Beware of internal conflicts, rivalries and toxic behaviour polluting climate action

Today I'm going to tackle a difficult but important topic - internal conflict. Given the number of people involved, the number and complexity of the issues, and the decades over which the climate movement is likely to be needed, it's a pipe dream to think there will always be harmony. At the same time, if the sort of problems mentioned here aren't acknowledged and, preferably, dealt with well, they can spread and become very destructive. Sweeping things under the carpet, pretending conflict doesn't exist, only allows it to fester and grow.

Where to from here?

I spent a lot of time in western Canada in the early 1970s. That's 50 years ago for all you young ones. The world was very different then. Edmonton was experiencing it's longest winter since, almost, forever. It was a long cold winter. In the summer in British Columbia they kidnapped whoever happened to be in the local pubs to fight the annual forest fires, but the temperatures rarely exceeded 80F. It was what people thought of as a bit unusual but not completely abnormal.

Today the world is different. Hard to believe this week, but this is what we should have expected. 

#Canada just had a temperature of nearly 50°C (Lytton, 49.6°C)
"Without human-induced climate change, it would have been almost impossible ...as the chances of natural occurrence is once every tens of thousands of years," says @metoffice scientist
Details https://t.co/fb1nIF8wny pic.twitter.com/rxKGmQqZZM

— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) June 30, 2021

Western Canada is wondering if it has been relocated to Death Valley. 

There was famine somewhere in the world back then as there is now, but today, all of a sudden we need to find food for three times as many people. 

We're trying to get on top of a global pandemic that everyone says was anticipated but that no-one prepared for.

We've accepted and supported and elected leaders who aren't game to read the writing on the wall, aren't able to act, and keep pointing the finger at someone else for their inadequacies - anyone else will do.

Alright - it's not all gloom and doom. There are some elected leaders in various countries around the world who are realists and who are keen to make sure the human race survives until at least 2100.

There are journos and communicators who are still quite sure, or at least hopeful, the message coming from the harbingers of knowledge and science will make its way through to political leaders, if not the general population. And that we'll act on it.

For even more good news - I'm coming back, soon, with some analysis and information about where we are today and what's in store. It won't be pretty.

Are you up for it?

Two uncomplicated tips for Judith Curry's dilemma

Judith Curry, who used to be a scientist and is now science denier, has asked a question: "How can the fundamental disagreement about the causes of climate change be most effectively communicated?"

She claims there is a fundamental disagreement on what is causing the climate to change. She doesn't cite any people who disagree with the fact that increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing global warming. She just asserts that there is "fundamental disagreement".

Nor does she explain what she thinks the fundamental disagreement is over, although she hints in a mockup of a slide that she thinks something other than the massive increase in CO2 is causing global warming. What that is only she knows, or doesn't. If she does she isn't saying, which is typical of deniers.

Eric Worrall denounces criticism of Trump, who he knows little about

I just noticed an article at WUWT by Eric "eugenics" Worrall (archived here). This is someone who for years likened climate scientists to eugenicists. He's a bit upset at Jeffrey D. Sachs, who wrote a strongly worded piece denouncing Trump for pulling out of the Paris agreement. Eric, who is a Brit now living in Australia, was quite irate and keen to show off his double standards.

What I think upset Eric the most was when Sachs wrote that Trump's actions were anti-society. I think it was the word "sociopathic" that he regarded as "hate speech", not so much the "willfully inflicting harm" part:

President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement is not just dangerous for the world; it is also sociopathic. Without remorse, Trump is willfully inflicting harm on others. 

(It's telling that climate science disinformers regard their audience as being so illiterate that they don't come up with any alternative to "hate" as a word to describe opposition to their efforts to ruin the world.)

Donald Trump's push to worsen climate change will reshape the world more quickly

Why does Donald Trump want to destroy the USA? What is his notion of "great again"? Going by his comments today when he announced that the USA will no longer play a leadership role in the modernisation and restructure of the energy sector, he believes that to bring back smog and increase black lung disease is what will "Make America Great Again". He referred to Pittsburgh as an example. This was Pittsburgh in its heyday:

hi I live in Pittsburgh, here's what our downtown looked like before environmental regulations (1940, taken at 12pm) pic.twitter.com/bDT4M1hLEj

— Rachel Mennies (@rmennies) June 1, 2017

This is how the Mayor of Pittsburgh reacted:

As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future. https://t.co/3znXGTcd8C

— bill peduto (@billpeduto) June 1, 2017

The social cost of carbon is positive, admits Anthony Watts

Prickly Pear Qld 1930s.
Wikipedia.

At last Anthony Watts admits that there is a social cost of carbon (archived here). He doesn't say what it is, he's not a climate economist after all but at least he admits it. His headline was: "The Social “Cost” of Carbon is Positive".  Unfortunately the article he posted, by ex-coal director Viv Forbes, doesn't discuss the social cost.

Viv Forbes is a climate disinformer from Australia. He's no longer a director of Stanmore Coal, but he used to be. As he's done before, his article is in the form of a letter to some unnamed editor of an unnamed publication. I guess it's to the "editor" of WUWT.

Viv lists "social benefits" of burning fossil fuels in the following terms:

Greens seem unaware that “carbon” coming from man-made CO2 is beneficial plant food supporting all life on Earth including polar bears, cane toads, prickly pear, rain forests and wheat.

WUWT sez let Africans starve, and implies Trump has single-handedly stopped climate change

I don't know if it's the Trump effect or if something else is causing denier blogs to be weirder and nastier than their normal weird and nasty. As you may have figured out, science deniers seem to think that global warming will stop now that Donald Trump has been elected (archived here). There's no rationale for this.

For years many science deniers have been arguing that "man" is too puny to have any discernible effect on the vast forces dominating Earth's climate. All of a sudden they've changed their tune, and many of them think that just one puny little man can change the direction of climate change and has stopped global warming dead in its tracks.

Weird, huh?

Anthony Watts gets into a dither with global weather

From some comments here at HW I discovered that there was a strange exchange at WUWT the other day. I say it was strange, because Anthony said he disagreed with a person while at the same time saying he agreed with him  - on the exact same point. Although it was strange, it was not uncommon as far as Anthony Watts is concerned. He doesn't understand what he reads, and doesn't seem to understand what he writes. He also demonstrates one of the telltale signs of a denier (and conspiracy theorist) - simultaneously adopting two mutually exclusive positions.

It started with the headline to the article from David Whitehouse (archived here - see Hotwhopper's Desperate Deniers Part 6): "2015 Global Temp, Or How Some Scientists Deliberately Mistook Weather For Climate"

The headline was over a graphic of Bart Simpson writing "climate and weather are not the same", which David Whitehouse and Anthony Watts should take to heart:

Chaotic weather and climate constraints gets Willis Eschenbach wondering

Gavin Schmidt, now Director of GISS, NASA, once wrote:

Weather concerns an initial value problem: Given today's situation, what will tomorrow bring? Weather is chaotic; imperceptible differences in the initial state of the atmosphere lead to radically different conditions in a week or so. Climate is instead a boundary value problem — a statistical description of the mean state and variability of a system, not an individual path through phase space. 

Note the words: A statistical description of the mean state and variability of the system. Every word is important. Climate is more than an average of weather. It also describes the extremes of weather, and the extent to which weather is likely to vary within those extremes.

When modeling climate and changes in the earth system, there are certain constraints, or limits, or boundaries. These constraints can include surface boundaries such as continental configurations, topography, bathymetry (topography of the sea floor), and vegetation distribution. On shorter time scales there are constraints relating to ice sheets, oceans and the atmosphere itself. Defining these constraints or boundaries is what scientists do when designing models of the earth system and climate.

This article is about two concepts - both involving the word "boundary", which need to be distinguished:

1. The boundaries to a given climate (extremes of weather), and
2. Boundary conditions, which are set when developing models of climate or the earth system as a whole. These can be any physical constraints.

Willis Eschenbach wonders about boundary conditions

Willis Eschenbach today is wondering what is meant by the boundary conditions problem for climate (archived here). At WUWT he wrote:

I’ve heard many times that whereas weather prediction is an “initial-value” problem, climate prediction is a “boundary problem”. I’ve often wondered about this, questions like “what is the boundary?”. I woke up today thinking that I didn’t have an adequately clear understanding of the difference between the two types of problems.

Eric Worrall mocks the small island states that will go under

Eric "eugenics" Worrall has taken over Anthony Watts' blog WUWT from the look of things. I say that because he's no longer a "guest", he's now a WUWT fixture. Anyway, Eric doesn't like the Carribean. That's a surprise because he's indicated that he moved to the subtropics, north of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, to get away from the cold UK.

As you know we promote heavily ecotourism, and if action is not taken by the international community to halt greenhouse gas emissions we’re going to have a serious challenge.

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, Dominica

Today Eric's decided to mock a meeting of Caribbean leaders, who were preparing their submission for COP21, the UNFCCC meeting to be held in Paris later this year (archived here).

These leaders aren't from places no-one's heard of.  They are from the playground of the rich and famous and their countries are home to the rich as well as the poor. These are islands like the Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago; and Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

There's a short report of the meeting by the Inter Press Service News Agency, which Eric didn't link to. He's not interested in such details. As I said, his mockery demonstrates that he couldn't give a damn about small island nations disappearing, as many will in a few short decades.

What's not at WUWT

Update: I've added some data from Munich Re below. [Sou 3:53 pm 17 March 2015]


There is a lot of rubbish posted on denier websites like Anthony Watts' WUWT. What is even more telling is what you don't see at WUWT.

Tropical Cyclone Pam

First of all, there has not been a single WUWT article on the massive disaster of the last few days, Tropical Cyclone Pam. According to Jeff Masters at WeatherUnderground, after Cyclone Zoe in 2002, Pam was the next most intense cycle in the South Pacific basin. Its central pressure got as low as 896 millibar. Almost certainly it would have been the worst cyclone in recent history in Vanuatu.

WUWT attacks the Catholic Church

Not satisfied with attacking scientists and science, now WUWT has set its sights on the Catholic Church. According to Tim Ball (archived here), the Pontiff doesn't realise that mitigating climate change means "reducing and controlling population" and "contradicts Catholic doctrine". Tim says that Pope Francis is a socialist who is "easily persuaded". Oh, and according to Tim, one shouldn't approach scientists if one wants to learn about science.

It's odd for WUWT to come out with a full bore attack on the Catholic Church because Anthony Watts recently declared himself as Catholic. Most Catholics are very loyal to their Church though many would recognise its faults and past transgressions. So if Anthony Watts had posted an article praising cigarette smoking, given his history, this would be the equivalent. Remember, Anthony favours the Heartland Institute, which waged a pro-smoking campaign for years, so he is not being inconsistent in his inconsistency.

What all this goes to show is that Anthony Watts has one goal which is way more important to him than his religion and his anti-smoking stance. His goal is to prevent anyone doing anything to mitigate global warming. He'll drop all his principles (did he ever have any?) and grab hold of anything, even Tim Ball, to achieve that end. His underlying motivation like that of many at WUWT, is mundane - it's money.

Bob Tisdale sez "I knew that", 'cept he didn't!

You've probably come across the sort of person who when asked a question gives the wrong answer. Then when told the correct answer will squirm and sulk and say "I knew that". They get scornful looks but it doesn't seem to faze them.

Bob Tisdale is behaving like that today (archived here). He is writing about what he regards as "An Unexpected Admission from Dana Nuccitelli at SkepticalScience". What did Bob not expect? He didn't expect Dana to explain how El Niños lift average surface temperature and La Niñas suppress it. Though he did twist Dana's words. Bob wrote:

Dana admitted that during a decade-long (or multidecadal) period(s) when El Niño events dominate (when El Niños are stronger, last longer and happen more frequently), the El Niños enhance global warming, and during periods when La Niña events dominate (when there are weaker, shorter and fewer El Niño events), the absence of El Niño events suppresses the warming of global surfaces.

Note the use of the word "admitted". Bob has been getting tips from David Rose on the abuse of rhetoric. Bob twisted what Dana wrote a bit. Fortunately he then quoted him directly. There was only one paragraph on ENSO and this is what Dana wrote (from the Guardian):

...average global surface temperatures have warmed between 0.6 and 0.7°C over the past 40 years (lower atmospheric temperatures have also likely warmed more than 0.5°C, though the record hasn’t yet existed for 40 years). During that time, that temperature rise has temporarily both slowed down (during the 2000s, when there was a preponderance of La Niña events) and sped up (during the 1990s, when there was a preponderance of El Niño events). Climate models accurately predicted the long-term global warming trend.

Do you spot the difference? Bob was saying it was the absence of El Niños, whereas Dana was writing it was the preponderance of La Niñas, when surface temperatures didn't rise as quickly were suppressed. That's not splitting hairs. Bob Tisdale wrongly thinks that El Niños cause global warming, which is why he talks about it in that way.

Denier Drumbeat: Eric Worrall on Democracy in Australia and the Climate Crisis

The tendency of Anthony Watts to conspiracy theories of the wacky kind increases week by week and year by year. What is harder to figure is whether he believes his nuttery or whether he just likes to sit back and watch his readers fall head over heels for his latest bit of paranoid thinking.

This week we saw Anthony Watts imply that John Kerry didn't condemn the barbaric group of thugs from ISIS, for murders and other atrocities, when he did. And in much stronger terms than Anthony Watts ever could (Anthony doesn't have the linguistic capability).

Anthony distorted a speech to get his audience fired up. To get the lynch mob going. Is it laziness, incompetence or deliberate deception on the part of Anthony that leads him to twist facts to suit his agenda?

Today he's done the same (archived here). He's published a couple of paragraphs written by one of his latest adopted strays, Eric Worrall. Eric is about as straight as a corkscrew, but he doesn't much like it when he's caught out. Not that there's much chance of that happening at WUWT.

Any notion more complex than "it's all a hoax" addles the brain of the average WUWT-er. Tell them black is white and they'll agree. Tell them up is down and they'll come back for more. Tell them hot is cold and an ice age cometh, and you'll have the denier hordes clamouring and swearing eternal allegiance to their heros.

Ask them to think about something as complex as the nature of democracy and they fall in a heap.

So when you combine a philosophical discussion about the nature of democracy with a misrepresentation of an article, you've won the dismal deniers for another day (or whatever brief span of time a WUWT reader can give their attention.)

Here is a summary of what Eric managed in his very short guest blog. It's probably approaching a record for the most things wrong and/or weird in the fewest words.

• He misrepresented the ABC itself
• He misrepresented the nature of The Drum on the ABC website
• He misrepresented an article in the Drum on the ABC website
• He is against any public discussion about democracy
• He is against any action to protect the environment
• He misrepresented the position held by the author of the article
• He misrepresented the argument of the author of the article.

William M Briggs is no futurist. About forecasts, scenarios and projections

I followed one of the items that "caught the eye" of Judith Curry at the weekend. It was an article by denier statistician to the stars, William M. Briggs. Yes, he's the bloke who coauthored a dumb article with Christopher Monckton of all people. That in itself tells you more than you need to know about him.

Anyway, William M. Briggs might shine brightly for some stars but he's no futurist. William wrote an article (archived here) under the headline:

There Is No Difference Between A Forecast, A Scenario, or A Projection

He's wrong of course. And not just in having a superfluous comma. Even I make that mistake, from time, to time :)

I thought I'd take a peek at what he wrote underneath his headline to see just how wrong he would get.  This is what I found:

This is a tad incoherent...

Well, his first clause was correct but that's about all he got right.

Anthony Watts brings logical fallacies to ancient Peruvian climate migrants

It was only a couple of days ago that Anthony Watts asked for feedback and one of his readers leftturnandre wrote:

June 15, 2014 at 8:34 am
Got only a second now, but the very first thing that comes into mind: don’t allow fallacies. Don’t go down to the level of the opposition. Keep on the high grounds. 

Anthony Watts builds a straw man

Anthony didn't listen. Today he's built a strawman fallacy, writing:

One of the favorite boogeyman arguments used in climate alarmism is that climate has been stable for thousands of years, and that our recent industrialized era emissions will result in climate tipping point. However, this study in the Proceeding of the National Academies of Science suggest that climate disruption caused people in the Central Andes to migrate to find a better climate over a thousand years ago.

That's a strawman fallacy because he's misrepresenting the science just so he can tear it down. It's not that local climates haven't changed. It's that overall the world has, until now, had relatively little change since human civilisation began. Much less than what's to come. It's also quite silly because he's calling on that same science to show that climates have changed in different parts of the world at different times. So which does he believe? Climate science or climate science? His poor little brain must be doing cartwheels.

Is Anthony Watts now a greenhouse effect denier?

Anthony jumps to another logical fallacy in his second paragraph, writing:

This posited bout of climatic fluctuation occurred before anyone knew what carbon dioxide was. So what was the driver then? Surely it wasn’t CO2 levels, which according to James Hansen and Bill McKibben who say“safe” levels are below 350 parts per million, which according to this graph from CDIAC, was below 300ppm during the period of study. 

This time he's arguing that climate science attributes all climate change to a change in atmospheric carbon dioxide. He's implying that because droughts in what is now Peru in the relatively recent past (geologically speaking) weren't caused by a change in atmospheric CO2, then the current global warming can't be caused by increased CO2.

It looks as if Anthony Watts has become a greenhouse effect denier - which at other times he's denied.

Climate migrations in pre-Columbian southern Peru

Although the stray WUWT-er might think it, going by Anthony's silly lead in, the paper itself is not new climate science. These climate events have been known about for quite a long time. What it is presenting is evidence of human migration as a result of those climate changes. It's an anthropological study by a large team led by Lars Fehren-Schmitz of the University of California Santa Cruz.

Some of the paper is described at Phys.org:

To gain a clearer understanding of early Nasca, Wari and Tiwanaku peoples living in various parts of what is now Peru, the researchers collected DNA samples from 207 mummies found in both coastal and mountainous parts of the region. Mitochondrial analysis and Bayesian modeling indicated that people that had been living near the coast began migrating to the mountains sometime around 640 BC. They also found evidence of a reverse migration as people from the mountains migrated towards the coast around 1200 AD.

From the WUWT comments

Like Anthony Watts, many of the deniers at WUWT are not able to differentiate between local climate change and global climate change.

ferdberple says:

June 18, 2014 at 10:28 am
climate science 101. any climate change that can’t be attributed to humans must be due to volcanoes. we can tell how big the volcanoes must have been by how much climate change there was. In this case a big volcano must have started erupting in ∼640 AD and ended in ∼1200 AD. the cannot be connected to the medieval warm period, because this change in south America, as well as the change in Europe, even thought they were at similar times, were both only regional. global changes only occur when humans are involved.

Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 is very wrong when he says:

June 18, 2014 at 10:26 am
So maybe these were really the “first climate change refugees” ?

TAG demonstrates a brain that works some of the time at least, and says:

June 18, 2014 at 10:33 am
Since the Little Ice Age in Europe was coincident with the 30 Years War, these findings should not be unexpected. The 30 Years War ended with the Treaty of Westphalia. This treaty created the concept of the sovereign nation state which shapes our world today. So it is no surprise that climate change can have dramatic and long lasting political and societal effects.
One thing that we should all remember the CO2 or not, climate plays an important part in our history and that even relatively slight climate changes can have large effects. natural variability can drive the course of history fro centuries. Don’t let the hype from climate activists and third team activist scientists distract us from this fact.

Chris B is a good little WUWT denier and says:

June 18, 2014 at 10:59 am
I’d like a couple million and a super computer to find out where all the SUV’s and coal plants went.

Pathway is also scoring brownie points from Anthony Watts and says:

June 18, 2014 at 11:01 am
If it doesn’t fit the agenda it is irrelevant. 

---

Lars Fehren-Schmitz, Wolfgang Haak, Bertil Mächtle, Florian Masch, Bastien Llamas, Elsa Tomasto Cagigao, Volker Sossna, Karsten Schittek, Johny Isla Cuadrado, Bernhard Eitel, and Markus Reindel. "Climate change underlies global demographic, genetic, and cultural transitions in pre-Columbian southern Peru", doi: 10.1073/pnas.1403466111

Killer cold, killer heat and Dunning Kruger at WUWT (again)

There was a recent article at WUWT about some research that compared deaths associated with cold in Adelaide and Sweden (archived here).

The implication being, I guess (given that its WUWT), that the cometh-ing ice age will kill everyone, or lots of people, or people who live in Adelaide, or something like that.

The headline Anthony used was: "Forensic science reports more deaths in Australia than Sweden due to cold" but that's a bit misleading.  The press release was only about deaths in South Australia, not Australia as a whole.  Still, it's not that odd, when you think about it, that cold would kill more people in climates where extreme cold is rare than it would in places where cold is the norm.

Here are maps of Australia, showing South Australia and Sweden:

Here is the essential bit from the press release:

South Australia has a higher rate of deaths from extreme cold compared with the northern European nation of Sweden, according to new research from the University of Adelaide.

The study, by a team from the University's School of Medical Sciences, analysed forensic cases of hypothermia deaths from 2006-2011 in both South Australia and Sweden.

The results show that South Australia had a rate of 3.9 deaths for every 100,000 people, compared with Sweden's 3.3 deaths per 100,000. In total, there were 62 fatal cases of hypothermia in South Australia and 296 cases in Sweden over the six-year period...

...Hypothermia is defined as a decrease in core body temperature below 35°C, with fatal hypothermia occurring at body temperatures of 26°C to 29°C...

...The results of this research will be published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences later this year.

The press release went on to say that most of the deaths in Australia were elderly women living alone and found in their home.  Most of the deaths in Sweden were of middle aged drunken men found in the open.

Naturally that brought out all the WUWT-ers who were decrying the rising cost of electricity and gas, as if the price of electricity and gas is going up in South Australia but not in Sweden.

People in Sweden pay around 0.21 Euro/kWh and in South Australia - well there are so many plans that it's hard to be precise, but let's say around 35c/kWh.  In US dollars that would be around 29c/kWh in Sweden compared to 31c/kWh in South Australia.  None of which tells you much about heating bills.  It's a lot colder in winter in Sweden than it is in winter in South Australia. I don't know how the cost of living or average earnings compare either.

Heat is a big killer in Australia

In any case, lets take a look at how many people die from heat in Australia, compared to the number cited as dying from cold.

According to the press release, there were on average around 10 people a year who died from cold in South Australia.  By contrast, while estimates vary widely, this paper by pwc is among the more conservative and estimates there are currently around sixty heat related deaths in Adelaide alone each year (refer page 29). (Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia.)

Here is another paper that studied heat related deaths and hospital admissions during recent heat waves in South Australia.  That's excess deaths from heat waves, which I guess wouldn't include the "background" deaths from summer heat. It discusses the type of problems that excessive heat waves can cause, particularly renal failure and ischemic heart disease (the latter particularly in the 15 to 64 year age group).  Heart disease was cited as having the biggest ambulance callouts during the recent heat waves in Melbourne this year, too.

What about Sweden?

Okay, you say. But that wouldn't be the case in Sweden, would it.  Well, yes it is but heat isn't as big a killer in Sweden.  At least according to this study by Åström et al, published late last year in Nature Climate Change.  The paper found that:

the number of deaths attributable to climate change over the past 30 years due to excess heat extremes in Stockholm is estimated to be 288...

Not accounting for urbanization and the urban heat island effect would yield a net reduction of 12 cold spells and 33 (95% CI: 18, 49) lives saved owing to fewer cold extremes. The increase of the number of heat extremes would be even more remarkable with 273 excess heat extremes occurring in 1980- 2009, resulting in 447 (95% CI: 252, 646) excess deaths attributable to changes in the frequency of heat extremes. The estimates derived from the observed data would increase the excess number of heat related deaths due to climate change by as much as 55% as compared with the adjusted data

In other words, if you include heat from UHI effects, which are real, in Stockholm alone there were around 15 extra deaths a year attributed to heat but only 3 fewer deaths a year because of having not so many cold spells.  (Stockholm pop.789,000 is smaller than Adelaide pop. 1.2 million.)

From the WUWT comments

A selection of comments from the archived article.

Gary says:

February 12, 2014 at 11:18 am
I’m not surprised at all. Swedes have more experience culturally with cold and most cases of hypothermia result from foolish behavior. Control for that and South Australia would rank even higher.

philjourdan says:

February 12, 2014 at 11:28 am
Bu-bu-but! They just had their “hottest” year on record!

On a serious note. Man can survive cold (thrive is a different issue). It does take preparedness however. That is why another glacial period would be more deadly than the mild temperatures we have experienced. But that does not fit the alarmist meme.

A.D. Everard says:

February 12, 2014 at 11:32 am
I’ve lived in rural South Australia. The houses are old with little or no insulation. Many are almost ruins, which is why they are so cheap. Also, most houses here are designed with Summer in mind, with ample shading, which backfires in Winter. My mother, who came to Australia as a young woman, always said she was far colder in Australia than she was in England or Canada.

ghl says:

February 12, 2014 at 11:40 am
South Australia has the most wind farms and the most expensive electricity of all australian states.

The first part is true.  South Australia gets about 30% of its electricity from wind these days.  However I don't know about the second part.  We're charged around the same tariff as those I saw for Adelaide (we're in rural Victoria).  Not that we have to pay for electricity, thank goodness.  We get paid instead for now.


Boadicea says it's cold and wet in South Australia - huh?:

February 12, 2014 at 1:49 pm
The climate in SA is one of long cold and wet winters with shorter hot summers. 

When I lived in Adelaide it seemed like one long summer, with June, July and August milder than December, January and February :)  As for wet, well South Australia is the driest State in the second driest continent (after Antarctica). Here is the annual temperature range for Adelaide and Oodnadatta (for those who like it hot).  Click to enlarge.

Source: BoM and BoM

Here is the annual rainfall range for Adelaide and Oodnadatta (for those who like it dry).  Note the very different scales. Click to enlarge.

Source: BoM and BoM

And for comparison, here is a chart showing temperature and rainfall data for Stockholm, Sweden.  The blue bars are the rainfall and the red line is temperature:

Source: ClimateData.org

Eric Worrall says it was warmer in the 1930s - Huh?:

February 12, 2014 at 2:40 pmTry to sleep overnight in the cool southern states, in any Aussie house built in the 1930s and you will freeze your nuts off. Why? Because houses built in the 1930s were designed for a much warmer climate.

Here's Australia's "much warmer climate" of the 1930s:

Data Source: BoM

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Åström, Daniel Oudin, Bertil Forsberg, Kristie L. Ebi, and Joacim Rocklöv. "Attributing mortality from extreme temperatures to climate change in Stockholm, Sweden." Nature Climate Change 3, no. 12 (2013): 1050-1054.

Nitschke, Monika, Graeme R. Tucker, Alana L. Hansen, Susan Williams, Ying Zhang, and Peng Bi. "Impact of two recent extreme heat episodes on morbidity and mortality in Adelaide, South Australia: a case-series analysis." Environ Health 10, no. 1 (2011): 42.

WUWT: Moguls on the Winter Olympics

I've gotta stop checking WUWT.  After his "mini-ice age" news, now Anthony is mocking a paper pointing out that it's only going to get tougher trying to find somewhere to hold the Winter Olympics.  (Archived here.) He started out with this:

Where's the snow gone?

A new Vinerism: ‘Climate change threatens Winter Olympics’

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Anthony Watts

From the opportunist headlines department, and the department of Vinerisms “children just won’t know what snow is” comes this press release. Apparently Winter Olympics will be a thing of the past. 

Here's an excerpt from the press release at the University of Waterloo:

Only six of the previous Winter Olympics host cities will be cold enough to reliably host the Games by the end of this century if global warming projections prove accurate, a new Waterloo study has found.

Even with conservative climate projections, only 11 of the previous 19 sites could host the Games in the coming decades, according to the study conducted by the University of Waterloo and the Management Center Innsbruck in Austria.

Under a high emissions pathway, the six locations suitable in 2080 are Abertville, Calgary, Cortina D'Ampezzo, St Moritz, Salt Lake City and Sapporo.  You can download the report here. It's got some good graphics like this one (click to enlarge):

Credit: Daniel Scott, University of Waterloo

Here are a couple of charts I've animated from Berkeley Earth, showing the temperature rise in Sochi and Krasnodar (the region around Sochi), where the current Olympics are to be held, and Vancouver, where the last winter Olympics were held.

Source: Berkeley Earth

The Accuweather forecast is looking a bit iffy, too.  It's just had a nice dump of snow but it may not last.

The weather leading up the Olympics is expected to turn milder which could lead to deteriorating conditions on the slopes used for the Olympic Games.

Whether or not the weather pattern will lead to problems for the Olympics will depend on how mild and how long this pattern lasts, but the concern exists nonetheless.

From the WUWT comments

The moguls at WUWT know a snow job when they see one (or think they do). (Sorry, couldn't help myself. Too punny?)  Here is a sample from the archived article here.


AlecM says:

January 23, 2014 at 9:12 amGawd help us to survive these lunatic claims.

mpainter says:

January 23, 2014 at 9:26 amThis is rank alarmism and in fact is deliberate propaganda. Goebbels would recognize the technique.

Aphan says:

January 23, 2014 at 9:27 amSeriously….a 7.4C average temperature “increase” in temps since the 1920′s?? Except the locations CHANGE? wow

No, mpainter - it's a long way from being the "coldest winter evah" - even in the USA:

January 23, 2014 at 9:30 am
It won’t do them any good- it is the coldest winter evah and people are praying for warmth. Also, the day of climate alarmism has passed and people are either chuckling or yawning at this type of hype.

omnologos says Sochi is almost subtropical in climate, wait for Novaja Zemlja - ha ha:

January 23, 2014 at 9:37 am
Erm…Sochi is almost subtropical in climate. Let’s wait for the Novaja Zemlja Games

JimS also falls back on Sochi having a humid subtropical climate:

January 23, 2014 at 9:56 am
Oh brother! Sochi has humid subtropical climate, and the last winter olympics in Vancouver, Canada is a city with a west coast marine climate (meaning a warm temperate climate where the mean monthly temperature all year round is well above freezing), perhaps the Olympic committee should choose better spots to hold the WINTER Olympics. For pete’s sake, it should be basic that the location of the “winter” Olympics should at least actually have a winter. No?

JimS, I believe the scientists would agree with you.  But that will mean finding a mountainous area with top class tourist facilities and a major international airport nearby. And in a region that will be assured of winter snow and ice conditions suitable for winter sports.  It's not going to get any easier as the world warms. (Maybe omnologos' suggestion could be developed for the occasion.)


 The future of winter olympics in a warmer world, by Daniel Scott, Robert Steiger, Michelle Rutty and Peter Johnson.

Wondering Willis' Original Weather Hypotheses

Wondering Willis Eschenbach wonders some more at WUWT.  This time, as almost every other time, about the way energy moves through the Earth system.  Willis combines the known with the unreal and thinks he has come up with something new.  Instead he makes simple science complex and complex science overly simple and mixes it all up into a weird concoction of his own making. (Archived here.)

Willis is keen to let everyone know he has invented meteorology.  Here are some of his claimed "original" ideas:

However, the idea that the temperature-determined time of onset of tropical clouds and thunderstorms is a main regulator of the temperature of the globe is my own, as far as I know. I think the same is true for the idea that the PDO regulates the temperature by either impeding or encouraging polewards heat flow. Finally, I think that the idea that the El Nino / La Nina alteration functions to regulate the temperature by pumping warm tropical water to the poles when the tropics start to overheat is my own idea as well. (December 22, 2013 at 2:40 pm)

Willis Original: Clouds & thunderstorms are the main regulator

First Willis claims this as his own idea:

...the idea that the temperature-determined time of onset of tropical clouds and thunderstorms is a main regulator of the temperature of the globe is my own, as far as I know.

Willis, as some of you will remember, doesn't read science.  It would both spoil his claims of originality and show his ideas up as foolish. Probably more the latter than the former.  Go to any page about tropical storms and you'll probably find a sentence something like the one on this NOAA page:

Since tropical cyclones help regulate the earth's temperature, any decrease in tropical cyclone intensity means the oceans retain more heat. 

A two-second Google search would tell even the least informed person that Willis hasn't made any original discovery relating to diurnal cloud formation in the tropics.  But for fake sceptics Google is for the birds.  (Sorry, birds.  I meant no offence.)

Clouds are formed when warm air meets surface water and the water evaporates, rises and condenses. I don't imagine that Willis is claiming that as an original thought of his own.  So what is he claiming as his original thought? Is it the "main regulator of the temperature of the globe" bit?  Surely he's not trying to claim to be the first to recognise that the water cycle is one of the main temperature regulating mechanisms.

The image below is from the National Environment Agency in Singapore, where it states that "Thunderstorms tend to occur between 2 pm and 6 pm in the afternoon as diurnal heating and convection play an important role in thunderstorm development".  I guess they must have got the "original idea" from Wondering Willis :)

A mature thunderstorm cell is characterised by vigorous updrafts and downdrafts. Updrafts are associated with inflow of humid air from the base of the cloud. When a thunderstorm matures, the falling of raindrops drags and pushes air downwards causing downdrafts. These downdrafts eventually spread throughout the entire cloud, cutting off the feed of moisture by updrafts. The thunderstorm cell then enters the dissipating stage. Each individual thunderstorm cell typically has a lifespan of less than one hour and a horizontal extent of several kilometres. 

Credit: National Environment Agency, Singapore

I came across this graphic of a tropical cyclone, which I'll include because I like it and it's more interesting than Willis' wonderings.  Click to enlarge it.

Credit: BOM/NOAA/ABC Tim Madden

Willis Original: PDO regulates the temperature

The next "original" claim by Willis is this:

I think the same is true for the idea that the PDO regulates the temperature by either impeding or encouraging polewards heat flow. 

I don't know what Willis means by that.  Does anyone?  Maybe he is referring to the fact that if there is a steeper temperature gradient in the North Pacific then heat will "flow" more from the tropics to the Arctic. But surely he wouldn't try to claim that idea as his own original thought.

The PDO is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.  It is described in terms of sea surface temperature (SST). From my limited reading, the general view is that these changes are brought about by a confluence of factors. For example, a paper by Schneider and Cornuelle suggests that it is influenced by various effects (some of which I've only vaguely heard of) including ENSO, the Aleutian low and the Kuroshio–Oyashio Extension.  A more recent paper by Michael Alexander states that the PDO is not a "mode of the climate system" but more the result of several different mechanisms:

Unlike ENSO, the PDO does not appear to be a mode of the climate system, but rather it results from several different mechanisms including (1) stochastic heat flux forcing associated with random fluctuations in the Aleutian Low, (2) the atmospheric bridge augmented by the reemergence mechanism, and (3) wind-driven changes in the North Pacific gyres.

So it doesn't seem right to my way of thinking to say that the PDO regulates something.  It seems to me it is an expression of what is regulated rather than being a regulator.

Willis Original: ENSO pumping tropical water to the poles

Remember Willis wrote this:

Finally, I think that the idea that the El Nino / La Nina alteration functions to regulate the temperature by pumping warm tropical water to the poles when the tropics start to overheat is my own idea as well.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know ENSO doesn't "pump warm tropical water to the poles when the tropics start to overheat". ENSO events are associated with changes in the Walker Circulation, which is an east-west circulation of the atmosphere above the tropical Pacific, not a north-south circulation.  In the ocean, it is associated with a shift in the thermocline with upwelling in the eastern tropical Pacific during La Nina - bringing cooler water to the surface in the east and with warm water being concentrated in the west. And suppressed upwelling in El Nino, allowing warm water to pool over a larger area in the east warming the air and land surface.

The surface current goes east to west across the tropical Pacific.  It's deep currents that go north-south and south-north.  But they flow all the time and as far as I know don't change with the different phases of ENSO, which is what Willis is arguing.

The video below shows the main ocean currents of the world:

Credit: CSIRO, the Wealth from Oceans Flagship and the Australian Climate Change Science Program

Willis' Thermostat is Broken

What Willis maintains is that his tropical clouds and thunderstorms act as a "global thermostat".  There's nothing new about that notion, whatever Willis tries to tell people.  Willis goes further though and argues that clouds keeps temperature at a set point.  Well, it looks as if that thermostat is broken now, doesn't it.  Willis insists that "over the previous century the total variation in temperature was ≈ ± 0.3K".  I have no idea where he got that notion from.  It wasn't from a chart of temperature variations over the past 100 years.  As you can see below the temperature rose from -0.4 to +0.6 degrees.  It rose by 1 degree Celsius (or 1 degree Kelvin if you prefer) over that time.  That's a lot more than +/- 0.3 degrees.

Data Source: NASA

Willis Eschenbach and the Dunning-Kruger Effect 

Willis, who wouldn't have much of a clue about what climatologists and meteorologists know about climate and weather, goes full on Dunning Kruger when he writes:

I differ from the majority of current climate scientists by saying that the climate is not the linear slave of the forcing. I say it is a regulated system, where the temperature is kept within bounds by a variety of interlocking and overlapping thermoregulatory phenomena.

What does Willis mean by "the linear slave of forcing"?  Is he arguing that nothing can force climate or is he saying that climate forcings aren't linear?  If the former he's wrong. The main climate forcings operating today are increased greenhouse gases and, to a lesser extent, changes in solar radiation and volcanic eruptions.  If the latter then he's wrong too, because forcings are not simply linear.  Forcings lead to a complex set of feedbacks that operate on different time scales so that the net impact is not linear.

And what's that gobbledegook about "variety of interlocking and overlapping thermoregulatory phenomena"? Could that be his fancy way of talking about feedbacks?  If so, why doesn't he just use the common word: "feedback".  If he is arguing that the water cycle is a limiting mechanism then I say - duh! Everyone should know that. Water vapour condenses when it gets cold and precipitates.  That helps stop the world getting too hot.

Maybe Willis is trying to argue that nothing can force the climate.  Surely not.  How would he explain glacials and interglacials?  How would he explain the current warming?

How does weather work?

Personally, for a simple description of how "weather" works, I'd go for something like this page that discusses the "heat engine" in a more sensible manner than does Willis.  If you want to get stuck in the clouds, there's a fair bit written here to keep you going for a while.  Or for something simple, the video below, from the UK Met gives a thumbnail sketch of the global weather system.

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Buttons, dogs and climate trends

Someone called Kip Hansen has written a long post at WUWT about buttons (archived here).  He's referred to an article of his that Andrew Revkin put up at DotEarth, possibly to show how wrong people can be sometimes.

In the Dot Earth article, Kip discusses the cute animation from TeddyTVNorge that you've probably seen before.  I'm really only writing this because it gives me an excuse to post it :D
.

The cartoon illustrates how global surface temperature (or weather) can fluctuate (the dog) but the trend continues upwards, with the man representing the temperature trend (or climate trend) being forced by increasing greenhouse gases.

At Dot Earth Kip made a song and dance about trends not determining the future and waffles on about stock markets.  Well, duh.  It's the forcing from the extra greenhouse gases that determines the climate trend.

Anyway, it looks as if Kip has chosen WUWT to try to make up for his mistake, though he does it in a very longwinded way.  After much argy bargy about how trend isn't itself a force he finally gets to the punchline, writing:

Models, not trends, can predict, project, or inform about possible futures, to some sort of accuracy. Models must include all of the causative agents involved which must be modeled correctly for relative effects. 

In general it looks as if Kip learnt something from his experience at Dot Earth.  Good for him. The same can't be said of some of the WUWT-ers.

(Personally I think models can be useful even when not all information is available.  If you waited for perfect knowledge you'd be waiting for ever.  You've got to make do with the best you've got.)