NC Media Watch

Happy Halloween Great Pumpkin Comet

Russ Steele

Halloween Weirdness in Space - The Great Pumpkin at Watts Up With That

Global Warming Halloween joke? (Updated)

Russ Steele

UPDATE: It is SATIRE!  Thanks  Anthony. It has been a busy day, and I forgot to do some fact checking this evening.

Let hope this bit of liberal environmental stupidity is not true: California Wildfire Victims Face Fines

The Official News Agency reports:

"As the devastating fires of Southern California finally succumb to the heroic efforts of 8,000 firefighters, weary and broken survivors return to their homes to assess losses and rebuild if they can.  They may have a nasty surprise waiting for them, though... millions in environmental fines.

California's Attorney General reportedly plans to collect millions of dollars from wildfire victims and effected counties in order to buy carbon credits, offsetting the damage the blaze caused to the environment.

Critics say that this is not the first time that Attorney General Jerry Brown of California, listed as Edmund G. Brown Jr. on the official website, has pushed his environmental agenda using his position as AG.  Since taking office in January of 2008 Brown has prosecuted and sued his way to controversy over a number of 'earth-friendly' issues."

It was this quote from a Jerry Brown consultant that got me hot under the collar. What about you?

. . . says Kilmer.  "This is exactly the right time to levy these fines.  The average citizen cannot be trusted to do the responsible thing with a monetary windfall.  We need to get this process underway before they get those insurance checks into their sooty little mitts."

What "monetary windfall", my god these people just lost all they own, now this liberal fool want to fine then for letting their house burn.  This is typical of liberals, people cannot be trusted to make the best decision for themselves, but must rely on a liberal elite to make decisions for them. Are these the people we want making global warming policy in Sacramento?

I honestly hope this was an Onion style parody, just a Halloween joke!

Some Naked TV Science

Russ Steele

I have posted my comments on the National Geographic Naked Science: Solar Forces program on my Dalton Minimum Returns blog. Log in and post your comments.

One more climate consensus shot to bits

Russ Steele

Mother Nature is on a roll, she has blown NOAA's hurricane forecast for two years in a row.  NOAA predicted a very high likelihood, 85% chance, of an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season in 2007. They predicted a 10% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of a below-normal season. These prediction were the result of a NOAA climate consensus. Now, for two years in a row the NOAA climatologist and their supercomputers have gotten the hurricane forecast wrong.  Yet, we are being led to believe these scientific “consensus” predictions, base on computer models, are the Gospel truth.

Well, Al Gore thinks they are the Gospel Truth and according to him global warming was to produce more, and more powerful hurricanes. However, these results are just two more examples that computer models are not reliable predictors of climate change, for one year, or for a 100 years.

You can find more details on the current hurricane season here, and more discussion of the failed forecast here.

I am interested in the parallels between the climate shift in 1977 to a warm Pacific, and the lower than normal Atlantic hurricane activity in 1977.  It was in 1976/1977 that a Pacific Decadal Oscillation took place, shifting from a cold phase to a warm phase. These shifts take place about every 20 to 30 years, and it looks like a return to a cold phase maybe taking place. Could low hurricane activity be the transition signal?  If a cool phase happens, then we should see more La Nina driven weather patterns. A cooler and wet pattern in Northern CA, and a dry pattern in Southern CA.

UPDATE: Consider this from ICECAP :

Icecap Note: Ironically the Pacific was undergoing the Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1976 and 1977, the last time we were this quiet. We appear to be again in the midst of another Great Pacific Climate Shift back to cold. Perhaps with these transitions, there is enough chaos in global weather patterns to reduce tropical system organization in most or all of the hurricane regions. Take that together with the prospect of a major decline in the solar activity that appears more and more likely with each and every day the next solar cycle is delayed (already cycle 23 is the longest since the early 1900s), the prospects that we will see an acceleration down in global temperatures, which peaked in 1998 by most measures, grow. If Global Warming was a stock, I would be selling.

La Nina in Nevada County

Russ Steele

After writing this post, Ellen reminded me that in 1989 we had a major blizzard in February of that year.  In a single storm we had five feet of snow in our drive way, the wind created huge drifts. My daughter and her boyfriend came home from CalPoly Valentine Day weekend. It started to snow on Friday afternoon, and Sunday we spent all day shovel the quarter mile drive way to get them back to school on time. Our power was out for five days. With that reminder, I decided to see if 1989 was a La Nina year. Yep, one of the strongest in the current Pacific Warm Phase. 

It appears that we are entering another Pacific Cool phase, it will take a few more years before we can be sure. If so we can expect our local weather to return to more like that Nevada County experienced from 1940 to 1977. Here is a big picture view of what we can expect, we are currently in the warm Atlantic and cold Pacific mode and thus the dryness in the southwest.

Click for a larger image.

Both graphics came from this paper: La_Nina_and_the_Oceans_Behind_the_Droughts_This_Year.doc

Can the sun save us from global warming?

Russ Steele

The National Geographic Channel will have a TV special on the Sun, sunspots, and climate next week. The teaser on the Dish Network channel listings said this about the program:

The Sun may help save the Earth from man-made global warming.

Well that got my attention.

This special will be shown on the National Geographic Channels Naked Science program. This one is titled: ‘Solar Force’. Dish Network customers will find it on Channel 186 at 6pm Pacific Time and again at 9pm on the 30th of October. It will also be rebroadcast on Thursday November 1st at 7pm Pacific Time.

I will post a discussion on what we see and hear on The Dalton Minimum Returns blog following the 9pm show.

Hat Tip to Watts Up With That for alerting us to this program.

New Dalton Minimum Return Postm (Updated)

Russ Steele

The length of the current sunspot cycle is increasing, which in the past has been an indicator of cooler temperatures. More details here.

UPDATE: Anthony  Watts posted a comment this morning alerting us that a large sun spot that maybe on the far side of the sun, which looks to be about 40 degrees above the equator. This could signal the start of Sun spot Cycle 24.

UPDATE TWO:  It was just system noise. No new spots. We will continue to wait and wait.  See the sun here.

 

Here is a holographic photo from Spaceweather.com:

Go here for a more detailed explanation of holographic science. This spot needs to be confirmed with a second and third observation. Stand by, we may be seeing the precursor to the start Cycle 24.

Return to the winter of 54-55 (edited)

Russ Steele

When telling weather stories around the Thanksgiving dinner table, the winter of 54-55 always comes to mind. That is the winter we got six feet of snow at our house on the Banner Ridge. It came in three storms of about 27 inches the first night, 24 the second and 20 the third.  I remember having to shovel the snow off the roof of my grandmothers house, which only had 2 x 4 rafters. The core of the house was part of WWII barracks which came from Beale Army Air Force Base. Not much snow load in the valley, but 4 feet of wet snow was causing the house to groan, so my two brothers and I were sent up on the roof to shove off the snow.  And the next day we got 20 more inches and had to shovel it again.

.

The power was out for almost two weeks, and our two freezers were full of garden produce, beef, and pork from some 4H projects. We shoveled for two days, opening up the quarter mile drive way to Banner, so my parents could take our freezer contents to the storage locker in Grass Valley. We were using wood and heating oil for warmth and NID Ditch water for drinking and flushing. School was out for a few days, but soon the buses were running. It was ten days before PG&E restored our power. Getting hay for our animals was also a challenge, as was milking the cow on cold mornings.

Why am I writing about all this Nevada County weather history?  It all came back to me when I was reading the AccuWeather Forecast for the winter of 2007-2008 this morning here. This was the trigger paragraph:

First of all, the La Niña has gone to AT LEAST where we thought it would go and there is no stopping it. We are projecting a moderate to strong one well into the winter and may wind up with a top 5 ranking as far as the nino3.4 SST. In addition, the forecast cooler west-than-east idea is a known warm signal for the United States as a whole. In addition, the warm AMO and the type of autumn we have had also fit well into 5 analogs: 1949, 1950, 1954, 1955 and most recently 1998.

I am thinking getting another five gallon can of diesel for the generator, we may need it this winter if AccuWeather is right.  Here is a dynamic view of the growing La Niña. Watch the animation, then observe the expanding pool of cooler water developing the Gulf of Alaska.

Tired of hearing that the SoCal fires are caused by global warming?

Russ Steele

Here is a more scientific view of the droughts enabling the fires.  The lack to hurricanes!  Read this analysis by Ryan Maue from the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies.

A non-global warming explanation for the lack of moisture/drought in the US Southwest deals with the lack of Hurricane activity in the Eastern Pacific basin. The moisture, upper-level outflow, and accentuation of the monsoon can all be traced back partially to EPAC storms, which are highly sensitive to SST conditions in the equatorial Pacific (ENSO). Simple reanalysis calculations for inactive minus active EPAC seasons shows very significant deficits of monthly mean cloud water, precipitable water, and surface specific humidity (among a host of other variables) for Aug-Sept months over the US Southwest.

Caution, this analysis requires a little brain work. No political sound bites here, only some interesting analysis of the real world and what the lack of  hurricanes  have to  do with  SoCal  drought.

Yes, global warming climate models are flawed!

Russ Steele

I have written often that climate models are flawed and should not be used to justify global warming mitigation policy in California. Here is the view of an expert, Dr William Gray an Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University with a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago in Geophysical Science. He is a leading climate expert known for his seasonal Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts and has recently written a paper, We Are Not in A Climate Crisis. Here is small segment on climate modeling: 

These GCM models should not be relied upon to give global temperature information 50 to 100 years in the future where model verification in the lifetime of the model builders is not possible.  These GCM modelers do not dare make public short-period global temperature forecasts for next season, next year, or a few years hence.  This is because they know they do not have short range forecast skill.  They would lose credibility if they issued forecasts that could actually be verified.  These climate modelers live largely in a ‘virtual world’ of their own making where reality and model skill is determined largely by the modelers themselves.  The climate models are so complicated that it takes teams of specialists to construct all of the various model components.  No one person well understands any model’s complete numerical package.  No independent outside person would ever know enough to realistically evaluate the model’s outputs.  They are just giant black boxes telling us that humans are warming the globe at a dangerous rate.  The fact that nearly all the GCMs give similar results (global warming of 2-5oC for a doubling of CO2 near the end of the 21st century) should not increase our confidence in these models.  They all have similar flaws.  For many modelers it appears that grant support and media coverage are more important than model reality.

Full paper can be downloaded here: Download ClimateCrisis.doc

I strongly agree with Dr. Gray's final paragraph.

I believe that in the next few years the globe is going to enter a modest cooling period similar to what was experienced in the 30-years between the mid-1940s and the mid-1970s.  I am convinced that in 15-20 years we will look back on this period of global warming hysteria as we now look back on other popular and trendy scientific ideas that have not stood the test of time.