So it’s true!! Worst Case Scenario came true!
That’s not the worst case scenario. The Earth being gobbled up by a multi tentacled space monster would be considerable worse. And you all are very concerned about the source rather than the content.
You won’t find his picture in the dictionary under “unconscionable asshole”, either. Not literally. I thought the hyperbole was obvious, but admittedly, with someone as crazy as Murray it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s hyperbole and what’s literally real. 
I addressed both the source and the content. Newsbusters misrepresented what the content was.
“You all”? In #56 I gave you three facts about why the content was complete bullshit.
ETA: And yes, so did RNATB.
Oh fer Christ’s sake, I don’t know if you’re being deliberately obtuse or just not interested in facts. Here’s some “language” for you that is pretty straightforward.
The facts here are may be multi-layered but the basics are simple and fundamental. It’s called “look at a map”. Look at a map of the Arctic, preferably a globe or a map centered over the Arctic Circle. What do you see? What you see is that the Arctic is primarily ocean (it’s called “the Arctic Ocean”). Arctic ice is mostly sea ice, surrounded by land (Canada, Greenland, Russia) that keeps it pretty much hemmed in. Arctic sea ice is the dominant form of long-term multi-year ice there. And it’s permanently lost more than 40% of its volume since satellite monitoring began in 1979. Measuring the loss of Arctic sea ice is a measure of the impact of global warming on the Arctic.
Then look at the Antarctic. What do you see? What you see a large continent (it’s called “Antarctica”), covered by an enormous ice sheet, surrounded by ocean. The exact opposite of the Arctic. Measuring the loss of the Antarctic ice sheet – land ice – is a measure of the impact of global warming on the Antarctic. (And it’s also a significant contributor to sea level rise.) Intuitively, one might expect sea ice to follow the same pattern, but not every climate consequence is intuitive, and only a motivated denialist would pretend that it should be. It turns out that Antarctic sea ice is just a seasonal spinoff effect that is actually exacerbated by global warming, at least in the short term. It starts forming in the autumn, grows, eventually gets blown out to sea, and almost entirely disappears by late summer. Then the cycle starts all over again. So what is the significance of increased Antarctic sea ice? What is it measuring? It certainly isn’t measuring either Antarctic air temperature (which is melting hundreds of gigatons of ice sheet mass every year) or Antarctic sea temperature, which is warming. We conclude, then, that in terms of global warming, Antarctic sea ice measures what is scientifically referred to as “nothing”, otherwise known as “bupkis” or “sweet fuck-all”. It’s exactly like drawing skeptical conclusions about global warming because there’s been a lot of snow the past few years in the US northeast.
So at the first level of inquiry, the simple answer is that change in Antarctic sea ice is not a primary indicator of global climate change. For that we need to look at the dominant form of long-term multi-year ice, which in the Antarctic is the continental ice sheets (or we can look to the Arctic, which is substantially more sensitive, for many reasons). There’s certainly scientific interest in Antarctic sea ice, but it’s strictly a secondary phenomenon. Increased meltwater outflows, increased precipitation, and model predictions of stronger westerly winds are all consistent with observations of how and where the annual sea ice tends to form, and all have anthropogenic influences. Most models haven’t shown the sea ice increase, but most investigations look at equilibrium conditions, suggesting that this may be just a transient phenomenon, a hypothesis that seems to be corroborated by recent studies.
Who is this “we” of which you speak with such vehemence? Certainly no reputable hurricane researcher that I know of. The correlation and the causal relationship of hurricanes to AGW in general and to rising sea surface temperatures in particular is a complex and difficult problem. It’s definitely true, though, that all else being equal warmer SSTs promote hurricane formation and contribute to higher hurricane energies. It’s a demonstrable fact that the North Atlantic PDI (hurricane Power Dissipation Index) has been increasing along with increasing SSTs since around 1980. The five-year average of both was around its peak at the time of Katrina. SSTs have stayed high while the PDI has dropped since then. The general expectation is that warmer SSTs will generally lead to stronger and more sustained hurricanes, but may also introduce disruptive factors that result in fewer of them. There are also many ongoing studies on the general subject of AGW leading to extreme weather events. But no credible scientific source I know of made any of the claims you stated above.
Just don’t try shorting beach front property in New York State, where Governor Cuomo recently signed the Community Risk and Resiliency Act. It provides laws and regulations governing coastal development, including policies on coastal retreat, buyouts, and “undevelopment” to move communities and habitation out of the danger zone. Although you can probably still make a bundle shorting beachfront property in Virginia and North Carolina, both of which states, being governed by lunatics, have essentially made it illegal for any government authority to talk about “sea level rise” – these have become doubleplus-ungood unwords.
Its a stupid move on the coal companies’ part. Just like when gay marriage was challenged in the courts and opponents suddenly realized they had to provide actual arguments and reason instead of spouting off slogans, coal companies will find themselves at a severe disadvantage trying to disprove something that’s true. Better to just stick with bribing politicians to apologize to oil companies
Got it. Thanks!
(At least, I am almost positive I would have it if I could figure this sentence out. 
So…this WILL be a horrible North Atlantic hurricane season ala 2012 w/ Sandy, or it WILL NOT be a horrible NA hurricane season a la 2013…
…but either way, whatever does happen will be in line with the AOGCMs, and a consequence of AGW, and that is no PR tripe in spades, right?)
Thank you for a genuinely helpful response on the current thinking.
WRT living next to the beach, it was a stupid idea at Galveston and it’s a stupid idea now. It was not a harbinger then. It is now. I don’t remember reading a single non-Denier article on Sandy that doesn’t imply it was harbinger of THINGS YET TO COME.
On the sea ice front, I think I understand what the current thinking is (but thanks anyway), but what I’m wondering is if we figured that out after the fact, or predicted it. I assume that everything not in line with what was predicted will turn out to be “not a primary indicator of global climate change.”
My complaint about PR has way less to do with science than it does the PR about what’s coming. We are reasonably good at explaining, post-event, why something happened. We have a lousy track record of predicting what will happen.
Was Jennifer Francis the only one to indulge in this sort of Sandy-Climate Change PR grab?
“In addition to the Arctic connection, the abnormally high sea-surface temperatures all along the eastern seaboard at the time, which must have some component associated with globally warming oceans, likely helped Sandy maintain tropical characteristics longer and allowed the storm to travel farther northward than would be expected in late October. Warmer ocean waters would also increase evaporation rates, adding to the moisture and latent heat available to the storm”
I completely agree the relationship between hurricanes and AGW is a complex and difficult problem. In fact, it’s kinda MY point, and I’m bummed that you swiped it. 
I remain unconvinced that only the Denier side is guilty of marketing PR hype in advancing their cause. I may not know jack shit about AOGCMs, but by god I know human nature.
I would see your point had Ms. Francis said that AGW had directly caused or even impacted the storm. Her actual statement, however, was more narrowly given, referring to “globally warming oceans,” a statement that happens to be accurate.
Not quite, as usual you really never read the scientific published papers.
What Kerry Emanuel reported is that while we can not blame a specific hurricane to global warming we can however do blame AGW for the increase in intensity they are gaining.
And as tomndebb noticed, you are indeed still depending on the PR tripe that the deniers are continue to make, so again: why does it seem that it is never a PR problem for the deniers? The reality is that the scientists are very cautious about what are the most likely results or what we can expect from a warming world, while the denier sources insisted (and continue to insist) that the ice is not melting or that the oceans are not warming (increasing in this case the intensity of the hurricanes that manage to form).
The conclusion should be obvious; after so many years of misleading information from the denier sources even you should had learned by now that it is folly to continue to rely on their misinformation that includes also the talking point that the scientists are the ones with a PR problem, the ones claiming that are in reality avoiding the science.
Nope, what you show here is a basic misunderstanding, when I looked at the problem of the weather prediction at mid latitudes (as in the USA) what researchers are finding is that we can indeed get harsh winters in some areas of the USA, but eventually the background warming in a few decades into the future will mostly override those cold conditions in winter time. In the meantime the jet stream is being affected by the loss of ice in the north pole and it is a big factor in affecting the weather patterns.
What the prediction was and remains is that warming was coming, and specially warming at the polar regions, it is what is called the Arctic amplification. People like Cohen and Jenifer Frances got together to explain how that affects the winter in the mid latitudes:
What their research shows is what are the factors that should be taken into account to make much better predictions about regional weather, and as Cohen has demonstrated we are beginning to get a handle on that, what you are ignorant about is that the resolution and some more local factors were not well understood until recently. Most of the climate predictions are not very localized, they only concentrated on very general areas, it was very easy for the merchants of doubt (their PR indeed) to create the misleading point that climate scientists were failing to predict the weather in the mid regions. **They conveniently forget to tell their readers that weather is not climate. **
What is happening right now is that computer power and better data gathering is beginning to allow us to get also a better handle on what are the most likely weather patterns that the current warming in specific regions of the earth will bring.
So indeed, a lot of what the deniers are going about is to complain about why climate researchers are not weather people too :rolleyes:, the PR from the deniers has consisted on blurring that distinction, but the problem for them is that scientists are gearing up to become more specific, and it will be folly to ignore what they are beginning to find.
Sandy IS a harbinger of things to come, because regardless of any predictions one may or may not care to make about future storm activity, sea level IS rising and future storm surges will be correspondingly amplified at any given level of storm intensity. The fact that future hurricanes may have higher and more sustained energy levels and the fact that their point of maximum power dissipation has been migrating steadily northward just increases the risk that much more. That latter point, incidentally, is part of the point that Jennifer Francis made in that quote you posted and what she said there is, as Tomndebb has noted, entirely accurate.
There’s something wrong there. The fact that you claim to have understood the nature of Antarctic sea ice is directly at odds with the fact that you posted it in the context that you did. Outside of scientific papers about the Antarctic which deal with these kinds of minutiae, I’ve only seen it brought up in these kinds of arguments with the following denialist rationale: it is a phrase that includes the dog whistle magic word “ice”, and in this case we can say it is increasing, so let’s throw it out there with some exclamation marks – “ice is increasing!” – my, how good that sounds! – and the rubes will think it actually means something important.
I also note that your quote of the things I said consists of seemingly random extracts that is virtually devoid of meaning, especially in obscuring the direct comparison I was making about the fundamental differences between Arctic and Antarctic geography.
So I must thank you, in return, for revealing the denialist thought process, which seems to be the following:
Ignore the fact that the reality of AGW is so well established by so many different lines of evidence that we are well past the point of having that argument. Insist that each and every new weather and climate phenomenon that ever occurs, no matter how minor or incidental or irrelevant, no matter how anomalous and overwhelmed by global trends, must either be intuitively obvious or else it must have been predicted by all models. If anything is found, ever, that is counter-intuitive and surprising, then insist that this is evidence that climate science is highly suspect and should not be taken seriously. This is the standard FUD strategy used by all PR types from political demagogues to snake-oil salesmen. There is growth in seasonal sea ice in the Antarctic, ergo climate science is not reliable, case closed, send the climate scientists to the back of the room with their dunce hats on.
Thank you for another thought-process revelation. No, actually, rising global temperatures and large-scale reductions in total global ice mass are among the kinds of things that are primary indicators of global climate change. Local anomalies that run counter to much larger trends and second-order effects are not.
Well, if the objective here is “win an Internet debate for the denialist side”, then by all means, diverting the discussion away from the scientific facts and into meaningless ruminations over broad generalities is the way to do it.
apart from the rusted on believers whose faces are well past saving by now ( 18 years + and still no warming), the rest of the world is, ahem, moving on.
I expect the panic merchants will find some other cause to keep the angst alive some time soon. Bless them all.
Repeating affirmations that there was no warming only makes the contrarians sound less and less reliable.
As for the Bilderberg group, that should show that their reach is only in the minds of the conspiracy theorists. That group is designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America, they are set as a forum for informal discussions.
In more formal settings the Europeans are the ones that are more active with dealing with the issue.
http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/brief/eu/index_en.htm
I always look to counter the weak points from contrarians, but only after I then look at how reliable the source of information that they used was, and it is not good at all.
Last year they just allowed the most discredited of the deniers to print grossly wrong and misleading criticism about what he claimed a professor had said about deniers like him.
What I am moaning about is that we are lousy predictors. I’m not moaning about which side is trying to use science. What I personally deny is that we have a very good idea about the net effects of what will happen with increased atmospheric greenhouse gases. (I also deny it’s anywhere near our number one problem, but that’s a different thread.)
I take it that Sandy is a harbinger of the next horrible hurricane, but has no relevance to the following extremely quiescent season? That the obvious climate change events which led to Sandy had no bearing on the fact that the next two seasons were pretty mellow?
And on the sea ice front, I remain confused. There was, or there wasn’t, a prediction based on the AOGCMs that sea ice would decrease in the Arctic but increase in the Antarctic?
I get it that, having observed a sea ice increase in the Antarctic, we can explain why we should have predicted it, b/c it’s totally in line w/ Climate Change theory now that we know it happened…but did we?
But what I’m complaining about on the PR front is that BOTH sides are guilty of overstatement. And on the prediction front, so far the AGW Alarmist side is just as guilty of overstatement.
If we decide to be cautious about increasing greenhouse gases willy nilly, it should be because we have no idea what the net effect would be; not because we are good at predicting them.
So, again, (and I tried to be fair actually quoting Dr Francis), is it the case that AGW “likely helped” form Sandy (because it happened), but likely did not help form the following quiescent year?
I’d like to see her come out at the end of 2013 with a statement that AGW may be a factor which likely helped the season be quiescent. (Actually, there were efforts in that regard, but they thought up a new post-event explanation about dry sahara air, completely forgetting how ocean warming served up Sandy the year before.)
That’s the confirmation bias trend that I see as a PR grab.
Wrong as shown already, the deniers are guilty many times over. The fact that you can not reply to what was reported about the mistakes of the deniers and the better statements of the scientists should be a big clue for that.
This makes no sense because it ignores a lot of what was shown already.
Generally speaking, the predictions about what the increase of CO2 would do to the background temperature were very good. There is uncertainty in issues like extreme weather, but as Richard Alley explained we know enough about the most likely things that will happen so we should act.
[QUOTE] It's true that Earth's a massive jigsaw puzzle, with lots of pieces intricately fitting together. But, Richard Alley argues, we already know enough to see the Big Picture. The missing pieces of scientific understanding - exactly how clouds work, how extreme weather will change with global warming - are important, but we can already see how Earth works. [/QUOTE]The big uncertainties should also be reasons to act too for the simple point that waiting to see how they will turn out is really reckless. Currently there is evidence that the increase in warming is making droughts worse, and the chances for more to come increase too, in places that already have humid conditions the water vapour is increasing making hurricanes worse (and one should add sea rise to the factors that will make hurricanes worse).
Things like that are enough to tell us that we have to act, that we are not sure what extreme weather phenomena like how many hurricanes and tornadoes will appear in a warming world should not be reason enough to wait because the other things that are happening like ocean rise will still be there. Waiting to see if yet another big drag to our economies will be added to the problem is foolish.
Actually I have seen her presentations on video, in essence the Arctic amplification (what global warming is doing to the poles) is changing the jet stream and as other researchers and Dr. Francis reported:
Researchers like Francis have been talking about this from earlier than 2012.
And, yes, that was from 2005, and what Stefan Rahmstorf, Michael Mann, Rasmus Benestad, Gavin Schmidt, and William Connolley told us then.
Again, the overall point was that the intensity will get worse, and that there are doubts about how many hurricanes will come in a warming world. A good number of researchers reported that the number of hurricanes can decrease, but most report that the ones that come will be more intense. So why is this not a PR nightmare for the deniers that clearly are misleading us when they push straw men like the one that they constantly repeat that tell us that all scientists only predicted a high number of hurricanes?