Developing La Nina means potential for more tropical weather

Forecasters warned Tuesday that a La Nina weather pattern - the nasty flip side of El Nino - is brewing, bringing with it the threat of more hurricanes for the Atlantic.

This can be an issue as the 2007 hurricane season approaches. La Nina is truly the flip side when it comes to hurricane patterns. 2006 was a very mild year for hurricanes mostly due to the development of an El Nino weather patter in the Pacific during the middle of the summer. As a result the development of tropical systems was squelched during the time of year when such activity should have peaked.

Now if a La Nina is developing, it has the potential to promote the development of tropical systems as therefore may result in a more active than typical hurricane season.

Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the official end of a brief and mild El Nino that started last year. That El Nino was credited with partially shutting down last summer's Atlantic hurricane activity in the midst of what was supposed to be a busy season.

"We're seeing a shift to the La Nina, it's clearly in the data," NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher said. La Nina, a cooling of the mid-Pacific equatorial region, has not officially begun because it's a process with several months with specific temperature thresholds, but the trend is obvious based on satellite and ocean measurement data, he said.

"It certainly won't be welcome news for those living off the coast right now," Lautenbacher said. But he said that doesn't mean Atlantic seaboard residents should sell their homes.

Forecasters don't know how strong this La Nina will be. However, it typically means more hurricanes in the Atlantic, fewer in the Pacific, less rain and more heat for the already drought-stricken South, and a milder spring and summer in the north, Lautenbacher said. The central plains of the United States tend be drier in the fall during La Ninas, while the Pacific Northwest tends to be wetter in the late fall and early winter.

Of special concern is west Texas which is already in a long-term drought, which during a La Nina will likely get worse, Lautenbacher said.

Our focus is primarily on tropical weather and long term climate issues. I have a hard time thinking of drought when I live in a swampy coastal region, but Texas was certainly quite dry all summer. Increased potential for drought just adds to the concerns that this La Nina can bring.




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Global Warming comic

Crock
(c) 2007 North America Syndicate

Courtesy: The Houston Chronicle
This matches my view of Global Warming alarmism. Forget the reality around you - just stick to the message.

An Inconvenient Exaggeration

This Sunday, Al Gore will probably win an Academy Award for his global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, a riveting work of science fiction. The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland’s 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.

Where’s the scientific support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent Policymaker’s Summary from the United Nations’ much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.

It amazes me what counts as a documentary these days. I once thought that a documentary was a fact finding expose that digs for the truth surrounding an issue or an event. Seems like now as long as a movie is about or contains real people as themselves that it counts as a documentary.

So it seems it doesn't matter if there are half truths, exaggerations or outright fabrications, if the message is the right one and it is presented like a documentary then it is one. I've written several times how this movie is a partisan attack on the American lifestyle. The continuing theme of the global warming crowd (known as climate change during the winter because no one will believe in warming when it is cold outside) has been redistribution of wealth to pay for perceived sins against the environment.

Every time we got ice and snow this year many of us would comment that this shows that there is no global warming. Of course one storm proves nothing yet Al Gore's introductory comment to promote this film was how Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans proved that global warming existed AND that it was caused by humans.

Al Gore takes many liberties with the information he presents in his film and anyone with a scientific approach to climate study can easily point these out.

The science has shown that there are many causes for the climate generally getting warmer. Variations in the Sun's output, wobble in the tilt of the Earth, decreased cosmic radiation affecting cloud cover, and green house gases. The majority of these causes are natural. Even fluctuations in greenhouse gases are natural. But the message is that western humans are the problem and western humans should pay for it.

Al Gore criticizes the US for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol yet while he was VP, he and Bill Clinton made no effort to present the pact to Congress.

It would be nice if my colleagues would actually level with politicians about various “solutions” for climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, if fulfilled by every signatory, would reduce global warming by 0.07 degrees Celsius per half-century. That’s too small to measure, because the earth’s temperature varies by more than that from year to year.

The thing is that all Kyoto does is penalize member countries financially without affecting any real change.

I do not begrudge Al Gore his Oscar. I do disagree completely with his premise. I just wish the film had been classified more appropriately as fiction, docudrama or fantasy.



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Science Today - Come See

I have just modified my other blog Science Today. It now OK enough to "Go Live" so to speak. The science news aggregators will be the primary source and they are updated continuously, automatically. I hope to continually add content as time allows.

Come by and leave me a comment or two on what you think. I intend to add Haloscan and set this blog up on TTLB and Open Trackback alliance to promote this blog in full force. In the meantime, I'll leave a post or two here on new updates.




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US doing better than Europe with regard to actual Kyoto emissions

H/T - Dumb Ox Daily News

I hesitate to refer to CO2 as emissions. CO2 is an essential, natural by product of normal respiration and combustion. The political argument is that CO2 is a pollutant that must be regulated, taxed and controlled. Europeans who have invested much money and energy in the Kyoto protocol like to deride the US as an evil polluter.

Well it seems that CO2 output of the US, as a result of the supposedly wrong policies of President Bush, is less than that of the gung-ho European signers.

The same European critics who accuse the U.S. of unilateralism have failed to meet their own Kyoto targets, Horner told a meeting at the Heritage Foundation.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty requires signatory nations to set limits on the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other "greenhouse gases" blamed for climate change, by an average of five percent by 2012.

The 15 European nations participating at the time - the so-called E.U.-15 - made a commitment to collectively reduce their emissions to the point where they would be eight percent lower than 1990 levels.

Since the treaty went into effect, however, Europe's CO2 emissions have increased quite substantially - and at a rate three times faster than America's - Horner said. At the same time, Kyoto-related regulations have led to higher energy costs for E.U.-15 citizens. (Emphasis mine)

Could it be that the Kyoto protocol is simply bad policy??




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From the Governor who brought you higher taxes...

New Jersey's governor Corzine created a fiscal crisis in his state when he refuse to sign any budget that did not include increasing taxes. He used the requirements of the state law for a balanced budget to justify the need to raise taxes yet the bill he signed did no such thing. The budget wasn't balanced but taxes were raised and that was the real intent anyway.

Corzine has ordered the state Department of Environmental Protection in the next six months to draft a comprehensive plan for reducing emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 statewide, according to a draft of the order obtained by The Star-Ledger.

The result will quickly be that New Jersey will raise the price of gas, home heating fuels and electricity. And to spread the wealth (or pain) they will require suppliers from outside the state to meet the same unrealistic and unnecessary requirements. Just another way to make New Jersey too expensive to live in.

New Jersey make great strides in reducing real air pollution over the past 30 years. Increasing efficiencies and researching alternate fuels are all good things. Taking the approach that Gov. Corzine is ordering is costly and won't change anything. For the same reasons that Kyoto is bad policy, NJ's attempt to meet the same targets is also bad policy and will hurt the state more than it has any chance of helping the environment.



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Himalayan Glaciers not retreating

VK Raina, a leading glaciologist in India feels that a negligible amount of research is being conducted on glaciers in the Himalayans and as a result, no conclusions can be drawn as to the effect of glacial melting as a result of global warming. As a matter of fact,

Raina told the Hindustan Times that out of 9,575 glaciers in India, till date, research has been conducted only on about 50. Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers.

It is simple. The issue of glacial retreat is being sensationalized by a few individuals, the septuagenarian Raina claimed. Throwing a gauntlet to the alarmist, he said the issue should be debated threadbare before drawing a conclusion.

This is the real point that has to be accepted by the proponents of all sides of the debate: That we need to discuss, debate and argue all of the factors that lead to climate change and determine what the science points to as the statistically most likely cause of these changes. From what I have read climate change and global warming looks to be mostly natural.

Could there be a human-induced component? I can concede that this might be possible but I do not accept that it is only cause or even the most likely cause. Until the alarmists discuss the effects of the intensity of the Sun, cosmic radiation, variability and uncertainty in measurements and natural warming from the Little Ice Age, they have very little credibility in my mind. That any suggestion of a non-human cause for climate change is met with scorn and belittlement is further evidence that the alarmist's position is weak at best.

Neither are Greenland's glaciers

A U.S. study suggests two of Greenland's largest glaciers are melting at variable rates and not at an increasing trend.

In 2004 and 2005, the glaciers melted at a very high rate dumping almost twice the usual amount of water into the sea but then the rate of melting settled down to normal levels. The study concludes:

"Our main point is that the behavior of these glaciers can change a lot from year to year, so we can't assume to know the future behavior from short records of recent changes," he said. "Future warming may lead to rapid pulses of retreat and increased discharge rather than a long, steady drawdown."

It seems to me that the conclusion can also be drawn that while occasional rapid increases in melting may occur, typical melting rates are just as likely and are no cause for alarm. Of course that doesn't play as well in the MSM.




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Winter snow must be due to climate change

While we all freeze in the cold winter worrying about Global Warming, let's check out some street scenes this winter. I think these are from Switzerland or maybe Syracuse - about the same amount of snow except the license plates are wrong.

This is a Power Point slide show that you have to download and it will start up on its own. As far as my McAfee virus scan software and my AOL Mail scan it appears to be free of any viruses.


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There is a 10% chance that the global alarmists are wrong

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Summary for Policy Makers for its not yet complete 2007 report. The summary states that global warming is very likely caused by humans. The "Very Likely" designation translates to a 90% confidence level. The media takes a statement like this and claims that there is essentially no chance that humans are not the cause of climate change. The fact is that a 10% likelihood that a scientific theory did not occur as postulated is huge.

The leading alternate theory of the cause for global warming, that the intensity of the Sun is the real culprit, appears to be a more likely factor. Over 10 years ago, Henrik Svensmark recognized that global temperature variations corresponded to the intensity of the Sun or more specifically, the ability for cosmic radiation to reach the Earth.

Mr Svensmark claims that the calculations used to make the prediction of )a 4.5 C temperature increase) largely overlooked the effect of cosmic rays on cloud cover and the temperature rise due to human activity may be much smaller.

It took over a year before his findings were published, in large part because it is not politically correct. The interesting thing is that current climate behavior corresponds to the behavior predicted by Svensmark's theory.



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I wish I was on the payroll

From CNN:

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Gore says Bush administration paying scientists to dispute global warming

MADRID , SPAIN (CNN) -- Former Vice President Al Gore said in an interview on Tuesday the Bush administration is now paying scientists to dispute global warming since the administration can no longer argue against it.

During an interview with CNN affiliate Cuatro in Madrid, Gore said, "they've lost the argument and they don't want to stop dumping all this pollution into the Earth's atmosphere. The only thing they have left is cash and now they're offering cash for so-called skeptics who will try to confuse people about what the science really say. But it's unethical because now the time has come when we have to act."

Gore was the Democratic nominee against Bush in the 2004 presidential election. His film, An Inconvenient Truth is up for the best documentary Oscar.

--CNN's Al Goodman

Posted 2/06/2007 06:00:00 PM | Permalink | More developing political news

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Cold in Cambodia

First there was ice in South Texas. Now its cold in Cambodia. And I thought it was summer time in Southeast Asia this time of year.

What will global warming bring us next?

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Global Warming - Yes, but is it true??

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As more scientists speak out against the alarmism that has become the politics of global warming, we are seeing this house of cards fall apart. As it does so we see the most vocal proponents becoming more and more irrational - witness Dr. Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel calling for decertification of meteorologists who don't regurgitate the party line and all the calls that the "science is settled".

If we really are on a downturn in temperature, it won;t be long before the Chicken Little's start crying about the cold.



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Maybe the Polar Bears will make us feel sad

Hat tip Drudge Report. And if we feel sad then we might start to think that we are guilty. After all, that is all that is necessary. If the AGW alarmists can convince the public that poor, innocent Polar Bears are suffering then maybe they can get people to recognize the need for sacrifice.

If you tell someone a lie long enough, they start to believe it. The picture here is a classic marketing ploy. Early in the article we learn that:

"Swimming 100 miles is not a big deal for a polar bear, especially a fat one," said Dr Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service.

The Bush administration even agreed to consider listing Polar Bears as endangered species because their habitat is supposedly threatened. This would be reasonable if the population of Polar Bears was actually decreasing, but as I understand it, the Polar Bear population is actually increasing. The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species lists the following taxonomy for Polar Bears:

1965-"Less rare but believed to be threatened-requires watching" as Thalarctos maritimus (Scott 1965)

1982-Vulnerable (Thornback and Jenkins 1982)

1986-Vulnerable (IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1986)

1988-Vulnerable (IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1988)

1990-Vulnerable (IUCN 1990)

1994-Vulnerable (Groombridge 1994)

1996-Lower Risk/conservation dependent (Baillie and Groombridge 1996)

Showing a listing of threatened in 1965, vulnerable from 1982 - 1994 and a lower risk/conservation dependent in 1996 indicated to me that the Polar Bear population is increasing and that the species is in less danger now then it was in the 1960's.

By using heart-rending pictures and imagining possible scenarios that might happen can be used to justify the desired outcome of getting westerners to pay extra fees and taxes and give up the conveniences of a prosperous lifestyle to fight a natural phenomenon that we cannot even influence significantly let alone control.