In case you haven't noticed...

Where's Tim?

As you can read in the sidebar, Real Life often takes me away from posting here. Recently, the aforementioned Real Life has forced me into a hiatus that is now in its sixth week. I'll be back soon, hopefully no later than the week after next. Thanks for your patience!

AGW will make hurricanes worse! No it won't! Yes it will! Maybe.

Al Gore used the Katrina disaster to popularize the notion that global warming would make such monsters a routine occurrence. That notion had no scientific merit, but no matter: Gore had successfully injected it into the public discourse, and it took on a life of its own (for example, it was cited by one insurance company as justification for a rate increase request in Florida).

Today Science Daily brings us another exercise in speculative alarmism related to hurricanes (emphasis added):

The Earth's jet streams, the high-altitude bands of fast winds that strongly influence the paths of storms and other weather systems, are shifting--possibly in response to global warming. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution determined that over a 23-year span from 1979 to 2001 the jet streams in both hemispheres have risen in altitude and shifted toward the poles. The jet stream in the northern hemisphere has also weakened. These changes fit the predictions of global warming models and have implications for the frequency and intensity of future storms, including hurricanes.

Cristina Archer and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology tracked changes in the average position and strength of jet streams using records compiled by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the National Centers for Environmental Protection, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The data included outputs from weather prediction models, conventional observations from weather balloons and surface instruments, and remote observations from satellites.

So, how far has the average position of the jet stream shifted over that 23 year span? About 25 miles. That's nothing -- we're talking about the distance from one side of a large metropolitan area to the other -- but the researchers (and/or whoever wrote the press release) do their best to make it sound frightening.

Storm paths in North America are likely to shift northward as a result of the jet stream changes. Hurricanes, whose development tends to be inhibited by jet streams, may become more powerful and more frequent as the jet streams move away from the sub-tropical zones where hurricanes are born.

Here's the equation: Small shift poleward in the average position of the jet stream = more powerful and more frequent hurricanes. Al Gore, call your movie agent.

So, you're still not impressed with the 25-mile shift? Well, the author of the press release doesn't want us to rest easy:

The poleward shift in their average location discovered by the researchers is small, about 19 kilometers (12 miles) per decade in the northern hemisphere, but if the trend continues the impact could be significant. "The jet streams are the driving factor for weather in half of the globe," says Archer. "So, as you can imagine, changes in the jets have the potential to affect large populations and major climate systems."

Some questions for our researchers:

• Will the trend continue? How do you know?
  
• What was the trend before 1979?
  
• How long is the current trend likely to continue?
  
• How far poleward is the jet likely to go?
  
• Are there any natural mechanisms that will limit or halt the poleward march?

Oh, and is this tiny shift the result of global warming?

"At this point we can't say for sure that this is the result of global warming, but I think it is," says Caldeira. "I would bet that the trend in the jet streams' positions will continue. It is something I'd put my money on."

Whatever you may think about this speculation, let's be clear: it's speculation, not science. The study was about the shift in the jet stream, not about the mechanisms of hurricane development. Of course, that doesn't matter. Some scientists said it, and it fits the AGW template, so it will be reported.

Updates on the remarkable winter of 2007-8

Yes, yes, I know. Climate is long-term, and one cold winter does not a trend make. Still, even CoGW adherents ought to take note of the mounting evidence that this winter season is unlike any we've seen since.... since when?

Since this winter has been undeniably extraordinary, those who have much invested in the AGW paradigm have been forced into "Yeah, but" mode: "Yeah, you've never seen this kind of winter in your lifetime, but it's all because of La Niña. Even though we attributed the extraordinarily warm temperatures of El Niño year 1998 to AGW, the extraordinarily cold temperatures of La Niña year 2008 are a routine fluctuation. We expect the doomsday countdown to resume shortly."

Even as Solar Cycle 24 stubbornly refuses to establish itself (despite months of numerous premature announcements that it had started), our planet's northern hemisphere winter has thus far declined to respect the calendar, as is evidenced by the unusually heavy April snowstorm currently working its way across the northern plains of the U.S. and Canada.

How unusual is this winter in the U.S.? Here are just a couple of examples from the past week:

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, April 11:

The latest-ever start to the Mississippi River navigation season in Minnesota is unfolding today.

[...] The average opening date of the navigation season for the past 30 years has been March 20. In 2007, the first tow to make it to St. Paul arrived on March 29.

This year's late start, due to unusually cold spring weather, breaks the previous late record of April 7, set in 1978.

Boston Globe, April 8:

Some Maine syrup producers say the season is off to a late start with delays caused by cold weather and taps and tubing hidden by snow in northern Maine.

Bob Moore of Bob's Sugar House is busy boiling sap this week, but he'd be a lot busier if he could tap all of his trees. He said at least 75 percent of his 5,000 trees are unreachable.

"I have trees that still have 3 feet of snow around them," he said. "It's not looking good right now."

Maine's maple syrup production can start anytime between mid-February and late March. But like most agriculture ventures, the season is subject to the whims of the weather.

"As usual, for some folks, especially in the far south of the state, sugaring season is over," said Kathy Hopkins, a maple expert with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Skowhegan.

"But I doubt they'll be done tapping in The County until June," she said in joking reference to the state's northernmost county, Aroostook. "In some places, they just can't get to their trees and all their tubing is buried under snow."

On the other side of the world, southern China got its worst winter in 50 years. At the bottom of the world, the media shrieks whenever a piece of ice breaks off of an ice shelf, but we get nothing about the fact that overall, Antarctica has been cooling in recent decades. In fact, the just-completed antarctic summer has yielded still more extraordinary news: Surface snowmelt there is running about 40% below the average of the previous 20 years.

But never mind all that. Once La Niña subsides, we can get back to TEOTWAWKI.

The Ferengi Factor (Pretend AGW is real, and retire rich!)

"Who cares if nobody has proven a human influence on our climate? This is an opportunity for profits!"

JunkScience.com chief Steven Milloy had a chance to speak last week at a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. The conference was, in Milloy's words, a gathering of industries "that seek to make a financial killing from climate alarmism".

Milloy noted that attendees were remarkably uninterested in the question of whether or not climate change was truly -- for the first time in history -- caused by human activity. Thus, Milloy's attempt to bring the audience's attention to contrary evidence like the graph below went down like a lead balloon.

Rather, the focus remained on the various ways for businesses to maximize profits, assuming no change in the current political...um...climate.

If enough corporations begin to recognize a financial interest in keeping public and political opinions where they are right now, it may not matter if science slowly comes around to recognizing the dearth of evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis:

Virtually every speaker at the conference professed that they were either in favor of free markets or that they supported a free-market solution to global warming. But invariably in their next breath, they would plead for government regulation of greenhouse gases and government subsidies for alternative energy.

It’s hard to conceive of any good coming from a public policy in which facts play no substantial role in its development and words have no meaning in its public debate.

Winter 2007-8: It's all in how you look at it

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presents a straightforward acknowledgment that this winter has bucked the trend of recent years:

NOAA: Coolest Winter Since 2001 for U.S., Globe

The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.

The Associated Press, looking at the same press release, ignored NOAA's summary and zeroed in on the one thing that matters most to the CoGW:

Winter Has Been Warmer Than Average

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Winter storms and snow notwithstanding, this winter was still warmer than average worldwide, the government reported Thursday.

The greatest tragedy of L'Affair Spitzer

All moral and legal issues aside, the scandal enveloping New York governor Eliot Spitzer may have caused some collateral damage to the AGW political agenda in the U.S., to the dismay of true believers. As opined by SolveClimate:

Spitzer's rendez-vous, the night before Valentine's day s'il vous plaît, will unfortunately strike a blow at progress on global warming, whether through his resignation, unavoidable distraction if he stays in office, and/or his diminished effectiveness. He has been a Governor who has shown -- in the absence of federal action -- leadership on global warming, which began during his tenure as New York State attorney General, and whose good effect endures.

(Credit: Minnesota Monitor, Free Republic)

Whoever added this blog to StumbleUpon...

Thanks! And, welcome to all who came for a visit as a result.

The planet will be better off if you stay in bed

Reader Kevin J. pointed me to the story of Dutch student Yde Van Deutekom, who is inviting webcam viewers to pay him to stay in bed all day. The wonderfully-named environmentalist site TreeHugger notes the similarity of Yde's quest with this classic Joy of Tech cartoon (click link to see the whole thing), which shows how laziness can be repackaged as an ecological virtue.

Shield your eyes if you're writing a college research paper

Of all the global warming blogs in all the domains in all the world... she comes across mine.

One of the nice things about using a data service like Statcounter is that I usually find out pretty quickly when somebody has linked to this site. Today I found out that I had the distinct honor of being a case-in-point in a college freshman's lab exercise on reliable and unreliable sources of information on the internet.

In case you were wondering, I was singled out as an example of an unreliable source of information on global warming. As soon as I got over the shock and shame at being thus labeled, I read on.

Before I relate why Ms. Cooper determined my site to be unreliable, I thought it might be good to note the qualities that she thinks makes a site reliable and/or credible. To sum up, a reliable/credible source is:

1. Associated with a commercial publication of some kind; or
2. Associated with some known organization; or
   
3. Associated with a government, military or academic internet domain.
   

That's about it. It's safe to cite anything that comes from such sources.

How did I fail Ms. Cooper? My sins are threefold:

1. I use "sarcasm" in the "About the Heretic" section on the sidebar when comparing my credentials to those of Al Gore. I thought of it more as dryly humorous hyperbole, but okay. I guess her complaint here is that by the use of such humor, I have surrendered any claim to objectivity. However, objectivity is not my aim, as I explain in the next item.
   
2. In that same blurb I mention that I use this site to present my opinions on the various issues surrounding the global warming debate. I have never pretended that this site was to be seen as a source of original news reporting or original research. There are other excellent sites out there (many linked in the sidebar) which accomplish this quite well. My goal is to analyze what others are reporting as news or publishing as science, and to look at possible cultural and ideological trends therein. So, if I was dinged for not being an original source for news and research results... guilty.

I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that opinions are expressed on this blog!

3. I publish on Blogspot. To the same extent that anything published on a site ending in .edu, .mil or .gov is deemed automatically reliable, so anything published on whatever.blogspot.com is automatically unreliable. In both extremes, the judgment is made without regard to actual content. Although I do work for a university, this site is a personal project of mine and is unrelated to my current work. Too bad. If I was a college professor I could move my analyses to my departmental web page, and by virtue of the .edu domain it seems that my essays would be citeable. Nice racket, if you can get into it.
   

Please note that I am not accusing Ms. Cooper of attacking my point of view. In fact, she presents fellow heretic GlobalWarming.org as an example of a reliable site.

Ms. Cooper's assignment appears to have been about which kinds of sources should be citeable when writing a college research paper. Fair enough, but I think that the broad generalizations given by Cooper discourage critical thinking.

Better to have the following standard regarding internet sources: Cite whatever you want, but be prepared to defend your choices.

(P.S. Here's a philosophical poser: Was it okay for Ms. Cooper to cite this site in support of her thesis that this site should not be cited?)

Update on the indoctrination of our youth

WJBF-TV in Atlanta brings us this February 28 story of a boy who appears to have a fine future in politics:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger helped a student who fainted at a speech in Sacramento.

[...]

The boy and the Governor got a chance to talk later in the nurse's office. The student told the Governor he blames global warming for the incident.

A modest request to those who believe in anthropogenic "climate change"

Despite the name of this blog, some time ago many in the CoGW abandoned the exclusive use of the term "global warming" to describe current climate trends. "Climate change" is the preferred term now, since many weather events in recent years do not appear to fit the perception of what we would see on an unnaturally warming planet.

I will continue to use "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (AGW) to describe this ideology. Although atmospheric CO₂ concentrations continue to increase, global temperatures have more or less plateaued in the past decade. Since the plateau occurred at a warm average temperature, we've been treated to innumerable accounts of the fact that recent years have been among the warmest in recent history. So, despite the use of the term "climate change", it's clear that proponents are invested in creating the public perception that the earth is continuing to warm (and that such warming will soon accelerate out of control).

Climate change really is a term of art, because it allows CoGW adherents to insist that all weather -- wet or dry, hot or cold -- validates the AGW orthodoxy.

Floods in China: check. Drought in China: check. More hurricanes: check. Fewer hurricanes: check. Summer ice melt in the Arctic: check. Winter refreezing of Arctic ice that exceeds that which originally melted: check. Collapse of the West Antarctica Ice Shelf: check. Net increase in Antarctic ice: check. Record warm winter in 2006-2007: check. Record cold winter in 2007-2008: check.

And so on.

This leads me to ask a question of those of you who believe that human activity is negatively and catastrophically impacting the earth's climate:

Is the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis falsifiable?

I am asking this within the context of the scientific method. Integrity demands that a scientist, when proposing a hypothesis, list the conditions whereby the hypothesis would fall apart:

We believe that this hypothesis sufficiently describes the reality we are studying, but if anybody can demonstrate any of conditions a, b, c, d or e, our hypothesis is fatally compromised and it's back to the drawing board.

So, AGW folks: can you name any condition (series of weather events, temperature trends, etc.) that would make you doubt the current orthodoxy, or are we witnessing the most bulletproof hypothesis ever?

UPDATE: After a quick Google search, I was pleased to discover that this question has already occurred to minds much greater than mine. As I composed this post earlier today, I had the folks at RealClimate in mind (among others). It turns out that Roger Pielke, Jr. tossed the following rhetorical grenade into the midst of a RealClimate discussion about how awfully cold Antarctica is right now:

There are a vast number of behaviors of the climate system that are consistent with climate model predictions, along the lines of your conclusion: “A cold Antarctica and Southern Ocean do not contradict our models of global warming.”

I have asked many times and never received an answer here: What behavior of the climate system would contradict models of global warming? Specifically what behavior of what variables over what time scales? This should be a simple question to answer.

Thanks!

The ensuing debate is pretty interesting.

Pielke followed up on the question in his own blog. The debate is pretty lively in the comment section over there as well.

(Found via: Seeker Blog)

NOAA, in a fit of common sense, points out the blindingly obvious

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, often found in the AGW camp, made a surprising admission today:

A team of scientists have found that the economic damages from hurricanes have increased in the U.S. over time due to greater population, infrastructure, and wealth on the U.S. coastlines, and not to any spike in the number or intensity of hurricanes.

More people and more stuff on the coast? Wow, more damage!

“We found that although some decades were quieter and less damaging in the U.S. and others had more land-falling hurricanes and more damage, the economic costs of land-falling hurricanes have steadily increased over time,” said Chris Landsea, one of the researchers as well as the science and operations officer at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami. “There is nothing in the U.S. hurricane damage record that indicates global warming has caused a significant increase in destruction along our coasts.”

In a newly published paper in Natural Hazards Review, the researchers also found that economic hurricane damage in the U.S. has been doubling every 10 to 15 years. If more people continue to move to the hurricane-prone coastline, future economic hurricane losses may be far greater than previously thought.

Al Gore, call your office.

Flex Fuel(ishness): Eco-hostile Ethanol

If you own a vehicle that depends to any extent on ethanol to run, you may want to set your latte down before reading the following from a February 7 AP article:

The widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday. The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global warming.

The researchers said that past studies showing the benefits of ethanol in combating climate change have not taken into account almost certain changes in land use worldwide if ethanol from corn — and in the future from other feedstocks such as switchgrass — become a prized commodity.

"Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming," concludes the study published in Science magazine.

The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly "plow up more forest or grasslands," releasing much of the carbon formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains when U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels, the study said.

The rebuttal is pretty weak:

The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers, called the researchers' view of land-use changes "simplistic" and said the study "fails to put the issue in context."

"Assigning the blame for rainforest deforestation and grassland conversion to agriculture solely on the renewable fuels industry ignores key factors that play a greater role," said Bob Dinneen, the association's president.

Gotta love that ethanol. Touted as an earth-friendly alternative to petroleum, instead it brings us deforestation, rising food prices, food shortages (especially in third-world countries), and lots and lots of CO₂.


William Tucker writes in a February 13 American Spectator report that our country's current mentality regarding biofuels has roots going back more than 30 years:

From the beginning, the entire biofuels effort has been built on flimsy projections and dubious accounting that were seized upon by politicians eager to demonstrate they were "doing something" about energy. The whole fiasco can probably be traced to a single paragraph in Amory Lovins Soft Energy Paths, the 1976 book that inspired President Carter's embrace of "alternate energy" and convinced California Governor Jerry Brown that his state didn't need to build any more power plants. (Google "California Electrical Shortage" to see what happened there.) In one hasty brushstroke, Lovins outlined what a national biofuels industry might look like:

[E]xciting developments in the conversion of agricultural, forestry, and urban wastes to methanol and other liquid and gaseous fuels now offer practical, economically interesting technologies sufficient to run an efficient U.S. transport sector. The required scale of organic conversion can be estimated. Each year the U.S. beer and wine industry, for example, microbiologically produces 5 percent as many gallons (not all alcohol, of course) as the U.S. oil industry produces gasoline. Gasoline has 1.5 to 2 times the fuel value of alcohol per gallon. Thus a conversion industry roughly ten to fourteen times the physical scale (in gallons of fluid output per year) of U.S. cellars and breweries, albeit using different processes, would produce roughly one-third of the present gasohol requirements of the United States....The scale of effort required does not seem unreasonable.

In other words, since beer and wine were already one-twentieth the volume of our gasoline, a reasonable expansion of distilleries could supply us with one-third of our transportation needs. Unfortunately, this analysis contained a single oversight that has bedeviled biofuels ever since.

Notice that while Lovins estimated the size of the distilling industry, he never mentions the amount of land required to produce the crops. Hops and vineyards currently occupy 40 million acres of farmland. Using Lovins' figure of "roughly ten to fourteen times the scale," that gives us 480 million acres -- more than all of U.S. cropland put together.

Lovins also made a mistake. Although he mentioned that beer and wine are "not all alcohol," he forgot to factor this into the final equation. Wine is 12 percent alcohol and beer is about 5 percent, so let's take 7 percent as an average. This means we must again multiply those 480 million acres by a factor of fourteen. That leaves us with 6.5 billion acres - three times the area of the United States, including Alaska -- in order to produce one-third of our transportation fuel needs in 1977. On this fatal error was the entire U.S. ethanol industry built.

Regardless of how we got here, the news that ethanol is likely doing more harm than good is not likely to lead any time soon to a rethinking of our energy policy.

Punxsutawney Phil could be out of a job soon

Rick Kollinger:


(For those of you who don't know who Punxsutawney Phil is, you can read more here)


Groundhog Day 2009 update: A big HOWDY to all of you who arrived at this blog post via Google Image Search!

Groundhog Day 2010 update: See Groundhog Day 2009 update.

Allstate's prophets seek more profits in Florida

Allstate recently tried to push through a 42% premium rate increase on its Florida customers, using as its justification unscientific wild guess about future weather conditions, as this article reports:

Now we know why Allstate wanted a 42-percent increase in home insurance rates. The company is using an unapproved model that factors the growing threat of global warming.

Last month, company executives objected to a Senate subpoena. The state tried to suspend their license, and Governor Crist threatened to sue them.

Now Allstate executives said they aren't price gouging. They say they're just very concerned about climate change, and trying to make sure they keep rates in tune with the growing threat. The ocean is a hurricane's fuel tank. Warmer waters could mean more and stronger storms (though this is currently a subject of scientific debate).

"It's my professional opinion and others at Allstate, it appears that the increase in sea surface temperatures and the near term effect of hurricanes is something that is real and is a need that we need to consider for the protection of our insurers," said Allstate Floridian's Ryan Michel.

Kudos to the article writer for noting that the link between warmer waters and hurricane frequency and intensity has not been established.

Allstate's Florida customers really ought to ponder whether they really are "in good hands".