[Newsbot]

Title: Cooling the warming hysteria
Category: Environmental
Posted By: mtbr
Date: 2008-12-29 08:29:17
Canadian

[mtbr]

The media only follows up on their stories when the results match the original predictions.

[C.M. Burns]

Cooling the warming hysteria
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN

If Mr. Bumble can say it and Dickens can write it then surely I'm not breaching online etiquette when I say that the Sun newspaper chain and Lorrie Goldstein are Asses! I'm gonna get all CSI on their asses and look for some truth amidst the rotting corpse of their journalism.

Quote:

This has been another disappointing year for global warming alarmists, which is why you haven't heard much about it in the media.

Haven't heard much about global warming in the media? Many may have been preoccupied with the global financial meltdown but that doesn't mean there haven't been plenty of stories about other meltdowns:

The melting of the Arctic ice cap - Times Online, UK
Arctic ice melting faster than predicted: expert - CBC.ca
National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado this year showed that Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level in 30 years - CTV.ca

In fact, there has been a massive amount of attention paid to global warming in the media this year. A few quick google advanced searches bears this out:

4,690 results from theglobeandmail.com for "global warming"
8,400 results from ctv.ca for "global warming"
1,400 results from cbc.ca/news for "global warming"

Need I go on?

Quote:

Global temperatures lately haven't been co-operating with Al Gore's simplistic claim in An Inconvenient Truth that the Earth's temperature rises in automatic lockstep with increasing concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases. Based on that incorrect premise, there hasn't been any warming since 1998.

The only thing simplistic about Al Gore's claim is Lorrie Goldstein's understanding of it. Mr. Goldstein has completely mis-stated the theory in order to suit his denier agenda. The theory actually states that increasing concentrations of GHG increase the heat retention of the atmosphere. What we experience as climate is the result of an incredibly complex and dynamic system involving just about everything on earth: the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the biosphere and yes, the sun. There's nothing simple about it.

Quote:

This year, preliminary estimates from the three leading agencies monitoring climate change, the British Meteorological Office (the MET), the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, place 2008 as the 10th, ninth and ninth warmest year on record, respectively.

"On record" means from 1850 (the MET) or 1880 (NOAA and Goddard), a flash in the pan compared to the Earth's 4.5-billion-year climate history.

Predictably, few media have noted 2008 is well down the list of "record" warmth. By contrast, in early 2007 when the MET predicted 2007 would be the warmest year ever, it garnered international headlines.

Well down the list? Since when is TOP TEN out of 158 well down the list? Few media noted that it is well down the list because IT'S SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

Quote:

As predictably, when the forecast turned out to be wrong, few media followed up. MET ended up classifying 2007 as the seventh warmest year on record, NOAA fifth and Goddard, tied for second. Now, 2008 has come in significantly cooler in each case.

That`s a play right out of the denier`s handbook. When the facts don`t fit, invent new facts!

What the MET actually said was this: "There is a 60% probability that 2007 will be as warm or warmer than the current warmest year" [1]

Where do you get YOUR facts from, Mr. Goldstein? I would have assumed that you know enough about journalism to get the facts from the source. Apparently, I was wrong. Do you have any business spreading this nonsense in a newspaper or does the Sun chain of papers no longer qualify?

Quote:

Finally, there's no such thing as an annual "global" temperature. It's a statistical average based on complex calculations, done in different ways.

Hang on a sec while I clean up the mess from my exploding brain. There is no such thing as annual global temperature and yet in the next sentence he gives it's definition?

Quote:

To be clear, the world's leading climate change monitoring agencies agree the Earth is warming abnormally due to mankind's influence based on 10-to-20-year temperature cycles and that either all or most of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.

So what was the point of Goldstein's nonsense printed above?

If 'all or most of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade', why write, "Based on that incorrect premise, there hasn't been any warming since 1998"?

If 'all or most of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade', why write, "Global temperatures lately haven't been co-operating with Al Gore's simplistic claim..."?

Why, Mr. Goldstein?

Quote:

However, global temperatures are also affected by natural factors, such as ocean currents, now said to be having a cooling effect.

Indeed.

Quote:

Someday, more media may realize you can't cherry pick information to fit the alarmist agenda, which most media subscribe to, and ignore everything else. But don't hold your breath.

Which media? Al Gore isn't the media, the MET office isn't the media. Who exactly are these media outlets that "... cherry pick information to fit the alarmist agenda"? It's simply another baseless assertion which serves only to support this ill-considered piece of denier drivel.

I'm simply not capable of expressing my outrage. No, Lorrie Goldstein, you can't cherry pick information to suit your global warming denier agenda. But that hasn't stopped you from trying, along with inventing a few non-facts of your own.


1. News Release
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/p ... 70104.html


Morons.

[BartSimpson]

C.M. Burns wrote:

tl;dr

Summary response: It hasn't warmed since 1998. That's TEN YEARS in which global warming has failed to warm the globe.

Deal with it.

But whatever you do, don't insist on telling me about global warming when there's no such thing happening.

[Zipperfish]

Put this one in the "Geez, it's cold out today therefore global warming must be a bunch of crap" file.

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish wrote:

Put this one in the "Geez, it's cold out today therefore global warming must be a bunch of crap" file.

More like, "Geez, I was told it would be so warm by 2008 that I would not need a jacket when I go outside in December but here it is colder than it was ten years ago. Maybe Algore was full of sh*t."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html

Quote:

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

[ziggy]

Time to drag out that list of envirofoiler quotes.

[BartSimpson]

ziggy wrote:

Time to drag out that list of envirofoiler quotes.

Here's a resource I use quite frequently:

http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Tech ... topic=2050

[BartSimpson]

"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus..."

- Michael Crichton, A.B. Anthropology, M.D. Harvard (RIP)

[N_Fiddledog]

BartSimpson wrote:

Here's a resource I use quite frequently:

http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Tech ... topic=2050

Thanks Bart. I haven't visited there in a while. I didn't know he was still updating.

And hey he's got a link to Apocalypse? No! online. I've been wanting to see that since it came out earlier in the year. I'm going to watch it right now.

In return for the great link have you seen this one?

Geologist Don Easterbrook paper at Watts

It came out today. Nothing new really. It's the idea that's gathering momentum lately about how Ocean Oscillations relate to past warmings and coolings more closely than CO2. This one's done in a crystal clear, readable way though, and I love his new graph where he makes projections for what might happen in the future based on the trends of the past.

Climate predictions graph

[Zipperfish]

I;'m not sure what to call Easterbrook--"alarmist" leaps to mind.

[N_Fiddledog]

Ah yes, I forgot Zip. This is your new strategy isn't it? Anybody who dares notice the world has been cooling the last few years is a conspiracy global cooling freak preaching an ice age, right?

No. That's not what he's saying. There actually are ocean oscillations. You can see the water warming or cooling patterns develop via satellite. It's not fringe science. Last year the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched from it's warm phase to it's cool phase, or from it's positive to it's negative. NASA has satellite imagery of this event.

Phases usually last about 30 years. The last PDO warm phase accounts for the warming spike from 1979 to 1998 which inspired Al Gore's global warming hysteria, except he attributed the warming spike to human activity, and increased CO2. This last ocean shift even had a name. They called it the Great Pacific Climate Shift. Easterbrook notes these ocean oscillations relate well to warming and cooling trends in the global climate. He suggests we should see a future pattern of warming or cooling similar to what we saw in the past based on shifting PDO. There's nothing alarmist about it. In fact if you look at the most likely pattern relating to the 1945 to 1977 cooling, there should be gradual cooling followed by a pleasant gradual warming, slightly above what we were enjoying in 1998.

It isn't just Easterbrook who's been noticing this, you know. Even your side has to admit it on occasion. Here's a link to a paper which appeared in Nature by Keenlyside et al where he speaks of a similar ocean influenced temperature pause, or cooling. He however suggests more warming will follow. He sees it more as a climate hiccup of sorts.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 06921.html

[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

Ah yes, I forgot Zip. This is your new strategy isn't it? Anybody who dares notice the world has been cooling the last few years is a conspiracy global cooling freak preaching an ice age, right?

Cheap shot, I know. But I suppose it's in return for all the cheap shots I get for constantly being referred to as an alarmist, although myself, and indeed a lot of people who believe that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are impacting planetary climate, are not alarmists.

He says:

Quote:

The bad news is that cold conditions kill more people than warm conditions, so we are in for bigger problems than we might have experienced if global warming had continued.

That's right, folks, WORSE THAN GLOBAL WARMING!!! He should get a powerpoint deck like Al Gore, filled with mile-high glaciers scouring away cities and Ethiopian kids building snowmen.

Please do remember that quote from this abstract to which you linked before referring to me as an "alarmist" in the future.

Quote:

No. That's not what he's saying. There actually are ocean oscillations. You can see the water warming or cooling patterns develop via satellite. It's not fringe science. Last year the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched from it's warm phase to it's cool phase, or from it's positive to it's negative. NASA has satellite imagery of this event.

Phases usually last about 30 years. The last PDO warm phase accounts for the warming spike from 1979 to 1998 which inspired Al Gore's global warming hysteria, except he attributed the warming spike to human activity, and increased CO2. This last ocean shift even had a name. They called it the Great Pacific Climate Shift. Easterbrook notes these ocean oscillations relate well to warming and cooling trends in the global climate. He suggests we should see a future pattern of warming or cooling similar to what we saw in the past based on shifting PDO. There's nothing alarmist about it. In fact if you look at the most likely pattern relating to the 1945 to 1977 cooling, there should be gradual cooling followed by a pleasant gradual warming, slightly above what we were enjoying in 1998.

It isn't just Easterbrook who's been noticing this, you know. Even your side has to admit it on occasion. Here's a link to a paper which appeared in Nature by Keenlyside et al where he speaks of a similar ocean influenced temperature pause, or cooling. He however suggests more warming will follow. He sees it more as a climate hiccup of sorts.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 06921.html

[/quote]

I understand the point the guy is making, and clearly these oceanic oscilllations have a huge impact on planetary climate in the decadal time periods. However, the abstract does not explain the current high levels of atmospheric CO2. If this is part of a regular twenty or thirty cylce, you would not expect CO2 levels to be so high. Perhaps the paper does explain this. A model has to reflect what we observe, so his model would have to account for that. Again, maybe he does in his paper.

My thinking would be that cyclical trends would continue, though on a slight positive slope due to a building up of CO2 emissions. In other words, due to higher than natural CO2 concentrations, a cooling trend will be warmer than it otherwise might have been.

Some sceptcis argue that CO2 is an insignificant driver (citing realtively stable CO2 temperatures during teh medieval wamr period and little ice age). Others speculate that current proxy data is faulty, that CO2 varies quite widely and that CO2 levels found today are not unusual. And still others say that the increase in CO2 is a result of increasing temperatures for the last hundred years or so, and the temperature increase is a result of some as-yet-understood multi-centurial cyclicl variation.

[BartSimpson]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

BartSimpson wrote:

Here's a resource I use quite frequently:

http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Tech ... topic=2050

Thanks Bart. I haven't visited there in a while. I didn't know he was still updating.

And hey he's got a link to Apocalypse? No! online. I've been wanting to see that since it came out earlier in the year. I'm going to watch it right now.

In return for the great link have you seen this one?

Geologist Don Easterbrook paper at Watts

It came out today. Nothing new really. It's the idea that's gathering momentum lately about how Ocean Oscillations relate to past warmings and coolings more closely than CO2. This one's done in a crystal clear, readable way though, and I love his new graph where he makes projections for what might happen in the future based on the trends of the past.

Climate predictions graph

Thank you!

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish wrote:

Cheap shot, I know. But I suppose it's in return for all the cheap shots I get...

I'll have you know I save my expensive shots for you.

My cheap shots are all saved for Avro.