Tim Blair lost in the stratosphere

Global cooling is now a flight-safety hazard.

The post he links speculates on a cause of the crash of BA flight 38:

But it would appear that the major contributory factor could have been the extreme cold. In other words, global cooling can kill.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Al!

and

After the aircraft crossed the Ural mountain range in Russia it climbed further to 38,000 where the ambient temperature dropped to as low as minus 76Â°C.

But 38,000 feet is in the stratosphere. And while greenhouse gases warm the surface of the Earth, they cool the stratosphere.

In the same post Blair credulously repeats a story from a commenter who claimed he drove across Montana in -80°F weather. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Montana is -70°F.

And while we are here we also have this from Blair

Al Gore has been silent of late, but was recently heard on US radio insanely claiming that the Burmese cyclone was linked to global warming.

In fact, Gore said the opposite: “any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming” but that scientists think that warming will likely produce stronger cyclones. Details here.

Comments

#1 Zeno
May 10, 2008

But you have to give Tim Blair credit for saying that Gore was “insanely claiming” that the disaster in Burma was related to global warming. Blair hasn’t forgotten the talking points from the 2000 presidential election. Always remember that Al Gore is just a little bit wacky and unbalanced and dishonest. Thank goodness that mass media compliance with that narrative saved us from a Gore presidency and gave us instead the steady, sane, sober, and straightforward leadership of George w. Bush (soon to be recorded in history as the worst president ever).
#2 Boris
May 10, 2008

The lowest temperature ever recorded in Montana is -70°F.

And since the guy is talking about the Billings-Columbus area, the record for Billings is -38F.
#3 Rattus Norvegicus
May 10, 2008

I turns out that the Al Gore interview was doctored.
#4 z
May 10, 2008

“Great tits cope well with warming ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7390109.stm
#5 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 10, 2008

Tim Blair:

I went along to one of the fringe-ins to hear the Socialists Against Brunch argue with the Maoist Golfers League and Communists Sans Underpants over the mega-party’s police policy.

Thank you, thank you! Remind me to start a taxonomy of Leftist Conspiracy Theories some time.

The Left are a bunch of namby-pamby hippies who can’t get anything done, yet they’re also able to the engineer the Greatest Scientific Hoax of All Time without a hitch.
#6 Betula
May 11, 2008

“The Left are a bunch of namby-pamby hippies who can’t get anything done, yet they’re also able to the engineer the Greatest Scientific Hoax of All Time without a hitch.”

“And Bush is the most incompetent President of all time, yet he managed to fool Congress and the American public about WMD’s and took down the World Trade Centers without a hitch.”

Well, there may be a little truth to the first part of my Bush example……
#7 z
May 11, 2008

“yet he managed to fool Congress and the American public about WMD’s ”

unfortunately, that didn’t take much effort.
#8 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 11, 2008

Betula, is this “You did it too!” act of yours some sort of Pavlovian reflex?

Anyway, I see that back in 2003 Pielke Jr. came up with yet another conspiracy theory. The family tree of AGW conspiracy theories is getting bigger and bigger…
#9 luminous beauty
May 11, 2008

Betula,

The Congress and the less than 50% of the American public who were fooled about WMDs didn’t presume Bush was incompetent.

He had to prove it.
#10 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 11, 2008

Pielke Jr. proposes a conspiracy theory, then turns around to accuse the AGW theory of being unfalsifiable. I like this guy.
#11 dhogaza
May 11, 2008

Pielke Jr is a far more honest man than his father, Pielke Sr.

Now that you understand the son, what opinion will you form of the father?
#12 MarkG
May 11, 2008

Feh. AGW unfalsifiable? Rubbish, it’s easy.

Step 1: Prove quantum mechanics (and by extension, radiative transfer theory) to be wrong.
Step 2: Profit!
#13 Nick
May 11, 2008

Until recently, I had the good fortune to be a Blair virgin. Another smirking dimwit neo-liberal driven by pathological attention seeking finds shelter in the House of Rupert, where quantity is quality.
#14 cohenite
May 12, 2008

GCM’s predict stratosphere cooling on the basis of lower atmosphere CO2 caused opaqueness; without plunging into the CO2 saturation bar to such opaqueness debate, a couple of queries;
The greatest rate of cooling is in the lower stratosphere, around 22 km; at low pressures a local thermodynamic equlibrium will not occur and a thermal gradient from the lower atmosphere should facilitate outward radiative emissions from the CO2 below; in effect the cooling, if a byproduct of AGW, has negative feedback on any general forcing occurring below.

On another tack; most of the discussion about the solar imput has been in terms of its positive forcing potential, or lack thereof; the current cycle is very subdued; the Richard Willson/Tamino debate indicates a general decline in all solar indices; even if there is little positive solar forcing during high solar activity periods, does that necessarily mean that a reduced solar activity period doesn’t have a larger -ve forcing effect, starting with stratosphere cooling?
#15 Gavin's Pussycat
May 12, 2008

at low pressures a local thermodynamic equlibrium will not occur and a thermal gradient from the lower atmosphere should facilitate outward radiative emissions from the CO2 below; in effect the cooling, if a byproduct of AGW, has negative feedback on any general forcing occurring below.

You failed the Turing test. A scienciness generator… I’d love to see your source code
#16 cohenite
May 12, 2008

Pussycat; poor old Turing, still being manipulated to enforce the orthodoxy; still, I suppose being called a machine avoids the ad hominem test. You, on the other hand, I envisage being quite comfortable at this place with its own climate issues:

http://www.southparkx.net/news/episode-1002-smug-alert-press-release
#17 Dano
May 12, 2008

Looking in the Unisys archive for upper-level rawinsonde plots, the 300 mb level is ~ 33-35k ft in the higher latitudes of the western hemisphere on the 17th.

It appears to me highly unlikely that the BA flight would have gotten into the stratosphere on that date.

Caveat: no trolls should use this information to validate TimBlair’s statement.

Best,

D
#18 Eli Rabett
May 12, 2008

Cohanlite floops again. At 22 km the atmospheric pressure is 40 mbar, the mean free path is about 1.25 microns and the mean velocity is ~ 400 m/s (standard atmosphere values). The mean time between collisions will be ~3 ns, more than fast enough to thermally relax any IR excited molecules and maintain a local thermodynamic equilibrium. Eli recommends a subscription to ZipClue for C.
#19 cohenite
May 13, 2008

OK Eli; what level of the stratosphere, if any, do you think the pressure becomes sufficiently low, and collisions infrequent enough, so that the opaqueness caused by the difference between the slower rate of thermal excitation and the much quicker rate of collisional deexcitation of CO2 ceases to be a barrier to outward IR?
#20 Eli Rabett
May 13, 2008

Cohenlite, try none for the stratosphere which goes to ~50 km. ZipClue has some inexpensive help for you at low cost.
#21 Dano
May 13, 2008

Possible self-correction. Looking at southern England on that date, I can see the jet flying into the stratosphere if it were at cruising altitude over England, Norway, Siberia.

And it’s pretty cold at that FL at many stations along the likely route, but not unprecedented. Anything to keep the ‘global cooling’ talking point going, I guess.

Best,

D