Global Warming – Page 18 – artdiamondblog.com

Observed Climate “Not in Good Agreement with Model Predictions”

The author of the following commentary is a Princeton physics professor:

(p. A13) What is happening to global temperatures in reality? The answer is: almost nothing for more than 10 years. Monthly values of the global temperature anomaly of the lower atmosphere, compiled at the University of Alabama from NASA satellite data, can be found at the website http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/. The latest (February 2012) monthly global temperature anomaly for the lower atmosphere was minus 0.12 degrees Celsius, slightly less than the average since the satellite record of temperatures began in 1979.
The lack of any statistically significant warming for over a decade has made it more difficult for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its supporters to demonize the atmospheric gas CO2 which is released when fossil fuels are burned.
. . .
Frustrated by the lack of computer-predicted warming over the past decade, some IPCC supporters have been claiming that “extreme weather” has become more common because of more CO2. But there is no hard evidence this is true.
. . .
Large fluctuations from warm to cold winters have been the rule for the U.S., as one can see from records kept by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. For example, the winters of 1932 and 1934 were as warm as or warmer than the 2011-2012 one and the winter of 1936 was much colder.
. . .
It is easy to be confused about climate, because we are constantly being warned about the horrible things that will happen or are already happening as a result of mankind’s use of fossil fuels. But these ominous predictions are based on computer models. It is important to distinguish between what the climate is actually doing and what computer models predict. The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with model predictions.
. . .
. . . we should . . . remember the description of how science works by the late, great physicist, Richard Feynman:
“In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”

For the full commentary, see:
WILLIAM HAPPER. “Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again; The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with predictions.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 27, 2012): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Warming Planet May Cause Fewer High Clouds in Tropics, Allowing Heat to Escape into Space

“A technician at a Department of Energy site in Oklahoma launching a weather balloon to help scientists analyze clouds.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the leading proponent of the view that clouds will save the day. His stature in the field — he has been making seminal contributions to climate science since the 1960s — has amplified his influence.

Dr. Lindzen says the earth is not especially sensitive to greenhouse gases because clouds will react to counter them, and he believes he has identified a specific mechanism. On a warming planet, he says, less coverage by high clouds in the tropics will allow more heat to escape to space, (p. A14) countering the temperature increase.
. . .
Dr. Lindzen accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point “nutty.” He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate.
But for more than a decade, Dr. Lindzen has said that when surface temperature increases, the columns of moist air rising in the tropics will rain out more of their moisture, leaving less available to be thrown off as ice, which forms the thin, high clouds known as cirrus. Just like greenhouse gases, these cirrus clouds act to reduce the cooling of the earth, and a decrease of them would counteract the increase of greenhouse gases.
Dr. Lindzen calls his mechanism the iris effect, after the iris of the eye, which opens at night to let in more light. In this case, the earth’s “iris” of high clouds would be opening to let more heat escape.
. . .
“If I’m right, we’ll have saved money” by avoiding measures to limit emissions, Dr. Lindzen said in the interview. “If I’m wrong, we’ll know it in 50 years and can do something.”
. . .
“You have politicians who are being told if they question this, they are anti-science,” Dr. Lindzen said. “We are trying to tell them, no, questioning is never anti-science.”

For the full story, see:
JUSTIN GILLIS. “TEMPERATURE RISING; Clouds’ Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters.” The New York Times (Tues., May 1, 2012): A1 & A14.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated April 30, 2012.)

“Environmentalists” Yawn at Windmills Killing Thousands of Migratory Birds

(p. A15) Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks–as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act–are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.
A pernicious double standard is at work here. And it riles Eric Glitzenstein, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who wrote the petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He told me, “It’s absolutely clear that there’s been a mandate from the top” echelons of the federal government not to prosecute the wind industry for violating wildlife laws.
Mr. Glitzenstein comes to this issue from the left. Before forming his own law firm, he worked for Public Citizen, an organization created by Ralph Nader. When it comes to wind energy, he says, “Many environmental groups have been claiming that too few people are paying attention to the science of climate change, but some of those same groups are ignoring the science that shows wind energy’s negative impacts on bird and bat populations.”

For the full commentary, see:
ROBERT BRYCE. “Windmills vs. Birds; About 70 golden eagles are killed every year by turbines at California’s Altamont Pass, reports the LA Times..” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., March 8, 2012): A15.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated March 7, 2012.)

Global Warming Would Reduce Deaths from Flu

(p. 4) According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this January was the fourth warmest in the documented history of weather in the contiguous United States.
. . .
. . . , our warm winter may have one unforeseen and felicitous consequence: a drastic reduction in the incidence of influenza.
. . .
This year’s flu season, . . . , didn’t officially begin until late last month. And while a true number is difficult to reach — not every sick person is tested, for instance, and the cause of a death in the hospital can be clouded by co-morbidities — it is likely that no more than a few hundred people in America, and possibly far fewer, have died of the flu this winter. Indeed, by any measurement, the statistics are historic and heartening. For every individual who has been hospitalized this season, 22 people were hospitalized in the 2010-11 flu season. Even more strikingly, 122 children died of flu last season and 348 during the flu outbreak of 2009-10 — while this time around that number is 3.

For the full commentary, see:

CHARLES FINCH. “OPINION; The Best Part About Global Warming.” The New York Times (Tues., March 4, 2012): 4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated March 2, 2012.)

Millennials Wiser on Environment than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers

(p. 6A) “I was shocked,” said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who is one of the study’s authors.
. . .
Researchers found that, when surveyed decades ago, about a third of young baby boomers said it was important to become personally involved in programs to clean up the environment. In comparison, only about a quarter of young Gen Xers – and 21 percent of Millennials – said the same.
Meanwhile, 15 percent of Millennials said they had made no effort to help the environment, compared with 8 percent of young Gen Xers and 5 percent of young baby boomers.
. . .
The analysis was based on two long-term surveys of the nation’s youth. The first, the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future project, is an annual survey of thousands of high school seniors, from which data from 1976 through 2008 was used.
Other data came from the American Freshman project, another large annual national survey, administered by the Higher Education Research Institute. Those responses came from thousands of first-year college students, from the years 1966 through 2009. Because of the large sample sizes, the margin of error was less than plus-or-minus half a percentage point.

For the full story, see:
MARTHA IRVINE. “‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ Not a Mantra for Young People.” Omaha World-Herald (Sat., March 17, 2012): 6A.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated Thursday March 15, 2012 and had the title “Study: Young people not so ‘green’ after all.”)

Science Not Accurate at Predicting Storm Intensity

(p. D1) For scientists who specialize in hurricanes, Irene, which roared up the Eastern Seaboard over the weekend, has shone an uncomfortable light on their profession. They acknowledge that while they have become adept at gauging the track a hurricane will take, their predictions of a storm’s intensity leave much to be desired.

Officials with NOAA’s National Hurricane Center had accurately forecast that Irene would hit North Carolina, and then churn up the mid-Atlantic coast into New York. But they thought the storm would be more powerful, its winds increasing in intensity after it passed through the Bahamas on Thursday.
Instead, the storm lost strength. By the time it made landfall in North Carolina two days later, its winds were about 10 percent lighter than predicted.
It’s not a new problem. “With intensity, we just haven’t moved off square zero,” Dr. Marks said. Forecasting a storm’s strength requires knowing the fine details of its structure — the internal organization and movement that can affect whether it gains energy or loses it — and then plugging those details into an accurate computer model.
Scientists have struggled to do that. They often overestimate strength, which can lead to griping about overpreparedness, as it has with Irene. But they have sometimes underestimated a storm’s power, too, as with (p. D3) Hurricane Charley in 2004. And it is far worse to be underprepared for a major storm.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “Intensity of Hurricanes Still Bedevils Scientists.” The New York Times (Tues., August 30, 2011): D1 & D3.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated August 29, 2011.)

Global Temperatures May Have Flattened, Justifying Global Warming Scepticism

“Well-sited weather stations, like the one at top in Tucumcari, N.M., are more reliable than others, such as one in a Tuscon, Ariz., parking lot.” Source of caption: print version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below. Source of photos: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A2) “Before us, there was a huge barrier to entry” in the field of analyzing temperature numbers, says Richard Muller, scientific director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team and a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Many scientists are giving the Berkeley Earth team kudos for creating the unified database.
. . .
“I’m inclined to give [satellite] data more weight than reconstructions from surface-station data,” says Stephen McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician who writes about climate, often critically of studies that find warming, at his website Climate Audit. Satellites show about half the amount of warming as that of land-based readings in the past three decades, when the relevant data were collected from space, he says.
Such disputes demonstrate the statistical and uncertain nature of tracking global temperature. Even with tens of thousands of weather stations, most of the Earth’s surface isn’t monitored. Some stations are more reliable than others. Calculating a global average temperature requires extrapolating from these readings to the whole globe, adjusting for data lapses and suspect stations. And no two groups do this identically.
. . .
Calculating a global temperature is necessary to track climate trends because, as your TV meteorologist might warn, local conditions can differ. Much of the U.S. and Northern Europe has cooled in the last 70 years, Berkeley Earth found. So did one-third of all weather stations world-wide, while two-thirds warmed. The project cites this as evidence of overall warming; skeptics aren’t convinced because it depends how concentrated those warming sites are. If they happen to be bunched up while the cooling sites are in sparsely measured areas, then more places could be cooling.
. . .
Any statistical model produces results with some level of uncertainty. The Berkeley Earth project is no different. That uncertainty is large enough to dwarf some trends in temperature. For instance, fluctuations in the land temperature for the past 13 years make it extremely difficult to say whether the Earth has been continuing to warm during that time.
This possible halting of the temperature rise led to a dispute between members of the Berkeley Earth team. Judith Curry, Mr. Muller’s co-author and a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told a reporter for the Daily Mail she questioned Mr. Muller’s claim, which he published in an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal, that “you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.” She said that if the global temperature has flattened out, that would raise new questions, and scientific skepticism would remain warranted.

For the full story, see:
CARL BIALIK. “THE NUMBERS GUY; Global Temperatures: All Over the Map.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., November 5, 2011): A2.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Global Warming Reduces Bubonic Plague in U.S.

(p. D6) Global warming may have one minor but previously unknown benefit, scientists said this month: it may be cutting down cases of bubonic plague in the United States.
. . .
A study in this month’s issue of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene tracked climatic conditions in 195 counties in 13 Western states, from Washington to Texas, that reported even one plague case since 1950.
Cases have dropped over time, and the study concluded that rising nighttime temperatures since 1990 had helped. Warmer nights melt winter snowpacks earlier, leading to drier soil in rodent burrows. When the soil gets too dry, fleas die.

For the full story, see:
DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. “GLOBAL UPDATE; United States: Decrease in Bubonic Plague Cases May Be an Effect of Climate Change.” The New York Times (Tues., September 21, 2010): D6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated September 20, 2010.)

Increase in Cholera Not Caused by Global Warming

(p. D6) Cholera outbreaks seem to be on the increase, but a new study has found they cannot be explained by global warming.
A bigger factor may be the cycle of droughts and floods along big rivers, according to Tufts University scientists who published a study in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene this month.

For the full story, see:
DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. “GLOBAL UPDATE; Cholera: Climate Change Isn’t a Culprit in Increasing Outbreaks, Study Finds.” The New York Times (Tues., August 30, 2011): D6.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated August 29, 2011.)

Global Warming Benefits Commerce by Opening Northeast Passage

“The Northeast Passage Opens Up. The Arctic ice cap has been shrinking, opening up new shipping lanes. This has given access to oil and gas fields, as well as fishing in international waters that were not accessible before.” Source of caption and map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) ARKHANGELSK, Russia — Rounding the northernmost tip of Russia in his oceangoing tugboat this summer, Capt. Vladimir V. Bozanov saw plenty of walruses, some pods of beluga whales and in the distance a few icebergs.

One thing Captain Bozanov did not encounter while towing an industrial barge 2,300 miles across the Arctic Ocean was solid ice blocking his path anywhere along the route. Ten years ago, he said, an ice-free passage, even at the peak of summer, was exceptionally rare.
But environmental scientists say there is now no doubt that global warming is shrinking the Arctic ice pack, opening new sea lanes and making the few previously navigable routes near shore accessible more months of the year. And whatever the grim environmental repercussions of greenhouse gas, companies in Russia and other countries around the Arctic Ocean are mining that dark cloud’s silver lining by finding new opportunities for commerce and trade.
Oil companies might be the most likely beneficiaries, as the receding polar ice cap opens more of the sea floor to exploration. The oil giant Exxon Mobil recently signed a sweeping deal to drill in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean. But shipping, mining and fishing ventures are also looking farther north than ever before.
“It is paradoxical that new opportunities are opening for our nations at the same time we understand that the threat of (p. B13) carbon emissions have become imminent,” Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, said at a recent conference on Arctic Ocean shipping held in this Russian port city not far south of the Arctic Circle.
At the same forum, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia offered a full-throated endorsement of the new business prospects in the thawing north.
“The Arctic is the shortcut between the largest markets of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region,” he said. “It is an excellent opportunity to optimize costs.”

For the full story, see:
ANDREW E. KRAMER. “Amid the Peril, a Dream Fulfilled.” The New York Times (Tues., October 18, 2011): B1 & B13.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated October 17, 2011 and has the title “Warming Revives Dream of Sea Route in Russian Arctic.”)

“The tanker Vladimir Tikhonov in the Bering Strait.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.