Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The reason it’s so cold is because of global warming. See, the Earth being so much warmer, that warm air has spread to the North Pole, where it dislodged a spinning top full of cold air that’s spilling over the nation, making the US colder. It’s colder because it’s warmer.
True, none of the climate change models predicted this effect; but that only means we have a lot to learn about how badly humans have screwed up the planet by driving SUVs and eating beef.
Okay, I concede I know nothing about climate science so it’s at least possible the new and improved theory is true. But adding Polar Vortex now smells a lot like adding Retrograde Motion to explain why the other planets really do revolve around the Earth. I remain skeptical.
Joe Doakes
Turns out the thing I never learned about the scientific method during my semester as a biology major – “all evidence for AND against a theory supports the theory” – was the thing I needed most.
I though I had a scoop, but I see Powerline did me one better. They found a TIME magazine story from 1974 claiming Global Cooling was related to the Circumpolar Vortex, a swirling tornado of cold air at the pole that threatened to sweep frigid air over the nation, sending us all into a deep freeze.
Back then, it was colder because it was colder. Now, it’s colder because it’s hotter. And it’s all settled science. Boy, do I feel stupid for having doubted.
It’s an interesting correlation; you can spot politicized science when they say that all evidence supports it, both that which appears to be for and against it. And then we remember the logical fact that if the proponents say that you can’t refute a theory, it fails the test of falsifiability and is thus……
…..false. Now there may be real climatology out there, but one wishes that the members of the IPCC had learned their logic and were willing to apply it.
The core metric is not the weather, it’s ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, currently about 400. This value is corelated with wealth creation. World governments want to reduce it or stop it. Well, national governments each want other countries to lower it. By carving out exceptions to CO2 emissions controls in less-developed countries, the non-democratic, supra-national UN shifts wealth from the developed world to the less-developed world. This is their goal, and it has to do with post-colonial ideas about which countries deserve to become wealthy. It has nothing to do with ‘climate change’.
Coincidentally, atmospheric CO2 is measured at the NOAA station on Mauna Loa, about thirty miles from my house.
I did enjoy this from that other article:
“Try this parlor game out at a cocktail party next time you’re clinking ice-free glasses with a warmist: ask him to specify what climate or weather phenomenon would not be consistent with the general theory of climate change. And then step back and enjoy the fun. Being a climateer is almost as easy as being a Keynesian.”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/climateers-caught-in-the-vortex.php
PM – you ought to rent a diesel truck and park it near the measuring site, just let it run all day for a week or so. Send the readings through the roof!
“rent a diesel truck and park it ”
JD, he doesn’t need to, he’s got a volcano just upwind of the measuring station
Kel-
The NOAA station is at about 10,000′, above the inversion layer, in the middle of an old lava field. No nearby life forms — not even lichen. They picked a good spot to measure CO2.
Almost everything about AGW theory is questionable, other than the measurement of atmospheric CO2 from the NOAA station on Mauna Loa. Its web cams are here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/livecam/livecam.html
The federal goverment has web cams so I can watch a machine monitor an invisible gas. Now I’ve heard everything.
I’m sure that’s far more interesting that watching grass grow. Or wait, maybe not . . . http://www.watching-grass-grow.com/
Here is the whole problem in a nuttier shell: The whole theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is based on the greenhouse gas theory, which says that increasing greenhouse gasses cause the Earth to get WARMER. So, if the Earth stays the same or gets colder, the whole theory is BUSTED. But “climate change,” well, if they can blame humans for THAT, then they can frighten us, and say whatever the weather does it’s our fault. I say pay no attention to these raving lunatics.
J. Ewing, it is not possible to match atmospheric CO2 to global temperatures in the range we have on earth. If I tell a paleo-climatologist that a fossil record shows that the CO2 level was 450 PPM in my sample, he can’t tell me what global average temp that corresponds to.
When your first assumption is that any science that contradicts your belief system is suspect, your are incapable of reasonable debate.
When your first assumption is that any science that contradicts your belief system is suspect, your are incapable of reasonable debate.
But it’s the “Denialists” that are putting up data, and the “warmists” that are bruiting faith about!
Like most of us usually do, I have been watching the weather over the past few days, especially when they said record cold. I couldn’t help but notice the high – low records and the fact that several of the previous record lows, were in the late 1800s. Of course, back then, we had so many more cars, trains, factories…Oh wait! Never mind!
Some peoples’ belief system is “trust in reason”.
Other peoples’ belief system is “trust in scientists”.
I look forward to the presentation of a falsifiable hypothesis by the AGW crowd. Needless to say, i ain’t holdin’ my bref.
It’s weird, mnbubba –the conversation goes like this:
Me: You can’t prove a negative, Mr. Climate Scientist, I can’t prove that the AGW theory is false, so you need to prove three things to me before I jump on the bandwagon. First, that the climate is going to change in the medium and long term, second, that this is due to human emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, and third, that this climate change will have effects that are worse than attempts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions by humans.
Climate Scientist: Can’t prove a negative, huh? Well, prove I’m not an accredited climate scientist! Can’t, can you? You climate change denier! Someone should kill you!
“J. Ewing, it is not possible to match atmospheric CO2 to global temperatures in the range we have on earth.”
Not sure where you are getting that information, but that is EXACTLY the science Al Gore uses to argue that the two are not only highly correlated, but that CO2 causes warming. The only problem is that he is reading the chart incorrectly, and every study of the ice core data confirms it. CO2 goes up, on average, 800 years AFTER temperature rises! So, CO2 does not cause global warming; global warming causes CO2! There is NO scientific evidence for the theory of CAGW. None.
J. Ewing-
We’ve only been able to directly measure average global temp and CO2 concentration for the last century or so. Going back further than that requires the use of proxies for temp and CO2. These proxies vary in quality the further back in time you look. Ice core data only goes back a million years or so, and its CO2 vs. age value has a large error bracket because gasses diffuse and ice compresses. You can’t assume, as some people do, that because the ice core measure of atmospheric CO2 for the last century matches NOAA data gathered with other techniques, that ice core data from 10,000 years is as valid a measure of atmospheric CO2.
The closer you look at the AGW fanatics methods and data, the shakier it looks. A data point from a million years ago may represent a thousand year average with an accuracy of +- 30%, and they graph it on the same line as a data point attained by an entirely different method, different time duration, and different level of accuracy. It’s crazy.