The AMS Scolds Rick Perry for Believing the Oceans are Stronger than Your SUV

via Roy Spencer, PhD.
http://ift.tt/1o1jAbd

Yesterday, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) sent a letter to DOE Secretary Rick Perry, scolding him for the following opinion he uttered in a CNBC interview on June 19.

Quoting from a Washington Post article:

Asked in an interview on CNBCs “Squawk Box” whether he believed that carbon dioxide was “the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for climate”, Perry said that “No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.” Perry added that “the fact is this shouldnt be a debate about, ‘Is the climate changing, is man having an effect on it?’ Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that?”

(Most of the headlines I’ve seen on the CNBC interview, including the WaPo piece, refer to Perry with the usual “denier” terms.)

Basically, Perry is saying he believes that nature has a larger role than humans in recent warming. I, too, believe that the oceans might well be a primary driver of climate change, but whether the human/nature ratio is 50/50, or less, or more than that is up for debate. We simply dont know.

So, while Sec. Perry goes against the supposed consensus of scientists, it was not outlandish, it wasn’t a denial of a known fact.

It was a valid opinion on an uncertain area of science.

AMS, me thinks thou doth protest too much

In response to Sec. Perry’s comments, the Executive Director of the AMS, Keith Seitter, said this in his letter to Perry (emphasis added):

While you acknowledged that the climate is changing and that humans are having an impact on it, it is critically important that you understand that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause. This is a conclusion based on the comprehensive assessment of scientific evidence. It is based on multiple independent lines of evidence that have been affirmed by thousands of independent scientists and numerous scientific institutions around the world. We are not familiar with any scientific institution with relevant subject matter expertise that has reached a different conclusion. These indisputable findings have shaped our current AMS Statement on Climate Change, which states: “It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide.”

Indisputable findings? Really? In my opinion, the AMS view (which draws upon the U.N. IPCC view) is much more definitively stated than the evidence warrants.

Sure, all of the scientific institutions are going to jump on the bandwagon, with politically savvy committees agreeing with each other; they are in effect being paid by the government to agree with the consensus through billions of dollars in grants and contracts.

If there is no global warming crisis, there would be little congressional funding to study it, and thousands of climate-dependent careers (including mine) simply wouldn’t exist.

That money also trickles down to the AMS, which is paid to hold scientific conferences, workshops, and publish the resulting research studies in scientific journals. They have a vested interest in the gravy train continuing.

So, maybe I can ask the AMS: Just what percentage of recent warming was natural in origin? None? 10%? 40%? How do you know? Why was the pre-1940 warming rate — caused by Mother Nature — almost as strong as recent warming?

The truth is, no one knows just how much of recent warming was human-caused, including those thousands of “independent” scientists. They pin the blame on CO2 partly because that’s all they can think of, and we still don’t understand natural sources of climate change.

Besides, in the climate business, there are no thousands of independent scientists scientists, anyway. They live and work in an echo chamber, and very few of them have the breadth and depth of knowledge to make an informed judgement on the issue. The vast majority are specialists in some narrow field of research. They go along to get along… and to continue to get funding.

Young climate researchers today cannot voice any doubts about anthropogenic global warming, or they might not have a career. They can’t go to Big Energy for research funding because, as far as I know, such funding does not exist. Big Energy knows they don’t have to pay people to prop up petroleum, natural gas, and coal, because the world (for the time being) runs on the stuff.

What we DO know with considerable confidence is that increasing CO2 should cause some warming. I’ll admit that my opinion here is mostly based upon a theoretical extrapolation from laboratory measurements of how CO2 amsorbs and emits infrared energy. But we really don’t know how much warming. We certainly do not have enough confidence to claim it is indisputable that our greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause, as the AMS letter claims.

I am ashamed that the climate research community allows such pronouncements to be made. The AMS became a climate advocacy group many years ago, and as a result it lost a lot of established members, including myself.

via Roy Spencer, PhD. http://ift.tt/1o1jAbd

June 22, 2017 at 11:34AM

New Video : Government Scientists Hiding The Heat Of 1896

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
http://ift.tt/2i1JH7O

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog http://ift.tt/2i1JH7O

June 22, 2017 at 10:58AM

1936 heat wave culminated 75 years ago today; 50 deaths resulted

via Climate Change Dispatch
http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

It’s July. It’s Illinois. It’s hot. It’s normal.

But 75 years ago, summer 1936 was anything but normal for Springfield and the rest of the Midwest.

Four of Springfield’s 10 hottest days ever came during July 1936, including a then-all-time high of 110 degrees on July 14. That record was broken on the same date in 1954, which registered a high of 112.

The temperature reached triple digits on 29 days that year, including 12 consecutive days from July 4 through 14.

Nationwide, the years 1930 through 1936 were the country’s Dust Bowl years, when drought, extreme temperatures, and poor farming practices turned much of the middle of the country into a wasteland. Those years also brought heat — some of the hottest summers on record — to the country’s midsection.

In the Upper Mississippi River Valley, the hottest temperatures of the period, including many record highs, were recorded during the first few weeks of July.

50 deaths locally

The sweltering, dry days also were deadly. Approximately 5,000 deaths were associated with the heat nationally. Thirty people died in Springfield as a direct result of the heat, according to the climate summary for that month. The high temperatures contributed to another 20 deaths in the city.

…snip…

 

Sleeping outside

Randy Hoover lived in Springfield for more than 20 years before moving to the St. Louis area, but remembers his late mother telling him about “that horribly hot summer of 1936.”

“According to her, to try to combat the heat, everyone in her house would sleep outside overnight,” Hoover wrote in an email. “Of course there was no air-conditioning at that time in homes.”

“She also told me that, to try to get even cooler overnight, they would soak their bed sheets in cold water, hang these wet bed sheets over the clotheslines and then sleep under these wet sheets to try to find any little bit of relief from the awful heat,” he said.

“And now my kids and grandkids just can’t get along without AC, right?”

…snip…

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, on a tour of drought-affected areas, cited “freakish” weather extremes over the past seven years and said the weather change might make the United States arid.

The good news was that Walgreen’s was selling 8-inch “Sea-Gull” electric fans for $1.59.

The heat set an all-time record for the Fourth of July when the thermometer reached 104.8 degrees at 3:30 p.m., the Journal said.

On July 5, it reached a high of 102.8, and 3,400 people visited the Lake Springfield Beach to try and cool off.

The next day, it was 102 again and was still 98 degrees at 7 p.m.

Sunny side up

Edward Strebel, a city policeman, drowned in the lake while swimming in an attempt to keep cool.

As the temperatures continued in triple digits, the city on July 7 announced that the beach would stay open until 10 p.m. until further notice (it usually closed at 3 p.m.). Springfield residents used 12.3 million gallons of water in the 24-hour period ending July 7, a record for water usage at the time.

Lumberyards advertised “rock wool insulate” as a means of keeping your house cooler.

Low temperatures were in the 80s almost every day during the heat wave. July 13 and 14 of 1936 had lows of 84 degrees, the hottest nights on record in Springfield.

The July 12 Illinois State Journal had a picture of fry cook Paul Burke frying an egg on an iron cellar door on South Sixth Street. He “cooked one sunny side up,” the caption read.

On July 14, as the heat reached its peak, the Journal had arranged — perhaps belatedly — for Dr. William Brady to begin a series of hot weather-related articles in his Personal Health Service column on the editorial page.

In addition to the 110-degree temperature recorded in Springfield, Pana had 110, Jacksonville 111, Havana 112 and Beardstown recorded 114 degrees, the newspaper said.

The newspaper had kept the weather on the front page each day of the heat wave, and on July 15 trumpeted, “Heavy Rain and Storm Rout Heat Wave.”

A storm that began about 1:30 a.m. July 15 cooled things off, at least somewhat. A second storm followed the next day – but the thermometer reached 100 again on July 17.

Officials said the Illinois corn crop would be cut in half that year, with losses estimated at $30 million.

Lack of vegetation

Several factors contributed to the deadly heat wave of July 1936, according to the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office.

A series of droughts that struck the United States during the early 1930s parched the earth and killed vegetation, especially across the Plains states. Poor land management furthered the impact of the drought, with lush wheat fields becoming barren.

Without the vegetation and soil moisture, the Great Plains heated up like a furnace. Then a strong ridge of high pressure set up over the West Coast and funneled the heat northward across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes.

A focus on soil conservation and new farming methods developed as a result of the Dust Bowl days have since minimized the effects of long-term droughts in the U.S.

---

Heat records

Some of the Springfield weather records from the summer of 1936 that still stand:

• Four of the city’s 10 hottest days on record occurred during July 1936, including what was then the all-time high of 110 degrees on July 14, 1936 (that record was broken on July 14, 1954, with a high of 112).

• Highs reached at least 100 degrees on 29 different days that year, including a record 12 consecutive days from July 4-15. By comparison, Springfield has not recorded a 100-degree day in the last 15 years.

• Low temperatures were in excess of 80 degrees nearly every day from July 7-14, 1936. July 13 and 14, as well as July 26, had lows of only 84 degrees. These were the hottest nights on record in Springfield.

• The Weather Bureau climate summary for that month reported that 30 people in Springfield died directly from the heat and heat was a contributing factor in 20 other deaths.

Source: National Weather Service

Read rest at SJR

via Climate Change Dispatch http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

June 22, 2017 at 10:56AM

California Focuses On Global Warming While Choked By Air Pollution

via Principia Scientific International
http://ift.tt/1kjWLPW

California has by far the country’s worst air quality even despite decades of environmentalism, according to research scientists at California State University (CSU) published Thursday. Researchers found California’s air quality is improving, but it is still by far the worst in the nation in terms of ozone and small particle pollution. The report found that […]

Click title above to read the full article

via Principia Scientific International http://ift.tt/1kjWLPW

June 22, 2017 at 10:41AM