IN JAIL. THAT WOULD GIVE HER TIME TO COOL DOWN(OOPS I MENT WARM UP).
Ok, another name for Dr. St. Suzuki’s arrest list.
BTW, here is a good one if you want to counter the inevitable “well, its only a minority of non-specialists who are skeptics”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus
The story at the link speaks of growth in the Arctic ice pack – not something that one often reads about in MSN
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/03/nbook103.xml
I’m still waiting for Sean to answer my request from Monday.
——-
Sean,
Since you deal in “reality”, could you kindly provide firm scientific proof of AGW?
I’m looking for more than “the IPCC says so”
Perhaps you could also help out by summarizing how much the IPCC has had to backtrack since it’s first report? Hmmm??
Stand by for Al Gore’s next flick on anthropogenic global cooling called “An Inconvenient Famine”.
The moment that killer tornadoes were reported in Tennessee and neighbouring states I knew that some of the nuttier warmists would soon be dancing with glee and proclaiming that anthropogenic global warming was to blame. Surprisingly, there’s been nothing over at DeSmogBlog, but loathsome bottom dweller, John Kerry has fulfilled my prophesy.
Even the MSM has been playing the story straight, and our local rag had some graphics this morning illustrating how this year’s strong La Niña event may have contributed to the disaster.
Anybody notice any satisfied smirking from anyone but Kerry?
The Earth has one significant heat source. It is external to the Earth. (Geothermal energy contributes so little to surface temperature that it can be neglected.)
Cycles such as El Niño and La Niña, the Pacific and Atlantic oscillations, the Gulf Stream, et cetera are driven by gravitational influences which include those of the Sun, the Moon, and the other planets.
Rhodes Fairbridge’s paper “Climate and Keplerian Planetary Dynamics” is a gentle and amusing introduction.
Not only do these influences affect the Earth, but the Sun is drawn from the centre of the Solar System by the ‘pull’ of the major planets, Jupiter and Saturn. The smaller planets contribute also, but to a much lesser extent.
The Sun ‘orbits’ the gravitational centre of the Solar System in somewhat complex patterns that repeat through time. The ‘Solar wandering’ patterns during the last four cool periods on Earth – Wolf, Spörer, Maunder, Dalton – and the upcoming Modern are disordered. The ordered patterns correlate with warming. See the following paper:
http://www.ann-geophys.net/18/399/2000/angeo-18-399-2000.pdf
Charvatova et al, 2000, give Solar orbital patterns for 4800 years and suggest projections into the future.
Solar cycles drive Earth’s climate cycles and the influences of the planets influences the solar cycles – and knowing the Solar system gravitational dynamics gives us a predictive tool.
Blaming climate cycles on ‘greenhouse gases’ – chiefly varying CO2 concentrations – whose 8.4% attenuation of Earth’s blackbody radiation essentially maxes out at about 20ppmv – offends the laws of physics and is simply a political manipulation being used by the deceitful to hoodwink the gullible!
Does Met mean meteorological?
…-
“According to the Met office, the temperature of 9.4 degree Celsius recorded on Wednesday was the lowest in the past 58 years.”
“”After so many years in Mumbai*, we are facing cold wave conditions,” said Rakesh, a resident.”
http://tinyurl.com/2mna6c (india)
*Formerly Bombay.
kanadian sentinal
“”””Apparently, even atheists need to believe, need their own special form of “religion” and their own special Prophet, the Goreacle…””””
maybe extracting thee head from your lower rear extremitese is in order here, there are several ATHEITS who post and read in SDA who are non-believers in the AGW nonsense
I remember listening to a Susuki interview many years ago in which he describes his early life and his hatred of whites. He also found he had a deep hatred of Japanese when he visited Japan, the home of his ancestors. What drives Mr. Susuki is “Hate”. Like many environmentalists, who have deviant personalities, totalitarian views and a hatred of human beings is at the core of his basic beliefs.
Posted by: DrD at February 7, 2008 7:35 AM
“Settled science” is an oxymoron; “sceptical scientist” is a redundancy.
Damn, Doc. That’s good.
climate is a highly complex system
Climate is based on fluid (Earth’s atmosphere is a fluid) dynamics, a subject that is notoriously difficult to correctly mathematically predict/model (even when contained within piping where the pressure and temperature and fluid is already known and using immensely powerful computers).
Anyone that claims to understand fluid dynamics on a global scale (considering all the variables) speaks from wishful thinking or the non-speaking hole in the rear.