November 30th, 2007 12:23
Dr. David Evans once believed carbon dioxide caused global warming and worker for the Austrlian government building models for carbon accounting. He has since joined the ranks of climate skeptics. He has even bet that CO2 is not a cause of global warming.
He suggests that
“Our scientific understanding of global warming has gone through three stages:
1. 1985 2003. Old ice core data led us strongly suspect that CO2 causes global warming.
2. 2003 2007. New ice core data eliminated previous reason for suspecting CO2. No evidence to suspect or exonerate CO2.
3. From Aug 2007: Know for sure that greenhouse is not causing global warming. CO2 no longer a suspect.”
He points out that there is no mathematical correlation between atmospheric CO2 and air temperature. CO2 concentration went up steadily during the 20th Century, but temperature went up and down which is usually a good indication that a factor isn’t associated with a specific change.
November 24th, 2007 2:12
Herbert Saffir , the structural engineer who developed the five category system for measuring hurricane strength, has died at 90 from complications associated with surgery acording to his son Richard Saffir. The Miami Herald lists a heart attack as the specific cause of death at South Miami Hospital.
Herbert Saffir had been working on developing building codes for Dade County, Florida, when the United Nations asked commissioned him to help develop codes for low cost buildings for poorer nations. Saffir was primarily interested in building damage when he established the different categories in 1969. Meteorolgists had previously classified hurricanes into major or minor hurricanes.
U.S. National Hurricane Center Director Dr. Robert H. “Bob” Simpson added storm surge information to Saffir’s system to produce the Saffir-Simpson Scale.
Hurricanes, unlike other natural disasters, can be detected far enough in advance to allow people to protect buildings from damage or flee the area. Earthquakes provide no advance warning. Volcanoes may be active before they erupt, but they can be active for a long period without producing a devastating eruption. Tornadoes may drop from severe thunderstorms without warning, although warnings can then be made for those in the storm’s path. The closest meteorologists can come to advance warnings of tornadoes is warning that conditions are consistent with tornado development.
The Saffir-Simpson Scale is a very useful tool, but hurricane forecasting is still not an exact science. Meteorologists are still learning about hurricanes and how they can intensify, or weaken, just before landfall. More research is needed on the processes that cause changes in intensification. Money that could be used for such research is currently being wasted on long term “global warming” studies of little or no scientific value.
November 23rd, 2007 13:29
One of the reasons I doubt that the climatologists who talk of global warming are scientists is the claim that tree rings provide precise evidence of past average temperatures that can be compared to thermometer measured temperatures.
Craig Loehle has published a study in National Council for Air and Stream Improvement indicating that trees rings are not reliable for determining past temperatures. Loehle focused on the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) (1000 – 1400) which is not shown in tree rings, but is apparent using other so-called proxies.
Loehle notes that tree ring width respond to temperature in an inverse parabolic manner to temperature with growth increasing up to some optimal temperature and then decreasing with further temperature increases. In other words narrower rings could actually indicate higher temperature rather than lower temperature. Loehle suggests that higher evaporation rates at the higher temperatures may slow growth. Tree growth responds to changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by increasing growth as CO2 increases.
Loehle cites a satellite survey covering 1982 to 2003 that indicated in tundra areas photosynthetic activity increased, but such activity decreased in forested areas, possibly because of the density of trees. As density increases individual trees may receive less sunlight and have less energy available for growth.
Loehle doesn’t examine the fact that trees reduce heating of the air by converting solar radiation into the chemical bonds of the carbon molecules deposited in the trunk. The greater the tree growth the lower the temperature if solar radiation remains constant.
November 19th, 2007 14:11
How Volcanism Affects Climate
Major eruptions can eject both ash and gases such as sulfur dioxide 80,000 feet or more into the atmosphere. Much of the ash falls out within 6 months, but sulfur dioxide converts to sulfate aeosals that can remain in the atmosphere for two years or more. These aerosals block solar radiation and cool the planet. The cooling can average 0.2 to 0.5 over a 2-3 years period.
The greatest cooling effect occurs in summer the location of the volcano determines whether winters in the northern hemispehere are warmer or colder. Tropical volcanos like El Chichon and Pinatubo produce winter warming by encouraging positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscilltion (AO). In this postive phase low pressure and cold air is trapped in high latitudes producing more westerly jet stream winds which push milder maritime air into the continents.
High latitude volcanos like Katmai in Alaska in 1912 favored the negative phase of the AO and NAO. Colder winters occur because the jet stream buckled and brought cold air south into the eastern U.S. and west from Siberia into Europe. The total global affect of volcanos is for net cooling regardless of the latitute of the volcano.
D’Aleo provides charts showing the affect of atmospheric aerosals on temperature.
November 17th, 2007 1:36
On October 14, 1997, Vice President Al Gore said, “For those who argue that global warming is already changing the world’s climate, this year’s El Nino weather front is more than enough evidence”, the audience was told by Gore. In the next day, a report by the San Francisco Chronicle said: “Gore links El Nino to Global Warming”. The Vice President stated at the summit that growing frequency of El Nino episodes could be connected to the gradual heating of the atmosphere caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Ten years later residents in Argentina and Brazil are wondering if this winter will ever end. Buenos Aires recorded this Thursday (November 15th) the lowest November temperature in 90 years. Temperature in the Downtown weather station reached 2.5C. Since records began more than a century ago, only two days had colder lows in November. It was in 1914 (1.6) and 1917 (2.4). And ninety years ago the urban heat island effect was much less pronounced than nowadays. In Brazil’s southernmost province Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil temperatures fell to 2.3C. In Sao Joaquim Monday’s (Nov., 12) the temperature was -1.2 C with frost.
The culprit is a developing la Nina , a cooling of the water in the eastern Pacific along the South American coast, that some climatologists believe could indicate a return to the la Nina dominated situation that dominated from1947 to 1977. El Ninos, a warming of East Pacific waters. have been more common since then. Some climatologists believe the el Ninos may have caused what the IPCC calls “global warming”.
NASA has recently indicated that the circulation of the Arctic Ocean has changed from the counterclockwise circulation of the 1990′s to the pre-1990 clockwise circulation which could result in a cooling trend in the Arctic.
Such a shift would be consist with the projected cooling trend mentioned in the previous post.
See comment below for another warm location with a cold weather problem.
November 14th, 2007 13:11
The idea that Jupiter or Saturn affect earth’s climate might sound strange, although not as strange as the greenhouse gas theory, but not if you consider the possibility that they affect the sun’s
behavior. Researchers looking for planets around distant stars look for wobbles in the motion of those stars which could indicate that planets are affecting that star’s position in space.
The sun doesn’t maintain a fixed position at the center of the solar system but instead has an orbit that varies depending upon the orbits of the planets, particularly the heavy gas giants. Rhodes Fairbridge suggested that sunspot activity varied due to the impact of the gas giants.
“The sun’s own orbit, he found, has eight characteristic patterns, all determined by Jupiter’s position relative to Saturn, with the other planets playing much lesser roles. Some of these eight have orderly orbits, smooth and near-circular. During such orbits, solar activity is high and Earth heats up. Some of the eight orbits are chaotic, taking a loop-the-loop path. These orbits correspond to quiet times for the sun, and cool periods on Earth. Every 179 years or so, the sun embarks on a new cycle of orbits. One of the cooler periods in recent centuries was the Little Ice Age of the 17th century, when the Thames River in London froze over each winter. The next cool period, if the pattern holds, began in 1996, with the effects to be felt starting in 2010. Some predict three decades of severe cold.”
“Temperatures on Earth are but one consequence of these periodic and predictable celestial movements. Others, Dr. Fairbridge has shown, are seen everywhere on Earth: in the various and differing periodicities in rocks, glaciers, sand dunes and the circulation of the ocean; geomagnetic records; the records of the isotopes of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen in tree rings, ice cores, air and water. They are the periodicities of climate change.”
“Dr. Fairbridge’s best-known periodicity, which he developed in the 1950s, hypothesized that sea levels had been rising for the last 16,000 years, during which there were periodic oscillations of rise and fall. The Fairbridge curve describing this period — so named in derision because it offended the conventional wisdom – is now widely accepted. It demonstrates that, even within the past 1,000 years, sea levels have several times changed by up to two metres, and suddenly — each of these large changes occurred in fewer than 40 years.”
A full discussion.
November 12th, 2007 3:45
Why do they buy the nonsense about alleged greenhouse gases causing dangerous global warming? The claim about the power of greenhouse gases sounds like magic and the evidence for “global warming” is of little value.
Those who talk about global warming claim a 0.5 C (1 F) increase in what they call the global average temperature indicates the earth is getting warmer. You don’t have to be a mathematician or physicist to recognize that one temperature cannot represent every place on earth from frigid polar regions to blazing deserts. Nor can a single temperature represent year round conditions in temperate regions where temperatures can range from -18 C (0 F) in the winter to 35 C (100 F) in the summer.
The claim that a 0.5 C (1 F) increase is significant ignores the fact that the number represents only a 0.17% change over a century. (Note: Per cent changes in temperature must be calculated using the Kelvin scale because of the arbitrary zero points of the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.) Scientists might be able to obtain an accuracy within 0.17% in laboratory conditions, but not in the real world. Inadequate maintenance of equipment can reduce accuracy. Changes in the area near the site of the reading can affect temperatures.
Carbon dioxide constitutes less than 0.04% of the atmosphere. How can anyone believe that an increase from 0.036% to 0.037%, for example, could possibly increase air temperature?
One of the oldest scams in physics involves the perpetual motion machine. Such machines supposedly operate with little or not energy. The inventor may claim that his machine may produce nearly as much energy as it consumes. Claims about greenhouse gases imply they cause the atmosphere to function as a perpetual motion machine.
The idea that individual CO2 molecules can actually radiate enough energy to heat anything sounds so ridiculous that it’s hard to understand how any logical person could believe it.
Police will tell you that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Scam artists tend to oversell whatever they are peddling. The people who claim global warming, are overselling claims about climate change and gullible journalists are buying what they are selling.
November 9th, 2007 11:39
Meteorologist John Coleman who founded the Weather Channel calls global warming the “biggest scam in history.”
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.
Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minute documentary segment.
I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.
I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.
In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend. See John’s full blog story here.
November 7th, 2007 11:24
Many climatologists misunderstand the theoretical physics concept of a black body model. They falsely believe that earth must radiate most of the energy it receives back into space.
The black body model is a theoretical concept that can only be approximted in a lab by examining what is called “cavity radiation”. It isn’t a practical concept for climatology.
A planetary black body, if one existed, would absorb all radiation received, become hotter and then convert the heat energy back into radiation.
Substances are black if they absorb all radiation. White substances reflect all radiation. Transparent substances allow radiation to pass through. Substances that are transparent or reflective don’t radiate well.
A black body concept is a simple linear model that only looks at radiation and heat. A linear model can be represented by a relatively simple equation. Non-linear models require complicated equations that may be difficult to solve. Chaotic models may be difficult to represent with equations.
For planetary objects the model can only apply to solids in a vacuum and to be fully applicable the solid cannot be reflective. The model cannot apply to planets with a transparent atmosphere because such planets are non-linear. Planets that also have liquid oceans especially a water ocean, are too chaotic to function as black bodies.
For a planet with a transparent atmosphere the solid will still heat up after absorbing radiation, but a portion of the heat is transferred to the atmosphere through conduction. The heated air then rises drawing in colder air which is also heated. As the heated air rises the heat energy is converted to potential energy rather than radiation.
Water is transparent to light which means it doesn’t radiate very well. Water loses heat through conduction and evaporation instead. Conduction heats the air. Evaporation carries heat energy into the atmosphere as latent heat rather than by raising the temperature of the air or by converting heat to radiation.
Earth’s biosphere further prevents earth from being a black body. From a thermodynamics standpoint, plants are solar energy storage devices. They convert solar energy into the electron bonds that hold complex carbon molecules together. When animals eat plants they store part of the energy as body parts and convert some of the energy into heat part of which may be transferred to the atmosphere through evaporation of water on the skin or exhaling water vapor. Fossil fuels are believed to be plant parts that weren’t eaten and continued to store solar energy.
A planetary black body is a simple energy in energy out system. Earth’s energy utilization system is far too complex for earth to function as a black body. The above discussion is an oversimplification of that energy utilization system.
November 6th, 2007 13:04
Global Warming suffered a setback when research at the University of Alabama at Huntsville indicated another prediction was wrong.
“All leading climate models forecast that as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in high altitude cirrus clouds, which would amplify any warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases,” Dr. Roy Spencer said. “That amplification is a positive feedback. What we found in month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system was a strongly negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease. That allows more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space.”
“Fifteen years ago, when we first started monitoring global temperatures with satellites, we noticed these big temperature fluctuations in the tropics,” Spencer said. “What amounts to a decade of global warming routinely occurs in just a few weeks in the tropical atmosphere. Then, as if by flipping a switch, the rapid warming is replaced by strong cooling. It now looks like the change in cirrus cloud coverage is the major reason for this switch from warming to cooling.”
He goes on the essentially say that long term climate forecasts are impossible.
“Until we understand how precipitation systems change with warming, I don’t believe we can know how much of our current warming is manmade. Without that knowledge, we can’t predict future climate change with any degree of certainty.”
Spencer and his colleagues expect these new findings to be controversial.
“I know some climate modelers will say that these results are interesting but that they probably don’t apply to long-term global warming,” he said. “But this represents a fundamental natural cooling process in the atmosphere. Let’s see if climate models can get this part right before we rely on their long term projections.”
Dr. Spencer’s comments provide further evidence that climatology is not a science. He apparently doesn’t understand basic physics. He believes that infrared radiation is heat when in fact heat is the motion of atoms/molecules. Even if the reflection of IR were important, it would.simply bounce around for a couple of microseconds before escaping. Light travels at about one foot per nano (billionth) second.
Clouds don’t keep heat in by reflecting IR. They keep heat in by preventing warm air from rising.