Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Weather is not climate, but...
...the Northeast's heat wave of the week just past was anomalous, to say the least.
Regular readers: Yes, regular commenter Brian goaded me, but intellectual honesty impelled me.
In other news, global sea ice extant remains at the long-term trend line, with the Arctic below and the Antarctic above. Climate scientists say that the models "predict" this disparity, although I have never seen any evidence that any of the older models predicted it before the model builders knew it would happen. It would be great if one of our more scientific readers would do the archival work and cough up a reference.
12 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Jul 13, 05:18:00 PM:
Last summer in NYC was unusually cool -- I don't think we had a single day that was over 90. Go figure.
Since AGW Brian initiated this thread, I'd be interested in his (and anyone else's) thoughts on the following:
1) How much blame should we put on the federal government for failure to mitigate the Deepwater spill?
2) In effect we've just killed drilling in the Gulf, haven't we? Is this a good thing or not? As I write, NPR news came on my jazz station: they're saying that the adverse economic effects of the moratorium are worse than the spill.
3) For legal nerds only: Judge Feldman overturned the drilling moratorium because Interior Secretary Salazar's finding was based on a report he had amended -- changes which were castigated by the experts who were initially relied upon. Judge Feldman was upheld by the Fifth Circuit. Is Salazar flouting the Administrative Procedure Act? If he is, should we be troubled?
4) The USA just put $2 billion into some private solar companies. Good idea or no? Personally, I'd have used it as part of a balls-out R&D effort into thorium reactors.
5) Tesla Motors just went public: "We are the first and currently only company to commercially produce a federally-compliant highway-capable electric vehicle, the Tesla Roadster", Market cap is about 10x sales.
The next Delorean? Will founder Elon Musk get caught in a sting with a suitcase of blow?
6) Is the EPA hopelessly politicized?
By 
knighterrant, at
Tue Jul 13, 08:35:00 PM:
I though I'd remind you what was written six months ago. Snow in all 50 states.
Yes, weather is not climate, but you can't take one weather event as evidence to support your climate case while declaring a second weather event meaningless. Either both are anomalous or neither.
By JPMcT, at
Tue Jul 13, 10:01:00 PM:
There is simply no clear evidence linking man-made activites to the slight tendency toward a rise in global temperatures.
There is a fusillade of bad data tainted by political and monetary priorities. This should all be simply ignored.
It remains a theory. As far as I can see, it has no greater impact on our future than the global cooling fad of the 1970's, the "silent spring", the "population bomb", the decay of our atmosphere by fluorocarbons, the devastating effect of DDT, the erosion of the polar ice, the statistical danger of nuclear power, the rising sea levels, the carcinogenic effect of cranberries, the risk of cellphones causing intracranial tumors, the deleterious effect of sugar, the risk of passive cigarette smoke...or, for that matter, the return of Halley's Comet.
They have all been touted as potential planetary catastrophes by progressives.
Unfortunately, actual statistical evidence proves all of this to be absolute crap.
One of these days, we will all smarten up and stop listening to these people.
When you do, I will be there to welcome you back to sanity.
By , at
Wed Jul 14, 01:37:00 AM:
Thus far in this corner of TX it has been the coolest summer in years. While last year had three months of 100 degree days, I am not sure it has hit 100 yet, and we are almost halfway through the hot season. It has felt more like post-Labor Day here. For those who say “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity,” I recommend that they try 106 degrees and then revisit their claim.
An acquaintance of mine recently visited relatives in Quebec, where it didn't get below 85 at night. Now that is brutal!
When it is cooler in TX than in the NE in the summer, we have ourselves a statistical anomaly.
Has AGW Brian continued to welsh on his bet with Gary Rosen over who were more anti-Semitic: Republicans or Democrats? After all, Helen Thomas was a card-carrying Republican. :)
By Brian, at
Wed Jul 14, 02:28:00 AM:
1. I believe that last goader wasn't me but someone else, so CWCID.
2. I looked up the first IPCC report from 1990 and it did project accelerated Arctic melting. That may have been anticipated by even earlier analyses.
3. Thanks to Boludo for providing the original bet thread re anti-semitism - Gary did't seem interested in providing it. You'll see there the link I gave that found no trend between the left and right. It's a little screwed up now, but this should work:
http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/?p=1780
Bet terms are that TH gets to decide the winner, assuming he agrees to weigh in, so until such time I appreciate withdrawing the false claim that I failed to pay on a bet I've lost, when I haven't in fact lost it. Thanks!
4. Unfortunately (from my perspective), I've got way too many commitments going on and am going to self-ban myself from commenting here for a while, probably several months. I will check comments at this thread though in case TH decides I owe Red Cross a check, and he's also got my email.
I appreciate the always-civil responses I've received from TH and Escort81 despite my occasional crankiness, and the sometimes-civil responses from commenters, despite my occasional crankiness. I'll be reading, and will eventually comment again in a while.
By , at
Wed Jul 14, 08:42:00 AM:
"I looked up the first IPCC report from 1990 and it did project accelerated Arctic melting."
"Paul the Octopus" was eight for eight in his World Cup predictions. Paul called all the German matches correctly (even the Serbian upset) and then got the 3rd place match and the final correct. Along the way, Paul became an international sensation and even got death threats for his trouble -- Argentine TV put a surrogate Paul in a blender.
It's said that Heidelberg U wants to give Paul an endowed tank ... there's talk of a movie deal ... serious prizes can't be far behind.
Seriously, eight for eight is statistically significant. So saying that "Paul has psychic powers" is at least as scientifically valid as saying that "AGW is true." Just ask Karl Popper.
Because of the lack of proper experiments, we should call it Climate Studies ... not Climate Science. There's a lot of very smart people who went into string theory physics only to find that they're in a dead end because they can't do proper experiments. Because of this, many say that string theory isn't proper science. More pointedly, it's not getting funded like it used to.
Many posters here think that AGW is far from proven -- which is a scientifically polite way of saying that it's NOT TRUE. Personally, I'm convinced that AGW is a crock. But here's the takeaway: for at least the next few years there's almost nothing that can happen to prove Brian right and me wrong.
What does matter over the next few years is the politics.
By , at
Wed Jul 14, 09:51:00 AM:
Brian, you did not answer the point in the post re: ice melt. That a document proclaiming global warming would predict Arctic melting isn't a surprise. The question posed was whether the models predicted that PLUS increasing Antarctic ice.
If one end is gaining ice while the other is losing it, a first approximation would be that there's no significant warming, but a redistribution of heat. The simplest explanation would be a slight decrease in the tilt of the Earth. As it happens, that's exactly what's happening.
Now, the period of the axial tilt is about 42,000 years, so it may not be a significant contributor, but introducing an unproven assumption (i.e. AGW) as a cause before investigating the known influences is a mistake.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Jul 14, 11:49:00 AM:
By MTF, at
Wed Jul 14, 01:47:00 PM:
Iowahawk ministers to the disappointed religious of the sect of AGW.
By Catchy Pseudonym, at
Thu Jul 15, 09:49:00 AM:
Yay Tigerhawk. Fair and balanced... to quote some organization. Can't remember who.
I found this on your link which I thought was interesting:
"Using my gridded temperature data, the low for New York City was 6 degrees F above normal, which should happen 30% of the time (1.1 standard deviations away from normal). The high was roughly 20 degrees above normal, which should happen only 0.29% of the time (3.04 standard deviations away from normal). This is an unusually strong heat wave."
By Viking Kaj, at
Thu Jul 15, 03:20:00 PM:
you guys are missing it all. magnetic pole reversal and the south atlantic anomaly are the bigger problem. the sky is falling, wait until your cell phone doesn't work and you can't go outside for more than 10 minutes without getting skin cancer
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sun Jul 18, 01:55:00 PM:
Catchy, always check with Watts Up With That on climate worries - or, if you are an AGW doubter, check with Real Climate when you think you've got the slam dunk disproof. It's just good to get out of the echo chambers, y'know?
