Pielke train wreck

If you haven’t been watching the Roger Pielke Jr train come off the rails and the carriages smashing into each other and exploding, I suggest you look at this post from James Annan:

Roger Pielke has been saying some truly bizarre and nonsensical things recently. The pick of the bunch IMO is this post. The underlying question is: Are the models consistent with the observations over the last 8 years?

Hey, hypothesis testing. First year stats stuff. So Annan carefully explains how it’s done.

Marvel at Pielke Jr’s response:

All he does is draw some graphs and wave his hands around. Does he calculate the probability of getting such a result if the null is true? Hell no.

Annan does the work for him:

Even if the null hypothesis was true, there would be about a 21% probability of observing data this “extreme”. There’s nothing remotely unusual about it.

And that’s using Pielke Jr’s cherry picked starting point …

Update: More carriages exploding here.

Comments

#1 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 17, 2008

Shorter J. Hansford:

What kind of error bar will not be huge, and why?

I’d love to see the inactivists answer this question.
#2 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 17, 2008

s/Shorter//
#3 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 17, 2008

Tim Lambert:

It’s the same “independent models” garbage as Douglass et al. (2007).
#4 John Quiggin
May 17, 2008

At this rate McKitrick will need to move aside. He only invented his temperature scale. These guys are inventing their own theory of statistics.
#5 Barton Paul Levenson
May 17, 2008

I have a bet for this Kofi Annan person. Unless the temperature goes up by at least 30 degrees K in the next six months, he must pay me over a billion dollars. If not, then he is a liar and so-called climate science does not exist. Plus climatologists rape lizards.

Twyla Reverberate
#6 Chris O'Neill
May 17, 2008

Tilo Reba:

I offered Annan a bet of 10,000 dollars that if the temp increases by .6C or more over the 30 years from 2000 to 2030 I would pay him.

spangled drongo:

The mean is 3.4c for the century.

I’m indebted to spangled drongo for informing me that 30 years is a century.
#7 Barton Paul Levenson
May 17, 2008

Tilo Reber writes:

Temperature increase, if the theory is correct, depends exactly on the amount of CO2 that was previously added.

This is the misconception at the heart of your whole argument here, I think. Temperature INCREASE does not depend exactly on the amount of CO2 that was PREVIOUSLY added, other than warming “in the pipeline.” Short-term temperature INCREASE depends exactly on the amount of CO2 that is CURRENTLY being added.

The whole theory behind your bet is based on a mistake.
#8 Barton Paul Levenson
May 17, 2008

Harold Pierce writes:

All climate, like politics, is local. It make little sense to me to try to compute a useless metric like the global mean temperature.

I welcome hostile peer review!

Okay, here’s some hostile peer review: Your sentence “All climate… is local” is not only wrong, but patently stupid. It’s saying there’s no such thing as climate, only weather. I have new for you — there is such a thing as climate. It involves wide areas and large periods of time. Your cherry-picking one site to prove something about global climate is not just incorrect, it’s flat-out, dumbass, brain-damaged STUPID. The more so because you’ve had it explained to you before and you apparently went blithely on without paying any attention to the explanations.
#9 Boris
May 17, 2008

I wish I could get a denialist poker game together. It would be so profitable. The beauty is, that after taking their money week after week they would still come back saying that their losing streak is “natural variation” and they’re just about to recover from the little bad luck age.
#10 bigcitylib
May 17, 2008

“I can’t help but wonder if Ti Roger is doing some kind of performance art piece”

Roger’s audience is not the scientists that are debating him. Its the rubes and the scientifically semi-literate (like myself) who can’t tell the difference between bullshit and research where a few equations are involved. Roger is talking over the heads of the experts to the folks that visit his site looking someone with a degree willing to trash the IPCC, even if incoherently.
#11 Betula
May 17, 2008

BPL said..

“All climate… is local” is not only wrong, but patently stupid. It’s saying there’s no such thing as climate, only weather.”

This was also addressed by Phoca at #49 when he used ENSO as an example……so let’s use ENSO.

An ENSO event can be expected to affect different locations differently ie: heavy rains and flooding in Peru, severe droughts in Indonesia and parts of Australia….all depending on the variables local to that area…..altitude,latitude,proximity to large bodies of water or mountains etc…

Also,climate zones are sometimes described by plant hardiness….here on the east coast, alongside Long Island Sound, the Sound acts to cool the coast in the summer and warm it in the winter…..the plant zone changes from the coastline to about 7 miles inland……is this not local climate?

So in a sense….isn’t all climate local?
#12 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

Levenson: “Temperature INCREASE does not depend exactly on the amount of CO2 that was PREVIOUSLY added, other than warming “in the pipeline.” ”

You are wrong Levenson. First of all, I’m not talking about what was added. I’m talking about the measureable increase that we can see in the atmosphere. And we have seen a consistent measurable increase in the atmosphere for the entire ten years that we have had no warming. The rate of increase was as large or larger than the previous 20 year rate where we saw a significant amount of warming. The greenhouse gas effect is not dependent upon when the greenhouse gas level was raised in the atmosphere; it only cares about how much of it is there. Take for example the number that you cultists like to use for CO2 doubling of 3C per doubling. You are going to get that 3C if you increase the CO2 as a pulse immediately, if you increase it gradually over time period x or if you increase it at the end of time period x. When you do the increase will effect when you get the 3C. And there will be some delay, but regardless, you will get the 3C – all other things being equal.

So, for the ten years that we have had no warming, the CO2 has continued to increase, and it has therefore changed the radiation balance of the earth. This is all warmer theory by the way. That CO2 for the last ten years is in the atmosphere now, reflecting heat back to the earth now, and requiring that the earth get hotter to balance the equation now. If we do not see that increase, it can only be because it is temporarily masked by other natural climate events. But once that masking is removed or reversed, then all of the CO2 effect must be seen. If you don’t understand that Levenson, then you don’t understand the greenhouse theory that you claim to subscribe to.

But taking things one step further, you theory has a bit of a problem. There has been no warming for 10 years. CO2 has continued up for 10 years. You now have to have some other natural climate events to mask the increase that should have happened for those 10 years. What is that natural climate event. It wasn’t PDO. It wasn’t a large number of volcanoes. Solar cycle 23 was smaller than 21 and 22, but it was still larger than the majority of the solar cycles.

So, while explaining away 10 years of no temp increase as being due to natural variablility is not a problem, explaining just exactly what that natural variablily was is a big problem, because there doesn’t seem to be any.
#13 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

“The beauty is, that after taking their money week after week they would still come back saying that their losing streak is “natural variation” and they’re just about to recover from the little bad luck age.”

Well Boris, it seems that your are too dumb to even realize that you are on the loosing streak. You haven’t had any temp increase for ten years. Considering that your hand requires .2C increase over that period to win, you have lost. And it is you that is claiming “natural variation”.
#14 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

“I’m indebted to spangled drongo for informing me that 30 years is a century.”

How long did you have to practice to be such a dumb ass Chris. When drongo says that the mean is 3.4C per century, he is obviously saying that the mean for a 30 year period would then be .3 X 3.4, or 1.02C. Meaning than Annan is getting a very nice edge if he only has to show .6C to win.
#15 Betula
May 17, 2008

“The beauty is, that after taking their money week after week they would still come back saying that their losing streak is “natural variation” and they’re just about to recover from the little bad luck age.”

The beauty is, that after increased C02 hasn’t increased the warming of the planet for the past 10 years, they still come back saying that their losing streak is “natural variation” and they’re just about to recover from the little bad luck age.
#16 Boris
May 17, 2008

I’m too dumb to realize I’m on a loosing streak. Oh, noes. I’m on a loosing streak? Really I hope this loosing streak ends soon, or I might just loose my mind.
#17 Boris
May 17, 2008

Thanks, Betula. You are welcome at my home game anytime. NL holdem, $400 max buy in, but we’ll raise it to $1000 for you if you’d like. I’ll even cover your share of snacks and beer.
#18 dhogaza
May 17, 2008

The beauty is, that after increased C02 hasn’t increased the warming of the planet for the past 10 years, they still come back saying that their losing streak is “natural variation” and they’re just about to recover from the little bad luck age.

So, Betula, do you deny that our planet’s climate is noisy and variable?

If not, why do you think adding additional CO2 to the atmosphere would end that variability?

Which climate scientist has ever said that increasing CO2 concentrations from 280 ppm to 380 ppm will cause the natural variability of climate to stop? That it will cause ENSO to stop? That there will be no more La Niñas, no more El Niños?

Do you understand just how stupid your comment is? Or do you need us to spell it out in more specific terms?

When the next El Niño inevitably shows up, are you going to remember that you don’t believe in the noisiness and variability of the global climate system? Or are you going to suddenly switch allegiance and say “oh, look, global warming plays no role, El Niño is natural” after sitting here denying the importance of the ENSO effect on the cherry-picked 10-year period that just happens to start in the year of one of the strongest El Niño’s in history?

Climate science doesn’t resemble your strawman characterization, any more than evolutionary biologist resembles the strawman characterizations “proven false” by creationists. If you’re going to overturn climate science, you’re going to have to understand the field, first.

More, in spades, to Tilo, who is one of the most stubbornly uneducatable trolls on the internet.
#19 Chris Colose
May 17, 2008

Tilo, for one so confident in challenging climate scientists, you are quite ignorant on this subject. For one thing, you should know very well that 10 years of temperature is far too short a time interval to look at given the signal-to-noise ratio. Your cherry pick fest is not impressive. Even if there was warming or cooling over the last 10 years (in fact, a best fit line does give slight warming) it could all be simply due to chance. What’s more, the projection of 0.2 C/decade does not mean that every subset of 10 years necessarily warms by 0.2 C.
While you claim to believe that CO2 is not the only thing that effects climate, and claim to be well aware that no one else believes that, your implications are that it IS the only thing that influences climate.

Next, the greenhouse effect does not work by “reflecting” heat. This is a rather elementary concept.

You are right that the ~3 C of warming will eventually be realized, but it does not need to be realized in nice linear steps. In fact, this is the idea behind the latest Keenlyside et al paper– if it turns out right, warming will occur in staircases, since it made no implications for climate sensitivity. It will take many decades to reach 560 ppmv (the “first” doubling) and still more time for equilibrium. Now we will need to get warming over the next 15-20 years to maintain confidence in the IPCC projections, but I really don’t think you understand any of this.
#20 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 17, 2008

Tim Lambert, is it possible for you to move all the discussion about this stupid bet into the Open Thread? It’s clogging up the Internets Tubes.
#21 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

Boris:
“Really I hope this loosing streak ends soon, or I might just loose my mind.”

Boris my boy, stop your fretting, there is nothing to loose.
#22 Thom
May 17, 2008

Lambert, I think this thread misses the point. The real question to ask: When was Pielke Jr. ever on track?
#23 mz
May 17, 2008

Heh.
There are two reasons why Tilo’s bet is wrong.

The first one:
James predicts 0.2 C per decade. Plus minus something. Tilo takes this as the center and would have James win only if it’s more than 0.2 and Tilo win if it’s 0.19 for example. So only 0.5 for James if James is 100% correct.

This is clearly not demonstrating how much James is believing in the 0.2 C (plus minus some of course). For example, if we assume James believed he is 90% certain and Tilo has 10% correct, then James’ odds would be only 45%. Only a fool would bet then.

0.1 C per decade would be a better example (if not for reason #2). Then James would have perhaps 80% chance (haven’t checked the distribution that lies to the right of 0.1 C) and Tilo would have whatever he believes.

The second one:
Including some flattish years from the beginning which, when taking into account the natural variability of the global temperature, lower the odds that a 20 year trend including these 8 first years would be the same as the long term trend. It’s all about window positioning which affects your results when you’re trying to predict a trend in a noisy signal.
Just look at this:
http://www.opentemp.org/_results/_20080515_lucia_7yrs/gistemp_7yr_and_22yr_trends.png
Short term trends are all over the place.
#24 Tim Lambert
May 17, 2008

Alas MT doesn’t let me move things.

I’m going to make this even simpler for Tilo: Tilo, please do not post to this thread any more. And everybody else: please do not respond to him/her.
#25 Betula
May 17, 2008

“So, Betula, do you deny that our planet’s climate is noisy and variable?”

I’m sorry, I thought natural variation worked both ways, I feel like a sellout…

http://tinyurl.com/62hmeb
#26 Betula
May 17, 2008

http://www.naturesongs.com/cricket1.wav
#27 dhogaza
May 17, 2008

I’m sorry, I thought natural variation worked both ways, I feel like a sellout…

Yes, it does, as any climate scientist will tell you.

Is there any reason why you just raised another strawman? Do you want to force me to believe you’re dishonest?
#28 climatepatrol
May 17, 2008

@dhogaza
@44

Tilo shows no more logic here than he ever has, anywhere.

Well, at least he shows a nice graph with a 30-year slope of just 0,166 K / decade.

May I suggest the troll be quieted?

It’s hilarious, though, that he proves the point that basing a bet that includes a historical component is stupid.

Good joke! Just look in your mirror at ‘realclimate’ where you back a bet by a professional climatologist, which is even heavily loaded with a historical component.

What do we learn? Annan’s claim is consistent with the IPCC. Roger Pielke Jr’s claim is consistent with the weather and with the IPCC, Rahmstorf, Keenlyside, (pirates?), and again with Annan. What is not consistent is the way how climate scientists suddenly debate in public. The level seems to be down during La Niñas:-).
#29 mz
May 17, 2008

That “deck was stacked” by Keenlyside themselves.
#30 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 17, 2008

What climatepatrol avoids discussing, again, is how Pielke Jr. totally fails to produce any calculations, and then leaps to the conclusion that the models are inconsistent with observations.

Feel the science, friends, feel the science!
#31 pough
May 17, 2008

Roger’s audience is not the scientists that are debating him.

I didn’t actually think he was being dense on purpose to make a point. In reality, I think he just starts from the point pf view of models being inherently flawed and those are the rails from which he will never “de”.
#32 Majorajam
May 17, 2008

Apologies Tim, but I have to answer the ninny. Ninny, there are indeed cyclical factors that one would expect to wash over any 30 year period, negating the importance of including realized history. However, the system is still chaotic with multiple feedbacks both positive and negative, (ice sheets, sea ice, biosphere, cloud formation, etc.), and meaning that unforced differentiation can introduce some pre-cooked results into even a long-term forecast. In addition, there are these things called specification and sampling error (the latter applicable to GCMs only deductively in that these must be consistent with empirical outcomes) you may have heard of which will also cause random innovation around your point estimate. So you choice of bet is indeed giving Annan less than even odds by his own forecast. And what a fool he would have to be to turn it down…

The more important bit is that this passive aggressive nonsense is a real bore. You claim that the ‘warmers’ are a ‘cult’ and yet won’t back up that self-parody with a simple and very favorable bet about climate sensitivity. You’re trying to show climate scientists lack the courage of their convictions by making it abundantly clear you have none. You won’t even take odds that climate sensitivity is, say, 1 degree per doubling, which would give you plenty of leeway in case there were a grain of truth to their conspiratorial cult to take over the world via the UN. But no, they must demonstrate their confidence by betting on a, (slightly stacked), coin toss while you lack the confidence even to bet that they overstate their case. What a hero.

So why doesn’t the troll take the bet? My guess is because you’re a poisonous little man with too much time on his hands when he’s not using them to punch his angry inch like he caught it trying to break into his house. And this is just another way to get a kick. You poor poor fellow.
#33 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

Majorajam

Answer on open thread.
#34 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

MZ, your response is on the open thread.
#35 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

Chris Colose, your response is on the open thread.
#36 dhogaza
May 17, 2008

May I suggest ignoring the open thread?
#37 Tilo Reber
May 17, 2008

dhogaza, your response is on the open thread.
#38 Betula
May 17, 2008

Is there any reason why you just raised another strawman? Do you want to force me to believe you’re dishonest?

The only thing dishonest is you claiming I deny natural variations……it’s an interesting strategy in an attempt to distort the meaning of what I said…..what’s the term used for that?

No temperature increases for 10 years…..you would think alarmists would be happy about that,instead they seem irked….like they are waiting for a long lost friend to return.

That was the point……that no further increase in temperature, or God forbid, a decrease in temperature, could be considered a loss….. blamed on natural variations.
#39 Chris O'Neill
May 18, 2008

Betula:

The only thing dishonest is you claiming I deny natural variations

You’re not getting the point which is that for you to deny that increased CO2 is a warming force over the last 10 years requires belief that nothing else (natural or otherwise) could have given a cooling force.
#40 Alarmist Creep
May 18, 2008

So in a desperate attempt to move on from the eye gouging what might one put forward as a reason for the apparent stasis in temperatures. What options are there on the checklist – solar, clouds, random walk, decadal oscillation?
Any thoughts?
#41 Tilo Reber
May 18, 2008

“what might one put forward as a reason for the apparent stasis in temperatures. What options are there on the checklist – solar, clouds, random walk, decadal oscillation? Any thoughts?”

Alarmist actually asks a valid and significant question. Knock me over with a feather!

Oh, let me say that “random walk” is like saying that “things happen for no reason”. Not a candidate in my mind. I suppose that you could add Volcanoes to that list if you had an abnormally large number of them or if you had some really big ones.
#42 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 18, 2008

Alarmist Creep is a strawman sockpuppet, possibly created by Tilo Reber. And I claim my ten shillings.
#43 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 18, 2008

Further in Pielke Jr.’s trip to nutland:

I am following RC’s lead in treating the models as independent realizations, subject to approximation via a normal distribution.

No, that’s not what they do.
#44 Alarmist Creep
May 18, 2008

err not likely “bi — Intl. J. Inact.” – I normally cross swords with Tilo over at Marohasy. But back to the issue – I wouldn’t pick solar, random walk, or decadal or radiative forcing running out of puff – leaves? … but I am asking and interested.
#45 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 18, 2008

Alarmist Creep:

A mixture of solar cycle 23 and La Niña? Then again, I’m not an expert.
#46 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 18, 2008

Latest from James Annan on this train wreck…
#47 Barton Paul Levenson
May 18, 2008

Tilo Reber posts:

There has been no warming for 10 years. CO2 has continued up for 10 years. You now have to have some other natural climate events to mask the increase that should have happened for those 10 years. What is that natural climate event. It wasn’t PDO. It wasn’t a large number of volcanoes.

You’ve been told what the “natural climate events” that result in your so-called trend here several times, and you rejected the explanation each time. I’ll try once again: You are starting from an El Nino year and ending in a La Nina year. The “natural climate events” resulting in your trend are El Nino and La Nina. You picked a part of the curve that started with a jog up and ended with a job down, a technique that would have given you a flunking grade in any introductory data analysis course in the world.
#48 Barton Paul Levenson
May 18, 2008

Tim posts:

I’m going to make this even simpler for Tilo: Tilo, please do not post to this thread any more. And everybody else: please do not respond to him/her.

Sorry, I posted one before reading your warning. Apologies. I’ll quit.
#49 Alarmist Creep
May 18, 2008

Well how about cloud feedback or haven’t got a clue.

Albedo?

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/ interesting on the albedo but pass on the cosmic rays….
#50 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 18, 2008

Alarmist Creep:

A good rule of thumb is this: if it’s any good, it’ll be mentioned elsewhere.
#51 Thom
May 18, 2008

Some classic Roger Pielke Jr. rhetoric

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/prediction_and_forecasting/001431the_helpful_undergra.html#comments

Roger Pielke Jr.: PS. James, my sense is that when you decide to have a conversation aimed at honestly exploring why we have different views on this topic, and you drop the attitude, snark, and bad will, it will be much more satisfying for both of us and the readers. If you are not interested in such a conversation, then lets just not have it. Fair enough?

—————————————————

Classic Pielke.
#52 Tilo Reber
May 18, 2008

Barton, your response is on the open thread.
#53 Tilo Reber
May 18, 2008

bi, your response is on the open thread.
#54 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 18, 2008

Thom:

Yeah, isn’t that how it works? As I wrote to him:

So, what were you doing with your pet [conspiracy] theory all these years? Were you thinking about how to test your theory, how to falsify it? Or were you waiting all these years for someone to label you, or misquote you, or quote you out of context, or whatever the latest excuse is, so that you can avoid talking about falsifiability?

You can talk to yourself now, Roger.

That’s how Pielkean science works: Throw all sorts of crap at the wall, repeatedly dodge and weave when called on it, and then find the flimsiest excuse — based on nitpicked flaws in the “attitude” of the Other Side — to end any discussion.

We don’t need no stinkin’ calculations!
#55 Hank Roberts
May 18, 2008

It’s a shame what happened to the brokers.
They all fell into selling the subprime stuff.
#56 Betula
May 18, 2008

“You’re not getting the point which is that for you to deny that increased CO2 is a warming force over the last 10 years requires belief that nothing else (natural or otherwise) could have given a cooling force”

And your not getting the point which is that for you to believe C02 is the main driving force behind the warming, and will wreak havoc in a short period of time if we don’t take urgent action….. requires the belief that nothing (other than immediate, drastic regulatory actions) can save us.

Unless of course there is no warming for 10 years, when the cooling effect of natural variations suddenly appears, putting the urgency on hold without warning…. and the term Global Warming fades away and Climate Change begins to take hold.

Did we forget to include the cooling or suppressing effects of natural variation into the sense of urgency formula?

I understand the trend and I understand things don’t happen in a linear way (due to natural variations) and I understand it would be wise to reduce and save and explore and create new etc…

What I never understood was the sense of panic….10 and more years ago and today…which is the fuel behind imaginary images of planetary doom that are the driving force behind attempting to rush overeacting policies.

And to drift off topic even further, think of it in terms of terrorism and the war in Iraq. Was the planning rushed? Was there overreaction? Was it well thought out? Was it a reaction to a trend line that created images of doom? Did it solve the problem?

Irrational doom and gloom and the need for expedience….there’s a good combination to formulate rational decision making…..

But hey, we haven’t had a terrorist attack in almost 8 years…..maybe rushed, overreacting policies based on worst case scenarios are a good thing.

Never mind Chris…..I’m on board.
#57 Hank Roberts
May 18, 2008

“Now if you told me that the RC distribution was a prediction for the specific years 2000-2007 (e.g., as they have labeled their graphs)”

As another train barrels into the first pile of smoking wreckage (sigh)
#58 Phoca
May 18, 2008

“An ENSO event can be expected to affect different locations differently ie: heavy rains and flooding in Peru, severe droughts in Indonesia and parts of Australia….all depending on the variables local to that area…..altitude,latitude,proximity to large bodies of water or mountains etc… -Betula

When the water to cause that rain and flooding in Peru moves across 4/5ths the breadth of the Pacific to get to Peru, and is carried by air currents that literally circumnavigate the globe, and the heat engine for the whole thing is 93 million miles away, it would be extremely difficult to say climate is caused locally, although if you say climate’s effects are felt locally, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.
#59 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 18, 2008

Guys, do not feed the troll.

Or trolls, in this case.
#60 Betula
May 18, 2008

“Guys, do not feed the troll.
Or trolls, in this case.”

Or at least feed them something worth eating…..we need to have them around so we can call them trolls and denialist twits to make us feel clever.
#61 dhogaza
May 18, 2008

Or at least feed them something worth eating…..we need to have them around so we can call them trolls and denialist twits to make us feel clever

Science will continue marching on with or without science denialists.

And the earth will continue to warm whether you believe it or not.

Reality’s a bitch.
#62 bi -- Intl. J. Inact.
May 19, 2008

And now, via Annan, we have Pielkean arithmetic…

I guess if you squint and wave your hands, 23% is pretty close to 5%.
#63 Betula
May 19, 2008

Phoca says…

“it would be extremely difficult to say climate is caused locally”

This began at #48 when Harold Pierce stated “All climate is local”. You can read into that what you like, but I believe we are talking semantics…..location affects climate.

This from the Colorado Climate Center……

“The climate of local areas are profoundly affected by differences in elevation, and to a lesser degree, by the orientation of mountain ranges and valleys with respect to general air movements. Wide variations occur within short distances. The difference (35°) in annual mean temperature between Pikes Peak and Las Animas, 90 miles to the southeast, is about the same as that between southern Florida and Iceland. The average annual snowfall at Cubres in the southern mountains is nearly 300 inches; less than 30 miles away at Manassa in the San Luis Valley, snowfall is less than 25 inches. While temperature decreases, and precipitation generally increases with altitude, these patterns are modified by the orientation of mountain slopes with respect to the prevailing winds and by the effect of topographical features in creating local air movements.”
#64 Bernard J.
May 19, 2008

Climate/microclimate…

It comes down to scale, but to try to say that HPJr’s “All climate is local” eyebrow-raiser is to any real extent defensible, Betula, stretches credulity. Global climate exists, and it is affected by global-scale factors. There is no hiding from this.

Methinks that it might be you who plays semantics, with your quotation and with your implication that HPJr is somehow correct.

Permit me a metaphor.