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All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?
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Pittsburgh Pete
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It's rarely the criticism as the tone of the criticism that varies to the extreme from the adolescent posts like Rexie's last one to the vitriol and downright mean-spirited ones like Rexie's penultimate post. He's provided solid examples for me. Thanks.
Randolph Kinney
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You have earned the repute you deserve, science "boy" with a small "b". Long on ad hominem, short on facts, short on substance and way short of reality.
Pittsburgh Pete
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Exhibit B. C should be along shortly!
P.S. do you understand the meaning of "repute"; I think you meant another word Randy. Reach out for help if you need it. Also praying hard that someday you might be able to convince yourself!
P.S. do you understand the meaning of "repute"; I think you meant another word Randy. Reach out for help if you need it. Also praying hard that someday you might be able to convince yourself!
Randolph Kinney
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Who knew Earth’s tilt influences climate change?
Obliquity pacing of the western Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone over the past 282,000 years
LSU paleoclimatologist Kristine DeLong contributed to an international research breakthrough that sheds new light on how the tilt of the Earth affects the world’s heaviest rainbelt. DeLong analyzed data from the past 282,000 years that shows, for the first time, a connection between the Earth’s tilt called obliquity that shifts every 41,000 years, and the movement of a low pressure band of clouds that is the Earth’s largest source of heat and moisture — the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ.
“I took the data and put it through a mathematical prism so I could look at the patterns and that’s where we see the obliquity cycle, that 41,000-year cycle. From that, we can go in and look at how it compares to other records,” said DeLong, who is an associate professor in the LSU Department Geography & Anthropology.
With research collaborators at the University of Science and Technology of China and National Taiwan University, DeLong looked at sediment cores from off the coast of Papua New Guinea and stalagtite samples from ancient caves in China. DeLong’s data analysis revealed obliquity in both the paleontological record and computer model data. This research was published in Nature Communications on Nov. 25.
The standard assumptions about how the variations in the Earth’s orbit influences changes in climate are called Milankovitch cycles. According to these principles, the Earth’s tilt influenced ice sheet formation during the Ice Ages, the slow wobble that occurs on a 23,000-year cycle as the Earth rotates around the sun called precession affects the Tropics and the shape of the Earth’s orbit that occurs on a 100,000-year cycle controls how much energy the Earth receives.
“This study was interesting in that when we started doing the spectral analysis, the 41,000-year tilt cycle started showing up in the Tropics. That’s not supposed to be there. That’s not what the textbooks tell us,” DeLong said.
This finding shows that the tilt of the Earth plays a much larger part in ITCZ migration than previously thought, which will enable climate scientists to better predict extreme weather events. Historically, the collapse of the Mayan civilization and several Chinese dynasties have been linked to persistent droughts associated with the ITCZ. This new information is critical to understanding global climate and sustainable human socioeconomic development, the researchers said.
Additionally, climate scientists have begun to recognize that rather than shifting north and south, the ITCZ expands and contracts, based on this information.
http://phys.org/news/2015-12-earth-tilt-climate.html#nRlv
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151125/ncomms10018/full/ncomms10018.html
Oh no, say it ain't so! ITCZ expands and contracts is consistent with PV=nRT and not radiative forcing.
Even science "boy" with a small "b" who knows warm air carries more moisture can connect with energy density of watts per square meter decreases with increasing obliquity, which means the temperature drops.
Where is CO2 in this revelation?
Obliquity pacing of the western Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone over the past 282,000 years
LSU paleoclimatologist Kristine DeLong contributed to an international research breakthrough that sheds new light on how the tilt of the Earth affects the world’s heaviest rainbelt. DeLong analyzed data from the past 282,000 years that shows, for the first time, a connection between the Earth’s tilt called obliquity that shifts every 41,000 years, and the movement of a low pressure band of clouds that is the Earth’s largest source of heat and moisture — the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ.
“I took the data and put it through a mathematical prism so I could look at the patterns and that’s where we see the obliquity cycle, that 41,000-year cycle. From that, we can go in and look at how it compares to other records,” said DeLong, who is an associate professor in the LSU Department Geography & Anthropology.
With research collaborators at the University of Science and Technology of China and National Taiwan University, DeLong looked at sediment cores from off the coast of Papua New Guinea and stalagtite samples from ancient caves in China. DeLong’s data analysis revealed obliquity in both the paleontological record and computer model data. This research was published in Nature Communications on Nov. 25.
The standard assumptions about how the variations in the Earth’s orbit influences changes in climate are called Milankovitch cycles. According to these principles, the Earth’s tilt influenced ice sheet formation during the Ice Ages, the slow wobble that occurs on a 23,000-year cycle as the Earth rotates around the sun called precession affects the Tropics and the shape of the Earth’s orbit that occurs on a 100,000-year cycle controls how much energy the Earth receives.
“This study was interesting in that when we started doing the spectral analysis, the 41,000-year tilt cycle started showing up in the Tropics. That’s not supposed to be there. That’s not what the textbooks tell us,” DeLong said.
This finding shows that the tilt of the Earth plays a much larger part in ITCZ migration than previously thought, which will enable climate scientists to better predict extreme weather events. Historically, the collapse of the Mayan civilization and several Chinese dynasties have been linked to persistent droughts associated with the ITCZ. This new information is critical to understanding global climate and sustainable human socioeconomic development, the researchers said.
Additionally, climate scientists have begun to recognize that rather than shifting north and south, the ITCZ expands and contracts, based on this information.
http://phys.org/news/2015-12-earth-tilt-climate.html#nRlv
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151125/ncomms10018/full/ncomms10018.html
Oh no, say it ain't so! ITCZ expands and contracts is consistent with PV=nRT and not radiative forcing.
Even science "boy" with a small "b" who knows warm air carries more moisture can connect with energy density of watts per square meter decreases with increasing obliquity, which means the temperature drops.
Where is CO2 in this revelation?
Last edited:
Randolph Kinney
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Paris Climate of Conformity
It pays to be skeptical of politicians who claim to be saving the planet.
The moment to be wariest of political enthusiasms is precisely when elite opinion is all lined up on one side. So it is with the weekend agreement out of Paris on climate policy, which President Obama declared with his familiar modesty “can be a turning point for the world” and is “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.”
Forgive us for looking through the legacy smoke, but if climate change really does imperil the Earth, and we doubt it does, nothing coming out of a gaggle of governments and the United Nations will save it. What will help is human invention and the entrepreneurial spirit. To the extent the Paris accord increases political control over human and natural resources, it will make the world poorer and technological progress less likely.
The climate confab’s self-described political success is rooted in a conceit and a bribe. The conceit is that the terms of the agreement will have some tangible impact on global temperatures. The big breakthrough is supposed to be that for the first time developing and developed countries have committed to reducing carbon emissions. But the commitments by these nations are voluntary with no enforcement mechanism.
China (the No. 1 CO2 emitter) and India (No. 3 after the U.S.) have made commitments that they may or may not honor, depending on whether they can meet them without interfering with economic growth. If the choice is lifting millions out of poverty or reducing CO2, poverty reduction will prevail—as it should.
No less than the supposedly true global-warming believers of Europe are also happy about voluntary commitments because Paris liberates them from the binding targets of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Germany’s high energy costs in particular have been driving companies offshore thanks to its renewable energy costs and mandates.
But no one is happier than President Obama, who would have to submit a binding treaty to the Senate for ratification. As we have learned from the Iran nuclear deal and so much else, Mr. Obama is not into winning democratic consent for his policy dreams. Mr. Obama plans to use Paris as a stick to beat Republicans even as he ducks a vote in Congress. We doubt the Paris climate deal would get 40 Senate votes once Democrats in Ohio, Colorado or North Dakota were forced to debate the costs.
Mr. Obama’s U.S. CO2-reduction targets are fanciful in any case, short of a major technological breakthrough. The President promises that the U.S. will reduce carbon emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025, but the specific means he has proposed to get there would only yield about half that. And that’s assuming none of Mr. Obama’s unilateral regulatory policies are declared illegal by U.S. courts.
As for the bribe, rich countries in Paris bought the cooperation of the developing world by promising to send $100 billion a year in climate aid. So the governments of the West are now going to dun their taxpayers to transfer money to the clean and green governments run by the likes of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. We can’t wait to see New York’s Chuck Schumer make the case on the Senate floor for American aid to China so it can become more energy efficient and economically competitive.
Even if a Democratic Congress made these bribes politically possible, they would do little to ease the consequences of climate change. The world’s poor can best cope with climate harm if they are richer, which requires faster economic growth. Yet everything we know about economic development is that foreign aid retards growth when it expands the reach of Third World governments. Poor countries won’t be helped by subsidies for solar cells delivered through the World Bank.
The same lesson goes for the developed world, by the way. We still recall the George W. Bush economic adviser who told us in 2006 that subsidies for cellulosic ethanol were justified because a breakthrough was “just around the corner.” He said the problem was that Congress’s research grants were distorted by political earmarks.
Of course they were. Congress took Mr. Bush’s invitation and force-fed ethanol mandates into law despite the lack of available technology to meet them. A decade later cellulosic ethanol is still around the corner.
Which brings us to the development on the fringes of Paris that might do some good. Bill Gates is hitting up his fellow billionaires to pay for research into energy alternatives to fossil fuels. This is a tacit admission that the technology doesn’t exist to make alternatives cost-effective no matter how many subsidies governments offer. If carbon energy’s efficiency and wealth creation are going to be displaced, the world will need advances in battery storage and nuclear energy, among other things.
The grandiose claims of triumph in Paris represent the self-interest of a political elite that wants more control over the private economy in the U.S. and around the world. These are the last people who will save the planet.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paris-climate-of-conformity-1450048095
All those climate change believers are duped into believing that politicians can control the weather if you just give them more control over the economy and your standard of living.
It pays to be skeptical of politicians who claim to be saving the planet.
The moment to be wariest of political enthusiasms is precisely when elite opinion is all lined up on one side. So it is with the weekend agreement out of Paris on climate policy, which President Obama declared with his familiar modesty “can be a turning point for the world” and is “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.”
Forgive us for looking through the legacy smoke, but if climate change really does imperil the Earth, and we doubt it does, nothing coming out of a gaggle of governments and the United Nations will save it. What will help is human invention and the entrepreneurial spirit. To the extent the Paris accord increases political control over human and natural resources, it will make the world poorer and technological progress less likely.
The climate confab’s self-described political success is rooted in a conceit and a bribe. The conceit is that the terms of the agreement will have some tangible impact on global temperatures. The big breakthrough is supposed to be that for the first time developing and developed countries have committed to reducing carbon emissions. But the commitments by these nations are voluntary with no enforcement mechanism.
China (the No. 1 CO2 emitter) and India (No. 3 after the U.S.) have made commitments that they may or may not honor, depending on whether they can meet them without interfering with economic growth. If the choice is lifting millions out of poverty or reducing CO2, poverty reduction will prevail—as it should.
No less than the supposedly true global-warming believers of Europe are also happy about voluntary commitments because Paris liberates them from the binding targets of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Germany’s high energy costs in particular have been driving companies offshore thanks to its renewable energy costs and mandates.
But no one is happier than President Obama, who would have to submit a binding treaty to the Senate for ratification. As we have learned from the Iran nuclear deal and so much else, Mr. Obama is not into winning democratic consent for his policy dreams. Mr. Obama plans to use Paris as a stick to beat Republicans even as he ducks a vote in Congress. We doubt the Paris climate deal would get 40 Senate votes once Democrats in Ohio, Colorado or North Dakota were forced to debate the costs.
Mr. Obama’s U.S. CO2-reduction targets are fanciful in any case, short of a major technological breakthrough. The President promises that the U.S. will reduce carbon emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025, but the specific means he has proposed to get there would only yield about half that. And that’s assuming none of Mr. Obama’s unilateral regulatory policies are declared illegal by U.S. courts.
As for the bribe, rich countries in Paris bought the cooperation of the developing world by promising to send $100 billion a year in climate aid. So the governments of the West are now going to dun their taxpayers to transfer money to the clean and green governments run by the likes of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. We can’t wait to see New York’s Chuck Schumer make the case on the Senate floor for American aid to China so it can become more energy efficient and economically competitive.
Even if a Democratic Congress made these bribes politically possible, they would do little to ease the consequences of climate change. The world’s poor can best cope with climate harm if they are richer, which requires faster economic growth. Yet everything we know about economic development is that foreign aid retards growth when it expands the reach of Third World governments. Poor countries won’t be helped by subsidies for solar cells delivered through the World Bank.
The same lesson goes for the developed world, by the way. We still recall the George W. Bush economic adviser who told us in 2006 that subsidies for cellulosic ethanol were justified because a breakthrough was “just around the corner.” He said the problem was that Congress’s research grants were distorted by political earmarks.
Of course they were. Congress took Mr. Bush’s invitation and force-fed ethanol mandates into law despite the lack of available technology to meet them. A decade later cellulosic ethanol is still around the corner.
Which brings us to the development on the fringes of Paris that might do some good. Bill Gates is hitting up his fellow billionaires to pay for research into energy alternatives to fossil fuels. This is a tacit admission that the technology doesn’t exist to make alternatives cost-effective no matter how many subsidies governments offer. If carbon energy’s efficiency and wealth creation are going to be displaced, the world will need advances in battery storage and nuclear energy, among other things.
The grandiose claims of triumph in Paris represent the self-interest of a political elite that wants more control over the private economy in the U.S. and around the world. These are the last people who will save the planet.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paris-climate-of-conformity-1450048095
All those climate change believers are duped into believing that politicians can control the weather if you just give them more control over the economy and your standard of living.
Randolph Kinney
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"We are going to break ISIS financially by requiring them to enroll in the Affordable Care Act by 2017"
- POTUS
Randolph Kinney
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E.P.A. Broke Law With Social Media Push for Water Rule, Auditor Finds
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded.
The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report on the agency’s practices in The New York Times, drew a bright line for federal agencies experimenting with social media about the perils of going too far to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.
The publicity campaign was part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to counter critics of its policies through social media tools, communicating directly with Americans and bypassing traditional news organizations.
At the White House, top aides to President Obama have formed the Office of Digital Strategy, which promotes his agenda on Twitter, Facebook, Medium and other social sites. Shailagh Murray, a senior adviser to the president, is charged in part with expanding Mr. Obama’s presence in that online world.
The rule in question has been adopted by the agency, but its implementation was suspended nationally in October by a federal appeals court after opponents of the plan challenged it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/u..._th_20151215&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50329110
Propaganda - information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded.
The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report on the agency’s practices in The New York Times, drew a bright line for federal agencies experimenting with social media about the perils of going too far to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.
The publicity campaign was part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to counter critics of its policies through social media tools, communicating directly with Americans and bypassing traditional news organizations.
At the White House, top aides to President Obama have formed the Office of Digital Strategy, which promotes his agenda on Twitter, Facebook, Medium and other social sites. Shailagh Murray, a senior adviser to the president, is charged in part with expanding Mr. Obama’s presence in that online world.
The rule in question has been adopted by the agency, but its implementation was suspended nationally in October by a federal appeals court after opponents of the plan challenged it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/u..._th_20151215&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50329110
Propaganda - information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
Randolph Kinney
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Don't just blame El Nino for weather
The weird warm weather much of the country has been experiencing in November and December is not unexpected. In fact, it fits many past strong El Nino patterns and was what was forecast to happen. Yes, El Nino is by SOME measures the strongest (warmest water temps) on record. But beware media hype, El Nino is NOT a storm system or a jet stream monster that's going to reek havoc and release the hounds of hell. It brings both good and bad weather. It can help the drought in California but with too much of a good thing (flooding/mud slides).
The strong 2015 El Niño event is near its peak. While sea surface temperatures remain close to record-high values, some El Niño indicators are now showing signs of easing.The 2015–16 El Niño is strong, and likely to rank in the top three events of the past 50 years. Presently, several key indicators fall short of their 1997–98 and 1982–83 values, both in the ocean (e.g. sub-surface temperatures, which have peaked around +8 °C this year, compared to +12 °C in 1997–98), and atmosphere (e.g. SOI, for which monthly values peaked around −20, while 1982–83 had several months at −30).
While El Nino is impacting global weather patterns, it is far from the only weather driver and not always the primary one.
Right now something else is more likely the reason the coats and gloves have been gathering moths. The warmth is "really associated with the strengthened polar vortex," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service. "It is much more likely the Arctic Oscillation." "Arctic Oscillation" is a change in air pressure (oops! no CO2, just PV=nRT) at the North Pole that affects how far south cold air travels from the Arctic.
First, it is important to understand (science "boy" with a mall "b") a phenomenon called the polar vortex. The polar vortex is a ring of cold winds that swirls around the north pole (there is one at the South Pole, as well). Low pressure (PV=nRT, temperature difference drives pressure and wind speed) keeps those winds — and the cold air they carry — wrapped around the poles. At the furthest perimeter of this vortex is a jet stream of fast-moving, cold air. But the pattern varies — high pressure in the Arctic can push the winds away from the pole and down to the the mid-latitude regions of the planet, where most people live. Other times, the pressure at the Arctic can be so low that the vortex is especially tight, and a greater portion of cold air than normal is trapped near the pole. Those fluctuations make up the Arctic Oscillation.
When pressure at the Arctic is exceptionally high, the AO is "negative," when pressure is low, it is "positive." The cold weather in the early months of 2014 was largely attributed to that shifting of the polar vortex away from the Arctic and toward the equator — a "negative" Arctic Oscillation. Over half of the United States was covered in snow, and some regions saw record cold temperatures.
Currently, the Arctic Oscillation is exceptionally positive, and the polar vortex has been stronger than average. The cold air that would otherwise chill the northern regions of the country is staying around the Arctic. So, regions that would normally be receiving snow at this time of year are unseasonably warm. Only a few mountainous regions in the country have seen snow. Judah Cohen, a meteorologist with Atmospheric and Environmental Research, echoed Halpert's comments in a recent blog post.
A positive Arctic Oscillation pattern "has resulted in very mild temperatures across northern Europe, the Eastern United States and to a lesser degree East Asia," Cohen wrote. However, he noted that the pattern is slowly transitioning, and "temperatures are likely to cool from their very elevated levels." El Nino is almost certainly affecting weather and precipitation in the Northeast and elsewhere in the United States to some extent; much of the rain seen across the South is consistent with El Nino, for example.
No two El Nino seasons are ever exactly alike, but are often similar. Halpert said the Climate Prediction Center projects that the strong El Nino will maintain its strength through the winter before gradually weakening in spring.
"For California, El Nino means that there is a pretty favorable tilt toward a wetter winter from January through March," Halpert said, but added that "this is not a guarantee" since weather and climate are complicated and can be affected by many factors.
Plenty of winter is expected as we get deeper into the new season, IF the analog years I've selected are correct.
Longer-term high latitude boundary conditions favor a negative bias to the AO including extensive Eurasian snow cover and low sea ice extent in the Barents-Kara seas. The key will be how strong the energy transfer from the troposphere to the stratosphere (PV=nRT) is in late December and how much the polar vortex is perturbed. If the energy transfer does NOT significantly weaken the polar vortex, the AO will likely remain mostly positive and then mild temperatures will dominate the mid-latitudes.
Strong El Ninos have accompanied both no snow and heavy snow in winter in Georgia.
http://www.wsbradio.com/weblogs/kir.../2015/dec/13/dont-just-blame-el-nino-weather/
Not one mention of climate change, global warming or CO2 levels. What is interesting to note is the energy transfer from the troposphere to the stratosphere (cooling). Radiative forcing transfers energy from the atmosphere back to the surface of the earth (warming). Strange that the CO2 levels are increasing without the effect of warming the earth consistently day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year for 17+ years.
The weird warm weather much of the country has been experiencing in November and December is not unexpected. In fact, it fits many past strong El Nino patterns and was what was forecast to happen. Yes, El Nino is by SOME measures the strongest (warmest water temps) on record. But beware media hype, El Nino is NOT a storm system or a jet stream monster that's going to reek havoc and release the hounds of hell. It brings both good and bad weather. It can help the drought in California but with too much of a good thing (flooding/mud slides).
The strong 2015 El Niño event is near its peak. While sea surface temperatures remain close to record-high values, some El Niño indicators are now showing signs of easing.The 2015–16 El Niño is strong, and likely to rank in the top three events of the past 50 years. Presently, several key indicators fall short of their 1997–98 and 1982–83 values, both in the ocean (e.g. sub-surface temperatures, which have peaked around +8 °C this year, compared to +12 °C in 1997–98), and atmosphere (e.g. SOI, for which monthly values peaked around −20, while 1982–83 had several months at −30).
While El Nino is impacting global weather patterns, it is far from the only weather driver and not always the primary one.
Right now something else is more likely the reason the coats and gloves have been gathering moths. The warmth is "really associated with the strengthened polar vortex," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service. "It is much more likely the Arctic Oscillation." "Arctic Oscillation" is a change in air pressure (oops! no CO2, just PV=nRT) at the North Pole that affects how far south cold air travels from the Arctic.
First, it is important to understand (science "boy" with a mall "b") a phenomenon called the polar vortex. The polar vortex is a ring of cold winds that swirls around the north pole (there is one at the South Pole, as well). Low pressure (PV=nRT, temperature difference drives pressure and wind speed) keeps those winds — and the cold air they carry — wrapped around the poles. At the furthest perimeter of this vortex is a jet stream of fast-moving, cold air. But the pattern varies — high pressure in the Arctic can push the winds away from the pole and down to the the mid-latitude regions of the planet, where most people live. Other times, the pressure at the Arctic can be so low that the vortex is especially tight, and a greater portion of cold air than normal is trapped near the pole. Those fluctuations make up the Arctic Oscillation.
When pressure at the Arctic is exceptionally high, the AO is "negative," when pressure is low, it is "positive." The cold weather in the early months of 2014 was largely attributed to that shifting of the polar vortex away from the Arctic and toward the equator — a "negative" Arctic Oscillation. Over half of the United States was covered in snow, and some regions saw record cold temperatures.
Currently, the Arctic Oscillation is exceptionally positive, and the polar vortex has been stronger than average. The cold air that would otherwise chill the northern regions of the country is staying around the Arctic. So, regions that would normally be receiving snow at this time of year are unseasonably warm. Only a few mountainous regions in the country have seen snow. Judah Cohen, a meteorologist with Atmospheric and Environmental Research, echoed Halpert's comments in a recent blog post.
A positive Arctic Oscillation pattern "has resulted in very mild temperatures across northern Europe, the Eastern United States and to a lesser degree East Asia," Cohen wrote. However, he noted that the pattern is slowly transitioning, and "temperatures are likely to cool from their very elevated levels." El Nino is almost certainly affecting weather and precipitation in the Northeast and elsewhere in the United States to some extent; much of the rain seen across the South is consistent with El Nino, for example.
No two El Nino seasons are ever exactly alike, but are often similar. Halpert said the Climate Prediction Center projects that the strong El Nino will maintain its strength through the winter before gradually weakening in spring.
"For California, El Nino means that there is a pretty favorable tilt toward a wetter winter from January through March," Halpert said, but added that "this is not a guarantee" since weather and climate are complicated and can be affected by many factors.
Plenty of winter is expected as we get deeper into the new season, IF the analog years I've selected are correct.
Longer-term high latitude boundary conditions favor a negative bias to the AO including extensive Eurasian snow cover and low sea ice extent in the Barents-Kara seas. The key will be how strong the energy transfer from the troposphere to the stratosphere (PV=nRT) is in late December and how much the polar vortex is perturbed. If the energy transfer does NOT significantly weaken the polar vortex, the AO will likely remain mostly positive and then mild temperatures will dominate the mid-latitudes.
Strong El Ninos have accompanied both no snow and heavy snow in winter in Georgia.
http://www.wsbradio.com/weblogs/kir.../2015/dec/13/dont-just-blame-el-nino-weather/
Not one mention of climate change, global warming or CO2 levels. What is interesting to note is the energy transfer from the troposphere to the stratosphere (cooling). Radiative forcing transfers energy from the atmosphere back to the surface of the earth (warming). Strange that the CO2 levels are increasing without the effect of warming the earth consistently day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year for 17+ years.
Pittsburgh Pete
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My suggestion is that the cherry-picked climate data function in the minds of climate denialists in ways similar to props in make-believe. The cherry-picked data constitute a set of props for the denialist. The principle of generation then is for the denialist to form ideological imaginings that comport with those props. This gives the denialists their semblance of rationality. They draw trend lines and make inferences in accordance with the props they have chosen, just as the children in the woods draw inferences about the concentration of ‘bears’ in various parts of the woods. How willful is this process? And how good is the denialists’ metacognition of the game of make-believe that is going on in their own minds? I’m not sure we know the answers to these questions. The murky answers for now must be “semi-willful” to the first question and “poor” to the second. But I think we can say that the game they are playing is motivated—typically—by the need to belong to a certain in-group (in this case: conservatives); that’s why Kahan uses the phrase “identity-protective cognition.” Thus to defeat the denialists, we can’t just lay out more evidence—the new pieces of data simply won’t be taken up as props—we have to motivate them to play a different game. How to do that, as far as I can tell, is completely unknown. But at least the morally important task is a bit clearer. -
http://www.philosophytalk.org/commu...uwen/2015/04/psychology-climate-change-denial
http://www.philosophytalk.org/commu...uwen/2015/04/psychology-climate-change-denial
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