Let us put aside seriousness for a few minutes. This opinion piece, linking global warming and obesity, had me laughing out loud. Leave it to the Australians. Just the pseudo-science graphic at the top of the article is worth clicking the link. I'd include it here, but the legal department would not be happy with me!

The Wall Street Journal online has a free feature today on the state of California's lawsuit against the 6 largest auto manufacturers over the GHGs emitted by the cars. It gives a pretty concise definition of the sort of suit it is (public nuisance rather than manufacturer liability), then features a debate between Russell Jackson, a defense-side lawyer who has worked on class-action and public nuisance suits, and David Bookbinder, a senior attorney at the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C.

I'm not sure how many of the readers of this blog follow up and read comments, so I thought I would add this link to an entry on the main page. Thanks to Sarah Fortner for adding it to our discussion. This is an op-ed piece from Peter Doran, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was his research which discovered the regional cooling in portions of Antarctica. The op-ed addresses how this research has been mis-used by the media and others as "evidence" against global warming. It makes a very interesting read.

I'll be honest - I felt a little lost last week reading the oral arguments from the Supreme Court. I'm no lawyer, and while I understand the basics of the case, I knew there were a lot of subtleties I was missing. So today I found a commentary from Michael C. Dorf which clarifies some of the legal jargon. In particular, it does a really good job explaining the standing doctrine, which comes out of Article III of the Constitution. Here's a paragraph that summarizes the standing rules:

The standing rules that the Supreme Court has located in the case-or-controversy requirement are complex, but three requirements stand out as particularly strange in a case like Massachusetts v. EPA. The plaintiff must show: first, that the injury alleged by the plaintiff is imminent; second, that the alleged injury is "concrete and particularized," rather than a "generalized grievance;" and third, that it is "likely," rather than merely "speculative," that the alleged injury will be redressed by a favorable judgment.

And from there the author goes on to expand on each of those three points. It's still written in "lawyer," but it does help to clarify the case.

A couple of quick pieces to touch on this afternoon from New England. First, global warming will be on the ballot in New Hampshire. At least 50 towns will vote by ballot on the New Hampshire Climate Change Resolution, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other steps to slow warming. The towns participating use ballot voting rather than Town Meetings. This is a grassroots effort to push global warming as a major issue in the 2008 presidential primaries.

Second, I appreciated a piece on Boston.com from Cathy Young on the politicization of the science of global warming. The piece rightly points out that as many on the right are quick to dismiss global warming based on economic motives, many environmentalists are equally quick to believe the worst in order to press for their own agenda. That agenda virtually never includes what may be the easiest current technology to produce electricity without greenhouse emissions, nuclear power.

Ms. Young's piece concludes:

Most journalists and pundits have limited knowledge of science; as a result, they tend to pick whichever science best suits their political prejudices. Both science and journalism deserve better. Perhaps we can start by remembering that an ideological crusade can be as strong an inducement to bend the truth as the profit motive.

I'm sure many of you who read extensively on the issue of global warming have already seen Ellen Goodman's Boston Globe Op-Ed piece from February 9. I realize op-ed's are supposed to be thought-provoking, sometimes even inflammatory, but I wonder if anyone has told Ms. Goodman that paragraphs like this:

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

are not the way to win friends and influence people.

The ironic thing to me is that while that paragraph turned me off completely, I agree with most of the rest of the piece. Doing what I can personally to reduce my carbon footprint, check, ranting against the politicization of the global warming issue, check, making the point that alarmism leads to inaction, check - all that seems very familiar. But couched in terms of "if you have any questions left in your mind, you are the equivalent of a Holocaust denier" - it just sets my teeth on edge. Is it not possible to be inclusive in today's society?

Recently, AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Elliot Abrams raised questions about this winter's weather and asked his readers whether they believed global warming played a role in the extremes. Many of the answers he received were well thought out, and I thought it would make sense to provide a link to them here.

The results ofan international poll on climate change were released today. The survey included 17 countries representing more than 55 percent of the world population.

Is global warming a critical threat? Should steps be taken now even if it involves significant costs? Should less developed countries (with substantial aid) make a commitment to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. These are some of the questions posed in the survey.

Full survey results along with the methodology of the research are linked from the press release.

Sir Bob Geldof, knighted for organizing the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts that raised money and aid for the Third World, wonders what the point of Al Gore's Live Earth concerts is (caution, link contains profanity). Geldof is irritated because people think he is part of the team organizing the global event. He also thinks without action on global warming from the United States, the concerts are meaningless. It's just another pop concert. He has a point. Global warming has permeated the conscious of the nation over this past year, and most of the world is a couple of steps ahead of the U.S. on the issue. Do we need to raise more awareness?

An interesting editorial appeared in the Sacramento Bee last Friday. It discusses the great divide in the United States over global warming policy, not the divide between Republicans and Democrats, but the divide between representatives of states dependent on carbon - either producers of fossil fuels or of automobiles, and representatives of states not so dependent, especially California, with its leading edge legislation on greenhouse gas emissions.

Noted hurricane expert Dr. William Gray of the Colorado State University has just authored a new piece in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday called Hurricanes and Hot Air. In the commentary, Dr. Gray states that the increase in hurricane frequency since 1995 is attributed to a speed-up of water circulating in the Atlantic Ocean and not due to global warming. Check out the link for his explanation, it is just one page.

In the Financial Times article "The steamrollers of climate science ", author Clive Crook says that the IPCC is a seriously flawed enterprise and unworthy of the slavish respect given by most governments.

In the article, Crook brings up a piece in the current issue of World Economics by David Henderson, a distinguished academic economist who believes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should never have been given the amount of authority it currently has on the global warming policy decision process of certain governments.

Henderson points out some of his issues with the IPCC below....

--Earlier studies on emissions standards were miscalculated by the IPCC.
--Reluctance to disclose data and methods.
--Lots of errors and a failure to correct those errors.
--The panel has numerous scientific contributors, but they are drawn from a narrow professional circle.

Henderson believes if governments are to get the best advise, they need information and analysis from an open and disinterested source or multiple dissenting sources.

I know some of you have already talked about this one already, but here it is.....

Climate scientists at the UK Met Office predict that at least half of the five years after 2009 will be hotter globally than 1998, which is currently the hottest year on record so far.

The group is using a new climate model which now incorporates weather changing phenomena such as changes in solar output, effects from previous volcanic eruptions, man-made emissions of greenhouse gases and sea-surface temperature extremes such as El Nino. Incorporating these factors has resulted in a substantial improvement in predictions of surface temperature, giving the scientists greater confidence in the model's performance.

What about the period from now to 2009? According to the article from ABCNews in Australia, the model predicts that natural forces such as some mentioned just above will offset the expected warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels which releases greenhouse gases.

A report in the journal Nature states that the Kyoto protocol has failed to bring about any significant action on climate change and should be ditched.

Professor Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Raynor from Oxford state in their report that the Kyoto Protocol has not delivered cuts in global emissions that continue to soar, and that it was always the wrong tool for the job.

According to the article in the National Post, Kyoto was fashioned after treaties for dealing with stratospheric ozone, acid rain and nuclear weapons. "Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables," said Prins and Rayner. The article states that the protocol failed because climate change is so complex and rooted in the globally interlaced supply system of fossil energy.

Prins and Rayner believe that the delegates going to the Climate Summit in Bali this December need to radically rethink climate policy. Here is some of what they would like to see......

--Emissions reductions concentrated on the biggest emitters, since less than 20 of 194 countries in the world are responsible for 80% of the world's emissions.

--Forget carbon taxes and cap/trade systems, as they think these are not capable of stimulating the level of action required.

--Need a massive spending increase on clean energy technology and devote as much money to this challenge as they currently spend on military research.

I realize that this story has been talked about on the web and in a few media outlets for about a week now, but I still think that a large portion of the general public has not heard about the global warming comments from John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel. Here is a link to his commentary, courtesy of Icecap. What do you think of John's comments?

By the way, John Coleman no longer works at the Weather Channel and is employed at KUSI in San Diego.

In a new BBC article, environment correspondent Richard Black questions the validity of widespread claims that there is a bias in the scientific community against climate change skeptics. No doubt something we hear about in our comment section of this blog on a regular basis.

In an earlier article, Black invited skeptics to send him documentation or other firm evidence of bias. His new article talks about some of the responses he received. You can read about what he concluded here.

I expect to see plenty of comments on this one.

Paul Yeager and the Global Warming comment section received a tremendous amount of feedback recently in response to Paul's Global Warming Debate column from last week.

In response to some of that feedback, Paul offers some observations and clarification about his initial intentions for that original post right here.

Evan Myers, who is our Chief Operating Officer (COO) and senior Vice president here at AccuWeather offers his personal take on global warming in our new Climate Change Forum on AccuWeather.com.

The forum is a great place to get into some excellent discussion on climate change. Registration is free and quick. In addition to the Climate Change Forum, we have forums which cover the weather in the United States, Canada and International.

A few weeks ago Dr. James Hansen, who is the Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS) and has been recently interviewed by AccuWeather.com, wrote a piece on Columbia U. website about the widespread problem of government science having to submit to political command and control. According to Hansen, it is not just an issue with the current administration, but with past democratic administrations as well. Keep in mind, Hansen also briefly promotes a book written about him and scientific censorship in his op-ed, but I still thought it would be of interest to many of you.

Here is the the link to "The Shadow on American Democracy", by Dr. James Hansen.

By the way, no video this week from Katie Fehlinger.

Dr. Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the Earth and Biosphere Institute (UK) says it is time for a real climate change body count. According to Lewis, there is currently no official climate change body count and the most likely reason is that it is very tough to quantify. That's no surprise to me since there is still not enough information out there to link specific weather disasters (floods/hurricanes etc..) with climate change. The only global estimate of people killed due to global warming is published by the World Health Organisation, and they estimate that 150,000 people are killed each year due to global warming, as stated in the Guardian op-ed. Now we are probably all wondering where that number comes from, well it comes from a 2002 modelling study which looked at four probable impacts of climate change.....

1. Malaria
2. Malnutrition
3. Diarrhoea-type diseases
4. Flooding

The authors of this study say this is a highly conservative estimate that is already out of date. It also seems that these four could easily be caused by many other factors in addition to climate change.

This seems like a number (body count) that we may never know or even come close to knowing, at least in the near-term. What do you think?

A follow-up to a post back in November that I thought was interesting......

John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, was a guest speaker at the International Conference for Climate Change (ICCC), which is currently going on in New York City. A few months ago, John wrote a piece detailing his views about global warming. This time, John gets to the conference podium and personally slams the company that he founded back in 1982. In his speech, John is also highly critical of global warming alarmism. Here is the link to the Business and Media Institute story, along with a video clip of him speaking from the conference. By the way, John Coleman no longer works at the Weather Channel and is employed at KUSI in San Diego.

******Update******

Here are some of the latest viewpoints of the conference, which ends today....

Day 1, courtesy of the Heartland institute which is hosting the conference.

Day 2, courtesy of the Heartland Institute.

Andrew Revkin's reporter's notebook from The New York Times.

Brett is going to be off for a few days, so that means that I'll temporarily be hosting the blog. I've followed Brett's blog fairly closely (I think he does a great job), but I haven't seen everything that he's posted lately, so I apologize if I post something that he's recently talked about.

One thing that I find disturbing about the debate related to global warming (or climate change) is the unfortunate marriage of global warming and politics. In some sense, it's difficult to separate the two since political decisions are often made based on beliefs related to global warming, and the concept of a carbon tax (discussed recently) is one such example. In that case, a discussion of politics is directly related to a discussion of global warming.

The part that I find disturbing is the fact that the global warming debate often becomes a political football, with the sides being largely divided along party lines. Democrats are supposed to believe certain things about global warming, and Republicans are supposed to believe other things. The result is that people, then, often use the discussion of global warming as an excuse to espouse their political views.

This is intented to be a blog about the global warming debate, not of political debate. So as I moderate the comments, I will not post any comments that are only about politics, and it goes without saying that I, like Brett, will also not post any comments that include name calling or hateful rhetoric.

Let me know what you think--but watch how you say it!

--Paul Yeager

Update from Indianapolis: I want to thank Paul for helping me out this week. My wife just gave birth to our third child and second daughter out in Indianapolis, Indiana early Saturday morning, while I was still in Pennsylvania with the blizzard stuck in between in Ohio. The baby came a lot earlier than expected, which explains why she was in Indiana for the Big ten tourney. I finally arrived in Indiana later Saturday afternoon. Mother and daughter are doing well. We may be here for a while, so I have no idea when I will return to this blog. I also wrote a more detailed summary of how it all unfolded Friday evening and early Saturday in my Accuweather.com Canadian blog.Thanks for your understanding. Brett

Now that I am back to work, I figured it was time to check back in with Dr. Hansen, who has consistently generated a ton of commentary on this blog over the two years that I have been doing this. I prepared this thread before I left for Indianapolis last week. Brett.

Dr. James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has been interviewed on Headline Earth and the subject of many of my blogs has chimed in on the recent cooling trend that has been talked about quite a bit over the past few months.

Hansen notes in his most recent pdf that the global cooling trend that began in 2007 is just a natural fluctuation or "noise" that will soon disappear. Hansen states that the cooling trend through the year was due to the strengthening La Nina and the unusual cold of January was aided by a winter weather fluctuation.

According to Hansen, the large short-term temperature fluctuations have no bearing on the global warming matter or the impacts of global warming that he discussed in an Illinois Wesleyan presentation back in February.

Do you agree with Hansen's viewpoint?

Our own long-range forecast expert Joe Bastardi posted a strongly worded response to some of Al Gore's comments from the 60 Minutes Interview in his blog on the AccuWeather.com Professional site Friday . Here it is................

UNBELIEVABLE: Gore to 60 MINUTES: Doubting Global Warming Is Manmade Like Believing Earth Is Flat.

I am absolutely astounded that someone who refuses to publicly debate anyone on this matter and has no training in the field narrated a movie where frames of nuclear explosions were interspersed in a subliminal way in scenes of droughts and flood, among other major gaffes, can say these things and then have them accepted... by anyone.

The list of degreed meteorologists, climatologists, scientists, that signed the Manhatten declaration stating their disagreement with Mssr. Gore's premises grows by the day.

What gets me most is he goes on unchallenged one-on-one on this. Never in all my years of competition have I seen someone elevated to a level that he is, in any thing, without any face-to-face competition to establish credibility.

When someone gets a PhD, his or her thesis is normally attacked, for lack of a better word, in something known as the "orals," at least it was for those venturing into those waters at PSU.

In other words, a group of people still in a higher academic standing than you, one you want to ascend to, will try to get you to defend what you do in a way where you show what you know, not by some programmed unchallenged remark, but by competition with the people that are criticizing. Why? Because you can defend what you know, if you have worked hard enough. It is typical of the mentality of this person, that he thinks that he should be able to get something for nothing, just go on unchecked, hurling insults at people who have forgotten more than he will ever know.

You be the judge of this statement, and consider the source: Gore to 60 MINUTES: Doubting Global Warming Is Manmade Like Believing Earth Is Flat.

In fact, here is an excerpt : "...I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat," says Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off," he tells Stahl.

I want to say that I have tried my best to be opened minded about this issue. But the more research I do, the more some of the claims of Bill Gray and John Coleman ring true.

However, I am all for non-carbon based energy as a way of increasing the quality of life, and that has nothing to do with what I consider grossly overstated scare tactics. Let me direct you to a site to keep an eye on: http://www.francis.edu/ActionCenter.htm I have been told they are developing some kind of home-based energy generator powered by wind. The idea is you store the energy created by wind. Given I live in the Boulder, Colorado of the East, count me in. As it is, we are getting a house with a geothermal unit in it that cuts electric bills by up to 50%. So I don't need to hear I am some kind of nut that thinks the Earth is flat, especially from a man who refuses to stand up one-on-one with anyone that can confront him fact for fact.

Last night I read an interesting story. GLobal warming is responsible for 770,000,000 people on Earth starving. Is that so? Never mind it could be a myriad of things, let's say that is right. The article also says that my 2085, that number may be 880,000,000.

These people have to assume that we are plain stupid. Seriously. The Earth's population has increased four-fold in the last 100 years. Suppose we assume in the next 80 years we only double the population. Right now the percentage of people starving because of global warming (and I am being nice in giving them their figure, even though any objective person would question that) is about 13 percent of the world's population. In 2085, assuming 12,000,000,000 people, (it's liable to be more) if only 880,000,000 million are starving because of the climate, that means the percentage has dropped to less than 8 percent. So if we use that reasoning, global warming would have increased the chance of feeding a greater percentage of people.

But you see what is done here. It's the same thing that is done across the board. Games played, and unless you look, you'll get taken.

It is funny. Lenin said, in his statement that was meant to say the ends justify the means as far as building his utopian society, that one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet. We can argue if that is valid, for one would have to assume almost a messianic quality to the person to know they are right about the future. Is Mssr. Gore assuming that about this issue? But if one destroys the entire egg itself, one cannot make an omelet (I hard boil my eggs and only eat the whites, so maybe that is why all this is hard for me to understand).

It's astounding, I am constantly reading and re-reading counter arguments to this idea. Let's remember, some of the major proponents with high powered doctorates that are on the other side, brilliant minds no doubt like Dr. Hansen and Dr. Mann, did not get their doctorate DEFENDING their global warming stance. It is not like there was a PhD dissertation with six PhDs, three pro and three con, challenging the assertions here. These come out of the natural curiousity and good will of these men, and I do not think they are anything less. However, you see the same thing with me in a way, when convinced of an idea on the future, because of hard work and research it's very tough to back away. There is a difference, though, of blowing the 3-inch line on a snowstorm, or that Omaha's winter was colder than I thought. We are talking issues that ORIGINATE WITH THE WEATHER, but have far reaching tentacles.

Now, anyone that believes he knows absolutely what is going to happen with the climate in the future, well you be the judge as to who is the card carrying member of the flat Earth society, that person, or the skeptic.

Nice way to start the weekend.

Hurricane Ivan over the Gulf of Mexico in 2004.

Dr. Phil Klotzbach and Dr. William Gray from the Colorado State University have just issued their updated long-range Atlantic Hurricane forecast for 2008 and the U.S. landfall strike probability. Once again, they are calling for a well above-average tropical season and a higher than normal probability of a major hurricane landfall in the United States.

In section 5 of their pdf, Klotzbach and Gray discuss how the current conditions in the Atlantic basin are quite favorable for an active season.

Where is the global warming part of all this? Well, in section 9 of the pdf, Klotzbach and Gray explain that the very large increase in major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin between 1995-2007 was in their opinion primarily a result of the multi-decadal increase in the Atlantic ocean thermohaline circulation (THC) due to changes in ocean salinity and not directly related to global temperature increase.

Klotzbach and Gray feel that we should not read too much into the highly active hurricane seasons of 2004-2005. Even though the activity was unusual, it was within natural bounds of hurricane variation. The authors note that both 2006 and 2007 had slightly below-average and average activity, respectively.

Klotzbach and Gray believe that the Atlantic basin is currently in an active hurricane cycle associated with a strong thermohaline circulation and an active phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). They expect this active cycle to continue for another decade or two, before we enter a quieter Atlantic major hurricane period.

By the way, it looks like Dr. Gray is in the slow process of passing the entire responsibilities of producing these forecasts over to the younger Dr. Klotzbach. Gray has been starting to focus more of his time arguing against global warming concerns.

Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize speech in Norway, courtesy of Wikipedia.

I saw this article today in ScienceDaily, which is titled "Scientists Debate the Accuracy of Al Gore's Documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth'. ScienceDaily takes a look at several articles just published online in Springer's journal, GeoJournal that are written by climate experts who express their opinions on the scientific validity of the film's claim.

The experts generally agree on the following (from ScienceDaily)....

--The documentary does an excellent job of raising public awareness to man-made global warming.

--The main weakness of the documentary is that it tries to use individual extreme events, such as hurricane Katrina to prove the existence of global warming.

You can read a brief summary of the opinions from each of the six experts right here in the ScienceDaily article.

AccuWeather.com's senior meteorologist and long range expert Joe Bastardi sent the global warming center a copy of his open letter to the 2008 presidential candidates. I like his idea in the fourth paragraph. Here it is...............

Dear _______

The nonsense that is the global warming debate can be likened to a Don King production, where the two main antagonists, well deserved ones at that, are still hours away from the main fight. Instead, we have under-cards that leave us simply wondering if we will ever get to the real deal.

I use the fight game because in boxing in past days, guys went right at it. Jake La Motta and Sugar Ray Robinson once fought each other within a few weeks of a fight. There was no dancing and ducking and big mouthing, just the fight against the guys that deserved to be in the ring.

This is exactly how this should be handled. Mr Obama, can the Al Gore as an advisor on the environment. Mr. McCain, quit succumbing to pressure because you want to look nice or moderate. Both of you, get the people that can give this debate its true merit in front of you. Hillary, if you are elected, the same thing (you got to admit, she is showing some Lady Thatcher or Golda Meir spunk these days). But stop with watching people that aren't the main event.

Within the first 100 days of office, get the top five SCIENTISTS on both sides of the issue in front of you in the oval office and let them argue it out. No cameras, no press, just you, your closest advisors, and the people that are qualified to do this. Have trusted members of both sides of the aisles, but get the politics out of it.

The polar bear situation should push Americans over the edge. The long term population has increased. In addition, the cold this winter may simply be a preview of what is coming. That we are basically going to make it illegal to get oil, from an area that can perhaps help us get off foreign oil, because of yet another problem that may not exist, should be enough to clear the air and reveal that there are alot of people supporting this position that are not driven by the science, but what may be an almost fanatical madness, and that should resonate with people. Sir or Mam, if you are absolutely convinced, after seeing people who don't think polar bears are as important as the people you are elected to serve, that argue out the science, then commit the American people on a path that will basically spend their hard-earned money on a problem our chief rivals are probably simply paying lip service too, then I will support you. But if you have doubt, after clearing away the feelings and looking at the facts, then by proceeding you will put yourself in a rush to judgement before the facts are clear that has left many Americans disillusioned about our nation in other matters.

This is not a matter of politics, it is not a matter of feelings. It is a matter of science and facts and educated men squaring off and displaying their knowledge. A non-conclusive answer in this matter is no answer at all, and no mandate to perhaps send us on path that could affect the chance for the very people we should have the most compassion for, to improve their lot.

Yours very truly,

Joe Bastardi

So, what is your opinion of Joe's letter?

Different types of offshore rigs.

John Tierney of the New York Times made a strong point in his science blog Wednesday in regards to offshore drilling and the potential fight with environmentalists.

John questions whether environmentalists who want to deny individual states the right to decide whether or not to have drilling off their shores could end up hurting their own cause to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I personally think John hits the nail on the head in his short piece. What do you think? I would like to know. I know this is a hot topic right now with energy situation.

If you want to comment, please make sure you read his blog "Offshore Drilling vs. Global Warming" first.

Remember, this is a global warming blog. Please keep your comments related to this topic as best you can. Let's keep it friendly and remember, no name-calling.

Thanks, the vacationing moderator.

Hurricane Katrina Flood damage in New Orleans, LA. Image courtesy NOAA.

Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post wrote an excellent article Sunday about how global warming is being overblamed in regards to specific natural disasters. From what I see, a lot of this is being created by a thirsty, big headline seeking news media. Some global warming advocates are also guilty of this rush to judgement.

I am not saying that global warming is completely off the hook when it comes to some of these particular disasters, but there is just not nearly enough information (data) out there to link the two with certainty. Far from from it, at this early point in time. Ten, twenty, a hundred years from now maybe that will change, but who knows.

Achenbach uses the Katrina and Iowa floods as prime examples of the quick-to-blame global warming rational. (Read the article here)

Kerry Emanual, a climatologist from MIT and a subject of at least one of my previous blogs was quoted in the article, stating "Global warming increases the probability of floods and strong hurricanes and that is all you can say." Makes sense to me.

Achenbach seems to zero in on the rapid growth of human population as the main culprit to many of these disasters. What do you think?

Also, Ken Clark, our western forecast expert, who also regularly blogs here at AccuWeather.com voices his opinion on a new plastic bag bill in California. You can read it here.

Dr. James Hansen, who is the head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) recently spoke to House Select Committee back in June, which was exactly 20 years after he first testified to Congress about the dangers of global warming. I blogged about that story on June 25th. As I expected, there was a fair amount of sharp criticism about his speech in the commentary section of this blog.

In a recent post (pages 11-18) (Aug 4th) on his Columbia University website James Hansen discusses how he was bombarded with critical emails after that speech. I wonder if any of those came from some of our regular commentators?

Anyway, Hansen explains that a majority of the critical emails insisted that the sun, not man, was the primary cause of climate change.

In his response, Hansen explains why these ideas about sun and climate change are wrong and that speculation that we may have entered a solar driven long-term cooling trend must be dismissed as a pipedream as the solar signal in shorter term global temperature is too weak. See next paragraph.

The text below is directly taken from Hansen's post:

Solar irradiance seems to be slightly less at its current minimum than in earlier minima (Figure 6), but, at most, the decrease from the mean irradiance of recent decades is ~0.1% yielding a climate forcing of about -0.2 W/m2. The current rate of atmospheric CO2 increase is ~2 ppm/year, yielding an annual increase of climate forcing of about +0.03 W/m2 per year. Thus if the sun remains "out", i.e., stuck for a long period in the current solar minimum, it can offset only about 7 years of CO2 increase. The human-made greenhouse gas climate forcing is now relentlessly, monotonically, increasing at a rate that overwhelms variability of natural climate forcings.

Hansen also tries to explain how science really works and admits that scientists may not fare very well against contrarians in you-tube style debates. Now you know why he may not be too keen about debating.

Hansen includes a few of the critical emails within the sources section at the bottom of the last page. I just touched upon his response, once again, there is a lot more detail between pages 11-18 in his post if you are interested.

Fay is one stubborn storm!

I figure no time is better than this to have one of my open forums. I have been extremely busy over the past couple of days in dealing with tropical storm Fay down in Florida. My other job here at AccuWeather is being the afternoon southeastern radio forecaster. I will have a fresh post up by tomorrow.

Please try to keep your comments related to climate change.

Upstate New York after a spring lake-effect storm.

Welcome to my second posting. Hopefully you enjoyed my first, and it is the first of many future blogs. Last week, I came across an article about global cooling due to a decrease in sunspot activity and thus a decrease in the output of energy from the sun. I chose this week's article because it talks about the same thing, but it has a different cause for the cooling. The reason in this article is that changes in huge ocean currents, such as El Nino/ La Nina, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation are absorbing the excess heat in the atmosphere due to the increase in greenhouse gases and forcing it deep in the ocean and causing cooler deep ocean water to the surface, thus cooling the atmosphere. This article from The Tyee made me think about two main ideas, and I would like to read your comments and thoughts about these subjects.

First off, as mentioned by some of you in last week's comments, is there a way to get an accurate read of the temperature and thus temperature change of the earth? If we are not sure if how we measure temperature of the earth is accurate, how can we even debate whether or not climate change is occuring? With "urban heat islands" growing in size, are they influencing our weather stations, causing them to have a warm bias, and ruining our temperature data? Does moving weather stations, adding new ones, and removing some influence temperature data? Is satellite observation of temperature accurate and reliable? I think there can be a spirited debate on whether or not our current readings of the earth's temperature are an accurate representation of what is actually the earth's temperature and thus whether or not the temperature is changing.

Secondly, let's assume that the earth's temperature is changing. What is causing this change? Our climate and atmospheric systems are so complex that would we be able to pick out one thing and say that this or that is causing climate change? Would we be able to say that the change is natural? Man-made? Let's assume that it is a natural cause behind climate change. Would we be able to point out one thing and say that this THE cause, or is there more than one natural cause, or it is a combination of man-made and natural causes? Or are changes dependent on one another, ie. does one change lead to another, and then another? Do these "steps" balance each other out, or do they contribute to one another and "steamroll" in one direction or another? My point here is that, assuming that we can figure out the first problem mentioned (ie. an accurate way to measure temperature and thus temperature change) would we be able to pinpoint what is causing climate change? And, if we get to this point, what can we do to stop it and fix the problem? No wonder why there is so much debate and so many feathers ruffled when climate change is talked about.

Note: Mark Paquette is a fellow meteorologist here at AccuWeather.com with a big interest in global warming.

**We apologize for the site being down since last night. It appears that the problems have been corrected. Brett.

-------------

Former Vice President Al Gore recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled 'The Climate for Change'. In the op-ed, Gore's goal is to commit producing 100% of our electricity from carbon free sources within 10 years. Ambitious indeed!

Gore feels that his plan will move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and also the economic crisis by creating millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.

Here is a breakdown of his five-part plan to repower America.......

1. Invest in incentives for the construction of solar thermal plants, wind farms and geothermal powered power plants.

2. Plan and construction of a national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from rural america to the cities, where most of the electricity is used.

3. Help America's auto industry to convert quickly to plug-in-hybrids to run on renewable electricity.

4. Have a nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation and energy efficient windows and lighting.

5. The U.S. needs to put a price on carbon at home. Replace the Kyoto treaty and reduce deforestation.

What do you think of Gore's plan?

A very active weather pattern is forcing most of my attention away from the global warming blog today, so I figure this is probably a good day for an open forum.

I invite you to post a comment that has at least something to do with climate change. We would love to hear your opinion about the subject. Also, what global warming proposals, if any, would you have for the new administration coming in on January 20th?

Thanks, Brett Anderson (your moderator).

A recent survey of 3,146 earth scientists, conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago, indicates that there is overwhelming consensus among those surveyed that in the past 200+ years mean global temperatures have been rising and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.

The authors of the survey contacted over 10,200 experts listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute's Directory of Geoscience Department to take part in the on-line poll, according to the EurekAlert article.

Only those invited could participate and computer IP addresses of participants were recorded and used to prevent repeat voting. Questions used were reviewed by a polling expert who checked for bias in phrasing, such as suggesting an answer by the way a question was worded.

The two questions were...........

1. Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels?
2. Has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?

About 90% of the total surveyed agreed with question #1, while 82% agreed with question #2.

For question #2, the authors broke it down by climatologists, petroleum geologists and meteorologists.........

97% of the climatologists agreed that human activity has been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures, while that figure was only 64% for meteorologists and 47% for the petroleum geologists.

The author, Peter Doran made an interesting quote about the meteorologists, which I, as a 20-year meteorologist, personally think is pretty much on target....."Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but most of them actually study very short-term phenomenon."

Doran also made a point about the climatologists....."They're the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you're likely to believe in global warming and humankind's contribution to it."

---------------------------------------------

Even though the survey from above may be quite revealing, we also remember the latest 2008 U.S. Senate Minority report, which indicated that more than 650 international scientists now dissent over man-made global warming claims.

The updated report now found a total of 650 dissenting scientists and former UN IPCC scientists from around the globe that challenged man-made global warming claims by the IPCC and Al Gore.

I looked through the updated report, which shows the newest batch of man-made global warming dissenters and skeptics and found a variety of chemists, economists, biologists, geologists, physicists and meteorologists, including our own Mark Paquette (Page 61), from AccuWeather.com, who is a frequent contributer to this blog on the weekends. I was not aware he was on the list and I doubt he knew about it either, but I will let him know.

On a final note........

Congratulations and best of luck to the new Obama Administration!

Blog posted and written by guest commentator and AccuWeather Meteorologist Mark Paquette....

Wow, I am almost overwhelmed by the comments received about my last post dealing with my mention in the Senate Minority Report on Global Warming. I can say that I truly feel lucky and honored to be mentioned in it. However, as I said in last week's blog, I don't really feel like I am a dissenter, but a proponent of man-made global warming, which in my opinion, is occurring as we speak. So, I would like to use this post to share my personal belief on man-made global warming and clear up where I stand.

Unlike many of the commenters and people here who work at AccuWeather, I do not feel that I am an expert or am confident enough in my knowledge to go far in-depth on the subject of global warming. However, I do have some simple reasons why I do think it is happening. One of the reasons I think that the earth is warming is by looking at the number of record highs seen as compared to record lows. This was brought up in my last post, so I will not dwell on this here, as many people brought up great points as to why this should not be a reason for believing in man-made global warming, and I am at least considering these reasons.

More importantly, another reason why I think warming is occurring is the graphs shown below. All of these increases (which would even be more dramatic if the time went back more than the 30 years as shown on the graphs) seen in these scientifically proven greenhouse gases are at least partly, if not chiefly, due to man. Simplistically, how can all of these greenhouse gases increase without influencing the earth's temperature? Even if the earth is in a natural cooling phase, how can these increases in greenhouse gases not negate somewhat this cooling? On the other hand, if the earth is in a natural warming phase, how can the changes in these gases not cause the warming to be enhanced? I just don't understand how people can know that these changes in the atmosphere are occurring, and know that these gases increase the amount of energy (warmth) kept near the earth's surface, but this information is just ignored or thought not to matter. This data may be a small piece of the atmospheric and climatic "pie", but isn't it a piece? And isn't it caused by man? Wouldn't this data, by itself, cause warming? Isn't this what man-made global warming is? Warming caused by man?

Another reason I believe global warming is occurring is the amount of heat we release into the atmosphere. From heating our homes, to factories and power plants burning fossil fuels, to internal combustion engines in cars, trucks, tractors, etc., aren't these releasing heat into the atmosphere that would not been released if man was not on the planet? How about the decreased albedo from the miles upon miles of roadways? From buildings with dark roofs? Would they be on the planet without man? Obviously not. Yes, these factors maybe mere drops in the proverbial bucket, but don't these drops add up over time and contribute at least somewhat to man-made global warming?

Yes, the earth will continue to see cold snaps (see the past 30 days in the Northeast US), but wouldn't these cold snaps be more drastic if it wasn't for man's influence? And what about how warm the west coast of the US has been? We'll hear people say, global warming, schwarming, look how cold it is where I live. Well, how about the rest of the world? What is happening there?

I will continue to try and post unbiased blogs, as a scientist, that is my duty. If there is data to prove to me that global warming caused by man is not occurring, then it is also my duty as a scientist to at least consider changing my opinion. I appreciate all the readers and commenters of this website, and I will continue to do my homework and try to learn as much as I can about the fascinating subject of global warming.

Noted long range hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray has fired off a seven-page letter (via icecap.us) voicing his strong opposition to the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) selection of Dr. James Hansen to its highest award, the Rossby Research Medal. Hansen is the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

Gray feels that this award presentation is an insult to a large number of AMS members who do not believe that humans are causing a significant amount of the global temperature increase. He also states that the AMS's sterling reputation for scientific objectivity has been diminished by this selection and others in the recent past.

Gray explains on page 2 of his pdf. why Hansen's modeling efforts are badly flawed.

Gray believes that we are going to experience a modest naturally-driven global cooling over the next 15-20 years, which will be similar to the weak global cooling that occurred between the early-1940s and the mid-1970s.

Blog written by Mark Paquette....

I always post blogs a little lighter in the subject matter than Bret and I will continue this trend and bring it down even another level by going even lighter than I usually do...

First off, let me tell you how lucky I am to have a great job like this. I hear about how bad the economy is, and how many people in this great country don't have jobs and others are in danger of losing their jobs, and I feel honored, privileged and just plain lucky to get paid to do something that I love. I feel this way even more so because of my personal situation. I graduated college in 1996 with a degree in meteorology and this is my first job in this great field. Every day I wake up and pinch myself and tell myself that I really get paid to work with the weather everyday. Actually, working overnights I wake up every afternoon or evening and pinch myself at that time, but that is another story for a later time. I feel this way especially more so because of how many crappy jobs I had to work supporting me and my sons (sorry Gary Ring, you are a good friend and a great guy, but your job was the worst, being a house painter in New England, umm, how can I say this politely, isn't cool...lol. Sweating profusely while scraping lead paint off a banister on a roof 60 feet above the ground in baking sunshine just isn't what I was cut out for).

Anyways, around AccuWeather, the overnight staff jokes all the time about Global Warming only happening aloft (we joke about everything, but I don't think it is politically correct to mention everything we joke about). I know that probably 90% of it is just that, a joke. But, underlying this joke, I think some meteorologists here are at least a little bit serious about the warming aloft and it makes me wonder. How many "all snow" events do we see in say, central Pennsylvania, or in central Massachusetts (where I spent 33 years of my life before coming here to State College)? This winter not many. The previous winter? Not many. I remember times past being a kid and young adult in Leicester, Mass. and seeing massive all-snow events (December of 1992, April!!! 1st of 1997, etc). Of course, I remember some sleet and freezing rain events too (in the superstorm of March 1993 we had alot of sleet and some freezing rain) .

The question I guess I'm posing in this blog is, do we have areas in this country where "all-snow" events are becoming rarer, maybe rarer isn't right word but less common? The running punchline at night is that we should rename State College to "sleet" College. I have absolutely no hard evidence one way or another, I'm just posing the question. Are the levels of the atmosphere where clouds are and precipitation falls from and through, about 900-750 millibars of pressure or about 3,000 feet to approx. 8,000 feet above the surface of the earth showing more of a warming than the surface of the earth itself and thus producing more sleet and freezing rain at the expense of snow? Are the ice storms that occurred in central New England and upstate New York in December and later in Kentucky a few weeks ago associated with global warming or climate change? What do you think?

The recent near flatlining of global temperature anomalies since 2001 has been talked about a lot in the comment section of this blog and elsewhere over the past 1-2 years. An atmospheric science professor from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee says that this recent flat line of temperatures does not appear to have a firm cause, unlike previous cooling events since 1950 that were influenced by strong La Nina's and volcanic eruptions.

Associate Professor Kyle Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate.

According to Swanson, global temperatures should have gone up .2 C or .36 F between 2001 and 2007, but instead the temperatures have been nearly flat.

So what could be the cause?

Swanson believes that there could be several reasons. Here are the two that were listed.....

1. Sinking water currents in the North Atlantic could be sucking heat down into the deeper depths.

2. Greater than normal amount of tropical cloudiness, which is reflecting more of the sun's energy back into space.

Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it's just a hiccup, and that humans' penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.

Here is the link to the Discovery News article.

The study was posted in the Geophysical Research Papers.

A nice picture to brighten your day. Courtesy the Accuweather.com Photo Gallery.

Gabriel London has an interesting article in the Huffington Post (liberal news site), which relates to what many people write about in the comment section of this blog.

London is on target in my opinion when he states how changes in your local weather can easily influence your feelings about GLOBAL climate change. This also applies to critical law makers as well.

London also takes some shots at the media and the Weather Channel.

You can read his one page post right here.

Blog posted by Mark Paquette

Earth Hour at 8:30 pm local time tonight.

I came across this article on the internet and it piqued my interest. First of all, since I had never heard of "Earth Hour", I wondered what exactly it was. I had heard of Earth Day, but Earth Hour? How long has it been around? Who came up with this idea? How many people know about it, or more importantly, plan to do something for it, or even care about it at all?

In general, I think events like this that try to let people know how important the earth is to us human beings is great. For me as an environmentalist and someone who respects and loves the earth and knows how gravely serious the health of our planet is to us, and who respects and admires the beauty of a snowstorm, a thunderstorm, or even a sunset, I think that these events (ie. Earth Day, Earth Hour, etc.) are all based on a good idea. Namely, to try to get other people involved in respecting the beauty and importance of the earth.

What I worry about is do events like these tend to be ridiculed by normal, everyday people; does it shed a "bad" light, almost an over-zealous sort of feeling, towards the people that are organizing and participating in these events? I'm afraid that people that are active in these events are looked upon as different, kind of the-end-of-the-world-is-coming-so-we-better-prepare-now-or-die type of people. People that are too busy trying to help save the earth and other different causes that they don't even take time to live their own lives. Basically, do people think of us as nature freaks that have nothing better to do than to let other people know how bad off we are treating the earth, at least in our minds and opinions. Do you think that people involved in these activities come across this way and thus you automatically are turned off towards their feelings and philosophies?

Another question, do events like this do more harm than good in trying to get normal, ordinary Joe or Jane to think a little more like these people? Or is getting the idea out to respect and love "Mother Earth" more important than how one comes across trying to get the idea out in public? For example, does Al Gore and his thoughts do more harm or good in the fight against global warming?

Photo below of Canberra, Australia on March 28,2008

Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, who I recently featured in a video segment from the second annual International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), recently made an addendum to his address made at the ICCC about negative climate feedback. Thanks goes to Anthony Watts for posting this story through his (Watts Up With That?) website.

In his post, Lindzen discusses positive and negative feedback in the earth's climate.

Through his research, Lindzen concludes that the earth is dominated by a strong net negative feedback and that any warming that arises from increasing greenhouse gases will be indistinguishable from the natural fluctuations in climate from processes internal to the climate system itself.

Lindzen also notes that the climate models which show alarming predictions are based on large positive feedbacks, which goes against the behavior of nature in his opinion.

I encourage you to read Lindzen's full one-page post right here to better understand what he is talking about.

A pair of researchers have determined that decade-long periods of cooling, and leveling off of temperatures, which is similar to what we have seen recently, can occur even within a strong overall warming trend.

Annual global temperature anomaly since 1880, courtesy NCDC and using the Smith/Reynolds method.

David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., and Michael Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California also state that people denying global warming due to short-term periods of cooling fail to understand the statistical insignificance of such periods, according to the UPI article.

The pair use the example of some media articles and web sites that continue to highlight the fact that the average global temperature has not risen since 1998 and cite that as evidence against anthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming. I can also say that I have read many similar comments over the past year or so within this blog.

In their study, which was just published in the Geophysical Research Letters, they show that periods of no trend or even cooling of the globally averaged surface air temperature are found in the last 34 years of the observed record, and in climate model simulations of the 20th and 21st century forced with increasing greenhouse gases.

Unfortunately, a subscription is needed to read the full entire article.

A new survey by Yale and George Mason University researchers found that American adults are fairly split when it comes to their opinions on global warming, according to the ZDNet article.

After going through the completed surveys, the researchers broke respondents into six different types..........

The alarmed
The concerned
The cautious
The disengaged
The doubtful
The dismissive

And the results...............

The concerned (33% of respondents)
The cautious (19%)
The alarmed (18%)
The disengaged (12%) I suspect this may actually be higher.
The doubtful (11%)
The dismissive (7%)

There were a number of specific questions within the survey. One question asked who was your most and least trusted source of information on global warming.

29% had a strong trust of scientists.
33% had a strong distrust of corporations.

---------------------

Which of the six categories would you put yourself into?

---------------------

The survey of 2,164 American adults was conducted in the Fall of 2008.

Here is the link to the original results of the survey from George Mason and Yale University.

I read this piece about the problems of man-made global warming theory on Anthony Watts "Watts Up with That?" site. The piece, which is titled "Disproving The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) Problem", is written by Dr. Leonard Weinstein (bio at the bottom of this page).

The opening paragraphs of Weinstein's paper are straight forward and well explained for the most part. Weinstein then lists six of the main predictions of man-made global warming models and then tries to show you why each one of those predictions is wrong.

Weinstein makes some strong points, but he also seems to be doing some cherry-picking as well. Let's take a look..........

1. While global atmospheric CO2 has indeed seen its steepest increase since 1940, it was already sharply increasing since the 1850's (industrial revolution). The atmospheric CO2 levels between 1940 and 1970 do not even compare (much lower) to what they are predicted to be from 2010 to 2100. Perhaps the modeling expects that these much higher levels of atmospheric CO2 in the future will be high enough to completely overwhelm natural climate cooling variables such as aerosols, la Nina, changes in the sun etc.....

Weinstein also states....It is also true that the present temperature trend is down and expected to continue downward for several more years before reversing again. What is his version of the present trend? This past year, past 5 years, 10 years? Also, some sources do predict a downward or stable trend for several years, while other sources disagree.

2. Weinstein states......The drop in temperature from 1940 to 1970 was claimed to have been caused by "global dimming" caused by aerosols made by human activity. This was stated as dominating the AGW effects at that time. This was supposed to have been overcome by activity initiated by the clean air act. In fact, the “global dimming” continued into the mid 1990’s and then only reduced slightly before increasing more (probably due to China and other countries increased activity). If the global dimming was not significantly reduced, why did the temperature increase from 1970 to just past 2000?

Weinstein seems to have forgotten about Mt. Pinatubo. Look at the chart below, courtesy of NASA, which plots global dimming aerosols. There was plenty of global dimming in the early 90s due to that volcano, but if you take out that volcano, then you can see there has been a steady decrease in global dimming aerosols from the 1980's through 2005.

3. Weinstein states......Claim 4 implies that the higher latitudes should heat up more than lower latitudes. In fact, the higher latitudes have warmed, but at a rate close to the rest of the world.

A rate close to the rest of the world? Not according to the RSS microwave satellite measurements. Check this out.........

His statement seems true in regards to the southern high latitudes since the 1980s, but it is clear that the northern high latitudes have warmed much more than the rest of the world since the mid 1990's. The far greater sea-surface area in the southern latitudes probably has a lot to do with the much more stable temperature anomaly trend down there, compared to the north.

4. Weinstein states.....In fact, Antarctica has overall cooled in the last 50 years except for the small tail that sticks out.

Not according to this research from Nature Journal back in Dec 2006, which shows a reconstruction of Antarctic temperature anomalies since 1957 over east and west Antarctica. According to the study.....the continent-wide average near-surface temperature trend is positive.

I am not saying that Weinstein is wrong. I am not sure. There is obviously some difference in opinion in regards to this 50-year trend.

5. Weinstein states.....Greenland and the arctic region are presently no warmer than they were in the late 1930’s, and are presently cooling!

The image below shows the temperature trends over the Arctic, including Greenland since 1981. Image courtesy NASA.

Where is that cooling he was talking about? I guess he meant parts of Siberia.

6. Weinstein states......it may be that the combination of the two (or more) volcanoes, along with Solar variability and variations in ocean currents (i.e., PDO) may explain the major causes of recent surface temperature rises to about 2002. In fact, the average Earth temperature stopped rising after 2002, and has been dropping for the last few years!

Mt. Pinatubo caused a period of cooling, not warming in the early 1990's. Weinstein also fails to mention the recent La Nina (late 2007/2008), which almost certainly had a role in the recent short term period of cooling. Also, depending on the source, the most recent period of global cooling was was less than two years in length and now appears to be creeping back up again in 2009, especially now that the most recent La Nina is officially dead.

7. Weinstein states....While some overall trends can be reasonably made based on looking at past historical trends, and some computational models can suggest some suggested trends due to specific forcing factors, nevertheless, the long term predicted result has not been shown to be valid.

Our overall assessment (IPCC)........
Coupled models have evolved and improved significantly since the SAR. In general, they provide credible simulations of climate, at least down to sub-continental scales and over temporal scales from seasonal to decadal. The varying sets of strengths and weaknesses that models display lead us to conclude that no single model can be considered "best" and it is important to utilize results from a range of coupled models. We consider coupled models, as a class, to be suitable tools to provide useful projections of future climates. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

8. Weinstein states.....The overall effect of Antarctic and Greenland are now resulting in net gain (or at least near zero change) of ice, not loss.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 25, 2009) — The Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are melting, but the amounts that will melt and the time it will take are still unknown, according to Richard Alley, Evan Pugh professor of geosciences, Penn State.

Seems like more controversy.

---------------
Bio courtesy of Energy Probe.

Leonard Weinstein received a B.S. in Physics in 1962 from Florida State University. He started work at NASA Langley Research Center in June 1962. While at Langley, Leonard obtained his Master and Doctor of Science degrees in Engineering from the George Washington University. He continued to work at NASA Langley until June 2007, ending as a Senior Research Scientist. Dr. Weinstein is presently a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace.

The number 315,000 has been in the news recently, and many of you know what I am talking about.

Last week, a report by the Global Humanitarian Forum last week, which stated that climate change claims more than 315,000 lives each year is being questioned by some experts in the climate change field, according to this LiveScience article.

One of those experts, Roger Pielke Jr., a policy expert on climate change at the University of Colorado said in his blog that the report was "a methodological embarrassment" because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions.

I agree with the above statement by Pielke Jr.. As I have occasionally noted in this Accuweather.com global warming blog over the past couple of years, it is very difficult in my opinion to link losses from specific natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods with climate change.

Pielke Jr. states in his Prometheus blog that human-caused climate change is an important problem, requiring our utmost attention, then notes...... "It will give ammunition to those opposed to action and divert attention away from the people who actually need help in the face of disasters, yet through this report have been reduced to a bloodless statistic for use in the promotional battle over climate policies. The report is worse than fiction, it is a lie."

What is your opinion of the latest report from the Global Humanitarian Forum?

Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate modeler, who is also well known to those who frequent Realclimate.org, discusses 5 climate studies that do not live up to their hype in an article from Popular Mechanics.

A majority of the reasons why these particular studies do not not live up to the hype is that the claims made by some researchers are overstated or the fact that certain media outlets are guilty of overblown reporting, according to the article.

Schmidt states that one common theme is that many news stories prematurely attribute local or regional phenomena to climate change. Hmm....Where have we seen that before????

In the article, Schmidt breaks down each of the 5 climate studies by the following.......

--Description of the actual study.
--The fallout.
--The truth.

You can read it all right here.

Hello again. I hope you have are having or had a great holiday weekend... depending on when you read this obviously. I am not very politically active or savvy, but I came across this article and thought that you might find this article interesting and have an opinion to share about it.

This article gives me hope that people and the politicians that represent them in both federal and state governments are taking the threat of global warming seriously.

However, I also find this article slightly disappointing, since all that these "Auto Emission Standards" do is regulate miles per gallon of gasoline that a vehicle needs to meet. Nothing is governed about what can come out of their tailpipes, or, better yet, researching about alternate energy forms that may be able to power our cars that we drive. It almost seems to me that government has given up weaning the public off of fossil fuels and resigned itself to the fact that motor vehicles will continue to be powered by fossil fuels, at least in the immediate future.

In my opinion, this really does nothing but prolong the buildup of greenhouse gases, most noticeably carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. If a real dent in the problem of global warming is intended, I think we need to look at and invest in alternate fuel sources for our motor vehicles, hopefully so that the output of greenhouse gases by motor vehicles is drastically cut or stopped entirely.

I know that there is a fine line between economic feasibility and environmental needs, and generally the all mighty dollar will win. That is the way of this world, especially with how poor the economy is right now. Why invest in something that is in the future, won't affect us tomorrow, and might not even happen at all? That question is probably most peoples' opinion.

Even though this approach, in my humble opinion, is short sighted and selfish , I can understand it. Not saying I agree with it, but I comprehend it. Is the next generation of human beings going to pay from the mistake I believe we are making? Well, only one way of finding that out...

No regular post today, so I figure this is as good a time as any for one of our open forums. We would love to hear your own personal views on climate change or anything that is related to it. Remember, let's keep it clean and no name calling. Fire away!!!!

A Scientific American 60-second podcast questions how we can still have such a wide variety of outlooks in regards to our future climate, despite us having access to the same information (data).

Mark Maslin, director of the Environment Institute at the University College London and John Adams proposed an interesting theory that says that human opinion can be explained by how we respond to risk and uncertainty.

In terms of global warming opinion, the pair present a list of four characteristic beliefs of nature by combining four possible myths of nature with four myths of human nature. From this framework, Maslin says we can tell which person is likely to believe which view of nature.

1. Nature is benign.

2. Nature is ephemeral.

3. Nature is tolerant.

4.Nature is capricious.

You should read the descriptions of each belief right here from the Scientific American article and then decide where you put yourself. I would love to take a poll on this one. I suspect a majority of our regular commentators would go with #1, but I might be wrong.

The O'Reilly Factor interview with our own Joe Bastardi from this past Wednesday night. Joe responds to a Greenpeace statement that says that the wildfires in California are spreading faster due to climate change. You can watch the interview right here. Courtesy of YouTube.

Joe also has a comment for our Accuweather.com viewers below that he wanted me to share with you.........

An open letter to Accuweather.com viewers from Accuweather.com's tropical and long range weather expert Joe Bastardi.

My appearance on Bill O'Reilly brought up some things that seem to be a shock to people, but to many many people that are looking hard at the weather, are not.

Please remember that I am not, nor do I seek, to be a spokesman on the AGW issue. I will however take a stand when called upon, on what I believe to be true.

I have always had an open mind on man's input into the climate system. However because I have to be acquainted with long term patterns of changing weather, which is what climate is for any one site, I need to know where we stand against the course of history. Because of that, I have to be acquainted with the global warming issue in much more than a casual way. It is to my advantage as the chief long range and hurricane forecaster here to develop a working knowledge of where we are and where we are going in the overall global pattern.

To be sure, the cooling now is happening faster than it should because it got so warm in the first place via the super nino of 97-98. The last warm cycle reached its peak in the late 50s when we actually surfaced submarines at the north pole in 1959... IN MARCH! I often wonder what global temps would have been measured at then if we had the ways of measuring we do now. The fact that there was so much "shock" at some of the revelations that showed up on the O'Reilly Factor is because people are refusing to understand that so far, this has been a case of been there, done that.

One can pull out as many cases of bad weather in the 30s, 40s and 50s as they can now. I still believe the 3 greatest examples of how bad a hurricane can get in relation to latitude are the 1938 hurricane with 186 mph wind gusts at Blue Hill Mass,
the 1944 hurricane that destroyed the Atlantic City boardwalk, and Hurricane Donna which gave hurricane force winds to every state from Florida to Maine. The 1944 hurricane had winds 600 miles in diameter and stripped 50% of the screws from a recon plane into it.

Unlike many people, I am well acquainted and respect the co2 warming idea, but in its pure form, which actually allows for the cooling coming now! There in lies the problem. We can't know till after the period that is coming up through 2030 whether co2 is really a player or not. The threat of not only oceanic cycles cooling the earth, but the suns lack of intensity and increased volcanic and seismic activity could mean
that as some papers in the early 90s (and dismissed by many) opined we would be as cold as back in the early 1800s. What you see now may just be the beginning. One thing we do know, that we should be skeptical of any future event, no matter what we believe.

I will leave you with this. Common sense dictates that a trace gas needed for life on the planet would not be the cause for destroying life on the planet. Common sense dictates that what has happened before without man can happen again with man. Common sense would dictate that you not believe me, or any one else, but go look for
YOURSELF. If its important enough for you to be happy with what I said, or to be mad as all get out at what I said, you owe it to yourself to go read all sides of the argument. To be informed, and not to simply throw stones.

In the end, for me its all about getting the weather right. 1 day, 1 week 1 year or whatever. That is the bottom line.

What I opine about global warming is not because this is my goal...to be in this debate, it's a by product of the work I put in to do what I was made to do..forecast the weather. But I will not run, nor bow down to people who simply wish to destroy the chance to get the right answer in this debate, for IT IS ABOUT THE WEATHER! it's that simple.

I do not seek to be a spokesman, but my company believes in freedom of speech. Please remember my opinion is my own, but perhaps the reason for my successes in this field are because of the countless hours I spend that no one but me and the good lord above sees in preparing to answer the call. That call comes every day in my forecasts, but if it comes in this matter, I will not back down from what I have prepared myself for.

Thanks for your time,

Joe Bastardi

I read this interesting New York Times Op-Ed by famed economist and liberal columnist Paul Krugman yesterday.

The title of his piece 'Cassandras of Climate' discusses climate scientists and their so-called gift of being able to see well into the future, but their inability to get anyone to believe them. Why is that?

You can read it right here.

Regardless of Paul's position on Global warming (obviously, he is not a skeptic), his answer to the above question seems about right to me. What do you think?

Update: I apologize for screwing up the link, somehow the h in the http got deleted and I failed to check it as I normally do. Not thinking too clearly today. Probably due to a lack of sleep and a head cold. It's fixed now. Brett

George Will, the well known conservative journalist, wrote an interesting piece in the Washington Post today. His Op-Ed, which is titled 'Cooling Down the Cassandras', is in response to a recent article in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin.

Also, remember the NYT's Op-Ed by Paul Krugman 'Cassandras of Climate', which I just blogged about a couple days ago.

In Will's Op-Ed, he responds to the NYT's piece which describes the difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming. According to the NYT, the "difficulty" -- the "intricate challenge," the Times says -- is "building momentum" for carbon reduction "when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years."

Will then goes on to say..........

"The Times says "a short-term trend gives ammunition to skeptics of climate change." Actually, what makes skeptics skeptical is the accumulating evidence that theories predicting catastrophe from man-made climate change are impervious to evidence. The theories are unfalsifiable, at least in the "short run." And the "short run" is defined as however many decades must pass until the evidence begins to fit the hypotheses."

"By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau,' not warming's apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume."

"America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence about climate change. Alarmists will fight this because the first casualty would be the carefully cultivated and media-reinforced myth of consensus -- the bald assertion that no reputable scientist doubts the gravity of the crisis, doubts being conclusive evidence of disreputable motives or intellectual qualifications."

H. Leighton Steward, who is a noted author, geologist, environmentalist and retired energy industry executive has recently written a new book titled 'Fire, Ice and Paradise' .

In the book, Steward, who is a climate change skeptic, lists the top ten myths of global warming and damaging effects of carbon dioxide.

In his article, Paul Bedard of U.S. News and World Report, presents Stewards top ten list. You can read them right here.

What do you think Steward's list? I personally can't argue with some of his points.

According to SourceWatch, Steward is also a director at EOG Resources, an oil and gas company formerly known as Enron Oil and Gas Company. Steward also serves as an honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute.

The Fort Collins Forum recently held a rare in-paper debate between two noted climate experts with opposing views on climate change.

The debate, which was made possible by author Ray Harvey, features Dr. Kevin Trenberth, who is the head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and Dr. William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and noted hurricane expert.

Thanks to Joe Bastardi for pointing out this story, which was posted on the Tea Party of Northern Colorado website.

The debate is broken down into two parts and is easy to follow and worth the read!

Part 1.

Part 2.

Tell us what you think of the debate in the comment section.

A survey by New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity states that 94% of a total of 144 economists that responded to a survey believe the United States should join climate agreements to limit global warming.

Many republicans and some democrats in Congress are also concerned about the economic costs of reducing emissions, and do not support the current version of the clean-energy bill.

Last month, a National Research Council report found that burning fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, exerts a hidden $120 billion cost on the U.S. economy because of higher health costs, leaving aside climate damage, according to the USA Today article.

The survey also found the following.......

--91.6% wanted a tax or "cap and trade" system, where polluters buy and sell emission permits, instead of regulation, to cut greenhouse gases.

--84% agreed the effects of global warming "create significant risks" to the economy, particularly to agriculture, fishing, insurance and health.

--Of the 94.3% who favor the U.S. joining climate agreements to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, 57% say greenhouse-gas cuts should come "regardless of the actions of other countries."

---------------
Here is more on this story.

The Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) is a non-partisan advocacy organization and think-tank dedicated to improving the quality of governmental decisionmaking.

Open forum on climate change today. Feel free to speak your mind on anything that is related to the science of climate change or policies.

Keep in mind, name calling and obscenities will not be tolerated.

The floor is yours today!

-----------------
Update

Joe Bastardi just gave me a heads up about this story. Supposedly, the Climate Research Unit (CRU) was hacked and many files/emails were released. I will stop there for now, since there are still a number of unanswered questions in regards to what was released and whether some of the emails are legit. We will not be posting any of the emails on this site, since they were illegally distributed.

Anthony Watts (Climate change skeptic) is closely following this story and you can read about it for yourself on his "Watts Up With That?" website. He posted some links as well. Climate Audit was also following the story, but I was unable to get into their site today.

Update #2

Real Climate (AGW scientist blog) has a response to this story.