Columnist.
This article caught my eye. Its authors examine reasons for the pause in global warming, and coincidentally, the sun, the oceans and stochastic events show up. I say coincidentally because that's exactly what I opined would cause cooling, and got roundly trashed for by global warming proponents, seven years ago on The O'Reilly Factor in what I termed the triple crown of cooling.
We came out the gate with a cold winter outlook. In our forecast, the three months scored are December, January and February. We are about 50% through with winter now. The forecast that went out to clients in November followed the cold ideas we have had since last spring, and in fact the seeds for this winter were rooted in ideas about what happens when La Ninas weaken.
There are days in the climate debate I feel like the Will Ferrell character in the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skit. ... But it gets nuttier. WeatherBell was asked to help the crew stranded in the Antarctic sea ice with the weather, and we did. ... But this latest episode of AGW brainwashing is simply stunning: Environmental alarmists thought they could witness the effects of global warming by taking a voyage to Antarctica.
As winter gets ready to crank up over the coming weeks -- which, I must confess, given our Weatherbell.com cold winter forecast and the affect on our clients who heeded our advice, I have no qualms about -- I thought I would bring back a golden oldie to counter the revisionist history that is being pushed in the climate debate today. The same outlet that is now actively touting man-made global warming (which one isn't?) was not singing the same tune in the 1970s, and this Time magazine cover from April 9, 1977 proves it.
(With apologies to Clement Clark Moore.)
Satellites have detected a temperature of -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Antarctica, which is the coldest ever recorded. What I'm about to say isn't going to be popular with people on my side of the climate issue. We shouldn't be depicting the new record as anything but what it is: evidence that we're able to detect data in a way we couldn't before. By trying to construe this as something beyond that -- implying that it means it's the coldest *ever* -- is wrong. It's the coldest ever *recorded*. We could not see such things in years past.
If what's coming in the next 15 days is followed by what we at WeatherBELL believe will be a cold January for the United States, it will mean the late fall/winter periods of three of the last five winter seasons will have been colder than normal in much of the nation. The non-winter of '11-'12 is sticking out like a soar thumb when one considers the pick your pocket energy-wise, slap your face temperature-wise cold and snow of the mid and late winter last season well into what was a cold spring. By the way, cold springs are quite common when the Pacific is in its cooling phase (we call this a cold PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation]) and the Atlantic is in its warm phase (called a warm AMO [Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation]). Therefore, the warm spring of 2012 is not likely to be repeated anytime soon.
For the record: Haiyan was the *seventh* strongest recorded typhoon to hit the Philippines, which have been hit 58 times by super typhoons.
The people claiming that climate change is the cause for what has been labeled by the meteorological centers as a *category 4 landfall of Typhoon Haiyan* in the Philippines are either ignorant of the facts or lying about them. Earth to AGW alarmists: What you see is what category 4s do to buildings that can't withstand winds close to 150 mph.
It's a Matter of Right and Wrong
Should we blame CO2 for nice weather?
"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" --Captain Renault, Casablanca This just about sums up the attitude on Antarctic sea ice which continues to break records, this time doing so about 10 days *after* the annual average peak.
I would love to debate Dr. Michael Mann. He's a professor at Pennsylvania State University, and I'm a Penn. State Grad (Meteo. 1978). Enough people know me, as well as him, so we could charge a modest admission, fill Eisenhower Auditorium at PSU, and give all the money back to the PSU meteorology department whom I still love dearly in spite of my outcast status on the anthropogenic global warming issue.
And CO2 will be blamed
Why? How could it not? There's no way the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could come up with a different answer than it presented. Let's examine this. The amount of money invested in "green" technology would have been rendered worthless if their answer was that there is no man-made global warming. In addition, what would happen to the reputation and livelihood of all that have bought into this? Since they are the ones helping drive the train, how could they derail it?
With Arctic ice rounding the bend and starting well above last year's level, will anyone call to account people that said the icecap will be gone by 2013 (one of them being our secretary of state)? We are actually seeing some of the same folks who in 2007 said the icecap was in a death spiral now claiming their climate models forecasted this increase. If these people want to think "globally," then let's think globally -- as in total global sea ice, which is at the same level it was when this scam began gaining steam in 1990.
There are two events in my life I believe changed history that the weather had a hand in. The first is the assassination of JFK -- a day that was supposed to be rainy but turned out sunny, meaning the motorcade top was down for the assassin to have a clear shot. The other, the pristine weather on September 11, 2001 that allowed the terrorists their clear shot. The cloud shot says it all. Hurricane Erin was far enough offshore that the big, cool area of high pressure to the west and the strong sinking air mass lead to what is called in aviation as Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited (CAVU) conditions.
Over the years, I have wondered if many of the folks on the other side of the AGW debate actually believed what they were saying. In the warmth of your home it's pretty easy to make bold pronouncements about impending disasters 70 years down the road. But to actually believe it enough to take action? Well, that's admirable in a way -- I admire people that take a stand. But believing this enough to try it? I can't go that far.
The heartbreak of a storm like Hurricane Sandy, or any major "unexpected" event, is enough to overwhelm even the toughest of people. Sometimes there may not be a right answer as to what to do. And sometimes realistically stating the problem can seem cruel. But realism has to take over and be dealt with. This article is a good case in point.
A few years ago, when I started challenging people to make forecasts on where temperatures would be by 2030, I coined a term called the Triple Crown of Cooling. It's really more the Triple Crown of Climate. This was to make it clear that the sun, the oceans and stochastic events, such as volcanoes, were so important to the climate that it rendered CO2 -- at .04% of the atmosphere and 1/100th of the greenhouse gasses -- for all intents and purposes powerless in changing the earth's climate. That is not to say it does not have a role. I like the idea that the 33 degree Celsius of warming that is attributed to GHGs allows for .4 to .7C to be from CO2. But the magnitude of factors stacked against it keep it boxed in that range.
