I always get the impression that you're avoiding making a point in these diaries. What's your position?

... the Northern Hemisphere is now being bathed in reality. The Arctic is showing great activity, sending strong highs one after the other, in ever more meridional trajectories, bringing snow and frost to temperate regions. This is a long way from what those who called for the melt of the North Pole expected.

That final statement directly contradicts the statement leading up to it.

First, in general, Global Warming, whether anthropocentric or not, implies greater climate extremes of all sorts, since the climate is a heat engine.

Second, cold being brought down from the Arctic implies warmth being brought up to the Arctic ... as that is how weather systems work ... the snow and frost being brought down toward temperate regions in the winter is exactly what those who are warning of the melt of the North Pole would expect.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

"In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that at the current level of emissions, summer sea ice could vanish completely anytime from 2040 to beyond 2100. But the extensive losses during the past two summers have led scientists to speculate that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free in the summertime much sooner than anticipated. In October, scientists reported that the thickness of winter sea ice plummeted after the 2007 minimum, showing that the ice pack is not only shrinking but is decreasing in overall volume (Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L22502; 2008)."
http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0901/full/climate.2008.142.html

There is a fair amount of bollocksy stuff here.

The story of a TV weatherman "with a 20 year career" suddenly expressing doubts about global warming after a few colder-than-usual months would be like a head waiter at a 3-star restaurant in Paris, with many years' experience, suddenly becoming a skeptic as to the theory that salmonella bacteria in the food can make people ill. Based on that we are supposed to believe that all the toxicologists and epidemiologists are just out to scare us into increasing their funding?

Solar radiation intensity does exhibit a cyclical variation correlated with the 11-year sunspot cycle. We are currently near the minimum. However, the two hottest years ever (1998 and 2005) were also in the lower half of the solar cycle. The solar cycle is just too weak to explain the annual temperature variations.

Indeed, the change in solar radiation over the cycle is less than 0.2W/m2 arriving at the surface of the earth. The estimated radiative forcing of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel burning is about 1.6W/m2 or 8 times bigger.

For these estimates see wikipedia:

Solar Variation

CO2 concentrations

CO2 radiative forcing

For many years the climate-change deniers have said that "correlation is not causation", as if climate change science were based only on a correlation between observed CO2 and observed temperatures. However, this goes both ways: just because you have one year that is colder than the previous ones does not mean that CO2 is irrelevant to global warming.

Real capricorns don't believe in astrology.

from a friend of a friend's son who works in the merchant marine says fully loaded oil tankers are parked in the Gulf just waiting for the word to increase prices again.

Scamming scumbag banksters are taking the government bailout money to set up the Globalist Green Gestapo department.  I shall cease to re-cycle.

You do not get to simply compare the current year to the two, three or even five immediately preceding years. That's not how thirty year rolling averages work...

And thirty year rolling averages are the relevant metric here, because if you look at five or ten year averages, you're modelling the noise, not the signal.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Chad Myers is a meteorologist with a career of more than 20 years, working for a reference news network.

Showman / scientist, meteorology / climatology; and, as others pointed out, strong winter highs  / growth or even stabilization of the polar ice cap.

This diary is like think tank scholarship. As Colman asks, wha's the point?

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

There were many people who made a good living for years declaring that the thinning of the ozone layer could not be anthropogenic because we as a species are too puny to "mess with Mother Nature."  The minute that DuPont folded its tent on CFCs, they got religion and realized that stratospheric ozone was being depleted by the release of man-made chemicals.

Climate change is following the same pattern.

Watched a program on Gusher of Lies on CSPANII today and was astonished once again how moot this debate is.  I propose the thought experiment of zero emissions for everything instead.  Let's try and figure out how to feed, clothe, and house the world's population with a zero emissions manufacturing system.  That seems to me to be a more worthy goal than arguing over whether the garbage we spew out into the world is lethal, crippling, or without any effect at all.  Whatever it is it's waste and a sign of inefficiency and an opportunity to save or make $$$$.

Solar IS Civil Defense