Bumped!

My appearance on Red Eye has been changed to tomorrow. See you then.

I’m On the Record

If and when Katla blows, whatever is scenic about the initial moments of the eruption will be swept away by the negative consequences on Earth’s climate.

If you know me well you know that as Don’t Sell Your Coat neared publication during late 2011 I was a nervous wreck. Why? Because I knew then, as I do now, that volcanically induced global cooling was a significant threat, I’d written about it in my book, and I wanted both the book sales and the simple sense of satisfaction of saying “I told you so.” To whom? To NASA.

Do I really believe that NASA doesn’t know that Earth is just one good-sized volcanic eruption away from destructive cooling? Of course not. NASA climatologists know this perfectly well, and have even published peer-reviewed papers about volcanic cooling in the temperature record. But such cooling was specifically not what NASA climatologists were warning the public about in the 1980s, 90s, 00s, and first part of this decade. Au contraire, NASA climatologists would have the public believe that the only thing to fear, climatologically speaking, is a warmer and warmer world.

This is wrong scientifically, and wrong historically. Humankind has prospered during warm times and struggled during cold times. You are here right now because the glacial conditions paused 12,000 years ago and homo sapiens developed in a way that could not have happened had the ice sheets remained in place. Looking at the last 1,000 years of history, it has been during the Medieval Warm Period and the last 150 years that humankind has prospered the most and during the Little Ice Age that famine, war, and plagues decimated population and were the “new normal” – as climatologists like to describe our time – of the era.

So, again, being pro-humanity as I am, I am also pro-warmth. Warm is good. Cold, not so much. (Even if the little boy in me will forever respond to snow as though it is something I especially need to survive.) And being pro-warmth, it was scary before the book was published to think that this opportunity for a non-scientist to stand up to the bullies at NASA and say, “Even though you’re smarter than I am and even though you possess education that I lack, people need to know the truth about the climate risks facing them.”

Such as (as those of you who’ve read my book know):

1. Ocean cycles are aligned to generate cooling in the next 30 years.
2. The Sun has quieted down and is meant to quiet down more, and this is likely to produce mild cooling as well.
3. An Icelandic or Alaskan or Aleutian volcano spewing enough sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to generate a shrouding of the planet from the Sun’s warmth is overdue and inevitable.

All of this is basically bad news. The only good news in sight is that the anti-science that is the global warming establishment will eventually come apart at the seams as its predictions are falsified to an even greater extent than they have been in the past decade and a half. Oh, and that little thing about book sales. It’s a hell of a way to make a living, and I wish were wrong and I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.

We may never know why NASA climatologists aren’t as concerned about cold as I am, and in the end it probably doesn’t matter. But knowing the truth? That matters. And now you, my readers, you know. Don’t Sell Your Coat.

DMI Arctic Sea Ice Graph Goes Back to Normal

The DMI arctic ice extent graph in its normal state.

Many had taken note of the Danish Meteorological Institute’s strange sea ice graph apparently showing projected sea ice for the next two weeks. It couldn’t have looked much weirder, unless they had continued the line off the graph and off users’ computer screens and across their desks and across the floor and out the door of their homes. That would have been the next weirder thing than what they actually had.

But it turns out none of the weirdness was intentional. In fact, not even the graph itself was intentional. I wrote to the very reliable and equally pleasant Gorm Dybkjær, who responded within a day or two:

The graph that caused head-scratching around the blogosphere. Most assumed that the new DMI sea ice graph was purposeful. Thankfully it was a simple glitch that produced the apparent forecast.

Thanks for notifying me  - we have had a series of unfortunate computer troubles, which created this unfortunate graphic that looks like an ice extent prognosis.This was NOT an attempt to forecast ice extent – sorry for the confusion. I will correct the error asap.

And, no surprise, Gorm has done exactly what he said he would. People can now go back to reading Arctic ice extent tea leaves to try to ferret out what the current year’s minimum might be. Carry on.

Meeting Opinions With Facts – Just Another Day as a Climate Change Skeptic

Note to self: It’s OK to think about climate, but it’s also OK to be in possession of a few facts.

Writing at Big Think, David Berreby laments the simple fact that people who are more knowledgeable about science are more likely to be climate change skeptics than they are to be global warming believers. Berreby takes as an article of faith that rising sea levels are a real-time threat to coastal dwellers the world over. Um, no they’re not.

I note that Berreby’s entire article, which posits a relationship between how people respond to climate change and their political philosophy, contains not a single scientific fact. I was a lifelong confirmed lefty when I became a climate change skeptic, and it is my new understanding of the science that has produced a political change in me (toward the right) rather than the other way around. The moral high ground presumed by Mr. Berreby is imaginary, by the way, as I write about here.

Getting back to that paucity of facts, does Berreby know that this moment in Earth’s climate history is not particularly warm? Does he know that the current interglacial is the coolest of the last four? Does he know that sea level was 15 feet higher during the interglacial immediately prior to this one? Does he know that forest rose all the way to the Arctic coastline in northern Siberia 7,000 years ago? Does he know that temperature on Earth routinely undergoes fluctuations of the same magnitude that we’ve seen in the last 150 years? Does he know that Antarctic sea ice has risen during the entire period of satellite measurement that began in 1979? Does he know that the South Pole temperature recording station has shown cooling for the same time period? Does he know that the Little Ice Age, from which the planet has been rebounding temperature-wise since about 1850 was no picnic for humankind? Does he know that historically warm periods are benevolent and cold periods not?

If he reads my book, he’ll know all of these things.

Berreby makes a big point of discussing how important it is not to turn one’s intellectual opponents into strawmen, and then proceeds to strive to turn climate skeptics into strawmen himself. Another fruit of reading my book: he’ll be in a position to know what climate skeptics, as real as he is, actually know.

Clinton’s Trip to Arctic Deconstructed

If I do one or two more radio interviews I may have to try a little career change. I love radio!

If you’re a busy politician and you want to sound green, what’s better than a quick trip to a polar ice cap? Nothing! Unfortunately, sounding green and understanding the environment and Earth’s paleoclimate are wildly different things, it turns out. Don’t believe me? Click here to listen to a segment from the June 3rd Wise Guys of Weather radio show featuring yours truly, Joe D’Aleo, Joe Bastardi, and Alan Lammey.

Worldwide Radio Interview Tonight

I’m looking forward to joining the hosts of Wise Guys of Weather at 8:10 p.m. EDT this evening to discuss weather, climate, and my book. Hosts Joe Bastardi, Joe D’Aleo, and Alan Lammey of weatherbell.com bring cold hard facts of energy and climate to bear for listeners around the world. I hope you’ll tune in!

As I sometimes mention, it’s as though some of the people on the pro-AGW side have very little appreciation of the wonder and majesty of the ocean-atmosphere system. Not a problem with us four! Seriously!  Call in with questions: 909-265-9150. We look forward to hearing from you!

They “Know” But They Don’t Know

BAD OLD DAYS: The desire to control weather and climate is a powerful human emotion, and it has gained currency among people who should know better during the last 30 years.

Update (6/1/12): The poll results for the poll at the end of this post are in. Zero percent agreed that “science demands that witches be burned”; four percent agreed that “science does not demand that witches be burned”; zero percent agreed that “I don’t understand the question, but I believe strongly in global warming”; and 96 percent agreed that “this question makes me laugh, and I’m proud to be a climate skeptic.” 

In my book, I talk about how the good old days of weather and climate are happening right now. If you obtain most of your news from MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, NBC News, CBS News, or ABC News, you may not be aware of that fact. Indeed, if you’re in this category, a combination of video technology, satellite technology, and the Internet have likely by now created a perfect storm of images in your mind convincing you that the end of time is nigh. But that perception is not connected to objective reality, at least not in terms of hurricanes, droughts, floods, forest fires, tornadoes, sea level, heat waves, or any other objective measure worth talking about.

Unlike the good old days of weather and climate (which, again, are happening right now – did I mention that?), the good old days of humility in the face of nature’s power are gone. Sure, for a long time people removed plenty of human hearts from their living owners and burned a cheering football stadium’s worth witches in the hopes of creating more favorable atmospheric conditions for agriculture. But Science, from about the time of the eighteenth century, allowed people to see that the crops don’t fail because of too few live human sacrifices.

That time, though, has ended. As of 2012, a dominant clique within climate science has demanded vast swaths of public funding, all the while frightening people the world over with Apocalyptic imagery and pronouncements. Science, in this one but important sense, has become anti-Science. If you’re a news consumer of the sort described, and you assert your passionate belief in the Science that you’ve been fed for the past few decades, meaning climate science above all, then you’re really asserting your passionate belief in anti-Science.

In the process, you’re living through a historical moment of singular significance. For not since the Englightenment has Science been used so successfully to make otherwise rational people irrational. What is Earth’s temperature today? They don’t know. What was Earth’s temperature 30 years ago? They don’t know. Is 2012 a particularly warm year within the Ice Age that started three million years ago? They don’t know. Let’s be perfectly clear, the overwhelming majority of believers in global warming don’t know what they don’t know. They know that a journalist told them that a scientist told them that they should be afraid. And so they’re afraid. It’s the only reasonable response, right?

Wrong.

The only reasonable response is to educate yourself, listen to both sides in a sustained and thoroughgoing manner, and then ask a couple of hundred questions of people who know more about the subject than yourself. That would be a start. That would be a return to Enlightenment values of reason and fair-mindedness. In the meantime, most of you who say you love science but know nothing of Earth’s climatic past will be part of the important social movement that set real Science back half a century or more, pushing it perilously close against the sorrowful tradition of witch burning.

Which leads me to the first-ever poll on talkingabouttheweather.com:

Does Science demand burning witches?