I am going out to Las Vegas the week of February 16 to talk to clients in the insurance industry on the weather risks we face in the coming years and decades. The title of the talk, “Going Forward by Way of Looking at the Past,” is a play on words from the movie “Back to the Future.” As I was putting this together, it struck me as odd that the man-made global warming argument even exists. I am presenting many examples of past weather events that are similar to today, and I marvel at how climate alarmists have gotten away with this. If you’ve seen something before, why should the same thing happening now be the result of something completely different? We have had cold winters, warm winters, heat, drought, hurricanes, tornadoes – all this has happened before. How is all this somehow different, and why do some many people push it?

For instance, I am setting up next winter in my talk since insurance costs this winter, whether it be for homeowners, autos, etc., are going through the roof. The tentacles of the weather are into everything. I believe an El Niño is coming on and we are already looking at analogs for next winter based on cold Pacific Decadol Oscillation-El Niño factors. As you can see below, these are much colder than winters in the warm phase of this cycle.

Cold:

Warm:

We have examples of why we believed the current winter would be cold, and we used them to come up with this temperature forecast:

Winter so far by the way looks like this:

And this was our winter snow forecast for the winter, indicating where we thought snowfall would be above normal:

Given all this, why would you think CO2, or anything else, is responsible for any of this? Think about it. If someone wants to argue CO2 is having an effect, then you should be able to factor it into a forecast. I know for instance that warm water in the northeast Pacific after previous cold years results in a cold winter over the U.S. That was our idea, and we went with it. So why is someone saying, no, it’s CO2, when we have other winter cases, both warmer and colder, where CO2 was not a factor?

When making a forecast, you weigh all factors. So if you know there is great sentiment against you – most of the competition had much warmer temperatures and a less snowy outlook than ours – you want to make sure you position the client on the correct side against the forecast. It’s sort of a compromise between what you believe and what the consensus is to make sure the product is one that gives the client an advantage in the market place; a way of allowing competition and freedom to bring out the best product. The idea was not the product, the actual forecast was. And it’s up to the client to decide its value. Did I use CO2 considerations for any of this? Of course not. You can not wait until an event happens without forecasting it, and then say it was the result of a predetermined factor. You can not say some patterns are hotter, and some colder, but have no idea until after it happens, which one it is.

What’s more, if we look at temperatures through the geological time scale of the planet, there is no linkage anywhere.

From IPCC reviewer, Dr. Vincent Gray:

There are claims that the California drought is CO2-induced, That’s poppycock. It’s caused by the overall cooling of the tropical Pacific, which in turn means there is less moisture available for the southern United States. It has been forecasted for years by those of us who understand what happened back in the 1950s when we were in a similar cycle. In fact, it’s when the Pacific warmed and global temperatures actually went up that we had much more rain in California and across the South. Why? More El Niños. Now there are now less rains because the Pacific is cooling. What did you think would happen?

There are countless examples of this. I did say we were in a time of climatic hardship, but that was only because that in the Triple Crown of Climate idea, the shift from cooler to warmer leads to an increased threat of severe weather in North America. All one need do is go back and look at how this evolved in the ‘50s, '60s and 70s with hurricanes.

I can’t give away the details of my upcoming talk here – after all, that’s why they are having me out there. But what I do is simply try and give them an ante on where the weather is going based on where it has been. That may seem rather simplistic, but if you see something that has happened before and the same overall pattern is setting up, something similar will happen again. That someone else isn’t seeing what I am seeing because they won’t look, or the fact they deny it, would be of little concern to me except that it is leading to a forcing of an agenda that is counter to the freedoms and beliefs this nation was founded on. But that is for people in power to look and act on. As for me, it’s all about the pursuit of truth, and how it can help those that wish to hear it from me.

Which is what the insurance companies will hear from me on February 17.

Viva Las Vegas…

Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.