Doomed Planet

The AGW Scam Runs Cold

climate fraudOne thing that CAGW sceptics and alarmists seem to agree on is that, as both sides say, ‘weather is not climate’.  Each camp trots out that line whenever the other cites a particularly hot or cold spell to support its position. And whilst the aphorism is true in general, its power in the hands of alarmists is waning — a case study in the law of diminishing. I’ll return to this point later.

At about this time last year and the year before, Gavin Schmidt, the soon to-be-redundant, number-crunching head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a catastropharian nonpareil, revealed his agency’s very elastic global surface temperature record. This is always accompanied by the gleefully morose warning ‘this year is likely to be the hottest ever recorded’. Under his watchful eye and, it must be said, his hand (or is it merely a thumb on the scale?), so it proven to be.

Here’s how it played out in 2014. On January 16, 2015, NASA GISS issued a statement jointly with NOAA NCDC announcing that 2014 was the ‘warmest year in the modern record’.  As there is no shortage of scientifically semi-illiterate and terminally credulous reporters, this was trumpeted by the global media as yet further “proof” the planet was speeding toward its sweaty death throes. However, on closer examination, it turned out that 2014 beat the previous record (2010) by a mere 0.02C, well within the margin of error of 0.10C.  Schmidt later conceded that they were only 38% certain that 2014 was, after all, a record. You can read all about this from a number of sources, but why not use the one least likely to call out any irregularities on the part of true ‘climate scientists’? That would be the ABC, in other words.  the ABC.

Gavin must have learned his lesson because 2015 presented a different story. Here’s how this one was reported by Climate Central, benignly described described by Wikipedia as a “non-profit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science” but, as the casual visitor to its website will discern at a glance, a bottomless pit of warmist alarmism.

2015 Shatters Hottest Year Mark; 2016 Hot on its Heels?

It’s official: 2015 was the hottest year on record, beating out 2014 by the widest margin in 136 years of record keeping, U.S. government agencies announced Wednesday.

The year’s incredible heat serves as a stark reminder of how much the Earth’s temperature has risen due to the steady build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities like power generation, transportation and clear cutting of forests. That temperature reached the point in 2015 where it was 1°C (1.8°F) above that of the late 19th century at the same time as carbon dioxide levels likely permanently rose above 400 parts per million.

“2015 was remarkable even in the context of the larger, long-term warming trend,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a statement.

Both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that 2015 easily took over the top spot from 2014.

So the difference between 2014 and 2015 was a whopping 0.13C, just outside the margin for error.  What all this means is that 2015 could have been cooler than 2014 by 0.03C or hotter by 0.23C.

Well here we are at the end of November, 2016, and Schmidt is yet to produce his annual alarm that things have never been hotter, the need for more funding and research never more urgent and the need for places to hide from well-versed sceptics beyond urgent.  Perhaps he is busy sending out resumes. But let us give Schmidt the benefit of the doubt. Sooner or later, as sure as the sun comes up tomorrow, he will be swearing blind that “the science” leaves no doubt 2016 has been the all-new and improved ‘hottest ever’. But at a local level what do we see?

I spent the last week in October in Adelaide.  It was cold.  I have just returned from a couple of weeks in Perth and surrounding districts, including Kalgoorlie. On a number of occasions we had the heater on at night and never felt tempted to go for a swim. This was a direct contrast with the same time the previous year.  In fact, the southern corner of Western Australia had its coldest spring for many years.  It’s been much the same around here in Kiama, where I live. My Quadrant Online editor in Melbourne has been likewise shivering, his heater working overtime to the delight of the household cat and his power supplier. From further afield I hear that Tokyo had November snow for the first time since 1962.

This is where I say, where’s all that global warming?  To which the alarmist will reply, you guessed it, ‘weather is not climate’. The problem for your parroting alarmist is that the more the weather refuses to confirm doom-laden prognostications of catastrophic warming, the weaker becomes the ‘weather is not climate’ defence. Sure, Age and Sydney Morning Herald reporters will still believe it, but that is to be expected from two of Australian journalism’s most conspicuous sheltered workshops.

Catastrophic warming, as opposed to beneficial warming bestowed by an increase in growth-promoting atmospheric CO2, is premised upon a putative amplification of normal warming above some idealised norm. Amplification should be agnostic. Warming that occurs naturally through regular El Nino events should be just as amplified as CO2-induced warming.  For the outcome to be catastrophic warming, each year should be noticeably hotter than the last, not hotter just around the margins. That hasn’t happened for almost 20 years.

And even as I write, the satellite temperature data shows ‘the steepest drop in global temperature on record’ — steeper than the crash following the intense 1998 El Nino, up to then the most severe of the recorded era.  If there is an amplification effect, why hasn’t it kicked in? The years 2010, 2014 and 2015 were not noticeably hotter than each other but, at least from my experience, the latter part of 2016 was noticeably colder than last year.

The alarmist workaround for this inconvenient truth is that the “missing” heat has hidden itself in the lower ocean. And if it is not hiding in the briny deep, well then it must be manifesting itself as an increased incidence of that extreme weather we keep being told is everywhere and growing, especially when news of bushfires fills the front pages.  The problem with this scenario is that if CAGW is predicated on additional heat being trapped in the atmosphere then, before it wreaks havoc with rising sea levels or extreme weather, it must first appear as additional heat in the atmosphere.  And the radiosonde record clearly shows that it hasn’t.

President-elect Donald Trump has branded global warming a gigantic hoax. Wouldn’t it be nice if members of the Turnbull government tapped reserves of intestinal fortitude, aired their private doubts and did likewise — perhaps by alerting the Victorian government that there will be funding consequences if it persists with plans to shut down a brown-coal generator that supplies better than 20% of the state’s electricity.

Yes, I know, with this lot it is simply too much to hope for. Sigh.

 

26 thoughts on “The AGW Scam Runs Cold

  • brian.doak@bigpond.com says:

    End-of-the-world scares are so motivating. Such scares can cause religions can grow around a frightened flock, and solidarity is maintained by extending the date for the climactic end as events fail to correspond with the predictions.
    In the US in the early mid 1800’s a group was lead to believe a wicked world would end in 1844. In disappointment an SDA group and others claimed the non-event was still imminent and the JW group recalculated adding 30 years to 1874, then adding 40 years to 1914 and claimed WW1 marked the start of the end. A century plus decades later each group maintains the original motivating fear/hope.
    So once a compelling idea is embraced it may endure for generations and global warmists could be just as tenacious in clinging to their ideology!

  • Rob Brighton says:

    I cannot help but recalling that Phrenology was once a proven science and hysteria was a condition suffered by women and proven by medical experts the world over.

    As I try and stick to what the scientists say, AGW causes me a great deal of cognitive dissonance, I think primarily due to the leeches tooling around the world in clouds of CO2 so they can yet again tell me I need to pay more for the temerity of wanting lights and refrigeration.

    I don’t know well enough to do the math myself and so I am required to accept the science but the lies make it harder every day to do so.

    • padraic says:

      I like the reference to gullible boy and girl reporters. The ABC and SBS has been spewing catastrophe and horror about the Great Barrier Reef over the past 48 hours which they of course claim is due to AGW. Their activist sources must be worried about the Indian coal mine in North Queensland getting closer to starting. They couldn’t give a damn about the Reef – it’s the coal mine they are after. AGW is now being used to push every ratbag activist barrow. The boys and girls are also pretty dumb. Their knowledge of science is appalling. On another channel I heard a gullible girl (in relation to the new scurvy scare)that cooking vegetables too long damaged the minerals (not the vitamins). What dills are being churned out of our universities?

  • ian.macdougall says:

    My Quadrant Online editor in Melbourne has been likewise shivering, his heater working overtime to the delight of the household cat and his power supplier. From further afield I hear that Tokyo had November snow for the first time since 1962.
    This is where I say, where’s all that global warming?

    And that’s where I say that could very well be it!
    Global warming means increased energy in the atmosphere and oceans, which shows up in sea-level rise. But one effect of it can be increased atmospheric circulation: hot winds from low latitudes pushing into the higher latitudes, causing polar ice and glaciers to melt (as they are doing) and the hot winds to cool before emerging from the high latitude region and heading back for a lower one, to cause the denialostriches of southern Australia to turn up their electric blankets, while complaining of global cooling and cursing the ‘fraud and hoax’ of AGW.
    Thermometer readings can be endlessly disputed. But the satellites used to determine sea level use the centre of the Earth as their principal and absolute point of reference. And they show that the world’s ocean is rising, meaning incontrovertibly that the planet is warming: spelt W-A-R-M-I-N-G.
    But what surprises me is that you leave out the most powerful denialostrich argument of all: the Earth could not possibly be warming, because if it was, it would be bad for established business. And especially for the fossil carbon business.

    • RayB says:

      It is a waste of my time to reply, but here goes anyway.
      Ian, you must be very gullible if you are willing to believe that published satellite measurements of sea level rise can be treated with any reliability. When it is considered that the oceans slosh back & forth across their width twice a day, plus they are constantly rippled by waves up to 10 metres high, how can someone ACCURATELY determine that the worldwide oceans are rising by 0.003 metres every year?
      When the high tide starts to wash across the forecourt at Sydney Opera House, I will believe it, but not before.

    • Peter OBrien says:

      Was the snow in 1962 caused by warming as well?

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    So what you are claiming Ian is that actual cool weather is due to warming climate. Hahahahaha

    • lloveday says:

      Thanks for the synopsis KK; justifies my decision to stop reading the rants.

    • ian.macdougall says:

      Believe it not, Keith, but there are fridges driven by a gas flame: still in use. Intuition and common sense say they should not work, but there are excellent reasons from physical chemistry for them to do so.
      Yes, what I am claiming is that more intense atmospheric circulation due to a warming in the oceans and atmosphere, can move freezing cold air from the higher latitudes towards the equator.
      It’s not rocket science, and there is no hahahahaha about it.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Breaking news

    Global warming causes colder weather

    Hahahaha

  • en passant says:

    Regrettably I will not be commenting on any posts until my complaint to the AHRC against Ian McDougall has been resolved for calling me a racist.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Sadly Ian you seem to be able to say anything to back your faith no matter how silly.

    Ian the physics and mechanics in fridges are quite a bit different than the science of meteorology. And certainly not as simple nor as well understood. Your claims on how weather is generated are simplistic not proveable.
    Do you understand how convection warms the air and causes it to rise?

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Do you understand how the ocean currents affect weather?
    Do you understand how clouds are formed?
    Do you understand the interaction of all these plus local topography, onshore and off shore and prevailing winds affect weather patterns and define regional as well as global climate?

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Well Ian I understand air is warmed by convection and it rises . As it rises it cools. The hot air travelling to the polar regions is just absurd. As the air travels across the cooler ocean surface toward the poles it is cooled long before it reaches there… due to convection. Similarly the cold currents from the Antarctic cool the water before it flows north in the great currents such as the Australian West Coast current and the Humbolt Current cooling the air that comes into contact with it until it is warmed by the sun in the warmer latitudes, The degree of warmth depends on many factors but primarily the absence or per Elenor of clouds and the resulting prevailing winds like the SETrades.

    I’m a sailor and have read extensively books on meteorology and currents etc written by RN officers. They have a body of empirical and observational knowledge dating back about 600 years.

    So yes I understand many aspects of what causes weather … but it is impossible to determine everything about weather and its causes.

    But I can tell you quite definitely cold weather isn’t caused by warming climate or co2 concentrations.

    Hahahahaha gee you are fun.

  • ian.macdougall says:

    Keith:


    Well Ian I understand air is warmed by convection and it rises . As it rises it cools. The hot air travelling to the polar regions is just absurd. As the air travels across the cooler ocean surface…. Etc

    Well Keith, to continue your fun, and give you a few more giggles.
    In your meteorology training, I am sure you must have become acquainted with the fact that the four main layers of the atmosphere are differentiated from one another on temperature criteria. As we ascend into the familiar troposphere from the surface of the Earth (that all birds and most aircraft fly in) the air gets progressively colder; not hotter as you and common sense suggest. ‘High’ air is colder than ‘low’ air. Any mountaineer will tell you that, and we’ll call it Counterintuitive Fact 1.

    But as we pass from the lowest layer (troposphere) into the one immediately above it (the stratosphere) a weird counterintuitive change occurs the other way. The stratospheric air gets progressively warmer as we rise in it (Counterintuitive Fact 2), until we get to an altitude of around 50 km above the surface, where the mesosphere begins and it starts getting progressively colder again. And the further we rise up into that next (mesospheric) layer, the colder the air in that layer gets: Counterintuitive Fact 3.

    However, when we get to the top of the mesosphere, at about an altitude of 80 km, it starts getting hotter again. We are in the thermosphere, and at its highest reaches it is so hot that for early designers of spacecraft it presented a formidable problem. Although of very low density (that air was very ‘thin’) it was so incredibly hot that it was feared spacecraft would just burn up in it (ie on the outward journey from the Earth to wherever, never mind the return.) Counterintuitive Fact 4.

    See http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V7e/knowledge/encyclopedia/me006.htm

    But wait. There’s more!

    A glance at the weather map that follows the TV News (preferably not as broadcast by the choke! caaargh! splutter! hawk! spit! ABC) shows prevailing wind, pressure cells and cold fronts moving up to Australia from the Southwest and the Southern Ocean. Where does the air in these weather cells, fronts etc come from? Two possibilities spring to mind:
    1. Air is generated from nothing in a sort of big bang factory somewhere inside the Antarctic Circle. This hypothesis has yet to find general scientific support.
    2. Warm stratospheric air descends into Antarctica from high altitudes.
    “Radiative cooling over the Antarctic ice sheet produces very cold, dense air that flows away from elevated areas and is replaced by subsiding air from above. The resulting katabatic winds accelerate downhill, enhanced by the confluence of glacial valleys. Katabatic winds blow with great consistency over large areas. At the coast they lose their driving force and soon dissipate offshore.
    “Low-pressure systems near the Antarctic coast can interact with katabatic winds to increase their strength. Resulting wind speeds can exceed 100 km/h for days at a time. Wind gusts well over 200 km/h have been measured.”
    http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/environment/weather

    In other words, ‘warm’ high Stratospheric air falls into the somewhat colder Antarctic Troposphere gets progressively cooled as it descends close to the Antarctic ice, and then flows out in all directions as katabatic winds, interacting with circular systems off the Antarctic coast to give us our standard weather patterns.

    I realise that by now you must be rolling round in a state of near-apoplexy, and I hope visitors calling on you tomorrow don’t find to their horror that your head is lying in the middle of the floor, having been giggled off.

    Well in that sad event they will at least have the consolation of knowing you departed happy.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Yeah yeah whatever. Ian you claimed global warming causes cold weather. That mate is absurd and the pseudo explanation of how hot air rises to cool and then warm again to descend and melt the ice adds nothing but more absurdity. Warm air falling not rising. Air is warmed by convection not by the sun. So many absurdities.

    Your rants just get you into deeper water where the temps are far cooler than the surface temps. Oops there’s another of those absurdities.

    Btw which reminds me, surface temps, your mates never talk about them anymore. Do you wonder why? Could it e because they are cooling?

    Great fun mate keep it up.

    I’ve read meteorology, self taughtand thankfullly, if you are an example, never been trained…. to believe all the sorts of c..p you propose.

    I also don’t have a floor I have a deck. I live on my yacht and am acutely aware of weather… and climate. Often my life depends on me reading and understanding such things. You well you’re an academic who has never been tested. Your rants confirm that.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Point one. I never said higher air is warmer. I said hot air rises and as it rises it cools.
    You are illerate.
    Point 2. Ever heard of the ozone layer? That’s were temps can rise but this level and thise above have jack s… to do with weather. Why? Well Ian the amount of air in these layers is neglibile.

    Read with greater depth Ian and you’ll learn and understand all weather and climate only occurs in the lower layers (about 10 to 12 miles) of the atmosphere… not these higher altitudes you are silly enough to hang your hat on.You see in these altitudes, as in space, there is no air and temps are either extremely high or low depending on the effect of the sun.

    All pretty basic stuff Ian and really very easy to understand if you are at all well read and don’t just rely on picking up scant knowledge from a few internet articles. But that’s what you apostles of the global warming scam have always done.

    Give it a bone Ian you are out of your depth and are only confusing yourself.

    Ps one of my ancestors was named Arthur Edwin Kennelly, its from him I became interested in the earth’s atmosphere and my son became an electrical engineer.

    This bloke has a layer of the atmosphere named after him along with a bloke called Heaverside.
    He was also Thomas Edison’s chief electrical engineer. He’s a legend in our family and we were all indoctrinated with his history.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Ian prevailing winds are not shown on the to weather maps. Prevailing winds are those that mostly blow in a particular region. They mostly blow all year round but do not blow all the time. Eg South East Trades in our region. On and Off shore winds blown morning and night. East Coast lows can bring winds from onshore … at any time. Storm generated winds are variable. Cyclonic winds are circular and vary.All these are shown in the maps but only their direction is ever mentioned.

    Australian weather comes from tropical regions as well Antartic regions. Often with no winds.

    Think Monsoons and cyclones, Indian Ocean low pressure system bring rain. Indian Ocean highs bring droughts.

    Antarctic weather and katabatic winds. Yes katabaticwind occur in the antartic but only because the lower air in depressions and valleys is not as cold as the air on the mountain sides and as the general principle colder air sinks and warmer air rises applies … we get katabatic winds.
    You should study what effect the great southern ocean currents has on surface temps and winds. They exert greater effect on our weather..

    Yawn. I’m tired now you should really read more… with an open mind.. … but you won’t cos if you do you would have your fundamental belief in global warming shattered.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Now that you are starting to learn a little about weather I might introduce you to ocean currents. While the Antartic is the thermostat the currents are the veins.

    The current in the Great Southern ocean swirls round and round the Continent. While not freezing the water is very cold.

    Now intreputing this merry go round are the tips of two other continents. That’s right Australia and South America. Now the icy water flows into them and up the west coast of both. West Australian current and the Humbolt current. Both feed into the gsun equatorial currents and then one into the northernIndian I ocean and the other into the Coral Sea and then down the east Coast of Australia.

    Both these systems dominate our weather.

    Now humour me a little. Let’s say the earth’s axis tilted slightly as it does from time to time. Say sufficient to move the South Pole eastward and the Nirth Pole westward. What would be the result of this impact on our weather?

    Let’s see using logic. The Antartic would melt in the west and expand in the east. Right?

    The GSO currents would contact theAntartuc further to the east and the flows into the Humbolt would be cooler. Right?

    The flow on to the sub equatorial current and the Coral Sea would lower the surface temps as well as the temps in the Great Australian East Ciast current. Right?

    There wouldbetwo pretty obvious reduction in weather events.

    1. Fewer cyclones. 26.5 degrees is the surface temp required to form and sustain cyclones.
    2. Less force and less prevalence of the South East Trades.

    Now the GSO current would also contact the ice for a lesser period,therefore it would be safe to say the Australian West Coast Current going would be warmer, and easier fir the air to collect and raise moisture. Evaporation would be easier … though I’m omitting the effect of clouds.

    Result
    1. wetter winters on the Australian continent.
    2. Fiercer thunder and electrical storms across Australia

    Well Ian all those things are happening now.

    Snow is another oddity at the moment. Snow in SA and Tasmanian has occurred on Nov\Dec for the past two years.

    It may very well be that Antartica is also expanding northwards. I don’t know.

    These things Ian make global warming less and less likely.

    Cheers keep up your reading. I’d advise older books written by Royal Navy officers. Ignore anything from academia. Graduates full the Bureau of Meteorologyand every ocean sailor will tell you they are always wrong.

    Cheers

  • ian.macdougall says:

    Keith:

    Your 3 latest rants are noted.
    Cheers, and all the best for the festive season.
    Over and out.

    PS: I am not an ‘academic’ (however defined.)

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