The Joplin, Missouri, tornado of May 22, 2011, was an EF-5. Photo by Aaron Fuhrman/Flickr Editorial/Getty Images.

Seth Fletcher is a talented writer. Consider this description of the day a tornado leveled his hometown of Joplin, Missouri:

Just after 5 p.m., two storm chasers driving toward the western edge of Joplin, Missouri, spotted a translucent set of tendrils reaching down from the storm’s low black thunderhead. Almost as quickly as they formed, the tendrils disappeared. And then things took a turn. A dark blob half a mile wide congealed and dropped from the clouds.

The description proceeds from there, as the horrifying events of May 22, 2011, are painfully well captured. As the twister’s progress through Joplin is laid out, piece by piece, it becomes clear that Fletcher is an individual who loves the English language and knows how to use it. What about climatology, though? And what about logic? Does he love these just as much?

Let’s take climatology first. How rare are tornadoes in the Central Plains? Not very! Fletcher himself talks of hearing tornado sirens throughout his childhood, and unfortunately twisters have been destroying life and property as long as people have lived in that part of the world. That’s because intense clashes of air masses, cold from Canada, warm from the Gulf, take place on a near-daily basis in spring, summer, and fall (and sometimes winter). That’s the way it has been throughout the Holocene, the glorious climatic nest in which we are privileged to live.

What Fletcher particularly avoids discussing is the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientific literature show the Medieval Warm Period to have been “hotter,” to use the language of the climate change crowd, than today. That aside, not one climatologist on Earth maintains that we are as warm in the 21^st century as we were during the Holocene Optimum 8,000 to 6,000 years before the present time. So, though Fletcher’s well-spun tale has the cozy feel of high-quality wool, it turns out that his narrative (lacking real anchors as it does) risks being a stylish blindfold for his readers.

More problematic still, the Holocene Interglacial is definitively cooler, with much lower sea levels, than the interglacials that came before it, including the one immediately before it: the Eemian. During the Eemian temperatures on Earth were at least 2 degrees Celsius warmer than today; sea level was about 15 feet higher.

Are we to presume that the warmer temperatures of yesteryear made for an even more dangerous atmospheric setup in Joplin than what it endures today? In other words, did the Eemian see vicious tornadoes on a more regular basis than during our own time. Simple answer: no one knows. One thing is sure, though: the lost-Eden presumption of Fletcher (and of course Bill McKibben, whom he cites as a climate authority) is a fantasy. If heat is the problem, and there’s no proof that it is, then we should be celebrating the pronounced global cooling of the last 110,000 years.

The simple truth is that the spot of land that Joplin occupies is a tornado factory, unlike almost everywhere else on Earth. Tornadoes, a commonplace in the United States, are quite rare elsewhere in the world. As for EF-5’s such as the one that destroyed so much of Joplin, they are close to non-existent outside the American heartland. They are a sad fact of life, in other words.

The slightly wistful title of Fletcher’s Popular Science article – “Did Global Warming Destroy My Hometown?” – can be answered in the negative.

Leaving aside the fact that carbon sequestration is a bad idea, in response to questionable science, the idea that newspaper space is occupied by model-driven climate analyses day in and day out is, I admit, hard to take. Why, you ask? Well, I happen to have addressed that very question in my spiffy new book. And, if you’re very, very nice, or even if you just keep reading, you’ll see why.

Let’s start with a picture!

Computer models have come to replace reality in the public debate about climate. NASA’s “Columbia” supercomputer, Mountain View, California, 2006.

That’s a big boy! Must have something interesting to say about climate change! You bet he does! And now, just a tantalizing bit of Chapter 5 (Rise of the Machines) from Don’t Sell Your Coat:

So the ice caps aren’t melting. That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of other ammunition with which to scare otherwise sane people badly. Put yourself in the shoes of the global warming doomsayers. If you’re going to scare the pants off a whole bunch of folks, you’re going to need some powerful tools. Arguably the most powerful tool available for such a purpose is the supercomputer. That is why a single phrase appears in nearly every article and book dealing with climate change. Although the phrase is used in other disciplines to signify divergence from reality, in the case of climate science it has come to be equated with reality, or even to replace reality. Its proponents are passionate, tireless. Its detractors don’t really know where to start.

That phrase? Computer models.

The full formal name is general circulation models. Using gridded cells the size of Connecticut, these computer models are humanity’s effort to lasso, intellectually, what may be the most mentally uncontrollable being ever created: Earth’s climate system. There are many, many issues with models.

Using the most powerful supercomputers in existence, modelers strain to generate even faintly accurate climate forecasts, simply for lack of computing power. The ocean-atmosphere system is that complicated. Among the items that the models must attempt to compute: highly complex, poorly understood deep-sea currents; the effects of aerosols (fine pollution particles) on cloud formation; the effect of black carbon pollution on the melt rate of snow and ice, especially in the Arctic; solar radiation (via an effect known as solar dimming); volcanic eruptions; the effect of air masses of different pressure on either side of mountains (a process known as mountain torque); variations in wind patterns, particularly of trade winds that lead to El Niños and La Niñas; variations in albedo, which is the extent to which the Earth’s surface and atmosphere (ice sheets, clouds, oceans, forests, deserts, cities, farms, rivers, and lakes) reflect radiation back to space; and, finally, solar variation, including a controversial secondary effect of the Sun’s shifting phases on cloud formation in our atmosphere.

Every one of these variable quantities is being debated in the scientific literature. And in the blogosphere the debate is red hot, as exemplified by the tongue-in-cheek suggestion by more than one blogger that global warming skeptics be murdered in their sleep. Controversy aside, just measuring any one of the factors to be included in computer model simulations, at any given moment in time, is nearly impossible. Among the reasons: The planet is a lot bigger than the average person gives it credit for being. The ability to fly from one continent to another in less than half a day gives a false impression of scale, it turns out.

The state of Texas can help convey the size of the planet. The land area of Texas, at 261,797 square miles, constitutes 7.4 percent of the land area of the United States (which comes in at 3,537,441 square miles). Earth’s land area, though, is 57,505,734 square miles. The percent of the world’s land area occupied by Texas, then, is 0.45. And yet within this rather tiny amount of Earth’s surface area are several distinct climates. From the high mountain desert of El Paso in the west, where accumulating snowstorms are typical most winters, to the southernmost coast on South Padre Island where the warm Gulf of Mexico water acts as a powerful buffer against temperature extremes (especially those of winter), to oppressively hot and humid Houston, to Amarillo in the Panhandle with its four distinct seasons, to the state’s myriad river systems (each with its own micro-climate), Texas (as those who have labored to drive across any portion of it know) is enormous. Likewise, every other half-percent of the globe’s land mass is, too.

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As the models continue to foresee worse and worse scenarios, demanding more and more extreme measures from politicians and the public alike, including and specifically a darker and darker future for my native state, I have to say that California, outside of its political present, continues to be a healthy, vibrant land that I am fortunate to have known intimately, and to know still.

I am not, repeat am not, suggesting that the footage in the video shows the beginning of the next Ice Age. I would, however, like to mention that when the Holocene interglacial, the wonderfully comfortable climatic nest in which we live, does finally come to an end, a variety of places in the Northern Hemisphere may look a lot like Valdez this winter. Remember: Snow and ice are not your friend.

And, by the way, if Alaska were unusually warm this winter, do you think that NBC, the Weather Channel, and other mainstream media outlets would consider sending a news crew up to confirm global warming? Just askin’…

"But, teacher, we've been cooling for 6,000 years!"

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that, horror of horrors, climate change skepticism is being forced into American classrooms by nefarious legislators intent upon keeping the nation and its young ignorant as long as possible. Here’s an excerpt from the Times piece:

A flash point has emerged in American science education that echoes the battle over evolution, as scientists and educators report mounting resistance to the study of man-made climate change in middle and high schools.

Although scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly, the issue has grown so politicized that skepticism of the broad scientific consensus has seeped into classrooms.

The article goes on to talk about Texas and Louisiana requiring educators to present climate change skepticism (which the Times calls “denial”) and what a stark reflection of ignorance and backwardness the states’ actions represent.

As usual, the mainstream media, in this case embodied by the LA Times, has the story exactly wrong. First: the claim that “scientific evidence increasingly fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly” is bunk. In truth, as the global mean temperature stubbornly refuses to climb in a statistically significant way over the course of a decade and a half, skeptic scientists are gaining ground, not losing it.

The planet is likely cooler than it was 800 years ago according to the great majority of scientific papers published, as the Vikings colonization of Greenland attests; cooler than it was during the Roman Climatic Optimum when no glaciers sat atop what is now Glacier National Park; cooler than it was during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, when boreal forests ringed the Arctic Ocean in what today is Siberia.

We’ve been cooling for 6,000 years, folks. Is it OK to tell kids in high school this? You be the judge.

Al Gore presents his latest business venture: A game called Mind Control.

Al Gore’s Current TV is not having an easy go of it. With its Italian version shuttered in 2011, it now appears a virtual certainty that Current will also go off the air in the UK early this spring. Spun by Mr. Gore as resulting from the right-wing machinations of a dastardly Rupert Murdoch, the moves were more likely in  response to abysmal ratings in both countries. In the United States, Current TV’s principal journalistic star, Keith Olbermann, is no longer talking directly to his colleagues at Current, having grown frustrated over the network’s inability to provide a modicum of technical support.

But no big deal, those seeking global mind control generally hit a speed bump or two along the way, right? And now Mr. Gore has found an ingenious way to turn this speed bump into a ramp launching him into the stratosphere of positive public opinion: climate video games! These things are gonna be huge! One way you can tell is that the format requires, up front, that people of all ages (including and especially children!), have to bolster leftist untruths in order to win points.

No big deal, right? The end justifies the means after all! The biggest whopper that players are asked to shine up: that energy companies are behind the vast majority of climate skepticism. That makes sense, because it sounds sinister and plenty of “cool” people say it all the time. But get this: by far the most popular climate website of any kind, which happens to have skeptic leanings, is wattsupwiththat.com, and the site has never accepted a penny from energy companies.

I myself have been “out” as a climate skeptic since I published in The Huffington Post in 2009. How many e-mails and phone calls do you suppose I have received from Big Oil since that day? A hundred? Fifty? Twelve? How about none? Bingo!

I’ve met and corresponded with dozens of skeptics, from the very prominent to the very anonymous, and I have yet to see a shred of evidence connecting one of them to carbon-based fuel industry. As we’re fond of pointing out on my side, though, Big Oil funds the heck out of global warming scaremongers!

But I’m straying from the joy of climate games here. These things are going to be unbelievably successful. Believe me. You’ve just got to believe.

Here’s the climate game I’ve been playing for three years: Follow your research wherever it takes you, regardless of the personal, professional, and financial consequences. Endure an onslaught of vindictive and dishonest pressure from the well-financed American Left. And then: Just keep on keepin’ on.

Not big on e-mail.

Among the curiosities to be found in the Climategate e-mails: Not one is addressed to or from Al Gore. One would imagine that someone with his finger on the pulse of climate science would occasionally communicate with a climate scientist. Whether such e-mails are in the cache of yet-to-be-released messages is unknowable.

This much I do know: 1. Mr. Gore is not currently flipping through the pages of my new book and 2. There are e-mails that he has written that would be interesting to read. I hope that no one strives to get them illegally, by the way. The Climategate e-mails, despite a chorus of claims to the contrary by The New York Times and others, have never been shown to be the product of hacking and are much more likely an instance of whistle-blowing. So if it turns out that the whistle-blower is sitting on one or more messages of interest from the former vice-president, I say let the games begin.

Talk about the Department of Energy! Whoa, yeah!

When you’re a climate scientist on top of the world, using taxpayer dollars to socialize with your friends is easy. You just have to be careful to call the social events “symposiums.” What’s not easy, evidently, is using those same taxpayer dollars for beer and wine. Ah, the humanity!

An e-mail sent on June 16, 2008, from Ben Santer to Kevin Trenberth makes this painfully clear:

Anjuli has informed me that it will be possible to use up to $10,000 of my DOE Fellowship for the purpose of funding the Symposium. I’m assuming there may be DOE restrictions on using that money for purchasing wine and beer. I’ll check into this.

Am I the only one to whom it seems unfair that a giant in his field,  especially one with the passion to “beat the crap out of”a skeptic scientist, should even have to wonder if tax dollars are usable for the purchase of booze?

For a scientist to arrive at this painful, and distracting juncture, it is necessary, first, to take the subject of intentionality and cast it to the wind, of course. How so? It’s a psychologically complex process, so bear with me. These are the steps:

1. Try to forget that the money one wishes to use for beer was allocated by the United States Congress to the Department of Energy to further the pursuit of climate science. Alternatively, convince yourself that a little beer and wine buzz is part of the pursuit of science. Either strategy could work here.
2. Focus hard on how much one works and how richly one deserves to take the edge off. Anyone working hard enough to be driven to thoughts of violence (you know who you are!) obviously has a good-size edge to be taken off, and doing so is really the moral duty of anyone who wishes for humanity to be saved. Do you wish for humanity to be saved, or not? Pass the bottle, bro!
3. Forget that real people, some of them struggling to get by, might not want to pay for your parties, if given the choice. This might seem hard, but it’s not. It’s well known that the public pays for the elaborate social functions, including those with alcohol, for the president and some other top-tier officials. Does anyone really believe that a climate scientist of the highest rank, particularly one with a good right hook, is doing less to save the world than the president? Seriously? Of course the less financially comfortable members of the tax-paying public, if they merely stopped to think about it for a moment, would want to fund a little climate-scientist party. It’s a no-brainer!

To be continued …

Climate change is the perfect subject for connoisseurs of irony.

In putting together my book on manmade global warming, I found myself bathing in irony more or less continuously. Below is a list of climate ironies in 2012:

Those who purport to love nature the most may actually fear it the most, and are in the midst of a terror-laden campaign to “control” it via carbon modulation.

Those who most need plentiful and affordable carbon-based fuels, i.e. all those living in the Third World (in India, China, Africa, South America, and rural Appalachia) are the ones the climate elite would deprive of carbon-based fuels.

The statement that “the science is in” is inherently ironic. The science is never in, and saying so reveals an antipathy for science.

Computer models have no grip on future climate whatsoever, and yet it is their terrifying predictions that have been used to control the debate about climate.

“Big oil” funds mainstream, alarmist climate scientists far more than it funds skeptics.

Windmills, symbols of gentleness and modernity, play a destructive roll in the environment and represent a step backward for humanity.

In a feast of self-righteous guilt, the greatest CO₂ emitter per capita, the United States, is also the most important producer of climate-terror science.

The fascination with carbon dioxide among the public, supposedly representing some knowledge of climate science, actually represents almost complete ignorance of the subject. Not one in a hundred people possesses an idea what past climate has looked like on the planet.

Sea level, specifically the fear of it rising, is the most potent tool in the alarmists’ arsenal, but sea level has never been stable. It cannot be. A hundred and ten thousand years ago, during what’s known as the Eemian interglacial, sea level was 15 feet higher than today. This oceanic “highstand” occurred without the help of a single internal combustion engine.

Carbon dioxide has been labeled pollution, but it is colorless, odorless, non-toxic plant food.

Needlessly raising fuel prices in the name of carbon mitigation has the inevitable effect of freezing people to death in their homes, among other negative consequences. The moral superiority of climate alarmists is its own potent form of irony.

Those keeping the torch of knowledge alight in our time, the skeptics, are seen by most as morally corrupt and intellectually inferior. Among the many honest and highly accomplished climate scientists receiving such ill treatment is Henrik Svensmark, the Dane whose theory of cloud modulation will likely revolutionize the world’s understanding of the climate system.

Al Gore has received a Nobel Prize for his supposed furthering of climate science knowledge among lay people. Al Gore is personally responsible for dramatically enlarging the CO₂ obsession among the public and thus enshrouding the world in scientific ignorance.

Most people on the left with passionately held beliefs about climate are in no position to debate it intelligently. They “feel” and they “know,” but they cannot discuss. Ad-hominem attacks against scientists, and writers who dare question climate orthodoxy by the way, are perpetuated by what is possibly the most potent PR smear machine on Earth.

“Climate change” is a fabulously ironic notion in and of itself. Climate has always changed. That is what it does. Now is a very nice time to be alive, climatologically speaking. The good old days of climate are happening at this very moment, in other words. People, for myriad reasons, wish to believe that they are so significant themselves that they must be witnessing something new. They must be.

Most meaningful measurements of the ocean-atmosphere system have been taking place for an astonishingly short period of time, nowhere near long enough to begin talking about “climate.” The single most significant measurement is probably the ARGO buoy system, measuring ocean heat content. Deployed in 2003, the system has not shown anything like the increase in heat predicted by James Hansen.

The world is cooler today than 8,000 years ago, and practically no one knows it.

The icier time, the Little Ice Age, which extended from about 1350 to about 1850 and that is looked back on so fondly by Al Gore and others, was no cakewalk. It was colder, icier, harsher, as its name implies, with more frequent crop failures and the suffering that entailed.

That coastal erosion is taken as proof of “climate change” is especially ironic. When have ocean storms and sands resulted in anything else? A single storm in 1362 killed at least 25,000 people and completely remade the coastline for large parts of both the Netherlands and Denmark. If such a storm were to take place today, it would be presented as evidence of “climate change.” Without irony, of course.

Even recent episodes of weather and climate history are successfully hidden from public view in plain sight. During the recent drought in Texas and Oklahoma, actual scientists went on the record stating that it was the “worst ever,” which is patently false. If the Dust Bowl were to take place again today, in exactly the same way that it unfolded in the 1930s, it would be seen as evidence of CO₂’s awful power.

As someone who rather likes irony, I could not have chosen a more delicious subject.

The connection to nature that pond skating brings is very intense. Few other things can make troubles melt faster than safe ice and a pair of skates.

I originally started this blog to discuss “climate change” and local weather and hoped that people would join me on both topics. Truthfully, I have neglected local weather stories, so here is a little one.

Entering winter every year in New England, I and tens of thousands of others wonder, Will the ponds freeze this year? I would say that in my 7 Rhode Island winters from 1999-2006 they froze four years, for sure three.

The best hope for pond skating this year is an outbreak of Arctic cold that Joe Bastardi points to on Twitter. Several computer model ensembles see this kind of flip. Nothing would make me happier than to “have to” go buy skates for my 6-year-old daughter and share one of life’s great delights with her.

If you go seeking climate Nirvana in the past, you're quite likely to arrive at a warmer period than the one you're living in now. Careful!

The climate deception machine is running overtime this Christmas season. The following is courtesy of the good people at thinkprogress.org:

This winter has been unusually warm, crippling ski resorts, ruining holiday traditions, and dashing hopes of a white Christmas across the northern hemisphere. While the billions of tons of greenhouse pollution in our atmosphere sometimes encourage freak snowstorms, the primary effect of global warming on winter is, well, warmer temperatures — making white Christmases less likely. Temperature increases in some regions were off the charts in November, withnorthern Norway about 10°F warmer than average. In Finland, snow has been replaced by rain, killing World Cup and European Cup ski races, hurting retail sales, and adding to the gloom people feel from the long winter dark. This “black Christmas” shows the “footprint of global warming“:

The desire to travel back in time among some folks is odd. But if you’re someone so inclined, you’ll want to choose the timeframe that the time machine puts you in carefully or you’ll wind up on a warmer planet than the Earth you were born into. Warm can be natural. Why is this so hard to understand?

Unless and until we exceed the temperatures seen during the Eemian (and the interglacials before it), there is no proof whatsoever that human emissions have swamped the climate system. None.

As for less snowy Decembers, you might want to get your facts straight.