I am a nature-loving person

As a surfer, my love of nature is at the center of my life.

If you’ve read my book on climate change, then you know that the first piece of writing of mine to gather any attention was a letter I penned in fourth grade to the prime minister of Japan, begging his country to desist from whale hunting.

If you had managed to read every word I’ve written since then, you would come away with the inevitable and accurate impression that I love the planet I was born on, including and especially the oceans girdling it and the skies above it.

If you had watched me, somehow, throughout the course of my life, you would have to notice, as well, that it makes me happy to pick up trash, and that I rejoice when I witness environmental success stories, such as the marked ecological improvement of America’s waterways during the last two generations.

Thus, for those with minds disposed to contemplation and hearts disposed to compassion, you can imagine how painful it has been to be typed as a hateful, anti-environment tool of Big Oil or some other right-wing power.

I am no one’s tool.

I report on the scientists who have a different view on climate than James Hansen and Michael Mann, and there are far more such scientists than most people have any idea of — far more. I did not create skeptical climate science. I did not fabricate one iota of what I have reported on. And I have not been made a nature hater by reporting on it, either.

I feed birds, stare at the sky a lot, surf, and generally adore creation.

I love this Earth. And I’m going to love it forever.

Apology accepted: an update

Needlessly expensive electric power is a beautiful sight to some. This Somers, Connecticut solar “farm” is a case in point.

In 2009, a few weeks before Obama was inaugurated for his first term in the White House, I wrote this in The Huffington Post: “You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet.”

My, how times have changed. Since I wrote those naïve words, not only have the president and I both grown considerably grayer, but he has done far more to join Al Gore in the ranks of destructive climate charlatans than most people realize. He decided, unilaterally, to make the creation of coal-fired power plants so expensive as to be non-starters, never worrying for a moment what jacked-up energy prices would do to working people and those on fixed incomes. For working people, pricy electricity makes life more stressful, palpably so. When $50 one way or the other can destroy your monthly budget, you notice when feel-good energy production costs your family – your kids – a pair of sneakers they needed two months ago or a prescription co-pay that you simply have to come up with.

It’s personal at that point.

Progressives love to talk about taking care of the little guy. And so long as the little guy is driving a Prius and making $70,000 a year at a union job, they really do. If he’s driving a third-hand pickup truck 17 miles each way to his second job at the convenience store, then progressives warm fuzzies don’t really enter the equation. Oh, well. Let them eat Prius cake, or something to that effect.

Obama has consistently talked the talk, throughout his four years in office, and as his second term gets under way in earnest, he’s also walking the walk – to green la-la-land, that is. Gorgeous New England farms covered with solar panels that belong in the desert Southwest (if they belong anywhere, which they don’t), domestically produced coal getting shipped to China (where it’s burned less cleanly than at home), thousands of acres of near-shore Atlantic waters littered with obtrusive, bird-killing windmills requiring redundant power generation systems because they’re unreliable (particularly when power is most needed), these are a few of my favorite things. Oh, no, wait. These are a few of President Obama’s favorite things. And guess what else? The dog is about to bite, and you’re about to be feeling sad.

Why? Because you are caught up in a glorious swindle, an impeccable lie, a howler. This is the notion that by walking away from conventional power generation as an individual and a part of your nation, you are “greening” the planet, or saving humanity, or some such. Once again, what you’re really doing is killing people needlessly, but this is at most an irrelevant detail, if you really, deeply love Mother Earth and know little or nothing about Earth’s climate history.

So, yeah, President Obama owes me an apology for his climate shenanigans at this point, just as he owes one to you. Does he think he’s pulling a fast one on the American people? I have no way of knowing that. And I don’t particularly care. What I do I care about are the president’s actions. And on climate, particularly, his actions are destructive.

NOAA map of February temperatures less than accurate?

NOAA’s map of February temperatures across the United States got New England all wrong. It wasn’t “near normal,” at all, as the people of the region can well attest. Oh, and the data, too: Hartford, CT, as an example was actually 5.1 degrees below normal.

 

 

 

 

(Update two: Thanks to Tamino for the correction. Boston’s mean was warmer and Hartford’s colder than I had originally. I have updated the numbers. See bottom of post for first update.)

As the map above shows, NOAA seems to have struggled in creating a temperature map that accurately conveys what New Englanders recently experienced: a frigid February. Hartford was 5.5 degrees below normal for the month; Boston was 2.7 degrees below normal. Providence was 3.5 degrees below normal for the month. And yet all three locations fall within the “near normal” portion of NOAA’s map. What’s up with that?

Talking About the Weather With Joe D’Aleo

Joe D’Aleo has been at the center of American meteorology throughout his career.

Joe D’Aleo has been at the center of American meteorology throughout his 40-year career. He was a co-founder and first director of meteorology at The Weather Channel. Later he was content manager and “Dr. Dewpoint” for Intellicast.com. He was a college professor of meteorology for six years at Lyndon State College, and has authored many peer-reviewed papers. While there, he inaugurated the Northeast Storm Conference, now in its 39th year. Currently, he is co-chief meteorologist at WeatherBell Analytics.

TATW: If you were speaking to a 10-year-old child curious about meteorology, what would be the most vital idea to leave the child with?

D’ALEO: First of all, it is a wondrous world in which we live, and weather affects our lives every day in every way. There is great majesty in big storms or a beautiful sunrise or sunset. But there are benefits regardless of the career chosen to pay attention to the weather and its effects on you business, and making the right, sometimes life-or-death, decisions about if, where, and when you go.

Talking about Climate with John Christy

John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Photo courtesy of The Huntsville Times.

John Christy is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Along with Roy Spencer, he developed  the first satellite temperature record of the Earth. Skeptical about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, he has been invited to speak before Congress several times.  He is the director of the Earth System Science Center at UAH.

TATW: What would be the single piece of information that you would convey to people who have strong opinions about climate and little knowledge?

Cue the Emperor of the North

Skim sea ice re-forms on Greenwich Cove, January 21, 2013.

I’m falling in love with the cove.

Part of that is recognizing that, at least at present, I’m better off walking than running. I’m capable of the 2-mile jog past the water that I did last year forty or fifty times. But it meant I didn’t get a chance to drink in the cove’s wonders as I have more recently.

Today at the Cove

The less you know about swans, the more beautiful they are. A pair of the gorgeous birds in a New England waterway similar to my local cove in East Greenwich, RI.

Today at the cove, I learned that there is a more significant population of swans than I had realized before. I counted 50 of them, but some were distant. I will try to confirm the count in the days to come.

It often seems to me that birds have a sense of impending weather. The swans looked keen to take all the food they could, submerging their heads, with their tails skyward, gorging ahead of tomorrow’s snow and bitter cold.

Talking About Weather with Elliot Abrams

AccuWeather Elliot Abrams, whose favorite weather is also his dog’s favorite weather: fluffy snow. Photo courtesy of Penn State University.

Today marks the start of Talking About Weather With and Talking About Climate With, a pair of regular features that will appear once a week or so on talkingabouttheweather.com. The inaugural subject is a giant in American forecasting, AccuWeather’s Elliot Abrams. In addition to his meteorological skills, Abrams is a talented and frequently hilarious writer.

Elliot Abrams earned a B.S. and an M.S. in Meteorology from Penn State University. He is a graduate of the United States Air Force Officer Training School. He joined AccuWeather in 1967, and was a co-founder of AccuWeather’s radio service in 1971. He is now a Senior Vice–President and Chief Forecaster for AccuWeather. He is one of only two people to have earned the accredited status of Certified Consulting Meteorologist and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Seal of Approval for both radio and television.

Just as background: Abrams kindly acknowledges that talkingabouttheweather.com is based in Rhode Island.

TATW: What is the polar vortex?

Elliot Abrams: A polar vortex can be found on maps of the wind flow aloft (such as 3-6 miles overhead) almost every day of the year. In summer, it is relatively weak and far north. In winter, it often quite large. Sometimes it will consist of a central core surrounded by lobes that can greatly range in size. When one of these lobes is oriented such that the flow comes from the northwest Canada to the Great Lakes or Northeast states, it can be extremely cold. At other times, a major lobe can extend from northern Canada to the western states. In that case it can be very cold in the West, but the flow exiting from the eastern side of this lobe or extension is often a southwest flow that brings warmth to the Northeast.

It’s Time for Hibernate

If one thing became clear during the recent cold snap, it was that people would sort of, kind of like to learn more about meteorology. Even Al Roker seemed interested, with his (fully inaccurate, but whatever) talk of winter hurricanes. In other words, while the weather itself wasn’t new, the urge to put labels on it, in the era of perceived climate change, was suddenly epic.

For those who may have cringed through the labeling mayhem and rather conventional outbreak of winter weather, I hope the polar vortex rap video above will salve the wounds. I know it did mine.

If you need further assistance feeling better, you could always read a book about climate cycles and the chances of global cooling in the next few decades.

(h/t to Phil Adams)

This Is What’s Happening

Not all rabbits are so easily controlled.

This is what’s happening: Global sea ice just had its best year, basically a full calendar year with a zero-anomaly, since 2004. Scientists told us that global warming was accelerating at the poles, through the polar amplification process. Part of that, they said (after consulting global circulation models), was that both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice would diminish. When Antarctic sea ice stubbornly refused to shrink as predicted, scientists scrambled for an ex-post-facto explication. This was a little like a magician whose rabbit has jumped off the stage explaining to the audience that this was part of the show.

This is what’s happening: The rabbit’s not coming back on stage.