The Driest First Week of January in Recorded History
No climate change to be seen here. Nope, nothing at all. Certainly no January wildfires in Montana. Move along everyone, back to your shorts and golf courses on January 9.
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Jesus this is stupid.
You know how we make fun of wingnuts who screeched about all the snow last winter as evidence of “global cooling”? You know, the ones who were scoffing at Al Gore because a blizzard hit DC?
That’s because it’s laughably stupid to talk about climate change in terms of one week (or one month) in one part (or any part) of the world.
You’re the moron. Apparently you’ve memorized the “no anecdotes, never ever” rule, and that’s all you know.
One of the linked posts covers three months and links to still more posts. Loomis’s 29-word lead-in didn’t prove anything, but it pointed to these posts, but that required that you be diligent enough to click and read. Anecdotes don’t prove anything, but they’re evidence, and all-time record conditions over the period of months are more than just anecdotes. Remarkably Dry and Warm Winter Due to “Most Extreme Configuration of the Jet Stream Ever Recorded”. That’s the headline, the first 16 words, of the piece you didn’t bother to click on.
People with an interest in the topic also know that Texas just has its driest year in recorded history. Here in Minnesota it’s the warmest winter in recorded history; cars are falling through the ice.
Limbaugh’s problem isn’t just anecdotalism; blizzards in DC aren’t inconsistent with global warming.
I have no idea what kind of entity you are, but your fake scrupulosity is characteristic of the way that academics cripple themselves and each other in political debate.
I was wrong, it wasn’t false scrupulosity but just denier trolling. He talks about “wingers’ to cover his tracks, but in his 4:06 post his true identity peeks out.
Too funny. Because climate change is really happening – and of course I have not disputed that anywhere in the thread – that means that Erik is automatically right no matter what he says and arguing with him makes me a winger.
Idiotic tribalism at its finest, and I applaud your efforts. But you know who never says dumb shit like what Erik said? Climate scientists, that’s who. Because they fucking know better than to be so damn dumb.
When you speak of a “typical know-nothing lefty argument” below you show your own tribalism, though as I said, I’m not completely sure what kind of entity you are.
Your the vehemence of your reiteration doesn’t make your argument any better.
I’ll give you a hint wrt my “entity”. In this thread, at least, I’m exactly what I appear to be – someone who thinks that Erik is basically full of it.
That’s all. I know release you back to your normally scheduled paranoia.
Fine, but your arguments are crap. And you did speak below about a “typical know-nothing lefty argument” which makes you seem to be what you probably are, a winger troll of some kind.
Developing…..
Ha ha, OK. No doubt the board is trusting you to keep a watchful eye on me.
I’m a troll here myself, asshole. These people here are too fucking nice.
Your arguments are crap.
You tipped your hand at 4:06 p.m. when you started talking about a “typical know-nothing lefty argument”.
You’re supposed to stay in character and keep repeating “Loomis is as bad as the wingers!” But you are a winger yourself, it seems.
Nice try, though.
The succession is “It isn’t happening” / We don’t know that it’s human-caused / there’s nothing that can be done / it’s really a good thing.”
In a rear-guard action, Strannix is sticking at stage one, but he’s picked up the clever idea of saying “Your guy (Loomis) is as stupid as my guy (Limbaugh)”. Not really true.
It’s fun watching you pick apart trolls but while Trollblog lies fallow it seems like a waste of talent
Funny when we go through cold winters all climate denialists can talk about is the weather but suddenly they can tell the difference between climate and weather. Scratch that, it’s more wildly depressing.
And vice versa, if Erik is any indication.
Sometimes climate activists change it up and say that snowy winters are actually evidence in favor of global warming.
But, yeah, this is something that both sides are equally guilty of.
Equally? Really? My impression is quite the opposite. Indeed, the usual commentary I see is, “Ok, cold weather gloaters, now it’s crazy hot in January…why aren’t you equally convinced by that? Plus, weather != climate BUT one possible outcome of global warming is odd shifts in weather patterns and more extreme weather events.”
Eh, I’m probably too skeptical. It seems like the way gobal warming advocates discuss the issue often allows them to have it both ways. When it’s unseasonably warm, that’s obviously evidence of global warming because, you know, it’s warm (see Erik’s original post, for instance). But when it’s unseasonably cold, that’s due to global warming too, because global warming predicts “more extreme weather events.”
This whole chain of argument is basically unfalsifiable, which is why it’s annoying.
This whole chain of argument is basically unfalsifiable, which is why it’s annoying.
Of course, we could look at average temperature over time, but then we would not be using cool words like unfalsifiable.
Indeed. Looking at global average temperature shows that global warming is occurring. Pointing out a random warm week in January does not.
My point isn’t that arguments in favor of global warming are, in general, unfalsifiable nonsense. For the most part, they are based on the current consensus of scientists about what the data is showing them.
My point is that the specific argument which takes individual weather events and then uses them as arguments for global warming are stupid.
Of course, abnormally snowy winters are actually predicted by global warming models, but never mind — Both Sides (the fact-based and denial-based) say similarish things! Equally guilty!!
Close italics, close bold, close tags I say!!! Sorry.
If global meaning means snowy winters, then how does an abnormally warm and dry winter fit in?
I believe in global warming, but its advocates have just as much of a tendency to point to weather events as confirming their views as denialists, and they do so in contradictory ways.
Argument by anecdote is stupid and wrong, whatever side is doing it.
Pleas try and avoid the use of the word believe – it seems to confuse people who like to be confused. I appreciate there is the everyday meaning of “I havn’t personally looked over all the data but from what I have seen and been assured my GPS system does indeed require Einsteins equations in order to function as accurately as it does, therefore I believe these equations are correct.”
Or something like that. Nevertheless reducing use of the word believe when talking about scientific subjects is a good thing. I don’t need to believe in gravity, oxidation reactions and semiconductors in order to be sitting here typing this.
I really can’t agree that it is so. Global warming advocates have been trying to rebrand the entire affair to ‘global climate change’ for over a decade. The idea that climate change is only about warming is one that gets eagerly promulgated by denialists, since then they can publish stupid Al Gore-based editorial cartoons every time it snows on the East Coast. But every articulate person on the side of goodness, right, truth, and environmental science agrees that the core prediction of climate change theory is an overall warming of the entire global, which in practice and from the perspective of the common global citizen will manifest as an increase in unseasonable and extreme weather.
Which is pretty much what we’re getting this winter. Here in Seattle, the winter is incredibly dry and very warm; we’re all on the verge on panic on the state of our snowpack. We’ve gotten two hail events, one of them pretty meager, and not one single snow event. No snow all winter into January?
In conclusion, I’m going to award this one to the people without a history of the rankest intellectual dishonesty.
This is honestly no different than wingnuts crowing over 75-degree days in July.
Basically, it’s this, except exchange “sports” for “climate”.
Is it really too much to ask of people to read the linked report before commenting?
Yes, yes it is.
I read them. The framing that both exhibit (weird weather phenomenon, ergo climate change) is false.
No climate denial here, all the science points towards warming. But cherry-picking weird weather patterns in absurdly small sample sizes (i.e. one week) is counterproductive and opens the door for idiot conservatives to point to a chilly morning in July as “evidence” for the other side.
I read them. There is no claim in the artilce that the warm weather is part of long term climate change. In fact, the article says that it was caused by extreme jet stream activity, that we had extreme jet stream activity in the opposite direction the last two years and that we have no idea what has caused this. And the article also says that we will be back to normal January weather next week.
I think there is a very good chance that this might be a part of long term climate change but you can’t tell that from one week’s weather just like you couldn’t tell the contrary from the big snowstorms last winter.
But Loomis (as well as the pieces linked, particularly the thinkprogress one) both implicitly make that claim, which is why people are complaining.
I don’t think you’re reading the Thinkprogress piece correctly. Masters goes out of his to say that we don’t know if this is the result of man-made climate change.
Ah, I meant more in the sense of, not sure a piece like that runs on ThinkProgress unless it’s easily interpreted as in support of AGW.
You might be right: the piece was originally published on Masters’s Weather Underground blog (a treasure for weather nerds.) ThinkProgress may not have republished except for the fact that it could be read as arguing that climate change is causing it. But I’m pretty confident that wasn’t Masters’s intention when he wrote the piece given that he goes to great pains to suggest other mechanisms that could have caused the weird pattern.
Loomis does (and his claim is more than implicit) but the articles dont.
Uhm,
Obviously, there’s a huge amount of (acknowledged) speculation in there, but it’s just not correct to characterize the article as making “no claim … that the warm weather is part of long term climate change”.
Oops, slight reading fail on my part. I see the higher sunspot activity is linked to the positive AO and thus the warm dry weather. Sea ice loss and low sunspot activity linked to the past cold wet winters.
Who says that extreme jet stream activity isn’t part of climate change?
No one says it isn’t, just that something else might be causing it to, as Jeff Masters, the linked author and respected meteorologist said. (I believe in human-caused climate change. My only purpose in this thread is to complain about Erik’s obnoxious treatment of his commenters today.)
Erik has not been obnoxious enough. Few of the commenters give signs of having read the links. And Richard above speaks of long term climate change and changes in the jet stream as though they were two different unrelated things.
In fact, Richard said the exact opposite of what you suggest he said. His second paragraph starts with, “I think there is a very good chance that this might be a part of long term climate change”
In his first paragraph he says “There is no claim in the artilce that the warm weather is part of long term climate change. In fact, the article says that it was caused by extreme jet stream activity, that we had extreme jet stream activity in the opposite direction the last two years and that we have no idea what has caused this.
He speaks as if jet stream activity and global climate change are two alternative explanations, rather than aspects of one explanation.
That’s an accurate summation of the article, though, isn’t it? You know, the one that you insisted everyone else should read?
There’s nothing in the article that says that a change in jet stream activity isn’t part of global climate change. He’s noncommittal and also mentions sunspots.
Right, because “we have no idea what has caused this” as Richard accurately paraphrases.
Really, learn to read.
Yeah, Richard is saying (as Jeff Masters did) that we don’t know that jet stream activity is caused by global warming. Richard actually goes further than Masters, though, in asserting that he believes it likely is caused by global warming.
You’re simultaneously misreading both Masters and Richard fairly egregiously. It’s impressive, actually.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=whats-causing-dry-winter&page=2
According to Scientific American, the sunspot hypothesis is pure speculation and the global climate change theory is well-founded.
It isn’t an absurdly small sample. It goes back to December, and covers the entire area affected by the jet stream.
Obviously, it isn’t proof of global warming- nor would it be proof of global warming if it were 95 degrees in Point Barrow Alaska for a week in January, but it would be pretty damned interesting.
The proof of global warming is technically inaccessible to virtually everybody. Stories like these which highlight significant aberrational climate activity which fits into the global warming models are reasonable.
And I take it that stories which highlight significant climate activity which doesn’t fit the global warming model would be equally reasonable? If so, fine.
Knock yourself out. Such stories would be about a lack of unusual weather. Extremely unusual cold or high snowfall would tend to support rather than discredit global warming.
So please, feel free to start a blog hyping the occurance of ordinary weather all over the world. There’s plenty of it to choose from, so you’ll never lack for material. You may not attract many readers, though.
The better question is did you read the linked report, as Masters specifically said we don’t know whether climate change is affecting the jet stream which is causing the weird weather this week and that there is, in fact, research that sun spot activity might be doing it.
And Masters is no climate change denier, either.
Regardless, this is the second thread of the day that you’ve called out your commenters, and the second one where you were wrong to do so. I hope this doesn’t become your new thing.
And what part of the linked reports, exactly, bolster your snide claim that these weather patterns is all about climate change?
Maybe I’ve been reading too much Somerby, but I think I can hear Erik’s call in the wind: “Hey, rubes….”
Global warming means more extreme weather, not simply warmer weather (although shirtsleaves in January qualifies as “extreme”).
How convenient that this allows any unseasonable weather of any kind to be used as evidence of global warming.
How convenient that you ingore that global weather has been wierd as hell for the last couple of decades, with incidents of wierdness increasing every year.
Rather, global warming means an increase in incidents of extreme weather.
I agree. But you need more than a week of warm weather to say anything (especially when the article says that we’ll be back to normal January weather by next week)
Strannix, sleepyirv and John,
You’re making a mistake. Isolated instances of a hot day or two, or even an isolated record high temperature would be no basis for highlighting the effects of global climate change. However, record high temperatures over two continents is a meaningful aberration from the norm which is predicted by the models. Obviously, it is not “proof”. Real proof does exist, but it is beyond the technical expertise of virtually the entire population. This story has value because it is a prediction of unusual behaviour consistent with the hypothesis which the layman can understand.
John, you statements in particular betray a complete lack of understanding of what is meant by “climate change”. Global warming is not just significant because of the change in average worldwide temperature. If weather patterns all stayed the same, except everywhere experienced a tiny increase in average temperature, that would not be so catastrophic. The bigger problem (in the short run) is the change in weather patterns – prevailing winds are changing, humidity levels are changing, and precipitation patterns are changing. When the weather is spectacular because the weather systems involved are behaving in previously unseen ways, it is a “global warming” story.
The fact that this weather pattern is due to aberrational behaviour in the jet stream makes it a “global warming” story.
No no no. You’re confusing “weather” and “climate” just like every idiot winger out there. Climate change models make no claim as to short-term weather patterns. They can’t, because as you may have noticed from your lifetime of paying attention to forecasts, weather forecasts are fairly unreliable just days – and sometimes even hours – into the future.
To say that this last week (or month) is “consistent” with climate change models is no different than some wingnut saying that any unusual snowfall is “consistent” with their claims that climate change is a hoax. “Consistent” is nothing but a weasel word that means “we have no proof but it sounds good.”
No.
Let me simplify to illustrate what I mean.
Assume the jet stream has two possible paths. Assume that there is a probability function for transition from path “A” to path “B” and visa versa depending on the day of the year. If that function changes significantly, that is climate change, not weather change. (Attributing such change to global warming would be more problematic)
If we see a uniquely atypical duration of the jet stream in path “A”, it represents a piece of evidence that the probability function of the switch from path “A” to “B” may have declined. It is certainly not proof, not remorely so, but it is more meaningful than just “weather”.
If there are many atypical stretches in a short period of time, it may be that they indicate that the old probibility function is no longer valid. The existance of one very atypical stretch, while not conclusive, can act as a flag to indicate research into the activity is warranted. That one stretch, while not proof, is a newsworthy event.
In this hypothetical, it is even possible for a single event to be proof that a climate change has happened. At some point, a lack of change from path “A” to path “B” would generate a 95% confidence interval that the old probabilty functions are no longer appicable – though I’m not saying anything like that is happening, it does mean that “one event doesn’t prove anything” is not always accurate.
——————————————–
This is wrong. Nothing about large snowfalls is inconsistent with climate change. Any extreme weather event is more properly consisdered a grain of sand in support of climate change rather than a grain of sand against it. It isn’t just that the argument is bad statistically, it is an argument in the wrong direction. Denialists should be claiming that stretches of typical whether are proof of a hoax.
“Proof” is out of reach of the people who have to decide what should be done. That isn’t going to change – ever. I defy you to define any situation in which a majority of Americans can have climate change due to anthropomorphic global warming proven to them. Regardless of how true it is, or how provable it is in the abstract, it can’t be proven to most people. The idea that, “This dangerous, freakish weather is consistent with global climate change models”, is all we are ever going to have as our argument. We have the science which people can’t understand already. It isn’t enough.
Nothing about large snowfalls is “inconsistent” with climate change hoaxes either.
This is your problem – you have no self-awareness of how easy your sophisms are to argue against and dismiss. Indeed, it’s arguments like this that make climate change so easy to argue against and dismiss. You think you’re so damned smart because you can spin a few paragraphs of utter BS about the jet stream, but in the meantime denialists are kicking your ass in the climate change fight precisely because they figured out how to rebut this kind of dumb shit decades ago – and yet you keep saying it.
LOL x100. Typical know-nothing lefty argument – “the public is just too stupid to understand the truth! It’s just so technical!” As if the climate change debates in our culture had revolved around cold hard science up until the point that you decided to adopt simple-minded rhetorical tricks.
Nothing about pizza is inconsistant with climate change hoaxes, but it isn’t a very useful point to bring up. Are you aware of the concept of logic?
You seem to be operating under the delusion that the issue does not exceed the technical competence of the vast majority of Americans. Why would you think such obvious nonsense?
Wow, yes, now that you mention it, pizza is just as relevant to discussions of weather and climate as snowfall.
Typical know-nothing lefty argument – “the public is just too stupid to understand the truth! It’s just so technical!”
But that’s your argument all through this thread.
This is bullshit. One anecdote doesn’t prove climate change, but climate change will produce anecdotes. And “The most extreme three months / year yet observed” is a different kind of evidence than “It was really cold yesterday”.
Loomis’s lead-in pointed to links that needed to be read. He wasn’t ecpecting your polemicized laziness.
This is the kind of statement that people love to make all of the time, but one that I’m pretty sure isn’t actually (mostly) true.
I took an Intro class to Weather one semester at college–starting at the beginning of each class we would look up the latest METAR reports, talk about the weather in the past few days, and then the teacher would take us outside to do a few basic checks of things like wind speed, temperature readings, altimeter, etc.
He’d make a pronouncement about what weather we were going to have later that evening, the next day, even further into the week and he was right every. single. damn. time. It’s not hard to figure out what the weather is going to be like(you basically just look several hundred miles in the direction that your local weather pattern comes from) and that’s likely what you’ll get later on.
The problem comes when you have to distill this sort of information into a one-sentence synopsis of what this week’s weather is going to be like. Not every weather event you predict is going to be a 100% certainty, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were pressure to give a certain kind of forecast (the state fair is happening, tell everyone that it’s gonna be warm and sunny!).
My point? It actually can be very easy to know what sort of weather pattern is coming. I’m sure there are parts of the world/country that this is more difficult to do (East Coast weather can be quite tempermental), but it’s definitely knowable.
Tomorrow’s weather can be forecast. Beyond a few days it can’t be forecast except to say that it will probably be within the normal ranges. Six months away the normal ranges are different, so we can guess that Jan 20th will be colder than July 20th and be right 99%+ of the time. (Around here the coldest July 20 is 47 and the warmest January 20 is 53, so every once in awhile you’ll be wrong).
This just showed up: in Minnesota 2010 was the fourth warmest year on record AND December 2010 was the coldest December on record (or one of the coldest). January 2011 was also one of the coldest. December 2011-January 2012 (so far) have been among the warmest on record.
Again – NO ONE here is disputing climate change. There are just some folks (like me) saying that:
a) that doesn’t mean that any given weather is the result of climate change, and
b) anecdotal evidence is a lazy and irresponsible way to approach the debate about climate change.
That’s it. Anything beyond that is your invention.
Well, you’re a waste of time.
As global climate change proceeds, will there be an accumulation of more and more anecdotes? Or will the process be entirely anecdote-free?
Will there some point at which you will allow people to reference their own experience in the context of global climate change, or will that be forbidden forever?
Will people ever be able to say “Sure seems like global climate change to me”, or must this kind of judgment be relegated (in the midst of a fierce political battle about how to respond to global climate change) entirely to experts?
Your original attack was unwarranted and excessive, and your repeated reiterations haven’t improved matters.
As you might infer, I’d prefer experts. As I’ve said, leaving it to people to make their own judgments leads to crap like wingnuts mocking Al Gore every time it snows.
I really don’t understand your argument against this. I mean, even people with technical expertise can’t say with any certainty whether any given weather pattern is a result of climate change or not, so how can Erik?
And you really want everyone else to shut up and not even converse about the topic. What a load of crap.
Or at least, you want “lefty know-nothings” to shut up, while the wingnuts babble on and control the public space. There is a political dispute going on, independent of the scientific argument.
I still haven’t figured whether you’re a wingnut troll entity (based on your phrase “lefty know-nothings”) or a hyper-scrupulous technocratic liberal entity (based on your self-presentation), but I don’t care because both types poison the discussion.
Right now:
The Weather Channel is forecasting Sunday in Chicago to have a high of 33.
The NWS is forecasting Sunday in Chicago to have a high of 31.
The Tribune/WGN is forecasting Sunday in Chicago to have a high of 18.
All due respect to your teacher, but like I said, these forecasts are fairly unreliable. These forecasts are for almost a week out, but we’ve all experienced days where storms were more severe than expected or didn’t arrive or we got stuck without an extra jacket because that cold front got here earlier than it was supposed to.
I don’t mean that forecasts are worthless; they’re generally reliable enough that our everyday activities aren’t too affected by the margin of error. If a high of 39 is forecast and it turns out to only get to 37 instead, well, we all would agree that the weatherperson was pretty much right.
But still, that’s a meaningful error over time, i.e., if every day is 2-3 degrees different than forecast (and this is, of course, highly common, especially in areas like Chicago with such close proximity to the lake). This is why climate scientists are so careful to draw the line between climate and weather. Climate should be predictable and reliable – indeed, this is the primary concern over change, that long-established climate patterns will be thrown into upheaval – but weather is extremely volatile.
I just checked and got 33, near 31, and 36, so I’m not sure where that 18 came from.
Of course, I never said 7 days out forecasts are especially reliable, but people frequently raise this spectre of weatherpeople as being wrong basically half the time, and that’s just not true. When the weather forecast for a day is wrong (and most of the time I imagine people mainly care about the immediately following day, or possibly up to three days out if it’s a weekend), it’s usually wrong in the sense of, “Oh we said it might mist a bit, and instead there was a downpour.” Which is to say that they are wrong in degree, but not about the basic type of weather or range of temperatures one might see.
I should clarify that when I say “people raise this spectre” I am sharing an anecdote, but one that I have seen displayed from people of differing backgrounds, ages, and locales. It seems like a fairly ubiquitous phenomenon that people grumble about when talking weather.
Keep arguing with people who don’t believe climate change is occurring. They will never know you don’t know what you are talking about.
There are a lot of people who don’t believe there is any real problem who are not denialists. They are never going to be swayed by rigorous science, but may be swayed by posts like Erik’s.
Seriously? People who don’t have strong opinions about global warming are going to be convinced by Erik’s lazy and logically incoherent post?
What you say is bullshit, but in answer to your question, yes, people are often convinced by weak arguments. Always glad to inform the ignorant.
I could just as easily describe Erik’s post as being sardonic and mocking of the type of posts conservative bloggers write (in seasons of especially cold or snowy stretches), and pointing out that this is one more data point in a still-currently-forming chain of record weather events (record highs, lows, amounts of precipitation, etc).
At a certain point, with enough anecdotes you start to have data.
Yes. It would also help if the members of the IPCC were the kind of guys you’d wanna have a beer with.
Since it’s Rumsfeld day here at LGM, you have to convince the populous you have, not the populous you wish you had.
There is no solution to climate change without US cooperation. There is no US cooperation without 67 senators approving. You don’t get 67 senators approving until they can win reelection after supporting a climate change treaty.
Last year: flooding. This year: no water?
You don’t have to believe in crazy shit like evidence to know that unpredictable seasons means less food. Less food means higher prices. Higher food prices means revolutions.
Where’s it going to be next year? India? Bangladesh? Is the South Asian Spring nigh?
The thing about weather and climate is that, sooner or later, the plural of anecdote really is data. You just have to decide how long you want to wait.