Unprecedented Melt? Not Exactly. Unprecedented Scientific Folly? You bet!

The Antarctic’s annual cycle is its own accordion-like expansion and contraction. But it is dwarfed by the larger expansions and contractions between glacial and interglacial periods during the present ice age.

As many of my readers know, the fact that Antarctic sea ice has steadily grown during the entire satellite record is something that I’ve alluded to frequently in the past. Some of you will know, too, that the temperature at the South Pole has gone down during the same period, as I’ve mentioned that here and elsewhere, including in my book.

Global warming alarmists have, meanwhile, made endless hay out of the fact that ice shelves have broken up during the last couple of decades. I mention in my book that if you could watch time-lase video of Antarctic ice shelves, as seen from space, over the last three million years you would see an accordion being played by a quite energetic player. Out they go, and in they come, out they go, and in they come. One feature that should convince people that climate is not changing outside normal bounds is precisely that ice shelves are continuing to do what they’ve done during the present ice age. This notion that until the last 50 years ice shelves were stable, in other words, is patently anti-scientific. And potentially manipulative and evil, but let’s worry about that another day.

But one thing that has been clear from the start: the falling temperature at the South Pole and the growth of sea ice have both been a problem for the AGW public relations machine. And you can smell that a mile away with a new paper published in Nature Geoscience, which carefully explains how the out-of-control Antarctic melting is causing the freezing of sea ice.

The authors have their logic, basically that volumes of melted ice shelf ice have lowered the salinity underlying the sea ice freezing zones and then rise in freshwater plumes to the surface to favor more rapid freezing. Do they consider the fact that the accordion freeze and melt process of the past three million years would have included the same dynamic? Not exactly. Do they presume that the overwhelming number of lay people and even some scientists will be overjoyed for an explanation for the horrifying reality that Antarctic sea ice continues to muss up the global warming narrative?

They precisely do.

Old Time New England Winter

A little evening snow in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on a far gentler night than tonight. Photo by Jeff Stevens.

I live in a historic part of a historic New England town: East Greenwich, Rhode Island, to be precise.

It’s tough to walk five minutes in any direction here without running across a cemetery or two with graves from two or three centuries back. The cemeteries range in size from 20 plots to 2,000.

Our part of town is known as the Hill. You can see it in the picture I chose for the blog today. In fact, the church spire in the background of the photo is the one belonging to our family church, St. Luke’s Episcopal. The open space in the right foreground is Academy Field, where sledding, baseball, soccer, and dog exercising manage to share time and space with admirable ease throughout the year.

In last weekend’s blizzard, the town got covered by pretty much exactly two feet of snow, which had the effect of turning it, for a time, into another town entirely. Street corners, after the endless plowing, were piled so deep in the white stuff that it looked unreal somehow, as though trapdoors had been opened at strategic spots in the clouds. The reality of the event took days to process.

By contrast, the storm that clipped us last night was less than generous in terms of what it left us. Although it is hard to know exactly, so powdery was what fell, and so strong the wind that blew,  I will say that we received between 4 and 5 inches.

Intriguingly, though, the taste of winter from the more recent event is stronger than what the blizzard gave.  The storm, like last week’s, wound up offshore so intensely that an eye formed, and the wind that has blown all day has covered the once-cleanly plowed streets with snow for a second time.

Walking my dog just now under the black trees and the cold stars and the sliver of frozen  moon, the wind sent up puff after puff of snow, some of it local, but some of it, inevitably, from fields, farms, and homes to our west. It’s that kind of night, and that kind of wind, when a thin spray of snow is in the air all the time and gusts spill ground snow onto the streets in feathered gobs.

The temperature is 20 degrees, but when the wind gusts, the assault of cold on skin, flesh, and bones is what crazy kids from California like myself yearn for: Arctic fury, old time winter, here and now.

The neighborhood is quiet, apart from the loud gusts of wind whooshing by. Not a lot of people consider it prime walking weather, and of course I understand. That said, I am noticing a curious thing in modern New England. So little time do people spend outdoors that they barely notice when an old-timey winter takes place right outside their door. They rush to and from their cars, dressed for temperatures 40 degrees warmer than what is actually occurring, shiver for a few minutes until the heat takes the chill off in their vehicles, and then rush from the car to wherever they’re going on the other end.

Sure, there are people who sled and ski and skate and run and walk in winter. But, increasingly, they are exceptions to the rule. The mass of humanity here that retreats from the elements has gotten so insulated from nature, and from the glory of a night like tonight, for instance, that they can be led by the nose when it comes to weather and climate. Whole world’s burning up? Must be, it says so right here. Plus, didn’t I see a video of a glacier melting, or something? Winter’s a thing of the past? Must be, I don’t even need a jacket anymore. And so on.

Do I find it a little depressing to hear people talk of global warming, knowing that they’re really talking about the growing wedge between themselves and the natural world, in all too many cases?

Yes, I do. Don’t sell your coat.

Blizzard Reading

Once you realize how badly you have been misled by AGW zealots, you suddenly understand that you must now pay attention to climate science on a totally new level.

If you have only recently become a skeptic, or only recently started thinking about it, then you may not be aware of the logical inconsistencies built into the theory that manmade global warming is turning the climate system into a post-Edenic nightmare.

I could list quite a number of them (and have before and will again), but need to be making preparations for the impending blizzard here in Rhode Island. So, in the time available to me, I will say this: Pay attention.

When the global warming crowd says, “It used to be snowier,” and then responds to equivalent snowfall in the current moment by saying, “This was caused by global warming,” pay attention.

When the global warming crowd says, “Storms of all kinds have gotten worse,” and you point out the dozens of instances proving the contrary, and they say, “Sandy was unprecedented,” pay attention.

When the global warming crowd says, “Winters used to be colder,” and you show them that winter weather runs in decadal, centennial, and millennial cycles, and they say, “But when I was a kid it was colder,” pay attention.

When the global warming crowd says, “Whenever it is cold now, that is really the result of global warming,” pay attention.

When the global warming crowd says, “American droughts of the last few years are unprecedented,” and you show them that droughts of the 1950s and 1930s were worse, and that megadroughts on the order of 500 years in duration have been found in the climate record of the land that is now the U.S. Southwest, pay attention.

When the global warming crowd says, “Look at this graph, temperatures are skyrocketing,” and you say, “That’s an anomaly graph, and you’re showing a tiny fluctuation that has occurred thousands of times before,” and they say, “We must do something before it’s too late,” pay attention.

When the global warming crowd says, “How dare you question science,” and you point out that (a) science and reason have to be closely acquainted at all times, (b) you question the reasoning underlying global warming, and (c) that all true scientists have questioned authority pretty much all the time and they say, again, “Yes, and how dare you question the science,” pay attention.

That’s enough for now. I have to go do about a hundred things, having had to work until late last night.

In the meantime, if you or someone you know needs a little blizzard reading, you can buy my book here.

Thank you for paying attention.

New York Times Sets Bar Just a Little Higher for Climate Misinformation

The News York Times has its standards: All the news that fits the narrative of climate doom.

Sunday, January 20, 11:43 a.m. EST, update: Andy Revkin kindly took the time to make sure the right set of eyes fell on a third letter I wrote, and the Times has fixed the piece and issued a formal correction. To Andy I offer my sincere thanks. With my book focusing in part on a century-long habit of promulgating climate fear at the Times it is gratifying to have the paper catch an accurate glimpse of its own reflection in the blogosphere mirror, if even for a moment. By the way, a screencap of the original article with the mistake is below (beneath that the original blog post can be found).

That’s what screen grabs are for: the original Times piece with the incorrect statement and link claiming record global temperatures in 2012.

When I found a rather major error in a New York Times article about climate change, I took the trouble to write the editors. I did so via two channels. One of the two ways was sending a letter to the editorial page editors; the other was writing the Times‘ public editor. As I have not heard back from either, I have decided to publish my own letter below. I will add that it has been my experience that if I don’t hear back quickly from editors then I don’t hear back from them at all.

Dear Editor:

There is a tendency among those declaring the seriousness of global warming to equate small pieces of the climate puzzle, when those pieces support a narrative of disaster, with the whole picture, but this is neither good science nor good journalism.

In the Jan. 15 online edition Jada Smith falls prey to the temptation: ”With record-breaking global temperatures in 2012, severe droughts and several storms and hurricanes on the East Coast, some members of the American clergy are saying that human decisions that contribute to the extreme weather associated with climate change can no longer be left in the hands of politicians.”

The year 2012 was not a record-setting one for global temperatures. The United States, 1.5% of Earth’s surface, did experience record temperatures, and indeed clicking the first link for “global temperatures” brings one to another Times article about the American record.

The United States is a wonderful country, but it is not the world.

Harold Ambler

East Greenwich, RI

p.s. The global temperature ranking for 2012 is available here:

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/the-global-results-are-in-for/4206223

Now, letters to the Times have a 150-word limit, thus my effort to be concise. But I don’t have the same limitations on my own blog.

And I confess that even knowing the extent to which the Times distorts climate information I am astounded that equating the U.S. temperature record with the world temperature record, when brought to the paper’s editors’ attention, does not merit a correction. It has come to this.

I expect non-experts driving in their cars on the way to work and who catch a story about record temperatures on NPR would frequently just assume that the temperatures in question were global. But the fact that a reporter at the most prestigious newspaper in the United States would not have a higher standard of discernment than the distracted and half-listening commuter is bracing. The fact that the reporters’ editors would fail to consider such an error worthy of correction is … wait for it … the single most glaring proof of the bias in American journalism regarding climate that I have seen.

I know, I know. Most of my readers will be surprised that I am surprised.

And yet I am. Don’t sell your coat.

Britain’s Cold Comes as No Surprise

The first book by an American journalist to predict the strengthening of winter and the slow undoing of the global warming narrative helps put climate science in a new perspective.

People say a version of the following to me all the time: “How dare you contradict mainstream science regarding climate change?”

Most of the Spanish Inquisition conversationalists haven’t any sense of the diversity of scientific findings within the climatology community. They don’t know how many honest and brilliant people of science all over the world have never accepted the manmade global warming narrative at face value.

So, yes, in writing my book that predicted the kind of cold Britain and much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere is about to experience (or already experiencing), I did have to stop listening exclusively to the clique of scientists dominating the media and the United Nations’ climate apparatus long enough to understand that another narrative even existed. That is true. (UK Amazon link for book here.)

I also had to think seriously about the destructive nature of cold and what it meant if the AGW narrative builders were wrong about winter’s premature demise. It meant old people dying in their homes for lack of heat, particularly in the era of carbon targets imposed from above on utility companies. And that is just what is happening these days in the UK, as energy prices have skyrocketed at the same time that wintertime need has steadily grown, as it has over the course of the last several years.

And let’s be clear: the manmade global warming team predicted the diminishment of winter’s power, publicly, and repeatedly, for decades. Conversely, the climate skeptic community of scientists ranged in its predictions from seasonal variability to mild global cooling during the first half of the 21st century.

Such cooling, if it were to occur, by the way, would, as likely as not, begin with a slow turnaround of the climate system. And that turnaround might look a lot like what we’re seeing today. The kind of heat that built during the last few decades of the 20th century doesn’t dissipate overnight.

In the meantime, ask yourself, those of you shivering in Britain, the European continent, and Asia during the winter of 2012-2013: does a book predicting such conditions hold any interest?

Don’t sell your coat.

Of Pure Weather Ignorance, Yaks on Faces, and Your Holiday Gift Shopping

A curious, and possibly deeply sad, facet of modernity: journalists successfully convincing people that they’re witnessing the demise of the climate system.

People have no idea regarding weather. They don’t know that they’ve been manipulated with HD video into believing that their own time is strange, unprecedented, extreme. They don’t know why they would be manipulated (via a combination of noble cause corruption and reflexive leftism in the Ivory Tower). They don’t know the parameters of the system (don’t generally want to know how many floods and droughts there have been in the past). They don’t know what’s happening anywhere but their own backyard (where global warming is ruining their whole week). They don’t know what “normal” was, meteorologically, around the globe five decades ago, five centuries ago, or five minutes ago.

That’s OK. I don’t blame them. Being someone obsessed with weather and climate has seldom been a ticket to the inner sanctum of polite society. And that’s just as true today as it was when Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were among the earliest weather freaks the United States had produced. Believe me, those two rose to prominence in spite of their weather mania, not because of it.

This is all a somewhat longwinded way of introducing a somewhat amazing weather tidbit. At this particular juncture, which happens to be noon on Friday, December 14, the temperature in an obscure Siberian town is -65 degrees Fahrenheit. As is generally the case when the temperature is so low, the weather conditions are listed with a single word: “Smoke.” You more or less need an inversion layer to yield temperatures that low, and with the inversion layer comes capture of the abundant woodsmoke generated by the locals desperately trying to stay warm. Frigid cold and smoke, in Siberia and elsewhere around the globe, often go hand in glove. The name of the town, by the way, is Ojmjakon. This is pronounced “Oh, my God, a yak is frozen on my face.” Just mumble it a bit and say “on” at the end, slur the “my face” part completely, and you’re good. You’d be surprised how many yaks freeze to your face when it’s -65 degrees Fahrenheit, by the way.

Why, you wonder, is it -65 degrees in Ojmjakon and too warm to snow in New York City? One answer: which way the wind blows. Last year’s warm winter in the U.S. was largely a function of what meteorologists refer to as zonal flow, west to east movement of mild Pacific air, a powerful and fast-moving river of warmth far too strong to allow anything like normal winter weather to unfold. And a similar process has been at play so far this winter. While we’re basking in “terrifying” warmth, Canada is freezing its remote provinces off.

Meanwhile, last year, as the the headline writers were working themselves into a sweat over the death of winter here, people were dying of cold in droves in Europe and Asia, and Alaska was seeing records for both snowfall and cold. You read the headlines about all that, right? No? I am shocked!

Returning to the serious business of weather and climate, on this day, December 13, 2012, a draft of the United Nations’ next assessment of Earth’s climate has been published at wattsupwiththat.com. The single most salient detail in the report, for those paying close attention at home: Svensmark’s mechanism for cloud formation and global cooling via galactic cosmic rays is specifically mentioned. I learned doing interviews for my book this year that going into this subject is a sure-fire way to produce blank stares, if not out and out rage.

That’s OK. Svensmark is relatively young, and, with any luck, the day will come when he can compare his Nobel prize for climate-related research to the one Al Gore was given in 2007. The world’s a strange, and sometimes funny, place.

If you’d like any of your friends to be able to understand the United Nations’ change of heart, buy them a copy of my book for the holidays on Amazon. All you need to get them a Kindle copy is their e-mail address and the knowledge that they read on Kindle. You can also buy them a hard copy. This will plant seeds of climate awareness that rise as beautiful flowers a few years from now. Nothing more and nothing less than that.

Surprised By White

The first “pure” Nor’easter of the season is delivering snow to East Greenwich this evening.

The storm, another potent one just nine days after Hurricane Sandy devastated the region, was snowier than the National Weather Service initially forecast along Narragansett Bay. Even at the time of the early-evening update, when snow had already broken out in East Greenwich and points northward, no winter weather advisory was forthcoming.

With snow sticking to grassy surfaces, cars, buildings, and eventually streets, residents of East Greenwich found themselves surprised by the white stuff.

Computer models were indicating anywhere from two to four inches for East Greenwich and locations in the central part of the state, with more anticipated in the traditional snow belt farther north.

As with so many Nor’easters, the potential exists for changeover to rain near the coast. Indeed warmer air was forecast by Mark Searles of NBC 10 be pulled into the middle levels of the atmosphere overnight, leading to a changeover to freezing rain and then plain rain by dawn.

But the presence of more cold air at the coast than the National Weather Service had anticipated should raise at least one eyebrow on any incipient changeover.

Dedicated sledders’  best hope for a run is either before bedtime tonight, or first thing in the morning before school.

Judging by the feel of a snowball hurled by my 7-year-old daughter striking between my shoulder blades, the snow was close to ideal for making a snowman — clumpy!